We usually hear of wildfires in California and the American West, or Australia, or the Mediterranean (especially Greece) for those are areas of drought and heat and wind and brush and trees that become tinder easily. But in this, the hottest summer on record for much of the world, Russia is literally burning at a rate never before seen in that part of the world:

This will be ridiculed and ignored by those who always find excuses to ignore and ridicule the idea that human beings are transforming our climate in ways that are dangerous for all life on earth, but the reality is that the conservative IPCC assessments of climate change predicted an increase of extreme events such as droughts, heatwaves and wildfires.

Regional-scale changes include: […]

* very likely increase in frequency of hot extremes, heat waves …

Drought-affected areas will likely increase in extent. […]

The resilience of many ecosystems is likely to be exceeded this century by an unprecedented combination of climate change,associated disturbances (e.g., flooding, drought, wildfire, insects, ocean acidification), and other global change drivers (e.g., land use change, pollution, over-exploitation of resources).

And that assessment of the effects of human driven climate change was based on conservative projections.

‘The really chilling thing about the IPCC report is that it is the work of several thousand climate experts who have widely differing views about how greenhouse gases will have their effect. Some think they will have a major impact, others a lesser role. Each paragraph of this report was therefore argued over and scrutinised intensely. Only points that were considered indisputable survived this process. This is a very conservative document – that’s what makes it so scary,’ said one senior UK climate expert.

Now in Russia, as in Australia last winter and the Northeastern United States this summer, we have more evidence that the IPCC predictions and their conclusions about climate change were more than justified, if not more conservative than they should have been:

Wildfires in Russia have killed 50 people to date as record heat and drought continue to plague the heartland. There are “signals” that the government may ban grain exports as early as Aug. 10, the Grain Union said.

Fires concentrated in central Russia and the Volga River region have scorched 712,412 hectares (2,751 square miles), an area about three times the size of Luxembourg, the Emergency Situations Ministry said in an e-mailed statement today. Crews are battling 589 fires on 195,834 hectares, the ministry said.

Agriculture is the hardest hit part of the economy, with the government declaring a state of emergency in 28 crop- producing regions and grain yields down 20 percent this year. Agriculture accounts for about 4 percent of gross domestic product, according to Moscow-based VTB Capital. […]

Dry and hot weather with “high” and “extreme” fire danger will persist in most areas of European Russia at least through Aug. 7, the state Hydrometeorological Center said on its website today. Fire danger will also be high in the Ural Mountains and the Tomsk region in Siberia, it said. Temperatures broke all-time records in five Russian cities yesterday.

Since most people can’t visualize an area the size of of 2,751 square miles burned to cinders and ash (nor is the comparison to Luxembourg helpful to Americans who may not even know where Luxembourg is much less how large it is) here’s a different comparison: 2,751 square miles is roughly equal to the size of Delaware.

Delaware is actually slightly smaller at 2,489 square miles.

Imagine the state of Delaware burned to a crisp and parts of Southern New Jersey as well and you’d have some idea of the damage these fires in Russia have already caused.

And there is little doubt that the extreme heat in Russia this summer is responsible for the large extent of these fires:

[W]ith blistering temperatures forecast over the next few days as the country faces one of its worst heatwaves, the ministry has warned of an “extreme risk” of more forest fires. […]

“There has never been a fire like this,” fireman Maxim Korolyov told AFP in the village of Maslovka, where all but five of the 150 houses burnt down on Friday. “It’s the first time I have had to fight a fire of this size.

There has never been a fire like this. I’m afraid Maxim Korolyov may have to get used to more events like this, just as firefighters in the United States have seen a marked increase in wildfires here over the last decade.

As Smokey Bear celebrates his 65th birthday this month [Note: Aug. 2009], forests are on fire across the U.S. West. Thousands have fled their homes in California while wildfires explode across the state. Two fires alone are currently burning a million acres in Alaska. Nationwide, an area almost eight times the size of Rhode Island has gone up in smoke this year.

It’s part of a recent trend that gives the impression — despite what Smokey says — that we’ve lost our knack for preventing forest fires. After burning an average 2.9 million acres in the United States annually from 1985-1995, they’ve averaged more than 6 million acres a year ever since, including nearly 20 million combined in 2006 and ’07. […]

Wildfire seasons tend to oscillate between severe and calm every couple years, but scientists have begun noticing an overall upward trend in the acreage burned, if not necessarily the number of fires (see graph above). It seems to correspond with the ongoing increase of U.S. temperatures that’s widely blamed on greenhouse gas emissions.

“It was probably sometime in the ’90s, maybe late ’80s, when I really noticed it personally,” Ocha says. “But if you look back at the research, the last 10 to 15 years, they’re much higher than what we’ve seen in the last 30 years in terms of fire activity. And the dominant factor has been the climate change.”

Do the Russian wildfires and the devastating heatwave there prove that global warming is real? Not in isolation from other evidence, but added to all the other bricks in the massive mound of data scientists have accumulated that supports that global warming is occurring, and at an ever increasing rate …

A new carbon cycle model developed by researchers in Europe indicates that global carbon emissions must start dropping by no later than 2015 to prevent the planet from tipping into dangerous climate instability.

The finding is likely to put new pressure on the world’s top two carbon emitters — China and the US — both of which were widely blamed for failure to reach a binding global accord on carbon reductions in Copenhagen last December. Furthermore, the non-binding outcome of Copenhagen has global carbon emissions peaking in 2020 — five years too late, according to the latest model.

The model, developed by researchers at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, suggests the world’s annual carbon emissions can reach no more than 10 billion tonnes in five years’ time before they must be put on a steady downward path. After that, the researchers say, emissions must drop by 56 per cent by mid-century and need to approach zero by 2100.

Those targets are necessary to prevent average global temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees C by 2100. Under that scenario, though, further warming can still be expected for years to come afterward.

… and only a fool would deny that something is terribly wrong with our world’s climate. A fool or a shill for those who profit off increased consumption of fossil fuels. Too bad the fools and shills get as much media airtime as the people who are doing the ever more irrefutable science, don’t you think?