As some fires rage, parts of the nation are gripped with witchcraft.
What to do about wildfires?
Skeptics think we should stop firestorms by reducing fuel loads, and clearing firebreaks. Unskeptical scientists on the other hand are talking about going vegan, swapping light globes, installing windmills and photovoltaic panels and of course…. planting more trees. Oh the dilemma? Should we stop fires with firebreaks or wave some solar panels? Yea, verily, let’s control fires on Mt Tamborine by cooling the world? Hail Mary and line up the wind towers to face north at the equinox!
Joelle Gergis has a PhD in climate science, yet even she apparently believes that these fires are caused by coal plants, and could have been prevented if only we installed enough solar panels. It says a lot about what a PhD is worth these days. It also says a lot about the Australian National University, and all of it is sad.
Gergis, in particular, is not the only one, but she is all “moss drenched” hype and marketing, no caveats, no qualifiers, and no error bars.
— Joelle Gergis, The Guardian
What will it take for us to wake up to the Science Crisis? Somehow it had never occurred to her that rainforests can burn. What are our universities teaching?
Five kilometers away from the Binna Burra disastrous fires is Numinbah, where there is no trend at all in rainfall
This is the reality of climate change:
…
The only trend that’s meaningful in fires is that 67 years of fire management in the hot, dry state of WA shows the more prescribed area we burn, the less wildfire does.
As the Bushfirefront team says — high fuel loads make unstoppable fires:
Fires on hot windy summer days in long unburnt forests simply cannot be put out by humans, no matter how many, how courageous and how hard they work and how good their technology. Even under relatively mild conditions, the intensity of fires burning in fuels over about 10 tonnes per hectare is simply too great to allow them to be attacked successfully. The 2007 Victorian fires demonstrated that the entire firefighting resources of Australia, plus international assistance from NZ, Canada and the USA, were inadequate.
Let’s see that data again. After terrible fires of 1961, prescribed burns were ramped up dramatically, and wildfires were almost non-existent for the next twenty years in WA.
As prescribed fire reduction declined, Wildfires increased in South West Australia.
In Australia we can either have man made fires or natural catastrophes. Cool burns, or uncontrollable firestorms.
Other fires are burning on the Sunshine Coast and there are no trends in rainfall there either
Rainfall data from Nambour Bowls Club from 1900 – 2015 and then at Palmwoods shows no correlation with the rise of man-made CO2.
….
See the rainfall in Mapleton Post Office
….
Here’s Joelle Gergis at The Guardian joining fantasy clouds of cause and effect in vague prophet-speak:
Although there are natural seasonal fluctuations in the Indian and Southern Ocean that are influencing the dry and windy conditions we are currently experiencing, all of Australia’s weather and climate variability is now occurring in a world that is 1°C warmer than it was since pre-industrial times.
If that one degree is a magical switch why was the worst fire in Australia in 1851?
The human fingerprint on Australian temperatures has been clearly detected since 1950. This means that all natural variability is now being modified by human influences on the climate system, leading to changes in observed climate variability and extremes.
What human fingerprint? The CCSP said it was the hot spot, but it didn’t exist?
Since the 1970s, there has been an increase in extreme fire weather, and a longer fire season, across large parts of the country.
She doesn’t mention the lack of any trends in drought or rainfall.
Gergis is “the modern” fortune teller, but just like fortune tellers have done for eons, she refers to mystical signs and plants suggestions with emotive allegory:
It’s clear to me that the extreme events we are experiencing right now in Australia and all over the world, are a sign of things to come. Events that were considered extreme in today’s climate will become average in the future as records continue to be broken and the “new normal” emerges.
What we expect to see in our future climate is playing out right now, not decades in the future. As we begin to drift away from the safe shores of historical variability, the only certainty is that life in the “new normal” will be outside the range of human experience.
The same questions need to be asked of the ARC (Australian Research Council) — they continue to fund Gergis (and many others who apparently agree with her). Let’s go right up the chain, The Minister of Science needs to explain how taxpayers are benefiting from funding profoundly unscientific work.
It’s time the ABC explained why it does not ask its own science unit to look at the basic important data on climate change, and ask scientists like Gergis, her Director, the university, the ARC and the minister even one hard question.
We don’t need to do a sophisticated analysis here, just the basics, obvious to anyone able to read.
- Fires are worsened by drought, temperature, fuel-loads, wind speed, wind direction, lightning and arson. Globally there has been no change in droughts for 60 years, and climate models — can’t predict rainfall or droughts, exaggerated temperature trends, and got wind speeds wrong. Wind speeds have been slowing — which ought to make fires slower too. The only way CO2 emissions make fires worse is through fertilizing extra growth and increasing fuel loads. This is the one factor none of the unskeptical scientists will mention.
- Theoretically there is not even a reason CO2 emissions cause droughts. Professor Andy Pitman says that “a priori” CO2 emissions are not linked to droughts. Warmer worlds are also more humid worlds, with slightly higher rainfall (on average).
- Rainfall patterns inland on the Gold Coast, in Brisbane and on the sunshine coast show no correlation with CO2 emissions. There is no trend.
- Anyone who questions the magic spell is called a “Denier”. Obviously, the scientific case is so pathetically weak it must be guarded by name-calling.
See the rainfall in Brisbane back to 1840
From the Brisbane Regional Office, and then Alderley six kilometers away. A very long record and no correlation with CO2.
….
Which part of recent rainfall do we blame on climate change?
Her best work was on the Hungry Beast.
41
The woman is showing an exceptional depth of ignorance when she blats on about 1C hotter than the start of “The industrial era”.
According to the IPCC the industrial era is taken to start in 1850 with the rise in today’s temperature calculated from then.
But as we know very well, but seemingly this “scientist” lady is wholly ignorant of (or perhaps carefully ignoring?) is that 1850 was at the tail end of the Little Ice Age….
and the LIA was a centuries long global COLD event ( the clue is in the name) that saw temperatures around 2C+ COLDER than the long term average.
A very convenient date to have been chosen by the IPCC to show “global warming” !
With contemporary records in the UK showing ships frozen in sea ice up to several miles out to sea off the eastern coast of England and “great trees”splitting their trunks from frozen sap – if earth hadn’t begun to naturally recover from that extreme cold there would be a lot more igloos now !!
170
I contend (and many others) that the 1degree is an artifice that is in place to gel with their contrived theory. It must be bluntly challenged whenever it is put up.
130
In the USA too the wild fires have actually gotten LESS since the early 20th cent.
Yes, loading is a big factor. Heat doesnt cause fires it takes ignition temperature well above any heat wave. In fact in QLD there is no heatwave here at present just very dry conditions.
We knew this would happen, ALL these disasters are ‘klimate change’ no matter what.
10
Wow a great overlay of observed data verses soothsayer scaremongering Jo, but once again is this argument put forward by the MSM for balanced reporting?
No and it never will while the anti-humanity league control the narrative.
110
Jo thanks again for putting the facts forward
In a coherent post.
Land whether farmed or bush
Must be managed
If it is not to burn
That is hat the aboriginal Peoples did
For 50,000 years..
Tisi Gergis woman is just an ignorant & stupid fool
Even ignorant of the reality that allowed
Aboriginal peoples to live here in Australia during all those millennia.
90
It all gets back to common-sense, but that involves politics, education and practical environmental management. It is called the lunacy cycle, were those planets must align.
