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An aerial view of wildfire of Tatkin Lake in British Columbia, Canada on July 10, 2023.

BC Wildfire Service | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

Record high temperatures and a record fire season are hitting Canada at the same time this summer, leading to an unprecedented combination of heat, fire and dangerous smoke plumes.

“I can’t emphasize enough just how terrifying this moment is on our planet. With global temperature records breaking and fires and floods raging around the world, our house is truly on fire,” Kristina Dahl, principal climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told CNBC.

Climate change, caused by greenhouse gas emissions, is making the planet hotter and also increasing the potency of the ingredients that are necessary for wildfires to burn. Even if humans stopped burning all fossil fuels today, the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere is going to continue heating the planet for decades to come.

“If I had a magic wand and said, ‘no more greenhouse gases being produced from human activities as of now,’ we will continue to warm for 30 to 50 years,” explained Michael Flannigan, the research chair for predictive services, emergency management and fire science at Thompson Rivers University British Columbia.

That means what’s happening now is unprecedented, but it’s also a harbinger of what’s coming.

“This is the new reality, not the new normal, because we’re on a downward spiral,” Flannigan told CNBC.

Record-breaking wildfires with no end in sight

On June 27, Canada surpassed the record set in 1989 for total area burned in one season when it reached 7.6 million hectares, or 18.8 million acres, a communications officer for Natural Resources Canada, told CNBC.

The total has since increased to 9.3 million hectares, or 23 million acres, which is about the size of South Carolina. The average is around 2.2 million hectares, or 5.4 million acres, or about the size of Massachusetts.

“The current wildfire season in Canada has been astounding and record breaking,” Dahl told CNBC.

Soon, the total amount of land burned this year will hit the equivalent of Maine, Flannigan said.

“We’re used to getting fires in the West, or the East, or in the north, or the central — but not the whole country at the same time,” Flannigan told CNBC.

An aerial view of wildfire of Tatkin Lake in British Columbia, Canada on July 10, 2023.

BC Wildfire Service | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

And the fire season is not even close to over. There are currently 908 active fires burning in Canada, and 576 of those are classified as “out of control,” according to data in a real time dashboard operate by the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre as of 2:15pm EST on Thursday.

“I’m not sure where we’re going to end up with this because it keeps keeps on burning,” Flannigan told CNBC. “Some of these fires are huge. And they will burn all summer, all fall, and some of them will burn through winter. Underground they smolder and even though you can have snow on top, they keep burning underground. And then spring, the snow melts, stuff gets hot, dry and windy. They pop to the surface and start spreading again.”

Record heat turns vegetation into kindling

Earlier in July, the Earth recorded its hottest average day since records began — then repeated the feat three times in four days.

Temperatures in Canada are no exception. Earlier this year, Fort Good Hope, at about 66 degrees north latitude in the Northwest Territories, reached 37.4 degrees Celsius — more than 99 degrees Fahrenheit — setting a record for the warmest Canadian temperature at that latitude, according to the Canadian government. Subsequent readings in nearby communities were even hotter, according to news reports.

“We’re in uncharted waters here,” Dahl told CNBC.

“Since May we’ve seen a pattern of heat domes developing in parts of North America,” Dahl told CNBC. A heat dome is a weather event that occurs when the atmosphere traps hot air like a lid or a cap, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration describes it. “These zones of extreme heat tend to persist for long stretches of time — weeks in some cases. The heat dome that developed in May was linked to the development and spread of the fires in Alberta that kicked off the start of Canada’s record-breaking fire season.”

“I’ve never seen it start so early that far north,” Flannigan told CNBC. Before he started working in academia, Flannigan worked for the Canadian Forest Service for 30-plus years.

Hotter weather dries out vegetation, which serves as fuel for the wildfires.

“The warmer it gets, the atmosphere gets more efficient at sucking the moisture out of the fuels,” Flannigan told CNBC. “It’s not a linear increase, it’s almost exponential.”

Also, warmer temperatures lead to more lightning, Flannigan said. In Canada, about half of wildfires are started by lightning, but they are responsible for 80% to 90% of the land burned, since these areas tend to be remote and harder for firefighters to reach.

A future of more fire and smoke

Three key ingredients for a wildfire spread are fuel, ignition and weather, Sarah Burch, a climate change professor at the University of Waterloo and the executive director of the Waterloo Climate Institute, told CNBC.

“While wildfire is a natural feature of healthy ecosystems, climate change affects all three of the factors” that cause wildfires, Burch told CNBC. So, too, does land management. For example, the mountain pine beetle is killing trees and turning them into fuel for wildfires, Burch told CNBC. And long-duration droughts also make forests more flammable.

