From Climate Scepticism

By Jit

Is this just going to be the way things are now with climate change being what it is?

Your correspondent was beginning to assemble a summer salad when, as is his custom, he put on PM on Radio 4. I missed the very beginning, and tuned in in time to hear part of a feature on the Greek wildfires. I missed the beginning of that, too, and part of it was drowned out by the kettle. But I was sufficiently exercised by what I had heard that I determined to transcribe the item for you, dear Cliscep Reader. Little did I know that there was quite a bit to transcribe before I arrived within range of the receiving apparatus. However, there was no Olympic athletics to watch. So, here we are. Transcription (E&OE) starts from about 5:05.

[FX: A helicopter flies by]

ANITA: That’s the sound of a helicopter battling wildfires in Greece. In the words of the mayor of Marathon, “We are facing a biblical catastrophe.” Wildfires have engulfed his historic town. Greece has come to expect seasonal summer fires, but these wildfires are something else. Fuelled by gale-force winds and a very dry, very hot summer, such is the ferocity of the flames and the speed of spread that Greece is now asking neighbouring countries to send help. Just over an hour ago, France announced it was sending 180 of its firefighters and specialist equipment. Aid is also expected from Spain, Italy, Turkey and Canada, and the Czech Republic has already committed 75 firefighters and 25 vehicles. Residents just north of Athens spoke of difficulty breathing.

[VOX POP]: I saw the flames about 150 metres away, and I called the fire service, and thankfully they came today. Despite the fact we were left for a while, we came back by back roads, because I didn’t want to lose my property for a second time.

[FX: A helicopter flies by]

[VOX POP]: The wind was very strong. You couldn’t do anything. I spent all morning hosing down the house. It was the same thing I did two years ago when I saved the house on my own. The wind would go in one direction and then in the other. The smoke was suffocating. You couldn’t see. Your eyes teared up. You couldn’t breathe. You couldn’t see the house. Our distance from the house is 50 metres plus 10 for the street. You couldn’t see this house at that time. Not even a helicopter had dropped water. You couldn’t see it. You could only hear it. Nothing else.

ANITA: Well the police officers are in Athens right now in the suburbs pleading with older people to leave. This is one older woman, and she says she simply can’t.

[FX: Fire appliance sirens]

[Unintelligible shouting, not voiced over]

ANITA: Helena Smith is The Guardian’s Athens correspondent and is with us now. Urm, is this affecting you too, the quality of the air, Helena, what’s it like?

HELENA: It is, I mean it’s very much affected the quality of the air across Athens, which sprawls across a 300 square kilometre, er, er, radius…

JIT [Howling at the moon]: Area!

HELENA: … um, these fires are being, the cinders from the fires…

JIT: [Snapping a walnut]: Embers!

HELENA: … are being pushed southwards towards the Argo-Saronic Gulf, over central Athens, where the Greek Parliament is, where the Acropolis is, and the air is, the atmosphere is really quite dark and, and, full of ash.

ANITA: Mmm. We heard from some of the people who were speaking a little while ago that, you know, they’d been through wildfires before, but this feels different.

HELENA: It does. I mean the scenes we are seeing on television screens are frankly tantamount to, er, a war zone. People desperately trying to douse flames with anything they can get hold of, buckets of water, hoses, and seeing homes, residences, um, you know, a lifetime’s work going up in flames, being reduced to cinders in a matter of minutes, it really is heartwrenching, absolutely heartwrenching, er, the images that Greeks have seen on their television screens throughout the day.

ANITA: Mmm. Helena, thanks very much indeed, stay safe. Helena Smith, The Guardian’s Athens correspondent. Eleni Myrivili was the deputy mayor of Athens, she is now the Global Chief Heat Officer for the United Nations Habitat and the Atlantic Council. And I spoke to her just before we came on air, and I asked her, how this news from her country was affecting her.

ELENI: I’ve been in tears today, because I know the places that are being burnt. I love some of these parts of my country, I really really care for them, I have known them since I was a child, you know, used to go there with my parents, and all of that kind of stuff, and now it’s burning, and it’s burning for the second time, and it’s really really frustrating.