70
Don’t you mean start fires?
https://www.foxbusiness.com/features/walmart-sues-tesla-over-solar-panel-fires-at-seven-stores
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/windpower/10971762/Wind-turbine-fires-ten-times-more-common-than-thought-experts-warn.html
131
On topic
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/
Viv Forbes with uncommon common sense on Queensland bushfires
Wednesday, 11 September 2019
Viv Forbes and his wife Judy have spent a lifetime in the bush of Queensland and NT. They were both volunteers in a rural fire brigade for over 25 years. They have fought many bushfires and have seen several fires lit – some deliberately, some naturally, some carelessly. One careless fire burnt out their exploration camp in Arnhem Land, another accidental “fire with nine lives” threatened their grazing property in SE Qld, and a deliberate fire on another property cleared a lot of lantana and leaf litter from their property and also made the adjacent National Park a much safer neighbour.
Below is a true unpublished story about one fire we fought. We hope you find it interesting:
“The Fire with Nine Lives”:
https://saltbushclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/the-fire-with-nine-lives.pdf
130
“In Australia we can either have man made fires or natural catastrophes. Cool burns, or uncontrollable firestorms”
Over seven decades I’ve seen the results of Coffee Shop based Eco management on the local bush and read about other areas like the Blue Mountains, with which I am familiar.
Then, I think of the 178 deaths just a few years ago in Victoria, the heartache of property loss, the many close shaves and the thousands of Australian animals roasted in these Monstrous Man Made Firestorms, and I feel betrayed.
Government is to blame. Let me repeat that.
Government is to blame, and deliberately wearing blinkers so as to get more votes from the Urban Eco population doesn’t address the devastation that is always imminent on the vast Australian continent.
The financial loss to the Australian taxpayers, of one Climate Change PhD would cover the cost of two well provisioned firefighting units which could tend and manage significant areas of land and save lives and heartache aplenty.
But No. We have government instead.
KK
170
We had a fire start in June when a truck carrying cottonseed for feed had an electrical issue.Fire was contained by local RFS my (younger rellies ) who got there after the driver got them on channel.It was a windy day and of course the Bush – with an understoryof shinybush and hopbush would go up grandly.Most of Eastern Australia is just waiting for a disaster this summer and the alarmists and media are going to town on it.
80
Rainfall has a great deal to do with the SE Queensland fires. Of course CO2 can’t make it wet one year & dry the next, so it is natural rain fall.
This has so far been the driest year on record in much of south eastern Queensland, with records in many areas including the main fire area going back to 1890s. 2017 was one of the wettest in the main fire area, so much that our river which rises in the area flooded 4 meters above living memory, cutting us off for 5 days.
Obviously such great growing conditions caused a profusion of undergrowth in already thick forests. Then this ultra dry year killed off most of that growth, setting the scene for these fires.
We were discussing our fire plan the other day, & feel pretty safe. With the very dry year, there is no grass longer than a couple of inches in hundreds of meters of my place, & almost any area grazed is mostly similar. There are also no thick stands of trees capable of carrying a crown fire. With the fire pump set up on the swimming pool, the big diesel on the dam, & little to burn, we should be OK.
With poor grass growth due to the drought, many areas have little to burn. It is mostly growth from a couple of years ago that is fueling these fires. I can understand the attraction of that “home among the gum trees”, but it is a very silly place to have your home. Even worse if you have a national park as a neighbor or nearby.
The incredibly poor maintenance of our parks, & an ideology wanting to keep thick impenetrable scrub in them is fostering much of these fires. That allows fires to become huge, before they come racing out into private property.
Will we ever learn that gum trees are dangerous things, that have no place close to homes.
40
LW journalists are also hugely to blame IMO KK.
Ultimately they hold all the cards and all the power.
They have only one real job to do in order to sort of justify their huge salaries-and that’s to broadcast the truth to the Australian people.
Instead they’re the gatekeepers for the hoax …flogging its propaganda…interviews with its high priests and footsoldiers that inevitably become unpaid promotions for the hoax…helping it to get its airhead barrackers into parliament and demonising…defaming and politically assassinating the rational sceptics for them.
Without the morally-bankrupt LW journalists’ and their penchant for mass hysteria …flattery of miseducated indoctrinated children fed by apocryphal fairytales …but above all their penchant for power…this hoax would have been dead as a doornail by now.
But I agree that LW politicians are massively to blame too.
After all it would have been a sick and crippled hoax if they hadn’t decided to go to the obscene extent of politically assassinating the new PM Tony Abbott…democratically- elected in a massive landslide…in order to mount a coup to install the Paris/IPCC candidate as PM of A’a.
IMO Scott Morrison’s in the LEFT category…with his Photios benefactor and his full-on Photios/Turnbull cabinet…he has Australia still hurtling towards the energy insecurity abyss… on the Turnbull ’profound transition’…never engages on the issue…just fobs off questions with platitudes and flim flam….so that the synchronous power plants will be gone and the transition to insecurity complete and unable to be rectified… before many Australians know what happened.
At that point Morrison and AEMO et al will say ‘oops’ and blame Australia’s effective demise on consumers who made their own solar PV choices…the insidious get-out-of-jail-free card the hoaxers are already fabricating for themselves.
With that accomplished… they’ll present their ‘solution’ and it will be loss of sovereignty and total obedience to Global Socialism …on which Australia will have made itself…with its world’s most insecure electricity system…totally dependent.
00
Soooo…the whole rainfall thing could possibly be a red herring – in the hope that those people burnt out by the fires ( fuelled by abnormally high fuel loads) , dont mount a legal case against those responsible for allowing such conditions?
90
Can we fund this!
50
How many of these victims would have written requests to carry out off season management burns.
How many would have written denials from the relevant authorities?
90
They wouldn’t bother Keith. The green tape is too great even for brigade captains. Everything has to be organised months in advance to enable all the rubber-stampers in head office to do their thing. Private land holders have no hope.
Gone are the days when a local captain or deputy could authorise a burn-off on the day if weather conditions were favourable.
30
So in practice hazard reduction management is technically possible but in reality almost impossible to carry out.
Imagine, if all the funds used to keep head office rubber stampers cosy and bathed in their smug eco-glow were instead deployed to providing permanent, public funded crews to identify and implement hazard reduction policy.
e.g. Make reduction burns and lopping as appropriate to keep access roads safe during fires, and, maintain firebreaks and lastly assist and supervise individual land holders to sensibly maintain their land.
KK
20
That’s about it. I’ve heard a captain complaining that he had to get a permit a year in advance and then it was for a given day or couple of days. If those days were rainy or too windy and you couldn’t burn, too bad, you start the process all over again . . . or you give up and wait for a firestorm to do the job for you like Grahamstown/Campvale/Saltash/Williamtown every few years.
40
Gees, quite a few Novacastrians here. 🙂
40
Almost. I thought you would have picked that up from my previous rants. Maitland/Tocal boy. Now an hour down the valley from the “death-dealing” power stations.
10
So many pertinent observations;
“The Minister of Science needs to explain how taxpayers are benefiting from funding profoundly unscientific work”.
Government Must explain why, with so much expenditure on Ecology, we now have rampant firestorms that bring death and destruction of habitat to man and beast.
Government is responsible.
KK
60
A successful legal win for wrongful death by bushfire would be all it will take……
60
And in the law suit the climate “science” would be closely examined in court…
One lie needs 50 more to cover it up….
40
Generally speaking the Court’s refuse to rule on the science. This is a good thing.
20
Meanwhile, on the planet Itsacon …
[CO2 global warming] link to bushfires clear: expert
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/hobart/programs/worldtoday/climate-change-link-to-bushfires-clear:-expert/11496190
Wait. What?
