EURAF
https://www.facebook.com/share/1DCKM5KT1e/

Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated around Bordeaux and Madrid in recent days, and the damage to homes, land and communities is tragic.

Our thoughts are with everyone affected, and with the firefighters and emergency crews working to bring these fires under control.

Once the immediate crisis passes, there will rightly be a lot of discussion about prevention. There's no single fix - prevention depends on funding, land-use policy, climate action, and long-term investment in rural areas.

🌳 🐐 But one approach that has shown promising results, among several worth discussing, is agroforestry and silvopastoral land management: reintroducing grazing, mixed land use, and active forest thinning into landscapes that have become dense and fuel-heavy after decades of rural depopulation. This is an area EURAF has long followed with interest.

One example worth highlighting is 👉 the Life-Montserrat project (Catalonia, 2014–2018), a case we featured in our report, "Agroforestry as a Wildfire Prevention and Mitigation Tool in Europe: Recommendations for Member States."

After major fires in the area in 1986, the pine forest that regenerated became very densely packed (over 50,000 trees/hectare in places) as traditional farming and grazing declined and active land management largely stopped.

By strategically thinning pine density to around 1,000 trees per hectare and using controlled burns with mechanical clearing to reopen pasture, the project restored a diversified agrosilvopastoral landscape. These actions successfully supported new, economically viable livestock operations, including goats, cattle, and donkeys, to graze and maintain the land.

Some results after four years:

✅ Over 1,300 hectares of woodland restored
✅ Grazing agreements across 1,400 hectares of private land
✅ Early positive signs for butterfly and plant biodiversity
✅ A new Montserrat Livestock Farmers' Association, giving local people an ongoing stake in maintaining the landscape

The project itself is careful to note this isn't about preventing all fires, that's neither realistic nor, ecologically, entirely desirable. It's about reducing the risk of the kind of large, uncontrolled fires we're seeing this week, by keeping land actively managed rather than left to accumulate fuel.

We're sharing this not as a silver bullet, but as one example of land-management thinking that deserves more attention and investment as these fire seasons become more frequent.

🔗 Full report: https://zenodo.org/records/21275959

📸 From Life Montserrat picture gallery: https://www.facebook.com/LifeMontserrat

Jem Bendell
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19J9oSeJRh/


As we examined in the environmental courses I taught since 12 years ago, even the media outlets that are good enough to cover environmental issues with some concern, never look deeper or give space to those who do. Instead they platform those who seek respect within the systems which are culpable.

The latest example on Channel 4.

Journalist: tone of - incredulity and worry.
Eco pundit: tone of - change is doable.
Consultant: tone of - positive changes thanks to some politicians.
Scientist: tone of - it's complicated so let's keep trying.

These tones each reflect and comprise a constellation of professional class subcultures that maintain denial and exclude honest appraisal of why capitalism makes this eco-social tragedy inevitable, how that's been known for decades, and what to do about it.

The journalist would not need such incredulity if the producer had interviewees who would explain the economic system drives the destruction, sells false solutions, and then rewards reactionary politics. Monbiot gets close to it, but maintains his acceptability with the establishment.


Europe is BURNING - why are politicians not acting?
https://youtu.be/TQatRrNcmww?si=CPUy34Mix3nkvHHl

The Trump administration announced that power plants built exclusively to serve data centers (ones that never connect to the public grid) are now exempt from the Clean Air Act’s Acid Rain Program.

Link: https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2026-07/epa-issues-clarification-on-islanded-power-generators-and-acid-rain-program-provisions.pdf

❝ The Rhine River’s water levels risk dropping to an unprecedented low as heat waves grip Europe, creating a bottleneck for the delivery of coal and fuels inland while raising shipping costs.

Water levels at Kaub, a key chokepoint for shipments heading to southern Germany and Switzerland, have already fallen to 28 centimeters, the lowest since 2018, according to German federal data. Forecasts show the barge clearance level could decline even more this week, potentially reaching 24 centimeters on Friday, which would be the lowest in data going back to 1990.

The river, which snakes roughly 800 miles (1,290 kilometers) from Switzerland to the North Sea, carries resources including coal, oil products and iron ore, plus goods in containers. As well as impacting water networks, the heat and dryness that have hit the continent this year have stressed power systems, strained public health services and caused major wildfires.

The falling levels on the Rhine are already disrupting freight. The cost to ship diesel from Rotterdam to Karlsruhe — further inland from the closely watched Kaub chokepoint — has climbed to the highest since Bloomberg began compiling the data in 2009.

The situation is unlikely to improve soon with Europe facing another heat wave. Temperatures in Frankfurt are forecast to reach as high as 39C on Thursday, according to Atmospheric G2, while little rainfall is expected in the coming days.

