In 1946 fires burned in an “almost unbroken chain from Brisbane to Townsville”. They lit up the sky at night, pushed plumes of smoke 3,000 ft in the sky, that looked like “Bikini Atoll”. And this was July…
Qld 1946: Now that’s what I call Hazard Reduction
Believers of man-made-weather say that warmer drier conditions and longer fire seasons are preventing hazard reduction burns. Aside from the fact that a warmer world is not a drier world, and rainfall trends have gone up not down, this is a snowflakes excuse. Even if it were true, the answer is to get more serious about burning off when conditions are cooler.
Thanks to Siliggy, Lance Pidgeon for the pointer. This is what Queenslanders used to do when they were serious about stopping wildfires. Their view of dry brush was that it was waiting like tinder…
Fortunately yesterday, Armageddon didn’t come to the East Coast. But it might have.
800 Miles Of Fires Along the North Coast
The Courier Mail, Monday July 29th, 1946
Trove, National Library of Australia
By a Staff Correspondent
TOWNSVILLE, Sunday. — Fires
are burning to-night in an almost
unbroken chain from the edge of
Brisbane to Townsville, 800 miles
The coastal fires provide air
travellers with a graphic picture
Deeper inland, even greater
areas of dry brush and grass are
burning or waiting, like tinder, for
a careless match or spark.
donvale, farmers are burning off
cane. Forestry officers in other
areas are burning fire breaks.
Columns of smoke loom from
hills above some coastal towns, In
the hills north and south of Mac-
kay to-night smoke from two
separate groups of fires stretched
in trails for many miles.
South of Maryborough there is
another group of fires. From some
of these the smoke was rising yes-
terday afternoon to a height of
One air traveller said: ‘They
look like pictures of the Bikini
Some fires are blackening areas
of dry grass on which ‘small and
large graziers depend for fodder
A Forestry Department manage
ment officer (Mr. Pohlman) said
to-night that no fires had been
reported in forestry areas, but
burning off operations were con-
Grass and rubbish fires round
Brisbane increased yesterday after
the light rain on Friday morning.
Fire engines were called to 10 fires
hi the metropolitan area. No dam-
9.4 out of 10 based on 76 ratings
The news article seems to refer to intentional burning off and cane fields than bushfires. Or am I missing something?
40
That is the point Anthony. You are only missing the correct conclusion to draw from that about the way things were done in the past in July being helpful later on.
190
Due to fuel load the worst places for fires would be where there have not been any for some time. So when you here the popular argument that “fires have not been known in that location before” you are dealing with a mind that has been skillfully manipulated into the wrong conclusion.
In 1936 people understood the recipe for disaster and held those responsible in low esteem.
“Because of the ab
sence of serious fires for several years,
the hills were covered with thick un
dergrowth. Few precautions, more
over, seem to have been taken by the
townspeople, either to establish checks
against the spread of fires, or to main
tain an efficient fire-fighting organ
isation. Consequently, the experience
of last week, it is said, has been a pain
ful lesson to the settlers to safeguard
themselves and their property as far
as possible against a recurrence of such
devastation in future.”
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/92349056
220
Thank,god,for Siliggy! Thoughts and prayers work!
What a hero, he can correctly identify which areas will burn, without the pesky necessity of using facts, just buy reading a report from 1936.
Lets hope he can find time to inform the RFS, so they can save money on science and data.
Just a quick call to Siliggy, danger averted!
/sarc on
[ Peter, don’t make it a practice to hijack a thread at #1 with no content. About six conversational responses to this were removed as they were “about PF” which is Off Topic. Replies about the content are fine, replies about the man, irrelevant. — Jo]
046
Perhaps while PF claims to want facts, the presentation of actual history is too hard to cope with.
130
Only when history informs the present. you seem to believe that history is the only guide to the present, and something form the 1930’s is all you need to quote. Science, technology and skill have marched on since then.
It is not the same now as it was then.
014
“Science, technology and skill have marched on since then”
Yours haven’t.
Your mind is still in an age of dark superstition and anti-science dribbling.
Witches, unicorn farts and all. !!
Where is your empirical evidence for the very basis of your cult superstitions, PF?
You know , empirical evidence for warming by atmospheric CO2.
Still totally missing.
81
History is an excellent refutation to the lie that “this has never happened before”.
It has happened before. It is not unprecedented.
The burden of proof that this is “different”, and WHY it is different, is upon you…….. a burden that you have ducked, dodged and fled from at every opportunity.
80
AGW
03
is the sub post thing broke?
02
There Is No Climate Crisis
https://youtu.be/Y-mRJmfFjFE
00
In 1892 ?
Puffery !
10
‘In 1892 ? Puffery !’
Come over to the new thread and I’ll explain my hypothesis in more detail.
10
AGW ? No such thing.
As you keep showing us.