Teenagers charged over Peregian Beach bushfire on Sunshine Coast
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-11/peregian-fire-sunshine-coast-teens-charged-deliberately-lit/11503420
Worrying arson pattern emerging in Nambucca
https://www.nambuccaguardian.com.au/story/6368533/worrying-arson-pattern-emerging-in-nambucca/?cs=736
Greta: “Our house is on fire … I want you to panic … I want you to feel the fear I feel … The IPCC says …”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjsLm5PCdVQ
We know the warmists are sick in the head … https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-good-grief-network-support-group-helps-to-deal-with-psychological-effects-of-climate-change/
70
Thanks Travis,
Your second link includes the item that Qld police are investigating 11 fires believed to be deliberately lit.
Why so many at this time I wonder.
Cheers
Dave B
90
A good question.
30
Copy-cat crimes. There’s excitement in the air and the vulnerable fall prey to their evil.
30
Maybe, but they seem too closely grouped, and too soon. All seem to have started close to the same time (=day?).
Cheers
Dave B
00
This from central Washington State, USA.
About 8 years ago our region was having fires start in late afternoon — for a reason unknown.
Agencies starting flying an airplane and taking pictures. After the next couple of fires the pictures showed a gray car in the vicinity. Closer looking revealed that car parked near a road construction project.
Seems a ‘flagger’ (traffic Controller) was a bit out-of-sorts with the world and after work, on his way home, he stopped to start a fire. Just for fun.
Most of us do not understand such minds, but they are out there.
20
Yes also remember there was announced just days before, fire risk was unprecedented. Did some maniacs take advantage?
00
Couldn’t possibly be something to do with the massively-telegraphed worldwide campaign to use schoolkids to bring the world to heel once and for all on September 20…in preparation for Global Socialism … could it??
Al Gore recently visited QLD …was feted by Palaszczuk…who ensured schoolkids as young as 8-9 yrs old sat at his feet to receive the word.
00
Travis, I would like to see some data on the percentage of bushfires in Australia caused by: Power Lines, Lightning Strikes, Railway/ Vehicle Sparks or Fires, Arson, Preventable Accidents, Climate Change, Other. Does anyone know of such data?
30
In the western USA, about 84% of wildland fires are caused by human activities of one sort or another. Auto accidents cause some. Campers some. Poor wiring. Kids with fire works (exp. rockets). It is a long list.
Also, see my reply just above.
10
“Events that were considered
extremeaverage in today’s climate will becomeaverageextreme in the future asrecords continue to be broken and the “new normal” emerges.alarmists loose their rational minds.110
Events that were considered extreme in today’s climate will later be satirised as global cooling intensifies. Its a first world problem associated with guilt and remorse.
60
“The human fingerprint on Australian temperatures has been clearly detected since 1950.”
Yep, its called BOM !!
290
Thats gold!!!
Post of the Year Award.
120
Too right!
70
“The
humanBOM fingerprint on Australian manipulated temperatures has been clearly detected since 1950.”10
“It says a lot about what a PhD is worth these days. It says a lot about what a PhD is worth these days. ”
Time to repeat this.
A US farmer explaining the university system to another:-
“Well first you pay for three or four years at university and your kid comes home with a BS and everyone knows what that means.
Then a couple more and they bring home an MS, which stands for “More of the Same”.
Then a few even more expensive years and they have a Ph. D. – which stands for “Piled Higher and Deeper”
180
Supporting evidence
“Shale Gas: Penn State Researchers Rediscover Circular Reasoning”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/09/11/shale-gas-penn-state-researchers-rediscover-circular-reasoning/
“Less disturbance on the region’s geology”???
“The purpose of drilling and frac’ing gas wells is to disturb the region’s geology. That’s how you get the gas to come out of the rocks and go into pipelines If you don’t disturb the geology, you don’t produce oil or gas… You can’t even drill and produce a groundwater well without disturbing the geology.”
50
Thinking matters academic, and whether or not lots of letters after your name actually shows that you are clever, I can use the prefix ‘Dr.’ – and very impressive it is too! But to appreciate it properly, you must understand the grammatical rule on abbreviation.
If the abbreviation ends with same letter as the full word, then no ‘.’ is needed; e.g.: ‘Mister’ becomes ‘Mr’, ‘Mistress’ becomes ‘Mrs’, and ‘Doctor’ becomes ‘Dr’; on the other hand, ‘Professor’ becomes ‘Prof.’ and ‘Reverend’ becomes ‘Rev.’
So, what is ‘Dr.’ then? The clue is in this bird: http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/Passeriformes/Dicruridae/Dicrurus/Dicrurus-bracteatus. Thus I have reached the conclusion that many of our ‘climate experts’, even if they have impressive-sounding ‘PhD’s and a ‘Dr’, their correct entitlement is actually ‘Dr.’!
I rest my case,and have a nice day!
10
Michael
I have one too. And I use that farmer story as explanation.
The only two places I’ve seen where a Ph. D. impresses is the legal fraternity and in overseas consulting.
I have been known to use it if I get a super-siliceous “Mr – – ” and have pointed out to a medico that “so am I and I earned mine”
20
Too many post docs and supervisors/professors looking for something to get the surplus of MS grads a project (usually totally useless) as that cant be employed so they stay on for the ‘doctorate’ hoping it will get them somewhere, of course they need something to do, such as waste taxpayers money.
A PhD thesis is supposed to be on a topic that has not been analyzed before. Not so for masters. I suspect that is no longer the case. In fact I KNOW it is no longer the case. There are too many grads chasing the elusive doctorate.
10
I used to drive from Brisbane to Noosa Heads every year in September for a holiday until a few years ago.
Every year there were fires burning but no one remarked on them. I thought it was the cane farmers burning off.
Local residents might be able to inform us if this year is different.
71
The cane fires ended about 15 or so years ago now. But since the Nambour sugar mill closed down very few people grow cane on the Sunny Coast. The transport to Bundaberg kills the profit.
As you’ll know, there are lots of marsh lands full of local wild flower and Banskia. The fires that burned around Perigian Springs were lit by two kids aged 13 and 14. They’ve been charged.
But yes, fires are not uncommon in these wetland reserves because they are never maintained by anyone. They’re national parks and pretty much off limits to everyone.
80
No more cane fires? Nooo . . . . .
Early 1980s the Maroochydore-Mudjimba-Nambour river roads were strewn with splattered toads when the fields were burning – I’ll admit I got a few – don’t tell me it’s all housing subdivisions and estates now… in/on the tidal estuary / marsh / swamp / lowland / sandbank / rivermouth?
Headline: Carbon Emergency [sic] Causes Plague Of Cane Toads – PANICAPOCALYPTO! Knee-deep…
21
I know many of you are aware already, but for those who are not Australians or not country folk, let me tell of my own experience with the Australian bush.
I’ve bought a 6 acre block north of Gympie in QLD. It’s a 30 year old estate and whoever bought it 30 years ago never visited it. It had 30 years of regrowth on it.
It’s got Iron Bark, two species of Eucalyptus, Spotted gum, Stringy bark, and miscellaneous others.
I’ve built a furnace on the block to clear the block and burn the scrub in a controlled manner.
There is a mat of twig and leaf on the ground about an inch thick, not including the grass. Even in the wet months the matting on the ground will burn and run. I’ve got to be careful with the wind. When ashes fly out of the furnace and touch the ground, it burns and the fire runs.
