Forests

"Four west coast cities in the US currently rank in the top 10 for worst air quality in the world, as wildfires rage up and down the western seaboard, cloaking the entire region in smoke."

"Wildfires have now burned more than 4.6 million acres in 87 large fires across 10 states, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. At least 35 people have died in California, Oregon and Washington, The Associated Press reported."

"Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden excoriated President Trump on Monday over his environmental record as wildfires continued to burn through much of the West and as the president used a trip to California to question the scientific consensus that climate change is a leading cause of the devastating blazes."

"As vast and fast wildfires continue to spread almost unprecedented destruction across America's three Pacific states, fire scientists, meteorologists and journalists have begun comparing the conflagrations to one firestorm 110 years ago."

"When President Trump flies to California on Monday to assess the state’s raging forest fires, he will come face to face with the grim consequences of a reality he has stubbornly refused to accept: the devastating effects of a warming planet."

"On a cool February morning, around 60 people gathered in the Sierra Nevada foothills to take part in a ceremony that, for many decades, was banned."

"Multiple mega fires burning more than three million acres. Millions of residents smothered in toxic air. Rolling blackouts and triple-digit heat waves. Climate change, in the words of one scientist, is smacking California in the face."

"Fires in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest worsened in the first week of September and are increasingly spreading into areas of untouched forest, satellite data showed as of Wednesday, after the number of fires likely reached a 10-year high in August."

"California is on fire. Almost 2.5 million acres of land have burned there so far this year — nearly 20 times what had burned at this time last year — and the wildfire season is far from over. That means many scientists in the state aren’t just studying their field; many of them are living it."

"“Unprecedented fire.” “Devastating consequences.” “Substantially destroyed.” Those were among the ways Oregon Gov. Kate Brown described the catastrophic wildfires blazing through large swaths of western Oregon Wednesday. The last statement was a reference to a handful of communities, including Phoenix and Talent in southern Oregon, Blue River and Vida in Lane County and Detroit at the foot of Mt. Jefferson."