It is a fantasy that only exists in climate propaganda models
40
Church of Climate Change scientologists
10
True but on Sky News more and more people are proclaiming we need a climate change policy prompted by the recent bush fires. It will be interesting to see how Morrison reacts. Will he be stupid enough and move even more to renewables or put a cat among the pigeons and announce we go nuclear?
00
Lumps in sewage rise to the top, water runs down hill, fires are hot, the world is round(ish).
Technology might change, but physics doesn’t.
And while the chemical make of the atmosphere has changed fractionally over the years, it continues to do pretty much the same as always.
Rain, drought, hot, cold, wind, dust. There are detectable changes, and statistical changes, but nothing indicative of a catastrophe anywhere.
80
“We were never the same again.
Mind you we were never the same before
But we were never the same again”
Spike Milligan
50
Natural history is the only guide to the present, because its non linear.
We are back into the early 1890s.
60
Joseph Jenkins in the Colony of Victoria in May 1892.
‘A thunderstorm with heavy rain marks the end of the drought which in some parts of the country has lasted for seven months.
(Diary of a Welsh Swagman 1869-1894)
30
No Fitz the past tells us that the word “unprecedented ” is overused.
50
Not true…..our climate is from the 1930s ( and earlier too )……no change…….bush fires, cyclones, floods…..
10
Thermodynamics, Energy, entropy, enthalpy, even gravity hasn’t marched on very much Peter, the way the universe works now is the same as it worked then.
40
History IS a fact.
Those who ignore its lessons……
130
The RCS does not do fire research.
That is done by the CSIRO and some Universities.
The link between fuel levels, drought and fire levels is as firmly established as the laws of gravity. We are not “wasting money” trying to prove what has already been proven in the real world as well as laboratories
Climate change theory contributes nothing to this understanding.
Knowledge of fire behaviour in the past under similar drought conditions aids in the prediction of fire spread. Climate change theory contributes nothing to this, either.
The forecasts that matter most to the RFS are those for the next 96 hours. Skill levels for that are high, and Climate Change Theory contributes no more to this than it does toany other aspects of fire behaviour. There is almost no depending on forecasts out beyond ten days, let alone decades or centuries from now.
130
PeterW,
I hope you don’t mind, but I’m posting this here. I posted it last-thing last night on the previous thread. It’s such a powerful piece, duplication and exposure here is important:
https://youtu.be/E6RrgBrb6R8
30
Oh, yes. It’s David Packham one of Australia’s leading researchers and experts on fire and smoke. He was part of the CSIRO Bushfire Research Group which was internationally regarded and had published many papers on bushfire behavior and smoke characteristics.
40
Sam….
I regard Packham highly and I am not alone. He has been accorded expert witness in inquiries such as the Coronial into the Linton fire that killed a crew of CFA volunteers.
I also respect Phil Cheney and agree with the status accorded him in this op-Ed from 15 years ago.
QUOTE.The CSIRO’s principal research scientist, Phil Cheney, Australia’s foremost bushfire researcher, also blames the intensity of the fires on the fact that, “for the last 30 years there has been a continuing decline in operational prescribed burning”. He said yesterday the January fires were “a truly historic event [producing] probably the most extreme, widespread and continuously burnt area in living history”.
And the reason history was made? “Really the only thing that has changed is burning practices.” The gradual removal of grazing stock from mountain areas had also allowed undergrowth to build up, he said.
The amount of fuel on the ground had a quantifiable effect on the speed and intensity of a fire, combined with weather and slope variables, said Cheney. If ground fuel was kept under control, with regular cool, controlled burns in winter, a fire would usually peter out in a eucalypt forest. Hazard reduction did not prevent fires, but it kept them manageable.
But, said Cheney, there had been a gradual transfer of responsibility from land managers to firefighters, from prevention to suppression, probably because it was more “politically attractive. You have heroes, big dramas, helicopters.”
So while millions of dollars are spent on sophisticated firefighting toys like the Elvis chopper, there is no money for the kind of professional, scientific prescribed burning program that would prevent huge, runaway fires.
The extent of green opposition to hazard reduction was clear in the days following the Canberra tragedy. The NSW Nature Conservation Council on January 21 denounced the practice as “futile” and a “knee-jerk reaction”. The NCC chairman, Rob Pallin, said: “People who claim that hazard reduction burning is a cure- all for bushfire risk are either fooling themselves or deliberately trying to fool the public.”
UNQUOTE.
Addendum to that quote.
Note that the NCC – which is accorded stakeholder status along with the fire services – trots our the lie (again) supporters of Fuel Management consider it a “cure-all”.
Note also that the Greens Party Senators are not the only means by which the Greens exert influence…..
130
OF course, nothing has changed, ever?
Head out of sand time. The Fire behaviour models use all the parameters I mentioned in previous posts, Things like atmospheric temperature, soil moisture. etc
Adding 1 degree of average temp from AGW is going to be fed into the models, along with other climate change related facts like increased evaporation, lower overall rainfall (but not in the tropics) etc etc.
