Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff Lauren Vogelbaum here. This summer, severe consequences of
Speaker 1: climate change were felt around the world tornadoes, hurricanes, flash floods,
Speaker 1: and wildfires. In Russia, for example, has been one of
Speaker 1: the country's worst wildfire seasons ever. At one point, more
Speaker 1: than three hundred wildfires burned simultaneously. Those burning in Siberia
Speaker 1: altogether were bigger than all other fires in the world combined.
Speaker 1: So what's going on? Russia and Siberia in particular is
Speaker 1: known as one of the coldest places in the world,
Speaker 1: yet each year it experiences more wildfires of increasing severity.
Speaker 1: This year was the worst after with more than forty
Speaker 1: three million acres that's seventeen and a half million hectors burned.
Speaker 1: The biggest fires were in the northeastern part of Siberia,
Speaker 1: they certainly weren't contained to that region. Thousands of firefighters,
Speaker 1: along with soldiers, emergency responders, and even agricultural workers have
Speaker 1: been mobilized to fight the blazes. In many places, However,
Speaker 1: officials need even more volunteers and financial resources, and some
Speaker 1: fires aren't being fought at all. In areas without a
Speaker 1: lot of infrastructure and few people in settlements. Authorities are
Speaker 1: just letting the massive fires burn. For the article this
Speaker 1: episode is based on House to Fork spoke with Zenya Namova,
Speaker 1: green Peace Rush's Fire Responds project manager, whose name I
Speaker 1: hope I just said correctly, as she said, the problem
Speaker 1: is that if the fires start in these zones and
Speaker 1: they don't send any emergency firefighters there when it's much
Speaker 1: easier to stop it, then the fire becomes bigger and bigger,
Speaker 1: and the scale becomes so high that you cannot actually
Speaker 1: stop the fire. According to Greenpeace, these wildfires should all
Speaker 1: be fought when they are small so that they don't
Speaker 1: get out of control and spread. Unfortunately, right now there
Speaker 1: is inadequate funding to fight all the fires. Nine out
Speaker 1: of every ten of these wildfires are caused by human activities.
Speaker 1: Namova says. That includes things like camp fires that aren't
Speaker 1: put out, sparks from passing coal trains, or old electrical
Speaker 1: lines breaking. The tenth common cause of the fires is lightning.
Speaker 1: While human accidents and faulty infrastructure don't necessarily have much
Speaker 1: to do with climate change, the conditions caused by climate
Speaker 1: change make the fires easier to start and make them
Speaker 1: more severe once they do. Siberia is one of the
Speaker 1: fastest warming places on Earth, with average monthly temperatures in
Speaker 1: averaging more than eighteen degrees fahrenheit that's ten degrees celsius
Speaker 1: above the average for the period between n and Nomova said,
Speaker 1: it's drier, it's hotter, and there's more lightning in some areas.
Speaker 1: When all these conditions are put together, the possibilities for
Speaker 1: fires is higher and possible scale for fire is getting higher,
Speaker 1: increasing potential harm that the fire is bringing. In addition,
Speaker 1: helping the fires grow so large and so fast as
Speaker 1: an infestation of silkworms which kill the trees, leaving forests
Speaker 1: full of dry wood ready to go up in flames.
Speaker 1: So should the world be worried? Yes, According to scientists
Speaker 1: and activists, nearby villages in Siberia end up blanketed with
Speaker 1: toxic smoke, meaning the residents end up breathing on healthy
Speaker 1: air and living in apocalyptic looking landscapes. NASA's Moderate Resolution
Speaker 1: Imaging Spectra Radiometer Earth monitoring tool showed smoke from the
Speaker 1: fires reaching all the way to the North Pole for
Speaker 1: possibly the first time in history on August six. Along
Speaker 1: with the damage these fires can do to the environment, people,
Speaker 1: and wildlife. The fires also released stored carbon and methane
Speaker 1: into the atmosphere, contributing to the very global warming that's
Speaker 1: increasing their frequency and severity in the first place. Roughly
Speaker 1: six of Russia is also covered by permafrost. As this
Speaker 1: permafrost thaws due to fires and warming temperatures, soil microbes
Speaker 1: begin to decompose and release even more carbon dioxide into
Speaker 1: the atmosphere along with methane, a greenhouse gas around thirty
Speaker 1: times more potent than carbon. According to Naumova, not nearly
Speaker 1: enough as being done to mitigate these fires, she said,
Speaker 1: on the state level, there's still no clear plan to
Speaker 1: act against fires because of climate change, and no clear
Speaker 1: plan to act against climate change at all. Actually, a
Speaker 1: Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has questioned the science of human
Speaker 1: caused climate change before and even emphasized the positive impacts
Speaker 1: warming temperatures could have. For example, he suggested that melting
Speaker 1: ice means more access to shipping roots and less difficulties
Speaker 1: searching for minerals, oil and gas. More recently, however, Putin
Speaker 1: has acknowledged the connection between the climate change and the
Speaker 1: growing natural disasters. Given the catastrophic fire season of Putin
Speaker 1: announced the funding for firefighting will go up threefold. There
Speaker 1: are also plans to plant trees and scorched areas, which
Speaker 1: Naumova says is an unnecessary waste of time and money
Speaker 1: because the forests recovered quite well on their own when
Speaker 1: people don't get in the way. What Green Peace Russia
Speaker 1: would like to see happen is a further increase to
Speaker 1: spending on firefighting. In addition, Namova said they would like
Speaker 1: to see every fire fought from early stages, as opposed
Speaker 1: to leaving some to burn. They also want to forbid
Speaker 1: using fire to clear the land for agriculture and industry,
Speaker 1: and most of all, they want to end risky activities
Speaker 1: like leaving burning camp fires and smoking in the forest,
Speaker 1: and to improve infrastructure that could accidentally start fires to
Speaker 1: begin with. Now, Amova said, we know that nine out
Speaker 1: of ten fires happened because of human activities, and this
Speaker 1: means that if we are changing the mindsets and becoming
Speaker 1: more careful with fires in our normal life and in
Speaker 1: industrial activities, then we actually can minimize this amount of
Speaker 1: fires happening. Today's episode is based on the article Siberia's
Speaker 1: Wildfires dwarf all others on the globe combine on how
Speaker 1: stuffworks dot com. Written by Stephanie Parker. Brain Stuff is
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Klain. For
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