ANITA: What is the latest that you have heard about the devastation caused by these fires?

ELENI: They are still trying to put it under control, at some point I heard this morning it was around, the front was close to… 30 kilometres long and the smoke was travelling really fast over the city of Athens, and down towards the Peloponnese, several hundred kilometres from the origin. It’s terrifying. It’s horrible to see this happening, it’s absolutely devastating. I mean what can I say? We knew it was going to be a really really dangerous summer, for these types of phenomena, we’ve had heat in Greece, but globally as well, of course this means that we have very little humidity left in our forests, and our forests are really ready to ignite. So, so – pfffft – we’ve been really really worried about was gonna happen this summer. And it’s happening and it’s really sad because it’s an area that has burned before, and it’s really close to Athens, and it’s one of the most important green spaces that really makes a difference.

ANITA: And Eleni, we’ve been hearing from residents that there aren’t enough fire trucks, there isn’t enough water, there wasn’t enough preparation to fight these fires. What do you make of that?

ELENI: From what I’ve been reading, the response was very fast, faster than usual, and firefighters have been saying that these megafires create a microclimate of their own, and they’re really really monstrous, really really hard to put them under control when they’ve started. And we hear this from California to Australia to Canada to you know to Portugal to everywhere. It’s you know now with climate change, the fires are really a new type of phenomena that it’s really really difficult to fight with the normal means that we have. So my feeling is that we really have to pay much, much more attention in preparing for these fires. We need to figure out, really fast, much more clever ways to be there before it even starts.

ANITA: As we’re speaking, I’m reading that a school in Nea Penteli is on fire, residents —

ELENI: Oh God.

ANITA: — are complaining that there aren’t enough fire trucks and firefighters to help. Is this just going to be the way things are now with climate change being what it is?

ELENI: I’m afraid so. I’m afraid so. I think that extreme heat, which we are increasingly facing, um, in England you faced it a couple of years ago in the summer of 2022 if I’m correct, but you know, all around the world we are facing incredible phenomena, incredibly high temperatures, with really long periods, prolonged periods, of extreme heat, and much more frequent. We keep on heating the planet and we are not serious about the way we have been controlling our fossil fuel emissions, and we are just heating up much faster than we expected. We have to take it seriously if we are to live in a world that we don’t face these types of constant crises and you know extreme heat brings drought, drought brings wildfires, wildfires and drought and extreme heat bring often kind of extreme crazy rains or hurricanes that are fed by the humidity in the air above the seas, and then we have like flooding and land erosion, and all of these, all of these things are basically impacting our most vulnerable communities and our most vulnerable populations, so you know, I think we really have to get serious about this really fast.

JIT: You forgot the disease from the stagnant water left behind after the flood.

ANITA: That is Eleni Myrivili, who was the deputy mayor of Athens, she is now the Global Chief Heat Officer for the United Nations Habitat and the Atlantic Council…

TRANSCRIPT ENDS

I was not aware that the UN had a Global Chief Heat Officer, were you?

As terrible as these latest wildfires are for those affected, it gets us nowhere if this is the level of debate about their causes and remedies. Were these fires arson, or lightning, or did high winds bring down power lines onto dry grass, or…? Answer came there none. What sort of habitats are being burnt? Are they fire-adapted habitats that inevitably burn, followed by a period of renewal and a repeat of the cycle? What preventative measures were in place – firebreaks, controlled burns, etc? Is there an issue with reduced use of the countryside for traditional purposes, or with development in fire-prone habitats? Why just sit there and let the UN’s Global Chief Heat Officer ramble on, record it all, and then play it all back seemingly verbatim for the audience of one of your most important news broadcasts? Why not interview someone who knows more about what is going on than someone who just opened a newspaper?

Come on, BBC.

Link to BBC Sounds page in case you would like to listen to it yourself.

See also John’s piece on the Greek wildfires of three years ago, and the discussion below.