Unless of course, the model ignores current conditions and uses measurements taken back in the 90’s
011
“Adding 1 degree of average temp from AGW “
No evidence of ANY anthropogenic warming, PF
STOP making comments you KNOW you are incapable of backing up with any real science.
That is just a childish attempt at trolling, nothing more.
Leave your head up the bull’s ****, where you get your facts from. !!
70
along with other climate change related facts like increased evaporation, lower overall rainfall
WOW, are you CONFUSED. !
70
Don’t lie.
The fire prediction models are based on tomorrow’s temperature, not what it might be in 2050, or 2100.
It is you who are claiming we should base our strategies on conditions far removed from what we have now, not me, the RFS or the CSIRO.
60
Above was addressed to PF…..
The rest of us understand that records from the past are facts, and that speculation about the future is not.
40
Hang on a moment Peter a few weeks ago you agreed that due to energy saturation in the CO2 absorption band 1 degree of AGW is several doublings (1000 years away) and may be literally impossible (given it requires more than 100% energy absorption). Now you reckon it’s imminent… How do you do that? I find it impossible to hold two contradictory positions at once.
Perhaps you’ve decided that CO2 IS actually capable of violating energy conservation and can magically absorb more energy than is actually emitted from the surface.
At the moment we are at an anomaly of maybe 0.1-0.15C not even close to 1 Degree, so how is your strawman argument even relevant?
20
Hi peter Fitz. you posted “Head out of sand time. The Fire behaviour models use all the parameters I mentioned in previous posts, Things like atmospheric temperature, soil moisture. etc”
Do the fire behaviour models have a button where you are able to input into the model the increased fuel loads that have occurred because prescribed burns and hazard reduction by fire services and land owners is banned or severely limited due to the policy applied in many local govt areas?
When a prescribed burn or hazard reduction is done, the aim is to reduce the fuel load. The fire is kept at knee height. If it flares to waist height we knock it down. The fire is slow moving with low intensity. This is done so as to not kill the fauna or destroy the natural flora. Australian plant species are adapted to this and will regenerate with vigour. Another benefit is that brambles, lantana and other introduced species are destroyed.
The Australian bush is highly flammable. Eucalyptus trees emit oil in vapour from their leaves when heated. If a fire has intensity due to high ground fuel load, that fire will preheat the tree canopy above causing it to release oil vapour and you will basically get a flashover/fireball up to 6 storeys high where the fire will incinerate everything but the larger trees. All slow moving fauna is killed. The fire then creates its own firestorm. The hot air rises and cooler air is drawn in as a result winds can be exponentially increased, intensifying the severity.
To blame climate change Fitz is a lie. Model all you like with your fake fire modeling. I live in the real world of firefighting. I have seen it, I have dealt with it, I have had to provide reports to the coroner. The coroner does not ask for modeling. The coroner asks for facts. The coroners in all reports from 1991 have found and documented that the fuel load on the ground is the driver to fire intensity. None concluded that climate change was the major cause.
When peoples lives are lost, homes are destroyed, businesses, farms and our fellow Australians are suffering while we put our their lives at risk to save or help them and then you hijack this tragedy to run an agenda claiming climate change is responsible, it is reprehensible. Your lies help no one.
20
I think you are saying there is a map of potential fuel loads hidden from the public somewhere in the NSW and Qld state governments databases. If so, please reference it so we can ALL SEE what is going to burn and WHO we should direct to reduce this fuel load for summer!
Fire can only burn dangerously where there is built-up fuel. Climate, the wind etc etc is NOT relevant.
10
I wonder how closely such a map coincides with a map of National Parks etc in NSW? 80%? More?
Then include areas specifically excluded from clearing or personal hazard reduction, would that, just perhaps, maybe tend towards 100%?
And hence, just perhaps, such a map would not have been made available for the general public?
Cheers
Dave B
40
From my observations,most of the fires start in NP or state forests. They are hard to suppress due to terrain,inaccessibility and fuel load build up. Rural property is checked by bulldozing containment lines as grass generally is the main fuel, maybe some scrub and forest. This is the worst drought in my region on record- no doubt about that and the lack of water for aerial intervention is affected by the long turn around in many cases to fly back to a source. We all just hope it rains.
41
Here is another Trove record:
1951 BUSH FIRES WORST IN Q’LAND HISTORY
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/45792517
10
Posting this related to comments on the prior article.
Designing Your Home to Survive Wildfires
http://www.energy-design-tools.aud.ucla.edu/FIRES.html
20
Slightly OT but related
What was good about tge 1950s was if stuff needed to be done, they just did it. [snipped on request of commenter – jo]
210
[snip]
This is a call to get things legally back on track in this country. We have lost our way it seems.
60
Also “routed” shoukd read “removed”.
Need my coffee.
Summarizing now as a final comment : we need to peacefully and legally remove PC and the related nonsense that has damaged the country.
