The Air Quality Index in my town is currently 260 (very unhealthy) due to a surge in wildfires in western Canada and the northwest US. There are additional smaller fires not shown on this map at this zoom level.

From the interactive map it looks like the worst air in the world right now.

  • TheInsane42@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    We can only hope that this year finally opens the eyes of the deniers. (Before nature decides to finally solve the issue)

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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      1 year ago

      Most of the deniers I know are in the Midwest. They’ve had “hundred year storms”, draught, and winter cold now for about 5 years in a row and it didn’t phase them. Finally this year they were blanketed in wildfire smoke (and in the 25 years I grew up there we never had smoke) - and finally some of them are starting to realize something is up.

      Oh everyone else says it’s a thing, well nothing happened to me so it’s obviously fake.

      but now that it is happening to them directly it might be worth looking into

      • electrogamerman@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Lets face it, that “something is up” is going to be something completely ridiculous and stupid. Source: Corona

        I had a friend that made any imaginable excuse to not believe Corona. When there were no vaccines: wHy tHeRe aRe nO vAcCiNesss?. Where there were vaccines: “ThEy ArE dAnGeRoUs!!”

        If someone doesn’t believe in climate change by now, they are never going to believe it or do something against it.

        • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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          1 year ago

          Man it’s weird, all this smoke, these floods, the regular -30 degree temps. I wonder why they’re happening

          Bill, as he steps into his F350 Super Macho Duty to go fill up diesel again today for $4 a gallon before loading it up with groceries

    • Sacha@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Climate deniers think all the forest fires are some government conspiracy because a bunch of fires starting all at the same time is super sus. Even though it happens all the time after a big heatwave / drought and pine forests are made to burn. Sometimes these trees will just… not spontaneously combust exactly, but pretty much do. Pine forests are built to burn every 2 years or so, it’s one of the ways they reproduce - pines are genetically predisposed to catching fire easily and their sap is very very flammable. These forests burn hot and quickly but a fast fire isn’t a very destructive fire. These trees often are not burnt to the ground. However, we are so effective at putting fires out so this 2 year burn off isn’t happening. So, years of underbrush, etc is building up that otherwise wouldn’t be. This makes what is supposed to be a fast burn fire, into a slow burn one. What would be a natural fireline because there is a large gap between some trees, isn’t one because all the underbrush connects them.

      So it’s not just because of climate change, but we are responsible either way. There aren’t any easy answers for this one because there are houses scattered all over the places. But there is no helping these Trump worshipping conspiracy theorists and we need to consider them a lost cause. Nothing will shake their faith in their Orange God so we must bolster against them and move on without them.

    • HubertManne@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      not from what I have seen but I have noticed people who gave it token acknowledgement before are starting to realize how serious it is.

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      Lol no, they’ve sunk too much social capital into it.

      For a bit I’d walk into discussions about how weather has been insane the last few years and say “yep, the climate is changing” (no mention of cause, even) and there’d just be awkward silence. Now I’m hearing people blame the sun, because I guess they’ve figured out a comeback to their own observations.

      Thankfully technology is bailing us out even though we don’t deserve it.

      • TheInsane42@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Thankfully technology is bailing us out even though we don’t deserve it.

        Somehow I get the feeling it’s already to late for that. The Amazon is already in a bad state and they’re discovering the temp at which leaves die and won’t recover is even lower then they expected. AT this moment we’re having to much freak issues that science couldn’t predict (it’s worse then they thought) and as species we’re more concerned on killing ourselves then fixing problems we created.

        I think nature is pretty fast solving the main cause of the issues. Nature will survive, I just hope that the next dominant species is a tad more brighter. (and that it will take a few decades more)

        • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          I think that’s too pessimistic. There’s no way it’d wipe us all out even if fossil fuels had continued being the only practical tech. Even at double-digit temperature increase Antarctica is quite cool, and we’ve passed through bottlenecks of only a few tens of thousands of people before. Some wartorn agrarian Antarctic civilisation would continue on.

          What the shift to renewables means is that we might put the Earth into a new persistent state, but then it will stop and we have an opportunity to either just adapt or try and push it back.

          • TheInsane42@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            It’s already predicted that we would live as species in the artic circles as that’s the only area still inhabitable with the prospected 3-4C temp rise. (as long as it’s high enough) I’m not sure if I’d want to live to see that happen.

            • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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              1 year ago

              Do you have a link for that, by chance? The 2 C predictions have us living in a wrecked world with almost no coral reefs but with about the same agricultural output, IIRC.

                • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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                  1 year ago

                  Thanks! A machine translation.

                  That’s very interesting, humans have a measurable preferred average temperature. It doesn’t suggest that it will be impossible to live in India in this scenario, just much less appealing. I already live well outside of our preferred niche towards the cold end, for example.

                  That’s not to say that it’s a good situation, though. I hope I haven’t come across as suggesting that, but we’re very hard to kill. I think humans are on the same tier of adaptability as small terrestrial invertebrates at this point; if they can survive probably so can we.

                  Here’s a current temperature map so you can see where 11-15C is. India and Egypt seem to be hot-side outliers to start with, having been extensively populated for a long time, as does West Africa. South Africa and Argentina are noticeable areas that are climatically perfect without having too much going on.

                  I wonder if we might see agriculture confined to cold seasons in some areas of a hotter Earth.

    • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Ahahahahaha. You’re funny. They’re only emboldended in their denial.

      The only actual hope would be that the fires and floods claim them. We need to find a way to basically let the dickheads be the tip of the spear idiots like Alex Jones always claim they supposedly are. If they had to actually face these issues themselves, at actual danger, that might change their lives. Or alternative, at least remove them as an obstacle to actual action.

    • ch00f@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      When the fires finally hit the east coast, I was hoping my family would wake up a smidge. Instead, my uncle convinced my Mother that this was the work of bioterrorists.

    • elouboub@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      They aren’t affected badly enough yet. Plus, there are still immigrants around to blame. Just wait, “immigrants set the fire” will happen.

    • qwertyqwertyqwerty@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Climate deniers won’t accept what is happening until it directly affects them, and even then, they still might do mental gymnastics to make it about something else.