As of now, the Gympie reagion hasn’t had rain since April, and it is super dry.
I’ve also discovered with the Eucalyptus and gums, the leaves will lie on the ground for a year and still be in perfect condition. I estimate the could stay there up to 5 years before fully decaying away, based on the thick matting in the scrub that I find.
The Australian bush is designed to burn. The leaves explode in flame, literally. Green or dead the leaves are highly flammable, and the timber burns rapidly away to nothing (which is good for me at least, as fast as i can throw timber in the furnace it burns away to ashes).
Cheers 🙂
180
Thanks for that dose of reality.
60
Careful there Greg, the Queensland minister for envionment, honesty and integrity might pay you a visit and have you charged for clearing native bush!
50
I’ve carefully read the laws relating to clearing on properties. I’m confident I’m fine. It might be 6 acres, but it’s zones rural-residential. That gives me certain rights to maintain the property. Also the species on the block are common natives, none of them are endangered or listed. And I’ve got certain rights to remove vegetation to keep vermin and pest species down, as well as fire risk. There’s plenty in the law for me to lean on should anyone want to get antsy about it.
100
Don’t burn the Iron Bark Greg.
It’s good fencing timber
Or Building foundation posts
As the white ants don’t eat it.
Re Gum leaves, yes they can hang around on the ground
For years without breaking down and remain flammable
The eucalyptus oil in the leaves preserves them.
But if you mow or slash them
and chop them up
They will then break down much quicker
As the micro-organisms can then get inside
The leaves and do their work.
30
I must have super termites, they eat anything Iron bark included. The ground is thick with termites. I’ve put posts up on bessar bricks to preserve them for use around the block, but the termites get into them quick smart.
30
They sure aren’t averse to silver leaf ironbark
20
Sounds like you have a similar range of species to what we have hundreds of miles south of you in the Hunter. If your Stringybarks are White Mahogany (Eucalyptus acmenoides) which are certainly common in your part of QLD, they will stand up to the white ants better than ironbark. We don’t bother with ironbark. Cut them after good rains though or you’ll have a major job barking your logs.
I grew up surrounded by a gazillion Spotted Gums. Now they are classed as AT RISK down in NSW and you can’t touch them.
Whatever you do, don’t clear the lantana. Magic stuff. Wink wink.
20
They aren’t as quite as keen on the turpentine in cypress though.
00
I think you mean turpenes which conifers produce a lot of and which give plants their smell and flavour. There are undoubtedly turpenes involved in sandarac which is the resin produced by White Cypress Pine that gives it its major anti-termite properties. I think it gums up their mandibles or something and they don’t like the smell. Unfortunately it’s also what makes your cypress floorboards squeak (like violin bow rosin).
Some timbers like Brush Box are quite high in silica too which blunts saw blades and termite teeth.
10
They’re not too keen on mulga – have to carry a tooth file for that
10
How about the Vegans start going through the forests gathering all that fuel load for free feed?
60
It is very unusual for rainforest to burn. This is because microbial action rapidly breaks down leaf litter, and the canopy prevents a dense understory from establishing. Conflating Dry Sclerophyll forest which has the opposite charactistics is a great story, but an abuse of the facts
210
Yeah but this is where she goes off the track.
‘Nine of Australia’s 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2005, and that long-term trend shows no sign of turning around any time soon.’
A decade of La Nina, reckoned to begin late next year, should flood the country and drive temperatures down.
70
I sincerely hope so el gordo.
40
PF wants people to get flooded out, and to freeze.
What an irksome little piece of troll.. !!
20
You are being a bit too precious, what Fitz said is heart felt because he doesn’t understand ENSO behaviour. The public needs to be informed, not ridiculed.
00
you keep saying that elG. Remember I dragged up one of your comments from some time ago saying it starts next year (2016)?
13
Thanks leaf, I was naive back then but now I’m better informed after hanging around at Climate Etc.
Its almost a decade since that intense La Nina and we should expect the next event to be the same. Do you know why?
40
PDO?
10
When the PDO is in its negative phase, should we expect multiyear La Nina events of three or four years?
10
Here is a glimpse of the US, the AMO and PDO combo are dancing.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/drought_freq-pdo-amo-e1513232931664.jpg
00
PF
Time you read Bill Gamage “The Biggest Estate on Earth: how aboriginies made Australia”
40
He gave a presentation at a Landcare conference I attended. And I agree with what he is saying.
40
No shes wrong. Either ignorant or deliberate lie.
‘Nine of Australia’s 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2005’ Incorrect and provable. As has been shown on this site.
Shes a die hard warmist hawk, in league with the climatealati.
10
According to http://www.agriculture.gov.au
Fire
Fire is an intrinsic part of Australia’s landscape, and affects biodiversity and other environmental values, as well as having important social and economic consequences. Eucalypt forests, in particular, accumulate large amounts of flammable fuel, and most eucalypt forest ecosystems burn naturally with a characteristic frequency, seasonality, and intensity (known collectively as the ‘fire regime’), followed by regeneration and regrowth.
A lot of good information at this link: http://www.agriculture.gov.au/abares/forestsaustralia/Documents/SOFR_2018/Web%20accessible%20PDFs/SOFR_2018_Criterion3_web.pdf
50
Firzroy that depends on the species.
On the edges of rain forests there are usually
Eucalypt trees with very flammable leaves
And in many ‘rainforests’ there are species of gum
That thrive but are still flammable.
20
All true, Bill. In evolutionary terms eucalypt speciation (that is the adaptation of eucalypts to specific environments) are unique in that they are found in the widest range of habitats, eg mountains, semi arid, rainforest etc.
They do share common ancestors though. This is not the case anywhere else in the world.
In the most general of terms, you would expect to see wet sclerophyll communities around rainforests. The two appear to be in competition for land, and depending on conditions you can see rainforest species colonise into the wet sclerophyll traces, or visa versa. Fire does play a part here, in that after a fire, the wet sclerophyll species are quicker to react, and have higher growth rates, enabling them to out grow their rainforest cousins. If, perchance, summer fires are absent for around 100 years, then you’ll see the rainforest moving into the former wet sclerophyll territory. It is a fascinating subject.
40
Great Post! It’s worth noting that the bluff on which the Binna Burra Lodge was built is outside the Rainforest proper and was surrounded / set in amongst open Eucalypt forest. Tragic but…. and on the Sunshine Coast two teenagers have been charged with starting that fire, sadly.
40
And then there’s this from NASA.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/nasa-detects-drop-in-global-fires
50
I didn’t recognise her name but I did recognise her face when I googled her. She has a record of writing garbage.
Pretty sure she Photoshopped her PhD. Probably the more important question as Jo points out is the award of Doctorates at her university.
Like Nobel prizes, they are being significantly devalued.
80
You’re right Antoine you get your PhD- then you get to be an “expert”.Publish rubbish so you seem sooo relevant to your peers.”Look, I’ve published paper”. Of course being an expert means that the media clamor for your expert opinion. Ahhh, what the hell..
60
Actually Glen, it’s ‘publish or perish’.
So writing alarmist garbage is a way of
Getting published
In dopey media
Like the Guardian
40
Hang on a minute Bill ….. She has also written a book, which has been endorsed by that well qualified Climatologist, Mr Flim Flam Flannery, so it must be a great work, so it couldn’t possibly be garbage could it ?
Ms Gerbil’s “Dole to Climate Messiah” story can be read here :-
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/in-the-hot-seat-joelle-s-journey-from-the-dole-to-a-global-role-20181218-p50n13.html
And if you want to feel a little bit of vomit rise in your throat you can read such heart wrenching quotes from her as :-
“It’s an enormous privilege to be a spokesperson for this issue, but sometimes the responsibility and emotional toll is hard to bear.”