100
Related nonsense such as Paris Agreement on emissions, Agenda 21 – Agenda 30 on sustainability and other UN based agendas.
People ask how the Greens achieve so much when their voter base is around 10 per cent plus or minus a little. Their political association with Unions and Labor and their infiltration of the local government, state and federal government departments and other organisations that implement the agendas.
150
Yes, and I think it is also because a lot of us are too chicken to challenge the b*stards and kick them out of the institutions.
With a little effort we can put an end to this wagging of the dog by the tail.
Pay more attention to the moron we are voting for and we won’t end up with the certifiably insane such as Dick Di Notter, the Bandit, and this latest idiot to break free…………the 250 pound pom in WA.
110
In his book Among The Barbarians journalist Paul Sheehan wrote about how small lobby groups tend to achieve far more than their fighting weight should enable them to do.
They make so much noise annoying politicians that often they get the results they want.
100
Thomas Sowell has pointed this out, too. Social change is far more often driven by noisy minorities than majority will.
40
Consider how the tiny activist groups have managed to convince at least some large companies to cancel advertising with conservative broadcasters and individuals.
Bombard the dopey marketing people with emails from “Mickey Mouse” and associates.
20
I don’t believe we’re too chicken to challenge them, but we are a voice crying in the wilderness.
I think the real reason is that, for whatever reason, the socialist minded Left leaning people seem to get into positions of power. Therefor they have the greater say, even though 90% of people disagree with their socialist/green agenda.
The UN is the perfect demonstration of exactly this.
50
i think you will find a very big part of the problem is the take over of Human Resources by the left, probably through pumping in people from university courses. Maybe it’s just something that just happened, of maybe someone saw the possibilities, and it has been carefully planned? Tending toward the later.Think about it, it’s a perfect take over scheme. Apart from elected officials, everyone is appointed through HR. Staff, management, public service, boards, quangos(?), from the top to the bottom every position is vetted by HR. If you run HR you run everything. Good luck fighting that. Was there much there before the 80’s? Since then it has become huge.
Going on about the public service is totally missing the mark.
30
It did not always work out well and it is a very big state. Two weeks later in August 1946, trouble.
“Flames could be seen far out to sea,
and clouds of smoke rose 10,000 feet
above the coast.
Captain L. H. Mellor, A.N.A. pilot,
who arrived from Townsville to-night,
said that from Bundaberg to Brisbane
they had never been out of sight of
bushfires.
For long stretches more than 25
per cent, of the country appeared to
be in flames, he said. There were
isolated fires between Townsville and
Bundaberg, but from there south it
had to be seen to be believed.”
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/17984881
50
On climate change and bushfires;
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2019/01/a-note-on-climate-change-and-bushfires/
30
Thanks Dennis. I’d missed that.
This is the “killer paragraph” in my view:
Fixing the climate so as to fix the bushfire crisis is particularly popular with the authorities. Being able to blame the climate for unstoppable bushfires is, politically speaking, a beautiful strategy: it absolves ministers and agency bureaucrats of any accountability.
130
Their other tactic is to rightly claim to issue permits for removal of fire hazard materials etc., but they don’t admit how few are issued or how selectively.
20
The ambulance chasing Greens are a menace to society with their UN global warming CO2 fear mongering.
2011: Coal miners to blame for Queensland floods, says Australian Greens leader Bob Brown
https://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/coal-miners-to-blame-for-queensland-floods-says-australian-greens-leader-bob-brown/news-story/cbfe12042fa9c4149ea3c10524f57344
1852 Gundagai – Australia’s deadliest floods.
“Between 80 and 100 people died, and the disaster remains the deadliest flood in Australia’s recorded history.
The death toll would have been much higher if not for the heroic efforts of local Wiradjuri men.
Wiradjuri men were renowned for their skilful use of bark canoes.
Such canoes were only able to carry one passenger, so Yarri made many trips, taking people one at a time.
He rescued 49 people while Jackey rescued 20 using a rowboat.
https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/gundagai-flood-1852
90
The one main thing Mankind demonstrates over and over and over again is not the failure to learn from history but the failure to put the lessons — all of them — into practice.
NZ doesn’t burn like Australia does — we don’t have flammable air — but we do have areas such as the north and north east of the South Island — which have regular periods of reduced or no rainfall for signifcant times. The province of Marlborough (the top 25% to 30% ) of the South Island is particularly dry, which is why it’s where a lot of our wine-making grapes are grown and so it’s also an area where late summer fires are not unusual. Yet we don’t take the proper precautions of managing fuel loads and doing wide spread controlled burnoffs during the cool and wetter times of the year. Instead, the arsonists do it for us before and during the grape harvests.
80
Lack of management in NSW had resulted in climbing weeds spreading out across the canopies of the trees in many areas that are now burning.
