Clojurians Log v2

I saw this from a youtuber that kinda surprised me https://youtu.be/M9Hoy9Kn1u0?si=PCffFpiyg9MGJNlA ... apparently global impact from wildfires has been trending down for a while ...

I suppose that globally doesn't surprise me. I think part of the problem atm is that we are seeing more and worse where we didn't before

yeah ... there's more media coverage of the rich people's stuff burning ... but I guess I just assumed that it'd be worse in africa, but I guess not

When we moved from California to Ohio last year, part of our decision was about wildfires. That eliminated Oregon and Colorado as possible locations. We'd already eliminated everything in "The South" (and the South East) due to hurricanes, and the center of the country due to tornados. We're in a bit of a sweet spot here (N.E. Ohio): we're far enough away from the Great Lakes to avoid the wildest winter weather and East of "Tornado Alley". That said, we had the snowiest winter anyone here can remember (3x normal snowfall—including 30cm overnight one day in January!) and we've seen three summer storms that led to tornado watches (and two small tornados touched down just SE of us in early July). The closest wildfires got to us in California was about 20 miles and that was way too close. A friend lost his home in the Paradise fire some years back and has had to evacuate again from another fire (it didn't get to his new house, fortunately). While global impact is trending down (which surprises me), I think we're seeing more fires in populated areas than before, and so we're hearing about a lot more evacuations and destruction of property. The wildfires in California tended to be in more rural, mountainous regions—definitely not "rich people" country—although outside of the US, I'm sure more news attention is paid to fires in those upscale neighborhoods. Millions of acres of California has burned over the past five years and nearly every such fire destroys at least one neighborhood, but I suspect a trailer park burning to the ground is not really considered "world news".

Here in France during the very recent fire near Bordeaux there has been firefighters and resources moved from a village, that later burned, to a place where a lot of rich people have properties. The fire was 200km/130miles away from my home and we still had yellowish acrid atmosphere for a couple days https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/08/02/french-sacrificed-village-save-millionaire-holiday-homes/

When California was burning back in 2020 (I think), we had to have the whole house sealed up for two weeks as the air was unbreathable outside. The skies turned "End Of Days Orange" 😞 A few weeks ago, the Canadian wildfire smoke was so bad here in N.E. Ohio that we had the house closed for several days. Our cats were very upset they weren't allowed out into the catio. It's why we have three powerful, wall-mounted air purifiers (the California fires) and we're glad we brought them to Ohio. What's happening in France and Spain is awful—and, unfortunately, we know what it is like 😞

(and, yes, those sorts of decisions and trade offs are going to continue to happen until a lot more money is invested in climate change response)

Good hunting

I am wondering whether the AI drought has truly hit Europe now.