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We may be looking at a new normal here too.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/wild...-104826643
There's another wildfire burning in Hawaii. This one is destroying irreplaceable rain forest on Oahu
A wildfire burning in a remote Hawaii rainforest is underscoring a new reality for the normally lush island state just a few months after a devastating blaze on a neighboring island leveled an entire town and killed at least 99 people.
No one was injured and no homes burned in the latest fire, which scorched mountain ridges on Oahu, but the flames wiped out irreplaceable native forestland that's home to nearly two dozen fragile species. And overall, the ingredients are the same as they were in Maui's historic town of Lahaina: severe drought fueled by climate change is creating fire in
Hawaii where it has almost never been before.
“It was really beautiful native forest,”
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And there is this little tidbit !
”Feathers from Hawaii's forest birds were once used to make cloaks and helmets worn by chiefs."
I believe this might have impacted the forest birds more than a fire last week.
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It always irks me when ancient people are held up as stewards of the environment and as less culpable than modern peoples when it comes to environmental degradation. Know what a buffalo jump is? You stampede a bunch of buffalo off a cliff then use only the tongues and hearts, because you can. In reality there were so few people and so many buffalo at that time that it didn't matter. At the time native Hawaiians were making these cloaks there were a heck of a lot more birds and no mosquitos to spread avian malaria. Ancient Hawaiians were never tested the way modern society is being tested as far as preserving wildlife. That goes both ways though. The fires today are threatening one of the few remaining enclaves of native wildlife so the stakes are much higher.
It is my understanding that there was a pulse of extinction that occurred when people first showed up in Hawaii. It tends to go unremarked as it was hundreds of years ago but was pretty much par for the course wherever mankind went.
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Sad news. Wouldn't be surprised to see this someday in Puna. Possibly during this "wet" season, as it's three months already way below normal rainfall.
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World Atlas reports that smokers are a big cause of forest fires.
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what...fires.html
Between the fires, the polution, and the effects of second hand smoke on our keiki, where is the empathy with these smokers? SMH
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when ancient people are held up as stewards of the environment and as less culpable than modern peoples
pretty much par for the course wherever mankind went.
Yes.
There was a fair amount of talk after the Lahaina fire that until the colonizers arrived Hawaii never had any kind of uncontrollable fires. A leap of logic at best, faulty logic at worst.
The world is getting measurably warmer, you can pick your reason, an increase in CO2 or normal fluctuations in earth’s atmosphere that have always occurred throughout time, completely uninfluenced by humans, but at this point you can’t deny the numbers and the results. Warmer weather will cause more fires. More forest fires burn in summer than in winter, and we now have longer summers.
People no longer have to travel to distant shores to create problems for the native ecosystem. Now we can do it from the comfort of our air conditioned cars, homes, and offices, and the exhaust will follow the wind around the world.
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11-12-2023, 09:59 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-12-2023, 10:22 PM by Punatang.)
The world is getting measurably warmer, you can pick your reason -
Excellent point and thanks for reminding me. Smokers also cause global warming according to the World Health Organization.
https://www.who.int/news/item/31-05-2022...tal-impact
And then there is the filth...
“Tobacco products are the most littered item on the planet, containing over 7000 toxic chemicals, which leech into our environment when discarded. Roughly 4.5 trillion cigarette filters pollute our oceans, rivers, city sidewalks, parks, soil and beaches every year,” said Dr Ruediger Krech, Director of Health Promotion at WHO."
So besides directly causing forest fires while poisioning our keiki's lungs and planet, they also demonstrate their dearth of empathy by heating up our atmosphere. One wonders how they justify it all in their minds.
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The main highway between Kahului & Kihei on Maui is closed. Brush fire. I lived on Maui for 12 years, don’t ever recall that happening.
https://x.com/maui_ema/status/1724228729952690675?s=12
