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.

Tags: ,

27 Comments

  1. 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.

    Science!

    Like

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

    And you weren’t? Tut, tut. 😉

    How else would the UN News last year be able to report that its secretary-general António Guterres was able to pontificate with authority: “Hottest July ever signals ‘era of global boiling has arrived’ says UN chief”

    https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/07/1139162

    Like

  3. Is this just going to be the way things are now with journalism being what it is?

    I keep coming back to the Patrick Brown affair. When he tried to draw attention to the journalistic focus on climate change’s impacts, to the exclusion of all other causal factors, he was set upon by his colleagues and the journalists themselves. But here we see a classic example of what he was talking about. So many questions the journalist could and should have asked but didn’t. As I said on this site only yesterday, a journalist who cannot ask questions is no journalist at all.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Not surprisingly, the Guardian’s narrative is the same as the BBC’s:

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/13/greece-takes-stock-of-wildfires-that-raged-through-athens-suburbs

    No questions, no looking for information, just an endorsement of the narrative:

    …Greece, a “hotspot” on the frontline of the climate emergency, has endured an exceptionally hot and dry summer. Successive heatwaves – June and July were the hottest months on record – helped turn terrain across the Mediterranean country into a tinderbox….

    Like

  6. I’ve caught the Met Office in the act of mischaracterising a study on the 2023 wildfire season, by making the claim that ‘climate change’ made the wildfires in Canada 3 times more likely when in fact ‘anthropgenic forcings’ (including land use) were quoted as the cause of the increase in likelihood. Their news release also says ‘climate change’ is responsible for an increase in burn area whereas the study says that ‘total climate forcings’ (including natural forcings) are responsible for the increase in burn area. I’ll be writing an article in due course, but countering their BS with precision and facts takes time and effort. Meanwhile, their garbage is out there, being amplified by all the main suspects.

    Unprecedented wildfires in Canada and parts of Amazonia last year were at least three times more likely due to climate change and contributed to high levels of CO2 emissions from burning globally, according to the State of Wildfires report. Get the full story

    Climate change raised the odds of unprecedented wildfires in 2023-24

    Liked by 2 people

  7. Thanks Jaime. I will read the report with interest.

    Ultimately blaming climate change for wildfires ends up being incoherent: as an example, do the enthusiasts really believe that Greece in August is not going to be a tinderbox when we reach the hallowed 350 ppm CO2? Too, the more frequently forests burn – if they are arguing for an increased frequency – then by definition the fuel loads will be lower and the intensity also. It’s like grocery shopping. If climate change makes us go to the corner shop every day, then we won’t be getting a big home delivery.

    Liked by 1 person

  10. The quality of the BBC’s output does not disappoint:

    Climate change has made the grasses and shrubs that are fuelling the Los Angeles fires more vulnerable to burning, scientists have said.

    I’m quite sure they have not said that. It isn’t true, at any rate. Not possible. The next sentence is also a zinger:

    Rapid “whiplash”-style swings between dry and wet conditions in the region in recent years have created a massive amount of tinder-dry vegetation that is ready to catch fire.

    They only invented “whiplash” last week, and now it’s the go-to explanation for fires that would have happened with or without climate change, thanks to land management and incompetence in local authorities.

    Liked by 3 people

  12. “Climate change made LA fires worse, scientists say”

    Because models: World Weather Attribution were on the case, and the numbers spewed out by their silicon friend were unequivocal.

    [Climate change] made those weather conditions about 35% more likely, according to World Weather Attribution – globally recognised for their studies linking extreme weather to climate change.

    Even if I believed that, a higher chance of the same thing is not the same as making the fires worse. Hope that’s obvious.

    “This is a carefully researched result that should be taken seriously,” [Gabi Hegerl] said in a statement.

    They got the answer they were looking for, that’s for sure. I think we should take that seriously.

    BBC link.