“This means that we expect fires to increase in frequency and intensity in the future,” Burch told CNBC.

People will have to learn to live alongside those wildfires.

Smoke from wildfires in Canada shrouds the Empire State Building on June 30, 2023 in New York City.

David Dee Delgado | Getty Images

“This is a common misconception of people that fire management can stop all fires all the time. Obviously, that’s not true,” Flannigan said.

If firefighters arrive when a fire is still small, they can put it out. But sometimes a fire can balloon into a high-intensity blaze in as little as 15 minutes. When a wildfire becomes a “crown fire,” meaning it jumps from tree top to tree top, “the horse has left the barn,” Flannigan told CNBC. “It’s too late. You’ve missed your window.”

Some fire mitigation techniques can work to slow the back end of a fire that’s already burning at full intensity, but when “that head is just racing across the landscape, you just have to get out of the way.”

This means more smoke from these wildfires traveling to other parts of the globe, too. Earlier in July, wildfire smoke from Canada blanketed much of the United States mid-west and Eastern seaboard.

There is no silver bullet to solving this problem, Flannigan says. Drones and artificial intelligence can help scientists track and monitor fire movement, but they are tools, not solutions. The only long-term solution is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on a global scale to mitigate the effects of climate change.

“I think there’s still time if we get our act together as a global society to deal with this. And sometimes people need a bloody nose or two before we change our behavior. We can change. And I’m hoping that we’re getting the bloody noses and now we’ll actually do something about fossil fuels,” Flannigan said.

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Europe unveils plan to become ‘AI continent’ with simpler rules, more infrastructure

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Europe unveils plan to become 'AI continent' with simpler rules, more infrastructure

The European Union is so far the only jurisdiction globally to drive forward comprehensive rules for artificial intelligence with its AI Act.

Jaque Silva | Nurphoto | Getty Images

The European Union on Wednesday presented a plan to boost its artificial intelligence industry and help it compete more aggressively with the U.S. and China, following criticisms from technology firms that its regulations are too cumbersome.

In a press release, the European Commission, the executive body of the EU, outlined its so-called “AI Continent Action Plan,” which aims to “transform Europe’s strong traditional industries and its exceptional talent pool into powerful engines of AI innovation and acceleration.”

Among the ways Europe plans to bolster regional AI developments are a commitment to build a network of AI factories and “gigafactories” and create specialized labs designed to improve the access of startups to high-quality training data.

The EU defines these “factories” as large facilities that house state-of-the-art chips needed to train and develop the most advanced AI models.

The bloc will also create a new AI Act Service Desk to help regional firms comply with its landmark AI law.

“The AI Act raises citizens’ trust in technology and provides investors and entrepreneurs with the legal certainty they need to scale up and deploy AI throughout Europe,” the Commission said, adding the AI Act Service Desk will “serve as the central point of contact and hub for information and guidance” on the rules.

The plan bears similarities to the U.K.’s AI Action Plan announced earlier this year. Like the EU, Britain committed to expand domestic AI infrastructure to aid developers.

Hindering innovation?

The launch of the EU’s AI plan arrives as the bloc is facing criticisms from tech leaders that its rules on everything from AI to taxation hinder innovation and make it harder for startups to operate across the region.

The bloc’s landmark legislation known as the AI Act has proven particularly thorny for companies in the rapidly growing artificial intelligence industry.

The law regulates applications of AI based on the level of risk they pose to society — and in recent years it has been adapted to cover so-called “foundational” model makers such as OpenAI and French startup Mistral, much to the ire of some of the buzziest businesses in that space.

At a global AI summit in Paris earlier this year, OpenAI’s Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane told CNBC that European political and business leaders increasingly fear missing out on AI’s potential and want regulators to focus less on tackling risks associated with the technology.

“There’s almost this fork in the road, maybe even a tension right now between Europe at the EU level … and then some of the countries,” Lehane told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal in February. “They’re looking to maybe go in a little bit of a different direction that actually wants to embrace the innovation.”

The U.S. administration has also been critical of Europe over its treatment of American tech giants and fast-growing AI startups.

At the Paris AI summit in February, U.S. Vice President JD Vance took aim at Europe’s regulatory approach to AI, stressing that “we need our European friends in particular to look to this new frontier with optimism rather than trepidation.”

“There is a real emphasis on easing the burden of regulation and removing barriers to innovation, which in part is likely to reflect some of the concerns that have been raised by the US government,” John Buyers, global head of AI at law firm Osborne Clarke, told CNBC over email.

“This isn’t only about the EU: If they are serious about eliminating legal uncertainties caused by interpretation of the EU’s AI Act, then this would be a real boost for AI developers and users in the UK and the US, as the AI Act applies to all AI used in the EU, regardless of where sourced.”