Bring me a bucket please !!
40
A bucket for Monsuier?
30
“Hasten Jason bring the basin
Urrp! Too late, bring the mop”
30
Also having your name on a published paper now makes you an expert (in the MSM eyes) not in the real academic world.
10
The biggest blot on her copybook is the Southern Hemisphere hockey stick.
30
Thinking matters academic, and whether or not lots of letters after your name actually shows that you are clever, I can use the prefix ‘Dr.’ – and very impressive it is too! But to appreciate it properly, you must understand the grammatical rule on abbreviation.
If the abbreviation ends with same letter as the full word, then no ‘.’ is needed; e.g.: ‘Mister’ becomes ‘Mr’, ‘Mistress’ becomes ‘Mrs’, and ‘Doctor’ becomes ‘Dr’; on the other hand, ‘Professor’ becomes ‘Prof.’ and ‘Reverend’ becomes ‘Rev.’
So, what is ‘Dr.’ then? The clue is in this bird: http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/Passeriformes/Dicruridae/Dicrurus/Dicrurus-bracteatus. Thus I have reached the conclusion that many of our ‘climate experts’, even if they have impressive-sounding ‘PhD’s and a ‘Dr’, their correct entitlement is actually ‘Dr.’!
I rest my case,and have a nice day!
10
So we’ve gone from “global warming” to “climate change” and now the Left are calling it “climate emergency”….
80
And when there’s a declared “emergency” government has certain extraordinary powers…
50
That is the big green hope. Happily it comes to nothing. I am watching US cities and counties adopt emergency declarations but that is all. No new action. Just meaningless declarations. The joke is in play.
40
Hi David
One of the best ways to keep the unwashed masses compliant is to make them fearful. Orwell’s 1984 included the slogan “War is Peace”. By being in a state of perpetual war (and fear) the mobs were too scared to question the validity of their government. North Korea has it down to a tee, China is probably not far behind, and the Greens are singing from the same hymn-sheet.
The truth will set us free. Thanks Jo.
Cheers,
Mike
20
I was watching some of the sky news coverage and the images show an overgrown jungle just across the road from a housing estate , high fuel loads and a highly variable climate is a recipe for an unstoppable fire .
I’m amazed they haven’t started claiming there were no bushfires before 1983 when the CO2 levels were lower .
90
No acknowledgement that the single biggest impact on Australia’s rainforest ecosystem was the 60 000 years of indigenous occupation and their indiscriminate fire setting practices?
No mention that arson plays a massive role in the current ‘crisis’?
No understanding of the impact of Indian Ocean Dipole, the Antarctic or Pacific?
Certainly, I can see that there is a climate science emergency, where so many people are ignoring the actual science in order to promote a climate emergency.
130
Yes, 60,000 years of “fire farming” by the indigenous population has had an extraordinarily destructive affect on the Australian environment including the extinction of vast numbers of species of non fire resistant flora and associated fauna.
80
Good points. One of the things that worries me about the media focus on “arson” is that it gets away from the main issue of government failing to manage the known environment. The other issue is that residents trying to take measures to protect life and property from obvious threats can be lumped into the category of “arsonist” and be arrested, detained and harassed for taking preventive action that was considered normal forty years ago.
Last year there were extensive fires in swamp land between Williamtown and Port Stephens.
A year or two before that there were highly destructive fires from Murdering gully through to Redhead.
All dangerous to humans and animals and ultimately caused by deliberate neglect.
The Money needed for the preventative work was put to good use by councils on more eco-friendly projects.
KK
70
Arson is the highest category for bushfire ignitions, accidental is the next highest (cigarettes, control burns that get away, embers from camp fires)
As to controlled burns, conditions that are favourable for controlled burns have decreased significantly with most authorities unable to carry out their full program. This is mainly due the the now extended fire season, and unfavourable weather conditions, like wind, low humidity, and the lack of available RFS (in NSW) teams to monitor those burns. RFS is going through a bit of personnel shortage ATM, with replacement rates falling in a lot of areas.
27
When ya stop doing cool burns
Ya automatically get less opportunity for cool burns,
And then folks ya get lots of hot killing burns
This is lost completely on city based greenies
Who don’t want any bush to burn.
EVER !
Dopey idiots !
140
When we want to do a controlled burn in Qld we have to have a permit from a local fire warden. Who is on the ground and not likely to slackly issue a permit as the warden will be in the RFB effort to put it out.
But before burning we have to ring FireCom in Brisbane for final OK.
The difference?
And throw in a “heat wave” becoming about 30 degrees!
Urban – “Oo a fire! Put it out before it burns something!”
Rural “We aim to burn something before we put it out”
90
Poiter you knowledge of controlled burns is only outdone by your understanding of CO2 !
The reams of paper work involved in a controlled burn and the red tape involved have impacted the available days to carry out this work .
Any one thing that deviates from a proposed burn on the day cancels it and then the red tape paper chase starts all over again .
Then there are the greenies that oppose the burns and further hamper the efforts , if my house was to burn down because of a fuel reduction burn gone wrong so be it , better that than an uncontrollable wildfire .
80
Thanks Robert, from you that is high praise. Precisely what statement engended such a response?
06
“your knowledge of controlled burns is only outdone by your understanding of CO2”
Its not hard to get above ZERO, PF
As you have shown, you have zero evidence or understanding about CO2.
Seems you have basically zero knowledge of controlled burns either.
60
Watch out, your arson’s on fire.
60
“low humidity”
So extra CO2 doesn’t increase humidity.
There goes the AGW “climate sensitivity” scam, thanks PFD
70
Over those 60,000 years they used wood fuel for cooking and keeping warm, along walking tracks and around the camps there was hardly any dead wood to scavenge.
They were acutely aware of ‘crowning’ and would have prepared for that eventuality.
60
Don’t know E.G. that they were “acutely aware” of to much at all. Reading a diary extract from a marines officer of the first fleet, he noted the great fires deliberately lit by the natives WITHOUT REGARD FOR CONSQUENCES OR AWARENESS OF OTHER NATIVES DOWN WIND. I think the book was simply titled” Arthur Phillip” but I can’t remember the author
60
Not sure, might be an urban myth, I’ll keep looking.
Even the explorer Cook noticed smoke fire along the coast and islands, ‘a certain sign they are Inhabited’.
60
Captain Watkin Tench of the Marines is the officer to whom you refer. I have a copy of Sydney’s First Four Years published in 1979 by the Library of Australian History which is a reprint of Tench’s 1789 publication A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay and I do recollect having seen the passage to which you allude but am unable to give a page reference just now.
60
Thanks Serp, it all relates to memory, that part of your brain that steadfastly refuses to forget things that you want to, and repeatedly fails to recall the thinks you want
20
Damn. “things you want”
20
Pemulwuy was a Dharug man who waged a decade long guerrilla war on the Cumberland Plain settlers, using fire as a weapon. He killed over 30 colonists because the newcomers took his hunting ground.
10
The only fires that will be stopped is the ones that would have burned on the areas cleared to build the solar and windmill monstrosities. Other than that, not one square inch of fires will be prevented.
The only thing that has ever worked is to drastically reduce the excess fuel load by clearing underbrush, building fire breaks, and setting low temperature controlled burns.
70
Ms Gergis.