80
“ climbing weeds ”
My mother liked a colorful climbing vine, I think Clematis viticella. Where we live now there is an Autumn Clematis that seems to be a “climbing weed.” This is in Washington State, dry side of the Cascade Mountains. In the US south there is Kudzu.
Vertical fuel continuity or “ladder fuels” is the descriptor our fire people (Firewise) use when telling us what to get rid of.
My mother would be unhappy.
80
Fuel grows back quickly and there is always the bits that did not burn before. Seven years later in 1953. Will the warmists at least admit CO2 helps the free fuel to replenish itself?
“BUSH FIRES OVER 600
MILES COASTAL BELT”
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/118421059
60
Looking at the temperatures in Paramatta Sydney yesterday compared to those of 173 years ago. Assuming these were recorded in good shade four feet off the ground as was the practice then it seems to have been way hotter. Just another part of our largest group of observational data, the AWOL dataset.
It looks to not be from a recording thermometer so the absolute max is unknown.
November 13 1846, 109 degrees F or 42.8 C with a hint of bushfire in the air.
November 14 1846, 110 degrees F or 43.3 C with bushfires stated.
Also notice the quart bottle of water on the ground to measure solar radiation. Wonder what temperatures that would get to now? Curious also to know what the quart bottle was exactly.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/12894093
60
Sliggy,
A quart bottle was (is) known as a quart pot. It was made of tine and was used by stockmen. It was carried usually in a leather cover, on the side of their saddle. It was oval in shape, has a lid that covered the whole of the opening which in turn had an extension such that it formed a tin pannikin for drinking.. It held a volume of 1 imperial quart (1.13652 litres). It generally was used to carry water and for cooking.
You can see a (not good) example here at 2.44:
https://youtu.be/f1ZcqAoSxWc
Note the open bushland.
20
tin
20
Sceptical Sam
Thankyou. Thankyou. Now off to look at absorption and emissivity of tin and other candidate materials. I think tin might be very difficult to reliably replicate with a highly variable reflectivity. Was in hope of being told goat skin or glass. Hmmm.
Do wonder if the gov’t version could have been brass.
10
Elevated CO2 causes people to forget to lower fuel loads in forests by winter back burning..
There..I have said it..
90
‘Aside from the fact that a warmer world is not a drier world …’
Amen to that.
60
Rainfall trends are increasing?
Well yess – if you live in the tropics, they are decreasing everywhere else (in Australia)
Burning cane and making fire breaks – seems like July would be a good time to do that.
As a beat up I’ll give you 1/10
021
WRONG again, PF
https://i.postimg.cc/BnDmXvLM/Australian-rainfall-history.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/W3rgT593/Slight_increase_in_rainfall.jpg
IGNORE facts , PF, its what you do.
“seems like July would be a good time to do that.”
PF totally misses the point.. Comprehension ZERO !!
So funny. 🙂
Yes, that is when burn-offs SHOULD be done. 😉
120
Here are the BoM charts of rainfall in Australia and the Murray Darling Basin since 1900. Any trends evident?
“I love a sunburnt country
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.” Dorothea Mackellar.
130
from the same site, in fact the next tab
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/#tabs=Tracker&tracker=trend-maps
now what were you saying?
08
Sir you should focus on precipitation and forget temperatures, and also narrow your gaze because its a big island. The MDB is a little droughty at the moment.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Murray-Darling-Basin-annual-rainfall-1900-2009-Source-Bureau-of-Meteorology_fig1_50934716
40
He was about to tell us how sweet his cherries taste.
Check out the 50-year rainfall trend:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/#tabs=Tracker&tracker=trend-maps&tQ=map%3Drain%26area%3Daus%26season%3D0112%26period%3D1970
03
Cherry picking the stat point again, hey. DISHONEST.
Slight increase in rainfall since records started.
20
And no atmospheric warming over Australia in 20 years,
and before the small step at the 1998 El Nino, insignificant warming for 16 years before that too.
30
NSW rainfall trend, all data (no cherry picking)
Nearly all green, darker on the North Coast.
20
Increased rainfall since records began
20
homogenised URBAN temperatures from total wacky non-compliant sites
20
There is an emerging trend (under 30 years) showing decreased rainfall in Australia’s SW, the SE and the East coast of Tassie and a corresponding increase in rainfall in Australia’s NW.
Peter Ridd tells us this, confirmed by both the BOM and the CSIRO.
However QLD and Northern NSW are not in Australia’s SE and might I suggest that classifying Sydney as being firmly located in Australia’ SE is also a bit of a stretch.
Rainfall patterns in those areas are forecast to be stable and consistent.
That you do not know this speaks to a profound ignorance.
They say that ‘you should not feed the trolls’ – but mention nothing about complete numpties.
130
Precipitation is a cyclic phenomenon, probably has something to do with the PDO and ENSO behaviour. Andy’s graph illustrates that since the Great Climate Shift of 1976 it has been naturally wetter with warmer temperatures.
Looking ahead we should expect cooler and wetter conditions in the first half of the 2020s.