    Like

  14. PS “World Weather Attribution – globally recognised for their studies linking extreme weather to climate change” isn’t the same as “World Weather Attribution – globally recognised for the accuracy of their studies linking extreme weather to climate change.“

    Like

  15. This is a perfect example of simplistic reporting resulting from a failure to understand the nature of the problem. Otto and her team are climatologists who are therefore focused purely upon the climate. What they have concluded is how much more likely had the necessary climatological conditions been. They can’t translate this into how much more likely the fires would be because they have no quantitive insight into the sufficiency of those conditions. This was Brown’s point — a point that is still totally lost on people such as professor Rice. Otto actually knows better but she doesn’t like that to be widely known. It doesn’t suit her narrative.

    Liked by 1 person

  18. Not sure what to make of this link – Let L.A. Burn? How A Marxist Historian Tried To Warn California About Its Fire Risk – Worldcrunch

    Ends with – “If there has been “a fatal flaw in the design of Southern California as a civilisation”, he argues, it has been “the decision to base the safety of present and future generations almost entirely upon shortsighted extrapolations from the disaster record of the past half-century”.

    In his book, he traces natural disaster and climate change in the region over centuries — and shows that LA’s urbanisation occurred “during one of the most unusual episodes of climactic and seismic benignity since the inception of the Holocene”.

    Our thinking, he insists, is totally skewed as a result. “These spans are too short to serve as reliable proxies for ecological time or to sample the possibilities of future environmental stress,” he writes. “In effect, we think ourselves gods upon the land but we are still really just tourists.”

    Like

  19. “Sensational Findings Published in Nature Blow Politicised Wildfire Climate Scam Out of the Water”

    https://dailysceptic.org/2025/02/22/sensational-findings-published-in-nature-blow-politicised-wildfire-climate-scam-out-of-the-water/

    Sensational new findings published in Nature Communications effectively blow the politicised wildfire climate change scam out of the water. Far from human-caused climate change making wildfires worse across the United States and Canada, it was found that recent fires occurred at a rate of only 23% of that expected from a review of the previous historical record going back to the 17th century. The researchers note that a current “widespread fire deficit” persists across a range of forest types and the areas burned in the recent past “are not unprecedented” when considering the multi-century perspective.

    Needless to say, there has been no mention of these finding in narrative-driven mainstream media.…

    Liked by 2 people

  20. “Tenth Lowest Year for Wildfires Across Southern Europe Since 1980”

    https://dailysceptic.org/2025/02/25/tenth-lowest-year-for-wildfires-across-southern-europe-since-1980/

    It was another vintage year in 2024 for ramping up the great wildfire climate change scam in southern Europe. The Guardian reported that fires in Portugal showed climate breakdown in action. “The global reality of the climate breakdown has moved into the everyday lives of Europeans,” noted the EU’s crisis management commissioner Janez Lenarcic. For those of us with less vivid imaginations living in the real world it might be observed that wildfires across southern Europe fell for the second year in succession and are running below average, while the overall trend is little changed since the 1980s….

    Liked by 2 people

  21. Mark,

    I think the following paper is very informative:

    https://www.fao.org/4/ad653e/ad653e64.htm

    The paper states:

    A sharp increase in both the number of fires and the size of burned area was recorded in 1974. At that time, an ever-increasing trend was established that has continued until today.

    Tables 4-8 and 4-9 bear this out as far as number of fires goes, though I’m not so impressed that there is much of a trend in total area burnt. Regarding the numbers of fires, the paper goes on to state:

    The increase in the number of fires in the 1980s can be attributed to many factors, one of which is a more thorough effort to record forest fires. However, a large part of this increase is due to increased activity of people in or near the forests and forested lands. New roads and an ever-increasing number of private cars offered easier access to forests. The number of people leaving the cities in the summer, seeking cooler places along the coastline and in the mountain villages for their vacation, has gradually increased, increasing the probability of accidental fires. The same is true for international tourists who visit Greece every summer at the peak of the fire season. Most importantly, a trend that started in the late 1970s of building secondary summer housing along the coasts, accelerated in the 1980s. These housing areas were poorly planned, creating a troublesome urban/wildland interface and increasing the risk of wildfires. The activities of these people, starting with construction and continuing with their everyday activities (barbecues, burning debris, parking cars on cured grass, etc.) have very frequently resulted in accidental wildfires. Another factor that led to increased forest arson in the 1980s and 1990s is a spin-off of the demand for land to build secondary summer housing and to develop tourist accommodations.