Q. How does coal induced carbon (sic) know when to make it rain-flood and when to make it a ‘permanent’ dry?
Lake Eyre/Kati Thanda – August 01, 2019
“The harsh Australian desert environment means the lake sits dry most of the time.
On average every eight years or so flood waters from inland Queensland flow down river systems such as the Diamantina River, Cooper Creek and Warburton Creek and enter into Lake Eyre North.
However some level of flooding has occurred every year since 2009.”
https://www.environment.sa.gov.au/goodliving/posts/2019/08/lake-eyre-kati-thanda-update
Q. How many world’s biggest batteries will prevent this from happening?
100
A. It doesn’t.
60
‘These questions are not allowed. I call it paradigm protection.
80
Those rainfall charts show considerable variability – who could have predicted this?
The only certain answer is not climate scientists; their models have zero predictive ability.
90
Global Warming means more bushfires … unless it means more floods …
“Spring has barely arrived, and bushfires are burning across Australia’s eastern seaboard.”
https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-bringing-a-new-world-of-bushfires-123261
Wait. What?
Why warmer storms could lead to more flooding than expected
“By linking existing observations of rainfall intensity and temperature it has been found, in general, that we can expect more rainfall when temperatures are higher.
This observation is founded in thermodynamics and underwritten by the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship which states that for each degree Centigrade increase in temperature, 7% more moisture will accumulate in the atmosphere.”
https://theconversation.com/why-warmer-storms-could-lead-to-more-flooding-than-expected-42825
Of course. Solar panels will prevent that. Because ‘science’.
90
The one equation climate strikes again!
50
Warmer air will have a higher dew point, do you have an alternative physics?
19
What “warmer” air would that be PF ?
Here is closest temperature site with reasonable length record.
60
Summer?
12
Glad that you have now admitted that these fires are NOTHING to do with the so-called “Climate Change™”
Rainfall… NO TREND
Temperature… NO TREND.
Green agenda and tape.. Big NEGATIVE affect.
30
So where is this warmer air? The global average doesn’t mean everywhere is always warmer. Most of the time most places are completely normal temperature-wise. This past week in France where I am it’s been below average. The “warmer air” happens sometimes for some time in some places.
20
Looks like global warming is a solution looking for a problem to solve. Any problem will do.
Cheers,
Mike
30
No theres no global warming havent you heard, its climate change which is MUCH better now we can blame everything.
True, Of course more warming would mean more water vapour and evaporation, more cumulus.
10
My comment from yesterday in a reply to someone else, appropriate to repeat it here.
“The Greens blamed climate change for the Feb 19 Tasmanian bushfires. However a month or two ago there was a program on the ABC in which factors such as lack of access roads and climate monitoring equipment were contributors. It was recommended that climate monitoring equipment be put into the wilderness even if it meant allowing some access roads to be built. In other words the Greens demands for areas such as the Tasmanian wilderness to be locked up are a contributor the the bushfires.”
110
And the ABCCC is never wrong.
50
10 Sept: SMH Op-Ed: Fires are burning where they never used to burn
by Greg Mullins, (AT BOTTOM) ***former Fire and Rescue NSW commissioner
As northern NSW and southern Queensland burn, there has been much discussion about an “early” bushfire season. Unfortunately, this is our new normal. While the official NSW bushfire season has always been from October 1 to March 31, long term records show that fire seasons now start much earlier, and last longer…
This is a clear long-term trend, driven by the warming and drying effects of climate change. It is not conjecture, but established fact, verified by the CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology, and the Bushfire/Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre…
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/fires-are-burning-where-they-never-used-to-burn-20190909-p52pnn.html
***what SMH omitted to declare about the writer:
AUDIO: 7min13sec: Sept: ABC Breakfast Coffs Coast: Yes this is climate change
On Breakfast with Fiona Poole
***Climate Councillor (ALONGSIDE FLANNERY, STEFFEN, GERGIS ET AL) and former NSW Fire and Rescue Commisioner, Greg Mullins is spooked.
He says the start to the 2019 bushfire season is the worst he has ever seen and it can not be ignored.
With more than 50 fires burning in NSW only one week out of winter he calls for government to act and for each of us to do our bit to move away from coal and gas.
But has the horse already bolted?
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/coffscoast/programs/breakfast/bushfires-is-climate-change/11493666
ABC’s intro: fires – Amazon “lungs of the earth”, Greenland; NOAA July hottest on record; next five hottest Julys were in the last five years.
audio includes the usual attack on Govt for doing nothing.
31
graham dunton – comment #4 – links to Viv Forbes’s article which includes August 1953 article on bushfires in SE Qld. Trove has lots more about August bushfires, as if they are simply the norm, e.g. this one:
12 May 1953: Trove: Winter lessens Bushfire Risk – May 12 1953
With the beginning of winter, the bushfire risk had lessened and no serious outbreaks were expected until ***August-September, Mr T. Pyae, manager Of Dalgety’s, said today…
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/77226734/7479554
there are others on Trove, including the following examples:
11 Aug 1951: Trove: TownsvilleDailyBulletin: Bush Fires Rage Over Wide Areas
The outbreaks hare been the worst for years.
The fire risk is being maintained by westerly winds and the tlnder-dry nature of the land.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/63384041
16 Aug 1951: Trove: Adelaide Advertiser: Bushfire out of control in Queensland
Flames are laplng 60 ft high and whirlwinds carrying blazing foliage and grass often 200 ft. high, are spreading the fire…
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/45720053
6 Aug 1935: Trove: Courier Mail Brisbane
The city and suburbs were again overcast with a pall of smoke from bush fires continuing to burn on he ranges surrounding Brisbane.
GRASS FIRES IN SUBURBS
The city and suburbs were again overcast with a pall of smoke from bush fires continuing to burn on he ranges surrounding Brisbane…
FIRES INVADE FARMS ON NORTH COAST
Several bush fires on the North Coast have threatened farms, and in some cases caused damage…
15,000 ACRES BURNED OUT
A bush fire which started on Noora homestead after a goods train passed through burned out between 15,000 and 20,000 acres in the district…
LOSS AT MULGOWIE
Bush fires in the Mulgowie district during the week-end did much damage, and it is estimated that more than 1000 acres of grass was destroyed. …
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/1958733
60
28 Aug: ABC: Queensland bushfire season expected to last longer, authorities warn
Queensland Fire and Emergency Services (QFES) Deputy Commissioner Mark Roche said Queensland had already started its fire season, with several fires coming close to homes and killing wildlife in the south-east last week.
“The bushfire season has started early and we expect it will go later as well,” he said…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-28/queensland-bushfire-season-starts-earlier-lasts-longer/11456576
9 Sept: MyPoliceQld: Fire investigation, Lakes Creek
Following investigations into a fire in the Mount Archer area, police commenced proceedings by way of a Notice to Appear against a 63-year-old Lakes Creek man for the offence of Light Unauthorised Fire under the provisions of the Fire and Emergency Services Act 1990.
Around 1.45pm yesterday a member of the public called Triple Zero after seeing a man acting suspiciously in the area.
It will be alleged that the man was conducting his own backburning operations without a permit – and the fire subsequently spread from Lakes Creek to Mount Archer…
The man is scheduled to appear at the Rockhampton Magistrates Court on 8 October 2019.
https://mypolice.qld.gov.au/rockhampton/2019/09/09/fire-investigation-lakes-creek/
no mention of possible arson, which was well known by this time:
AUDIO: 3min41sec: 11 Sept: ABC The World Today: Residents return home to Peregian Beach as bushfire threat eases
By Rachel Mealey on The World Today
Featured:
Stephen Marx, Peregian Beach resident
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/worldtoday/residents-return-home-to-peregian-beach-as-bushfire-threat-eases/11500844
40
Man made Global Warming is not true. There is slight warming, but that happens.
