HoChiMint

No, your "mostly this" is climate change too. I'm taking the normal recovery from fire into account for one, and for another, much of these changes I'm talking about happened before the fire (like I mentioned with the banana slugs) which is also a big part of the reason why the fire was more damaging. These are feedback loops with one another, not separate things. For instance, there were fires that came through here in past decades and it didn't happen like this. 25 years ago there was a fire that burned through a coastal park reserve about a 40 minute drive away from where I live. I visited it often both before and especially after that fire, I watched the sequence of different kinds of life year after year. There are even certain kind of trees there whose cones ONLY release their genetic material for reproduction when there's a fire. Whatever area your graphic is from, it's not the area I'm in which has fires more often than every 150 years. What I was trying to get across in my comment above is that the recovery after the fire is totally different now and that is due to climate change. Also the intensity of the fire itself was much more than past fires and that is due to climate change.

The semi-rural property I live on (low rent) burnt down so I had to evacuate. But I came back because the building I was in was mostly unharmed somehow. That was a few years ago now so it's been a good amount of time for life to rebound from the fires, but everything has deeply changed since then. It used to be quite lush with green plant life everywhere even in the Summer and Fall. A lot of plants have come back, as expected, but not the lush green foliage, it's all dry grasses and invasive weeds now. It's like living in a completely different biome to what it used to be like here. There used to be a sheen of moisture on everything, now it's a patina of dust.

It's SO much more dry and barren so inevitably the animal life completely changed too. As an example, we used to get these big banana slugs. It may sound gross to some, but they were really fascinating and colorful creatures. I haven't seen one for years, even before the fires it was drying out and they couldn't survive. Now if you brought one from somewhere else and set it here, it would be dead and desiccated within hours. The kinds of insects you could find has completely changed too. Not just in the types, but in a lack of diversity. There used to be this huge variety of beetles and crickets, centipedes, silkworms, butterflies and moths. Now those are mostly all gone and only the earwigs dominate. There are still moths, but only like 2 kinds instead of 20. I try to keep a little garden, and I've noticed there are even fewer earthworms than there used to be. It's sad. It genuinely feels like some kind of slow death in a way.

I agree, this kind of thing is awesome. Like in the original meaning of the term too... inspiring of awe.

You are just repeating a myth. A quick look from wikipedia:

Logicians and philosophers of logic reject the notion that it is intrinsically impossible to prove negative claims.[11][12][13][14][15][10][16][17] Philosophers Steven D. Hale and Stephen Law state that the phrase "you cannot prove a negative" is itself a negative claim that would not be true if it could be proven true.[10][18] Many negative claims can be rewritten into logically equivalent positive claims (for example, "No Jewish person was at the party" is logically equivalent to "Everyone at the party was a gentile").[19] In formal logic and mathematics, the negation of a proposition can be proven using procedures such as modus tollens and reductio ad absurdum.[15][10] In empirical contexts (such as the evaluating the existence or nonexistence of unicorns), inductive reasoning is often used for establishing the plausibility of a claim based on observed evidence.[20][10][21] Though inductive reasoning may not provide absolute certainty about negative claims, this is only due to the nature of inductive reasoning; inductive reasoning provides proof from probability rather than certainty. Inductive reasoning also does not provide absolute certainty about positive claims.[19][10]

The Rockies are actually relatively recent, 55M to 80M years old. The Appalachians are much older and part of the reason they aren't anywhere near as big as (for example) the Rockies, is because they have been eroded for so much longer. That said, they are still definitely not the oldest mountain range. It looks like the Makhonjwa Mountains win that one.

Don't listen to or upvote this nerd. The western comprador governments did indeed get ousted by the respective militaries who had and have overwhelming support of their populace. This was an unambiguously positive series events unless you're pro-imperialism and pro-colonialism. Yes, 5 months ago the three countries in alliance chose to withdraw from imperialist-backed ECOWAS (who earlier wanted to invade Niger unless the latter reinstated their former colonial puppet leader) but this is a new development and a great step forward towards African socialism and pan-Africanism. Given the context, it is an even bigger win.