    Not much about climate change there.

    Liked by 3 people

  22. Japanese wild fires this time:

    “Japan battles largest wildfire in decades

    More than a thousand people have been evacuated near forest of Ofunato in northern region of Iwate”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/01/japan-battles-largest-wildfire-in-decades

    Only the Guardian (or, I suppose, the BBC) could include this in an article:

    The number of wildfires has declined since the peak in the 1970s, according to government data.

    and end the article with their favourite non-sequitur:

    Last year was Japan’s hottest since records began, mirroring other countries as ever-rising greenhouse gas emissions fuel the climate crisis.

    Liked by 1 person

  23. Two articles reporting on the same thing, but with a rather different take on it:

    “EU wildfires worst on record as burning season continues

    Data shows more than 1m hectares torched so far this year, with records also broken for CO2 and other air pollutants”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/22/eu-wildfires-worst-year-on-record-as-season-continues

    and

    “Wildfires are preventable. So why does the Iberian Peninsula keep burning?

    Governments can’t use climate change as an excuse for failing to take preventive measures, scientists say.”

    https://www.politico.eu/article/wildfire-prevention-iberian-peninsula-spain-portugal-climate-change/

    Liked by 1 person

  24. “Spain and Portugal wildfire weather made 40 times more likely by climate crisis, study finds

    Wildfires were 30% more intense than would have been expected without global heating, scientists say”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/04/spain-portugal-wildfire-weather-climate-crisis-study

    What a headline! But, wait a moment:

    …The study, which has not yet been submitted for peer review…

    …Changes in land use have compounded the rising regional risk of untamed infernos. Several hot Mediterranean countries have struggled to deal with the effects of rural abandonment and ageing populations, as young people moving to cities have left behind unmanaged farmland with overgrown vegetation that can easily burn.

    David Garcia, an applied mathematician at the University of Alicante, said the public debate in Spain had focused on the decline of rural activities and the resulting growth of vegetation.…

    Liked by 2 people

  25. It’s odd that the Graun article about the Spain and Portugal wildfires doesn’t mention eucalypts, which are a major exacerbator of Iberian wildfires. Even the Graun has acknowledged that previously.

    The press release for the study that inspired that Graun article doesn’t mention them either but they do get a brief mention in the study itself.

    A brief and somewhat weird mention.

    The study – a ‘Super Rapid Report’ co-authored by Friederike Otto – seems to say that eucalypts are Iberian natives and that it’s their disappearance, not their increased preponderance, that increases fire risk.

    Population and environmental factors also contribute towards fire risk. These include… loss of native species which can promote higher ignition (e.g. eucalyptus, acacia and silver wattle)…

    But I think that was just careless writing. The report was perhaps too ‘super rapid’ to allow proper editing.

    There have been protests about eucalypts in Spain and Portugal for many decades. I think the last big one was only about two weeks ago. 21st August in Galicia. More are planned. Will the Graun cover them? Prolly not. Better things to do.

    Here’s some some background info about Iberian opposition to eucalypts (not all of it about fire risk):

    https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/120725420/

    https://web.archive.org/web/20250720092039/https://www.themonthly.com.au/june-2013/nation-reviewed/eucalypt-invasion-portugal

    https://theecologist.org/2024/mar/14/de-eucalyptus-brigades

    Liked by 3 people

  27. The wife says I sleep like a Koala, not sure if it’s a complement & makes me wonder how she can tell!!!

    Like

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