Do people equate the global wild fires with global warming? Or is it still just weather?

[Greedybilly]

What are your thoughts?
I'm finding the whole thing bloody terrifying and feel like we're all just sleep walking into a bit of a nightmare.

It's not just the causing of the fire it's how far and fast they spread

Very few reports of the recent heatwaves mentioned global warming. Feels like there's a lot of downplaying going on. Then look at the expansion of Ai data centres that consume massive amounts of water, it's like we're in some sort of dystopian parallel universe where there's no recognition of cause and effect. Our so called leaders are just whistling in the dark. While we're on the subject why are they banging on about continual growth when we live with finite resources? Shouldn't we be looking at reducing consumption??

The UK doesn't manufacture much any more. We buy stuff in from overseas.

That 1% figure is pointless as our consumption of goods made elsewhere is a far higher contribution to global warming than 1%. We are not blameless

That’s exactly what I mean. People have been chosing to ignore what they are being told.

I think the tipping point has been and gone personally. We will all find out soon enough. I have done my bit by studying this at university. With however many humans on this earth I'd be foolish to think I have any real power.

Quite. Climate change denial is almost as frightening as climate change itself and it needs to be called out for the dangerous BS that it is.

I appreciate everyone's thoughts and comments. You can easily be made to feel like you're over -reacting - on MN. Environmentalist is used as an insult ffs!. The lack of use of phrase 'global warming ' on the news is very weird - didn't know about the Scottish fires until I googled.

Of course. The speed and range of wildfires is increasing due to climate change. The increasing speed and range of climate change and collapse of the bio systems is driven by human activity. Fires are starting earlier in the seasons, they last a month longer than they used to do and the carbon dioxide they produce is obviously increasing. There is less water available and humans are using more water.

It is referred to as the Anthropocene epoch.

Absolutely you are not alone. Ecological grief is a global phenomenon. You might want to Google “Near Term Human Extinction”.

UK and a lot of Europe had masses of rain last winter. But some weather guru on R4 yesterday was saying that in some ways that has made the situation worse, in that lots of rain means lots of growth of undergrowth, which means even more ‘kindling’ for spreading the fires.

Plus because of farming technology and the massive paving over of gardens, roads and so on, the land can no longer retain the rainfall it needs. Some cities are removing tarmac and paving to replace it with earth, grass and gravel to address this and try to reduce the temperature.

I don’t think people grasp the extent of how drastically rainfall has reduced over recent years. Where I live we had a lot of rainy days in June and we also had some rain at the beginning of the year. People found that a nuisance and they think that addressed the problem. But if you check the figures - actually check them - we are still very much below average and that isover the last few years.

People can’t grasp that a few rainy days doesn’t redress the massive deficit we’ve been experiencing in recent years. Unfortunately, people don’t notice when there’s a drought, particularly when this happens in winter, but they do notice a few days of rain and complain about that.

FUBAR

I wish there was more we could do about the data centres being built. Absolutely horrible buildings and will damage humans on multiple fronts.

Rainfall has increased in the UK over the last 100 years. Rainfall has increased worldwide over the last 100 years. I'm not sure if it's relevant, but it's most certainly true.

Well I think we all know it is global warming. The question is what are we prepared to sacrifice to halt this race into chaos?.... flying wherever we want whenever we want, wanting out of season veg etc flown in from abroad, wanting cheap tat flown in from the other side of the world, using bottled water from plastic bottles ..... ?
Unless we are willing to make adjustments to our lifestyles and are prepared to pay for research into and installation of alternative sources of energy then the downward spiral will continue. Which political parties might be willing to grasp the nettle?

This is a particularly hot, dry, European summer and we are in a period of global warming. I don't believe it's a case of one or the other, it's a combination of both.

I absolutely agree with this.

If you ‘don’t know’ whether humans are causing climate change, can I ask where you get your information from? Because it’s 100% established fact that our climate is changing because of humans burning fossil fuels. If anything, natural processes have slowed it down a bit by, e.g. the oceans absorbing CO2, but now we are getting to the limits of that.

So do you think that you haven’t bothered to find out because you’re not really interested? Or is it that you’re getting conflicting information, seeing scientific facts from some sources but also misinformation (that it might just be natural processes)? I realise that sounds patronising, but it’s scary that people don’t all know the basic facts by now.

I dont think as individuals we can do that much other than try to elect politicians who are prepared to put the environment first. Im disappointed if Andy Burnham is agreeing to drill for oil. We need green energy and it needs to come from government. We need stricter controls around private jets etc and limits to flying. But it's mostly these huge multinationals that are causing the problem and they seem to be untouchable. None of our politicians have the balls to stand up to them.

To add to that - the basic facts are that while we carry on burning fossil fuels the world will get hotter and hotter and hotter. It’s simple physics. But newspapers are reporting the wildfires alongside saying how terrible ‘net zero’ is, never mentioning climate change being the reason net zero was brought in or that the world getting to net zero emissions is literally the only way to stop continued global heating. See the Times front page today.

But even if they are started deliberately, the reason they take hold and spread like wildfire (ha!) Is because the vegetation is so parched. That's down to the heat and a lack of rain. The climate is changing. We are causing that.

Guess you can't stop them. And you have to deal with it. Great for our tech industry.

Definitely climate change.

The elite are accelerating global warming, Profit above people.
The fires will clear land for data centres.
People will die.
That will be seen as a good outcome.
People would compete with AI for water otherwise.
The ultra wealthy need and want a passive non human workforce.

And so was the summer of 2025 and the summer of 2024.

Is it not alarming to you that the pattern is 1976, 2003, 2024, 2025, 2026? What was a once in a generation weather phenomenon is now just… summer.

I love the head in the sand "humans caused the fires" people. Yes of course, 90% of thr fires were started by human activity deliberate or accidental. But global warming has created the conditions for a fire to become a wild fire. I grew up on a farm in SE England in the 1980s and 1990s, and we would often have straw stubble fires in fields jn August, usually started by some idiot chucking a cigarette butt or glass bottle from their car. Terrifying as these were, they were easily contained to one field and put out by the fire brigade or by ploughing the land around the fire.

What we have now is completely different - tinder dry vegetation all over and high winds that create out of control wildfires in places that have not experienced them before.