10
for the doubters
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/#tabs=Tracker&tracker=trend-maps
now shut up
09
You know that is just URBAN warming from very shoddy sites smeared over the continent.
No atmospheric warming in 20 years, PF
Now shut up yourself and stop your parrot like regurgitation of non-facts..
Or if can’t shut up, then provide that totally absent empirical evidence for warming by atmospheric CO2.
30
I fail to see how sugar cane burn offs (pest control mostly) have anything to do with bushfires.
But sugar cane can look like a straw when you have to grasp something
08
You fail to see most things..
You just FAIL.. period. !!
30
you seriously thing all that was cane, really !!
WOW the PF fantasies continue !
20
typo….
thing-> think10
I am so damned tired and angry at the excuses and prevarication.
It’s a lie that Fuel Management has to eliminate fire to be considered effective. It’s a MITIGATION factor that renders fires less intense, less lethal and provides more opportunity to extinguish fires before they become large and/or extreme conditions arrive.
It’s also a lie to claim that Fuel Management burns reduce the bush to a “car park” (an expression used by politicised former NSWRFS Commissioner, Phil Koperberg) .
We KNOW that it works when applied with common sense, to make fires, yet we are repeatedly hearing the myth that a temperature increase of a single degree is making more difference than fuel increases of 20-30 tonnes per hectare.
Everything we know from fire science says otherwise.
230
I was in a former time
A secondary teacher.
Australian history.
Any one who know Australian history
Knows that fire has always been an issue
Cool burns are needed to prevent vast raging bushfires
And as Australian history has fallen out of favor in schools
So too has an awareness of the role of fire.
160
Jo, Bob Tisdale delivered a post over at WUWT some weeks or months ago which disclosed that according to Berkerley Earth raw Argo buoy data the Southern Ocean has been cooling since recordings began in 2003.This is important to know about because any drop in sea surface temps means less evaporation and less rain for southern Australia.I would hate to believe that current conditions might not be temporary.Apparently, the only reason the drop shows up in the raw data is because there are too few ships readings in the Southern Ocean to disappear it.
90
We looked at the Southern Ocean here last December. And the region 32 degrees (ie. Perth-Syd) south to 52 degrees was warming. (Trend from 1982 – 2017).
.
The region 50 – 70S was cooling — this is well south of Tasmania. Launceston is at 40S.
http://joannenova.com.au/2018/12/far-southern-ocean-cools-kiss-goodbye-to-polar-amplication-around-antarctica/
Perhaps those trends have changed since 2003?
40
The SST’s off northern and southern Australia are anomalously cool at the moment
Hence, drought.
Then there is a wobbly southern jet stream, which is causing cycles of cold Se winds and hot dry blustery north westerly winds along the east coast.
Hence, bad fire WEATHER.
60
As a disappointed global warmer I see the Conversation is rabidly at it again this morning with some nuancing (but not much). And quoting a 5 year trend since 2016 as evidence of anything. Hahahaha ! I find it aggravating that the separation between climate variability and climate change is deliberately blurred. That we are 1.5% of the world’s emissions is simply ignored. Almost a belief that banning coal mining will immediately change our bushfire risk. So we might ask the rabid greens what improvement would there be if Australia was carbon neutral NOW? Just roughly – 100%, 50%, 10% or 0.0000%
So it really is preposterous. Nutz even. The discussion needs to be on planned systematic hazard reduction burns years before. Remote sensing can already give us a complete national fire history and time since the last fire – 30 years of Landsat in the piggy bank. Need – Best fire fighting appliances including aircraft. Best command and control and fire weather simulation.
AGW may have added something to the fires – but how much? The carbon sequestered in vegetation from the 2011 La Nina is now being returned to the atmosphere.
151
Well said, Vishnu ! 🙂
except this part..”AGW may have added something to the fires – but how much”
Something that exists only in models, cannot actually add anything to something in real life.
170
I took that as meaning the extra carbon in the growth of the bush, as is implied by the remainder of the sentence. “The carbon sequestered in vegetation … is now being returned to the atmosphere.”
30
Increased CO2 has increased the rate of plant growth. This is a well known consequence. The result is faster rate of fuel increase. If not matched by increased effort in fuel reduction then fire risk increase.
00
Well yes, common sense and lack of evidence global warming for at least the last 20 years means that unless you have a political barrow to push using climate chnage as the trojan horse of choice, it can scientifically and logically be completely ignored.
CAGW is not an issue, as shown scientifically, hence its not in the frame. Why talk about a non issue? Waste of time.
120
An often missed fact is that according to the warmist CSIRO we are already carbon neutral and then some relative to Kyoto (370 PPM reference) the CSIRO claims 5PPM causes 1% increase in carbon fixing by plants so 40 PPM since then represents 8% increase in photosynthesis on our (conservative) 10GT of biomass production which extracts a minimum of 800 MT CO2 more than in 1990 (Kyoto reference). Our Emissions are only 520MT so we are already beyond zero.