There has been an increase in aerial CO2, but that follows warming as 98% of all CO2 is in the ocean. This is also provable from C14 measurements, showing that very little of the CO2 is man made.
So it is all wrong. As former Prime Minister Tony Abbott said, “climate change is crap”. Which is why he lost his job and why he is no longer member of parliament.
What is wrong with all this is that no one much on either side of politics is prepared to call it out as a fr*ud. And the proponents of Climate Crisis are now using teenage girls to attack politicians. A 12 year old promoted by GETUP says “I don’t want to live in a world where the Great Barrier Reef is just a memory. No more Nemo and Dory. And I really don’t want to spend my whole life cleaning up the mistakes of leaders like Scott Morrison and Matt Canavan.”
Now that is child abuse. This girl is very worried because she believes what she is told. I am only amazed that a 12 year old knows Matt Canavan or her speech is scripted.
150
Her life is scripted, like a beauty pageant entry.
110
At 12! As I said, manipulative abuse of children. Greta Thurnberg is another and working so well Australia has their own Greta now. All such obvious manipulation of public opinion, now by using children.
80
Just received my Spectator. Second article claims Australia is falling behind in the Climate Change stakes and asks “where is our Great Thurnberg”. It’s all scripted.
So down with Captain James Cook. Down with Admiral Nelson. Down with Cecil Rhodes. Down with the Southern Generals. Down with Jewish people and Israel. Paint the statues. Extinction rebellion. Get in the streets. Down with Donald Trump, because he is mysogynist/racist/white supremacist/anti semitic/fascist/dictator/sexist/a crook. Who needs evidence. Mud sticks.
And even Elizabeth Warren, Fauxcohontas, actually descended from the illegal squatters on Cherokee land and specifally one ancestor who ran the Trail of Tears identified all her professional life to her own advantage as a Cherokee and wants compensation from everyone else.
As with Climate Change/Global Warming, who needs facts? We have our Great Thurnberg. Courtesy of the apolitical group GetUP. What?
40
Stumbled onto this last week (only coz the aerial drone shots looked great – then it turned into 97% nonsense). At the 33-minute mark, a teacher asks school kids to
explainrepeat rote-like what CCC means:Kiribati: a drowning paradise in the South Pacific | DW Documentary 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ0j6kr4ZJ0
‘Climate change and rising sea levels mean the island nation of Kiribati in the South Pacific is at risk of disappearing into the sea. But the island’s inhabitants aren’t giving up. They are doing what they can to save their island from inundation. Can COP23 help make a difference?‘
20
Tragic that her references are a couple of animated movies, not a direct experience of nature. Says a lot.
As mentioned before, on a rare TV occasion I recently checked out a movie about an autistic accountant whose autism gave him superpowers. (I’d recorded it because it was described as a thriller, okay?). Anyway, in the ad breaks there was repeated promotion of a series about an autistic doctor whose autism gave him superpowers. Some time later, I was getting clobbered with autistic Greta. You know, Super-Greta, saving the planet for Dory and Nemo and other such well-loved pixelations.
Creepy much?
50
20
She should have landed in 1619 not 2019, then felt the wrath of the Puritans!
10
This is supposed to be global warming. Right?
Two serious fires were in North America.
In 1910 – Idaho, Montana, & Washington
The Great Fire of 1910 (also commonly referred to as the Big Blowup, the Big Burn, [Wikipedia]
In 1950 – Canada
The Chinchaga fire – it is the single largest recorded fire in North American history. [Wikipedia]
I remember the smoke and black sky in western Pennsylvania.
Western USA
From Jan 1 until Sept 11 in 2019: acres burned 4,251,231
Ten year average, year to date….: acres burned 5,918,538
[Source: https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/nfn.htm ]
nifc = national interagency fire center
This is a better source of wildland fire info than is the Guardian.
60
If it burns, it earns. And they call themselves greens.
70
That’s because black or brown is racist.
60
More fiction from ABC Pravda .
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-11/government-appears-unprepared-for-climate-change/11492886
40
And again more fiction and dodgy accounting lead the “experts” to conclude that renewables provide cheaper power by using dodgy assumptions and not examining the facts in an unbiased way .
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-12/is-renewable-power-cheaper-than-coal-nuclear-malcolm-turnbull/11495558
30
He’ll say anything to support his son’s investment fund.
70
All propaganda to propagate the Big Green Lie. The lie that a molecule, CO2, somehow influences the climate. It does not, and cannot. Thus there is no need to limit human use of combustion for electricity and transportation. Those who say otherwise work for vested interests or are useful idiots. And idiots is one thing there is never any shortage of.
50
Fire is the product of good rainfall. 1951 happened because of 1950. The south end of Sydney went up in flames in 1980 after the lush 1970s. In 1895, start of the Fed Drought after rain and floods, we had a major fire emergency up the coast here. By 1902, the driest year (till this year, maybe!), there was nothing to burn.
Look, 1895 (driest winter/spring), 1902 (driest),and 1915 (second driest and hottest by mean max) are there in the record to prepare me for 2019, which is looking grim. 2019 is not in the record to justify more white elephants and more green plunder.
The climate is not new. The white elephants and green plunder are new.
110
And cattle are now not allowed to graze in the high country to protect it, so it should burn very well.
100
Bushfires are natural. Gum trees in particular and Pine trees reproduce by fire. That’s the point of the gum. The pine cones open under extreme heat and release their seeds. Both are very rapidly growing trees, so their strategy is burn the place and rise dominant from the ashes. Of your house.
We have exported Australian gums to California, Spain, Greece, Israel and more, so they all have massive deadly bushfires now. And the Greenies are responsible, as Donald Trump says. They stop forest clearing, back burning, removal of the fuel load. This is ironic when you consider gum trees are not native to California.
A whole suburb of Canberra burnt out because they would not allow the council to clear the fuel load. People lost lives, houses, everything. Inside a modern city.
So the irony is that the Greenies with their passion for doing nothing and letting deadly nature take its course are putting themselves and everyone else in deadly danger. In fact by letting the fuel load increase, the temperature of the fires is so great the trees are killed and the wildlife cannot survive. Thoughtless and ignorant. Anyone who had studied botany, or ecology would know this. With the do nothing attitude of the Greens, we humans go back to being victims of every natural disaster. Mother Earth, Gaia, will drown, incinerate and devastate us. Flannery’s and David Cameron’s Gaia is an unemotional uncaring killer, not Climate Change.
The same with dams which also act for flood mitigation. As for ‘environmental flows’ and pouring our precious fresh water onto dry sand, words fail.
50
You have multiple years of missing data for Nambour and Mapleton.
Most of those years were low rainfall years. If they are accounted for then you will see a trend of declining rainfall but it might not be significant.
You also neglect to mention that temperatures are increasing which also leads to increased fire risk.
19
Simon, don’t blame Jo, blame the BoM and their record-keeping department. Palmwoods (040695), the nearest weather station (with records from 1930-2018)- approx 6kms away, has the same problem of missing years. Palmwoods, from 1999, has 12 years of missing data. The BoM’s record-keeping is a mess, especially in the later years. Maybe they should employ more data observers than modelers (sarc).
90
“The BoM’s record-keeping is a mess, especially in the later years.”