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Elon Musk ratchets up attacks on Navarro as Tesla shares slump for fourth day

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Elon Musk ratchets up attacks on Navarro as Tesla shares slump for fourth day

Elon Musk (L), and Peter Navarro (R).

Reuters

As Tesla shares plummeted for a fourth straight day, CEO Elon Musk let loose on President Donald Trump’s top trade advisor Peter Navarro.

Musk, the world’s richest person, started going after Navarro over the weekend, posting on X that a “PhD in econ from Harvard is a bad thing, not a good thing,” a reference to Navarro’s degree. Whatever subtlety remained at the beginning of the week has since vanished.

On Tuesday, Musk wrote that “Navarro is truly a moron,” noting that his comments about Tesla being a “car assembler,” as much are “demonstrably false.” Musk called Navarro “dumber than a sack of bricks,” before later apologizing to bricks. Musk also called Navarro “dangerously dumb.”

Musk’s attacks on Navarro represent the most public spat between members of President Trump’s inner circle since the term began in January, and show that the steep tariffs announced last week on more than 180 countries and territories don’t have universal approval in the administration.

When asked about the feud in a briefing on Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “Look, these are obviously two individuals who have very different views on trade and on tariffs.”

“Boys will be boys, and we will let their public sparring continue,” she said.

For Musk, whose younger brother Kimbal — a restaurant owner, entrepreneur and Tesla board member — has joined in on the action, the name-calling appears to be tied to business conditions.

Tesla’s stock is down 22% in the past four trading sessions and 45% for the year. Tesla has lost more tha $585 billion in value since the calendar turned, equaling tens of billions of dollars in paper losses for Musk, who is also CEO of SpaceX and the owner of xAI and social network X.

Even before President Trump detailed his plan for widespread tariffs, he’d already placed a 25% tariff on vehicles not assembled in the U.S. Many analysts said Tesla could withstand those tariffs better than competitors because its vehicles sold in the U.S. are assembled domestically.

But the company’s production costs are poised to increase because of the tariffs on materials and parts from foreign suppliers. Canada and Mexico are among the leading sources of U.S. steel imports, and Canada is the nation’s largest supplier of aluminum, while China and Mexico are home to major suppliers of printed circuit boards to the automotive industry.

At a recent an event hosted by right-wing Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, Musk said, “Both Europe and the United States should move, ideally, in my view, to a zero-tariff situation, effectively creating a free trade zone between Europe and North America.”

Musk, whose view on trade relations with Europe stands in stark contrast to the policies implemented by the president, has a vested interest in the region. Tesla has a large car factory outside of Berlin, and the European Commission previously turned to SpaceX for launches.

Even before the tariffs, Tesla’s business was faltering. Last week, the company reported a 13% year-over-year decline in first-quarter deliveries, missing analysts’ estimates. That report that landed days after Tesla’s stock price wrapped up its worst quarter since 2022.

Musk, who spent roughly $290 billion to help return Trump to the White House, is now leading the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which has slashed costs, eliminated regulations and cut tens of thousands of federal jobs. In the first quarter, Tesla was hit with waves of protests, boycotts and some criminal activity that targeted vehicles and facilities in response to Musk’s political rhetoric and his work in the White House.

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Brad Gerstner explains his Tesla position

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Apple’s 4-day slide puts Microsoft back on top as most valuable company

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Apple's 4-day slide puts Microsoft back on top as most valuable company

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, laughs as he attends a session at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 23, 2020.

Denis Balibouse | Reuters

Apple‘s 23% plunge over the past four trading sessions has again turned Microsoft into the world’s most valuable public company.

As of Tuesday’s close, Microsoft is worth $2.64 trillion, while Apple’s market cap stands at $2.59 trillion.

While the market broadly is getting hammered by President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff plan, Apple is getting hit the hardest among tech’s megacap companies due to the iPhone maker’s reliance on China.

The Nasdaq is down 13% over the past four trading days, as President Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on imports from more than 100 countries has sparked fears of a recession brought on by rising prices. UBS analysts on Monday predicted that the price of the iPhone 16 Pro Max could jump as much as $350 in the U.S.

Both Apple and Microsoft, along with chipmaker Nvidia, were previously valued at upward of $3 trillion before the recent sell-off.

In January, Microsoft issued disappointing revenue guidance. Nevertheless, last week, as Jefferies analysts reduced their price targets on many software stocks, they wrote Microsoft was among the “companies who we view as more insulated” from tariff uncertainty.

Microsoft also had the highest market capitalization of any public company in early 2024, but Apple soon reclaimed the title.

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