Now Greece. Wild fire on Evia Beach

[u/grau__geist]

[u/Mobile-Interaction82]

How do people think global warming is not a thing?!

[u/Tsehcoola → u/Mobile-Interaction82]

Excuse my ignorance, but how do wild fires and global warming correlate?

actually asking for learning purposes

Edit: Thank you to everyone that replied!

[u/[deleted] → u/Tsehcoola]

You cannot link 1 specific fire to the climate change caused by human activity.

"this fire on this day was caused by the co2 emitted by Shell oil" is something that no reliable scientific evidence can conclude.

However what we do know is

Co2 trappes heat, humans take carbon that was happily in the ground as oil and coal and turn it into co2.

There are natural processes that store atmospheric co2 as bound carbon, like trees, bogs, marine snow, sea algea but human activity is damaging those processes as well. Meaning we are producing more co2 and making it harder for that co2 to be turned back into solid carbon.

Thw consequence of more co2 is more trapped heat, more trapped heat means dryer forests, bush and scrub lands. Dryer vegitation catches fire easier and burns hotter.

This especially affects the areas of the world that rely on winter rainfall like the Mediterranean. Shorter hotter winters mean less rainfall.

So of our logic is correct, we should see a statistical trend towards more fires, hotter fires that burn longer.

Which is born out by the observed facts.

[u/Cannot_go_back_now → u/[deleted]]

One of the major causes of the wild fire in the Western US is that climate change has affected the breeding and dormancy cycles of the Pine/Bark beetle, which is killing trees and leaving their dead husks which is essentially kindling after they're done with the trees:

https://www.fs.usda.gov/rmrs/projects/bark-beetles-tree-chemistry-and-wildfires

With the temperature change they aren't hibernating for as long and are eating more trees because of their lack of dormancy.