No pressure, but there are charities for all sorts of unwanted things, even people. Yet these crafted, loved objects from nature can be left on the shelf, totally uncared for. Or they can be bought, by the way.

From The Crazy World of Arthur Brown to Wassailing in Little Birch, fire attracts all sort. What is it? It is usually combining whatever it is with oxygen. And this gives off various things some of which are visible when they are hot gas (flames - watch!) and some can be felt (radiated heat - stand closer). Some can be felt far more (conductive heat - actually touch!). And some of which you feel later through their effects (smoke, soot, carbon dioxide and other waste products). Smoke exists because the wood hasn't burned properly - too damp or too little oxygen. Shut off all the oxygen and the wood will slowly turn into charcoal.

Fire can be good for life, witness the huge fires that nature now needs in Australia having adapted over thousands of years. But not good for human life as we spread and seek to control more and more of this earth.

The European Space Agency tracks fires all around the world - see here for the Map of European Fires. NASA updates a world fire atlas showing when fires start and finish.

We've been told that the Amazon Rainforest is the lungs of the world, providing a large percentage of the oxygen we breathe. This is not true. Plankton do that job. But burning wood or peat such as across Canada or even the Russian arctic does use up oxygen and add back CO2 - as much as a small country does in a year. Nine countries share the Amazon basin—most of the rainforest, 58.4%, is contained within the borders of Brazil. The other eight countries include Peru with 12.8%, Bolivia with 7.7%, Colombia with 7.1%, Venezuela with 6.1%, Guyana with 3.1%, Suriname with 2.5%, French Guyana with 1.4%, and Ecuador with 1%.

Having flourished for 50 million years, strangely, half the phosphorus needed to replenish the nutrient washed away by rain and rivers comes from the Sahara as blown-in dust these days. Which itself was a green and pleasant land with rivers and lakes (possibly ruined by humans and their goat herds) up to maybe only 5000 years ago. Yet the Amazon rainforest survived without it being a desert - yet ... So much we don’t know about it, may as well log it to extinction, eh?