Yep, I noticed that when I looked at Bourke temperature data.
Drew a graph, 0 = data, 1 = no data.
https://i.postimg.cc/zXm15k4v/bourke_missing.png
That mass is after the AWS was installed.. Great data quality hey. 😉
Could it be INTENTIONAL so as to give them space to INVENT warming data ???
40
“You also neglect to mention that temperatures are increasing which also leads to increased fire risk.”
WRONG.
Here is data from the closest reasonable length record
https://i.postimg.cc/05TWrqYr/Murwillumbah_Temp.png
50
One of the sidelines to the global warming catastrophe (man made in the sense of not being caused by nature) is the concurrent and lesser known Eco Management during construction of homes.
More later, but think who profits from the enforced installation of;
1. Roof water tanks.
2. Awnings to minimise air conditioning use.
3. The divestment of electricity linkage to your home by 50% through the requirement that power goes to your own brand new shiney pole rather than direct to your house.
Then ask, is there any real, tangible benefit to the public, or does the benefit go elsewhere.
More eco manipulation, crap quality equipment and jobs for the boys.
KK
20
https://theconversation.com/there-is-a-problem-australias-top-scientist-alan-finkel-pushes-to-eradicate-bad-science-123374
‘There is a problem’: Australia’s top scientist Alan Finkel pushes to eradicate bad science
41
He’s not “Australia’s top scientist” he’s a sinecure holder.
Against my better judgment I perused the linked article and found it to be, as always at theconversation, a waste of time, just a teaser for an address he is to make today.
If you research the company Finkel has kept in his career endeavours you will not find anything laudable; he’s just another camp follower of the climatariat, and it’s an indictment of the quality of Australian governance that he has been granted his current prestigious station.
40
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1529-0
Mediterranean winter rainfall in phase with African monsoons during the past 1.36 million years
Can somebody upload the chart?
20
haven’t seen you around for some time…. go here
https://sci-hub.se/10.1038/s41586-019-1529-0
20
Lake Ohrid is one of my favourite places. Thoroughly recommended.
20
OMG! Thank’s so much for the link!
10
With so many people like Joelle Gergis it’s amazing this nation isn’t already destroyed economically and socially. Give it time though it will happen as sure as night follows day, unless it’s turned around by a strong leader with more voter awareness.
40
I’ll just keep the drumbeat going that we need excellence in licensing to bring the goats, the pigs, with the portable electric fences. We need one license for the wood gatherers on the ground and another licences for the arborist to start felling a well chosen few branches. And we need to basically have a system that clears a great deal of fuel without undermining forest productivity. Actually a full blown forest with canopy overhead is not particularly productive. The most productive system is the permaculture food forest on the one hand or the tree-heavy pastures on the other. Its mid-secession foresty, before the forest has closed in, and you can have 7 layers of growth and three layers of herbivore and maybe two commercial omnivores … thats where the real productivity lies.
But with the public lands we have to clear the excessive fuel. That means a sophisticated system of goats, hogs, electric fences, and woodgatherers.
20
Many of the BOM rainfall data is rubbish. Miss a day (eg observer sick or instrument failure) then the month is out and that means no data for the year. I have a full monthly record for rainfall close to my home going back to 1893 because I looked at missing data and filled in an estimate from surrounding official sites.
Nambour bowls was started in 1893 which was a heavy rainfall year with close to 4.0m of rainfall at Buderim and 4.8m at Crohamhurst observatory (station 040062). Fail to understand why BOM has no daily or monthly data for 1893 and missing data in the early years. There is another station in Nambour which is run by the Qld department of Agriculture 040988 Nambour Daff. There was also another station Nambour DPI 040282 which has been closed when the research facility moved to hillside Nambour Daff. Palmwoods is between Nambour and Buderim.There are also many other stations which have rainfall data but in BOM practice many are closed. It seems they prefer airports Maroochydore and Caloundra on the Sunshine Coast both close to the ocean and both have UHI effects.
50
What is more accurate do you think? Use data from another site (or averaged sites) or delete the day and divide the total by n-1.
I’d assume the latter if the reason for missing the day is random since n and n-1 are both large. There is no statistical reason to include estimated data to replace a missing data point. If non-random then that is a different matter e.g it is hard to get to the measuring device during a downpour.
33
Sounds reasonable.
10
Tipping buckets don’t need to be “got to” during downpours, GA
20
Thanks for misunderstanding the point. Next time I won’t confuse things with examples
13
Only person confused is YOU, GA.
As usual, you have limited knowledge of what you are gabbling on about.
There is absolutely no reason for all the recent missing data except either INCOMPETENCE, or INTENT.
41
So what do you think is the best way to use the data available? Any advice for cement?
00
What do you think is the reason for all the recent missing data, GA
INCOMPETENCE, or INTENT. ?
00
“I’d assume the latter if the reason for missing the day is random since n and n-1 are both large”
So you now have no idea if there was zero rainfall that day or an absolute deluge.
And you then talk about dividing by n-1 as if it meant something.
What are you going to calculate, average rainfall per day, or something ???
So funny,… So DUMB. !
00
Sydney harbor sediment records would be the best indicator of long term rainfall.
Does anyone have a copy?
00
Hence why BoM data needs to be infilled, homogenised, and averaged. Do that and you will find an increasing temperature trend and a possible trend in decreased rainfall in sub-tropical areas.
15
Yes, the homogenisation treatment CREATES the trend.
Many station that had negative or no trend, are suddenly all warming after the black box treatment.
So much missing recent data, to be infilled using climate models and homogenisation to UHI affected sites.
Just in time to push the climate scam.
What a coincidence. !! 😉
30
Are you serious Simon ?
Or just trying to bait us ?
If you want to know what the BOM
Weather stations are like
And why they are so inaccurate
Trot over to KensKingdom
Over 80 BOM stations FAILED
When assessed by the BOM’s own guidelines
And counting !
30
Pretty much sums up the other side of this argument
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/11/how-actually-dare-people-politicise-the-bushfires-by-claiming-scientifically-its-linked-to-the-climate-crisis
18
The Guardians Dog on the Moon
Commenting about fires in Qld ?
Utter garbage !
Best to leave Dogs to barking.
71
Gruniad doesn’t sum up anything.. They struggle to add 1 and 1 together. !!
Dogs barking and hens cackling is about all they have to offer.
But that is all PF needs (or can comprehend.)
50
Come on PF, do YOU have any science whatsoever to show these unfortunate bushfires are caused or made “wilder” by human release of CO2?
Or are you just a cackling headless-chook.
41
/sarc off
05
Yawn !
PF caught out with ZE , yet again
20
Jo,
The links you give to the Brisbane and Alderly rainfall data at BOM does not cover the years that you quote. I know you are very busy but is there any way to get the data you have plotted?
10
Jo,
Don’t worry, my bad! All I needed to do was select monthly and look at the closed stations to get the data you have displayed. I must have forgotten to screw my head on this morning!
20
I’ve said before, the ABC has had a couple of programs, one earlier this year and one a few years ago, about cool season burning in the Northern Territory. Apparently cool season burning releases less CO2 into the atmosphere that hot season wildfires. So much so that an oil company gets carbon credits and pays the local people to do the burning. You would think the greens and all the other climate change believers would be all for anything that reduces CO2 emissions but apparently not.
40
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/#tabs=Tracker&tracker=trend-maps&tQ=map%3Drain%26area%3Daus%26season%3D0112%26period%3D1900
The map highlights how stupid it is to blame the dry conditions on climate change.
10