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wafflebrain

Member
Oct 27, 2017
10,189

Vast stretches of Earth's northern latitudes are on fire right now. Hot weather has engulfed a huge portion of the Arctic, from Alaska to Greenland to Siberia. That's helped create conditions ripe for wildfires, including some truly massive ones burning in remote parts of the region that are being seen by satellites.

Pierre Markuse, a satellite imagery processing guru, has documented some of the blazes attacking the forests and peatlands of the Arctic. The imagery reveals the delicate landscapes with braided rivers, towering mountains, and vast swaths of forest, all under a thick blanket of smoke.

In Alaska, those images show some of the damage wrought by wildfires that have burned more than 1.6 million acres of land this year. Huge fires have sent smoke streaming cities earlier this month, riding on the back of Anchorage's first 90 degree day ever recorded. The image below show some of the more remote fires in Alaska as well as the Swan Lake Fire, which was responsible for the smoke swallowing Anchorage in late June and earlier this month.

Intense hot conditions have also fanned flames in Siberia. The remote nature of many of the fires there means they're burning out of control, often, through swaths of peatland that's normally frozen or soggy. But as Thomas Smith, a fire expert at London School of Economics, noted on Twitter, there are ample signs the peat dried out due to the heat and is ablaze. That's worrisome since peat is rich in carbon, and fires can release it into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Peat fires can also burn underground into the winter and reignite in spring.

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Not scary at all, nope.
 

adj_noun

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
17,152
I'm no climate scientist, but I'm going to file this under

uh

is that supposed to happen
 

Dark Knight

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
19,259
I'd say we had a good run, but - meh -

thanks Earth, good luck with the cleanup once humans are gone
 

Zetta

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
7,630
This is gut wrenching events, guess we better start mutating into fishes.
 

TheShampion

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,214
You know, I don't know enough about the Arctic, but maaaaaaaan, that really looks baaaaaad.

I really wish we were doing more to make this sort of thing less worrying.

Correction, I really wish we were doing ANYTHING TO STOP THIS WORLD BURNING ITSELF TO DEATH.
 

Barnak

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,056
Canada
But remember guys, since we still have snow and cold weather during winter, everything is peachy. Let's panic the day snow doesn't exist anymore, alright?
 

dabig2

Member
Oct 29, 2017
5,116
Yeah, been burning for a minute now. June was a horrific month already. Plus, all this destruction is compounding the problem by releasing even more CO2 poison into the atmosphere


Estimated June total #wildfire #CO2 emissions for the #Arctic Circle from 2003-2019. 50 Mt CO2 is equivalent to 2017 national fossil fuel CO2 emissions for Bulgaria, Hungary and Sweden https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/overview.php?v=booklet2018&sort=asc9 … @EU_ScienceHub @adamvaughan_uk
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One of those nasty negative cycles, which we'll have to get used to as more and more burns down.
 

Wamb0wneD

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
18,735
Man...fuck all of this. I'm not going to put children into this dystopian hellscape. Things will look really fucking bad in 30 years.
 

Akira86

Member
Oct 25, 2017
19,585
jesus.


i bet cavemen who saw this stuff 20,000 years ago were completely losing their shit.
 

Wetwork

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
2,607
Colorado
Why isn't this national news. Why am I just hearing about this now, but president dickead tweeting about freeing A$AP Rocky is a headline. Fuck man.
 

breakYODAy

Member
Oct 25, 2017
428
Why isn't this national news. Why am I just hearing about this now, but president dickead tweeting about freeing A$AP Rocky is a headline. Fuck man.

There's a very good case to be made that as a species, we are simply too distructive and delusional about our collective actions to preserve life on this planet.
 

StrykerIsland

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,151
If that kind of news doesn't light a fucking figurative fire under all of the united governments, nothing will.
 

maxxpower

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
8,950
California
Just burn the whole fucking planet. There's no way to prevent this anymore and our "leaders" don't give a shit.
 

Rendering...

Member
Oct 30, 2017
19,089
Hmm, where did I put that snowball I use as a visual aid to expose the FICTION of climate change? There's just a big splotch of water in my drawer here.
 

Starwing

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Oct 31, 2018
4,111
Not to throw more bleakness on this or metacommentary, maybe because its a Saturday night where I am, but its somewhat illuminating that this kind of news would be eye catching on here or anywhere else with a title like that, yet has so few views and responses compared to stories on no-name people in daily social media spats. Probably should give it more time, but I don't forsee this information garnering much more attention than it already has.
 

Deleted member 6949

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
7,786
It's so surreal to know that we are all stuck on this earth and it is turning to shit and we could totally do something about it but there is a cabal of antisocial freaks running everything who want to kill as many people as possible.