The actual figure is more like 1% more carbon fixing per 2PPM ( its a simple calc – 180PPM is Neutral (Zero net growth), 370PPM represents growth in 1990 (defined as 100%) (370-180)/(100-0) = 1.9 PPM per %, so relative to 1990 we get more like 2GT extra sinking, 4 times our Emission. And that’s only for forests, doesn’t include farmland, savanna and ocean sinks
With 1.5 GT less total emission its funny how the bushfires haven’t stopped? Oh gee – maybe its fuel loads?
This is the problem, take real facts and data and the warmer narrative always falls apart, and our resident warmers are shown once again to have no case. When it comes to total emission Australia is well below 1990, yet no impacts on your disaster du jour, conclusion Australia’s CO2 emission is irrelevant to bushfires (floods, cyclones and other recent events).
PF and others, take stock get some real facts and do the math, when the math doesn’t support your world view you need the reconsider your world view.
80
Bravo! I get a similar effect with a clown suit and tricycle, but yours is much more efficient.
11
You don’t do math/science do you? Just love to mindlessly insult people who can. Great strategy there Nutbag…
10
“I get a similar effect with a clown suit and tricycle”
So, you use the only tools you have at your disposal
We had noticed. 😉
20
[…] Nova reports on the fires of 1946. In 1946 fires burned in an “almost unbroken chain from Brisbane to Townsville”. They lit up […]
10
First, let me say that Fires Near Me and Sentinel Hotspots have proven invaluable during this emergency. Weather predictions a day or two out were accurate, and the all-important wind predictions were fairly spot-on. While I decided not to evacuate, I was ready to do so depending on the information.
The other thing…
I do not watch refuse media nor know what’s on the “news” beyond scanning the headlines to ascertain what I am supposed to believe today.
Too many neighbours, friends and family who do watch television have been traumatised and incoherent when I’ve tried to speak to them. I don’t know what has been pumped through those TV sets these last few days but it was doing no good to anyone.
A few years back I was on a weekend break with family and friends when a ridiculous shooting event hit the news. Australia’s ABC began pumping CNN round the clock, hanging on every word from degenerate network personalities and hammy crisis actors. And all my family and friends were transfixed for hours, as if they were in the presence of history. (I read a book in another room.) If you asked them now what happened and the how and why they wouldn’t even remember…because you’re not supposed to remember anything but a blurry “account” and some message about fanatics or guns or fundamentalists or migrants or bigots under the beds. (These hoaxes are usually flavoured to appeal to both left and right, since increased division, fear and surveillance are more important to globalism than anyone’s politics.)
People, this is so important. The refuse media are a far greater enemy than any enemy they are telling us to fear. When you turn them off you will understand.
180
It is possible that a tv broadcast could be set up to alter alpha wave behaviour in peoples brains. As such it may be possible to put people in a trance-like state, or even manipulate them emotionally.
Subliminal advertising was banned years ago, but there are other patentened technologies like S.S.S.S. I believe can actively alter peoples emotional state. As such, is this the reason for the push to digital tv, were more encoded information can be transmitted without our knowledge? Who knows. Interstingly, the movie “Kingsman” basically explored a related thing. Not sure of its in use, but these days nothing would surprise me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsman:_The_Secret_Service
Back inthe 1970s, the use of microwaves to transmit audible voices into peoples heads existed, I suspect techniques are much more sophistciated now.
50
I remember “television”. I think we still have one somewhere.
60
The ACT appears to be a Leftist stronghold, largely out of touch with the reality of the rest of australia……
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6487481/climate-change-affecting-bushfires-act-rural-fire-chief-says/?cs=14225
“ACT Rural Fire Service chief officer Joe Murphy said there was no doubt climate change was affecting the Australian landscape and making it more susceptible to devastating bushfires.
“The ACT had its first total fire ban on Monday in response to hot and gusty conditions and to stand in partnership with NSW, which is suffering from “unprecedented” bushfires.
“Chief officer Murphy’s comments come after politicians, notably the deputy prime minister, criticised people for linking the NSW bushfires which have claimed three lives to climate change.
“He said his beliefs regarding climate change were both a personal and professional stance and were shared by the ACT government.
“”We are seeing a change in the Australian climate, we are seeing a change in our weather patterns,” chief officer Murphy said.
“”We are seeing a change in what this means on the landscape, the amount of water we have access to.
“”The way in which our average temperatures and average rainfall are now changing quite dynamically and quite quickly and is starting to skew all the predictive work that goes on.
“”Right now climate action is a key focus of ACT government.”
70
Union City
40
People are deceived because they are told the lies the want to hear. But it is a remarkably prevalent phenomenon.
Free speech is paramount, but the problem is that morons such as those that inhabit the ACT boil over with oral diarrhea, and there seems to be few that attempt to correct. them.