“With every centimeter it’s getting more difficult,” said Florian Krekel at Germany’s WSV, which manages the country’s waterways. “There’s no rain in sight.”

The disruption is also showing up in coal logistics and supplies. Inventories of the fuel at ports in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp hub have risen about 75% since the spring, according to DBX Commodities Ltd., while barge loadings to move those supplies inland have been cut by three-quarters.

“The Rhine has effectively locked the door on inland coal delivery, and Rotterdam is where the trucks are queuing up,” DBX Commodities chief executive officer Alexandre Claude said. ❞


Heat Wave Drives Rhine to Record Lows, Disrupting Coal and Diesel Deliveries - Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-28/heat-pushes-rhine-toward-36-year-low-in-risk-to-energy-supplies

mrzute, ale to k letu patri

Hungary is partially shutting down its Paks Nuclear Power Plant by turning off one of its four reactors. This partial stop is caused by record-low water levels and high temperatures in the Danube River, which provides the cooling water needed to run the facility safely

This documentary, in the form of a satellite map, traces the history of weather modification world wide between the years 1952 and 1999 as recorded by the United Nations World Meteorological Organization. This map includes data on the apparatus involved, agents applied and the techniques used in each event. It also includes both positive and negative results of some of the completed projects, funding sources such as government agencies and private companies.
Interactive Map of 50 years of U.N. tracking Weather Modification Projects (1952-1999) • Live Earth Monitoring & Educational Resources • ClimateViewer Maps
https://climateviewer.org/history-and-science/geoengineering-and-weather-modification/maps/50-years-of-united-nations-tracking-weather-modification-projects-1952-1999/

Kevin Ovenden - Even if the city of Bordeaux is not...
https://www.facebook.com/share/19JtgAnfgL/

Even if the city of Bordeaux is not evacuated, as contingencies are now being made for, the fact that a *European* city of over a million people is in this position ought to mark a turning point.

Of course there are two points taken for granted: 1) we have had so many turning points not taken, and 2) devastation due to climate breakdown and other environmental crises has ripped through the rest of the world at frightening levels, especially in the poorest countries.

All that said, such a peacetime emergency evacuation is, I think, unprecedented.

If I were trying to construct artful conjectures about relativising climate breakdown and downplaying action - revolutionising action - today both to adapt and to tackle the sources of the environmental crises, then I wouldn't choose this month or the next to do so.

A city of one million people faces emergency evacuation in days. Not in years due to rising sea levels or loss of natural fresh water supply.

Days.

Interesting interview with Earth scientist Bill McGuire.

One of the most concerning points he discusses is a new (as yet unreviewed) paper suggesting that current satellite observations aren't matching our understanding of Earth's energy imbalance. In other words, the planet appears to be warming faster than existing models can fully explain. As this paper has not yet been peer reviewed, these findings should be treated as provisional until they have undergone independent scientific scrutiny. If they do hold up, they suggest we could exceed 2°C of warming by around 2040, approach 3°C by around 2050, and continue rising thereafter, pushing Earth's climate towards temperatures not experienced for millions of years.

The video also explores the economic consequences of climate breakdown.

The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, the professionals who assess financial risk for banks, insurers and pension funds argue that many economic models are fundamentally underestimating climate risk. Their concern is that most financial institutions treat climate impacts as isolated events, rather than recognising that droughts, crop failures, floods, migration, conflict and supply chain disruption can cascade into one another, creating far greater economic damage than the sum of the individual parts.

Their warning is stark. Without immediate action to change course, severe climate impacts are not only plausible but could threaten future global prosperity.

To illustrate the scale of the disagreement, many mainstream economic models still rely on assumptions originating from a model published in 2000, which estimated climate change would reduce global GDP by only around 3% by 2100. By contrast, actuarial risk assessments, produced by people whose job is to price and underwrite multi billion dollar financial risks, warn of around a 15% reduction in global GDP by 2050, rising to as much as 50% by 2100. Some actuarial scenarios even suggest the possibility of widespread societal breakdown beginning around the 2040s, with catastrophic human consequences later this century.

It does make you wonder whether the old contrarian slogan, "We are the carbon they want to get rid of," has ended up applying in the opposite direction.

The Insurance Industry Predicts Mass Death: How Do We Live A Good Life?
https://youtu.be/9Q93ZE54yaE?is=q0M2JBIgKLEgw6ZZ&t=4m0

As the planet heats, public doubt grows: The social structure behind rising climate change scepticism in Germany

In 2024, global heating exceeded 1.5 °C for the first time. Paradoxically, as the climate crisis becomes ever more evident, climate change scepticism (CCS) has recently grown (rather than declined) in Germany, a high-emissions country with enormous responsibility.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378026000919?via=ihub

XCHAOS:

XCHAOS: pise se, ze je to spis do 30ti stupnu, treba Bolivie do 22, Paraguay do 24 atd.