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posted by janrinok on Wednesday January 08 2020, @07:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the let's-measure dept.

Which is larger? Yours, or mine? Australia or the United States of America, that is. With the bushfires in Australia out of control incinerating large swathes of the country a map was produced to visually depict how widespread the fires are. For emphasis the map was overlaid on top of America to give people an idea of the scope of the problem Australia is dealing with. Americans responded with disbelief that Australia was just as large as the USA. People were also in shock over how large an area, measured by size of US states, are currently burning. Responses on social media show how shocked and dumbfounded people were learning this.

  • Area of Australia = 7.692 million km2
  • Area of USA, excluding Alaska = 7.653 million km2

Here is the image under discussion.


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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 08 2020, @10:14AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 08 2020, @10:14AM (#940982)

    https://www.euronews.com/2019/08/29/should-we-worry-more-about-the-wildfires-in-africa-or-in-the-amazon [euronews.com]

    Scholes points out that while fires are extremely damaging to the biodiversity of a tropical forest like the Amazon, "the savannahs have to burn, it's part of their evolution, they've burned over the last seven million years and there's nothing unusual about it."

    "Just because the number of fires seems far greater in Africa than it is in Brazil that doesn’t mean necessarily that the ecological damage is greater in Africa than in Brazil,” he said.

    “It depends where they're burning and exactly how much area is burned, which you can't tell from the number of hot pixels.

    “The second issue is if you look at the distribution of where the hot pixels are in Africa at this time of year, there are almost all in savannahs and not in the rainforests.”

    My half joking interpretation - Africa = situation normal, already fucked up ages ago. Whereas if the Amazon keeps burning it might end up looking like Africa's savannas or deserts... ;)

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