70
When I worked in govet-funded research, I saw firsthand how risky it was for any staff member to declare themselves conservative or rightwing. At best, you’d be Billy No Mates in the morning tea area. The upside though, was that you wouldn’t have to endure the storm of spittle that many deranged lefties emit when talking ‘passionately’ (I think that’s called a euphemism) about politics.
The public service generally is hostile toward such people, so when it comes to Canberra – itself basically a massive, public-service enclave, it’s not suprising to see it drift ever more leftward.
70
Anyone want to correct this nonsense? It could be added to soil to aid growth….
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6489279/flammable-future-set-to-hit-central-victoria/?cs=14231
“CENTRAL Victoria is facing a fire future unlike anything Australians have known for the past 200 years according to experts, as climate change drives fire weather.
“Experts say Victoria sits on the front line of increasing bushfire risk, as climate change lengthens fire seasons and causes more extreme weather.
“Scientists say southern Australia is primed for a devastating and dangerous bushfire season in 2019-20.
“A City of Greater Bendigo leader says the political dialogue surrounding climate change “disappointing”.
“Climate Council Head of Research Martin Rice said Victoria was most affected by bushfires among the Australian states, both in terms of civilian deaths and economic costs.
“”Dr Rice said Victoria faced a long, hot, dry and dangerous bushfire seasons into the future. He said the annual $180 million cost of bushfires to Victoria was set to double by 2050.
“”The most direct risk between bushfires and climate change is the long term trend towards a hotter climate. So in Victoria we’re seeing the number of hot days and very hot days … that’s increased strongly.
“”Heat waves in Victoria are also lasting longer and they’re more intense and more frequent.”
Dr Rice said southern Australia was primed for a devastating and dangerous bushfire season, which could be similar to the situation in NSW.
50
It’s 12 degrees today where we are so please someone send some globull warming our way .
40
Can someone please provide evidence to support the central proposition of this post. i.e.
I’ve done some googling and can only find claims such as the above (e.g. by Mr Joyce) without support. It seems to be all about some green somewhere saying something. How does this translate to government policy?
15
Actually, it was an invitation to discover if in fact the last 200 years had experienced anything similar.
My thoughts are yes they have.
80
?
15
Here’s a link.
LINK
60
best effort yet
25
Don’t be too easy on him, his heart isn’t in the right place.
22
In the previous post, a comment by “Screaming Nutjob” (IIRC) made the claim that Fuel Management Burning was limited to about 6 days per year in which conditions were suitable.
He is a self-confessed believer in AGW.
I have heard this argument repeated elsewhere…. that because things are hotter and drier now, there was no time or resources. Those who disagree – including Barnaby Joyce – are inclined to point out that the limitation IPA’s more to do with Environmentalists insisting that burning only be carried out under ideal conditions with an almost perfect guarantee of zero harm to either nature or property.
Those of us with a more contextual understanding of fire and the environment point out that fire is natural, it naturally changes the ecosystem, and the risk from FUEL Reduction Burns is far less than from high intensity fires.
110
just a link would do. Save you typing so much.
19
Just a blank comment would do for you GA.
Save you typing at all. !
80
I notice none of our trolling lefties are attacking or addressing Jo’s story but instead are meandering around with the usual blog clogging diversionary tactics they learned at greentard skool .
50
You really are incompetent Gee Aye:
“The CEO of the Climate Council, Amanda McKenzie, said…….the longer fire seasons meant that crucial hazard-reduction measures sometimes couldn’t be carried out. “There’s a narrowing of time in which there’s safe conditions to conduct hazard reduction, such as backburning and fuel clearing,” she said.”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/oct/21/bushfire-season-will-be-more-severe-as-a-result-of-climate-change
50
“Climate Council”
LOL
Now there is a JOKE of group of ignorant, zero-science, far-left drones, if ever there was one.
60
thanks for the link and the insult. That is quite an old article but one person does say this which is sort of like Jo’s claim
not really saying that back burning etc is being “prevented” and no one is saying that hazard reduction should not be done.
16
If its from the “Climate Council” it will be riddled with zero-science garbage and AGW propaganda junk comments
Which GA will swallow and regurgitate, because he can’t tell the difference.
30
https://www.smh.com.au/national/this-is-not-normal-what-s-different-about-the-nsw-mega-fires-20191110-p5395e.html
Greg Mullins is a former Fire and Rescue NSW commissioner and a councillor on the Climate Council.
In other words — The Climate Council is spreading misinformation and fake excuses for greenies.
140
“The Climate Council is spreading misinformation and fake excuses for greenies”
Which is EXACTLY their purpose.
A far-left anti-science climate propaganda unit.
60
Ive noticed furious spinning of the fires, to try and make it look the cause was anything *****but***** the obvious – i.e. lack of hazard reduction burning……
50
You’re welcome. 🙂
Your lack of English comprehension isn’t though:
You avoided that bit.
If you cannot comprehend the meaning of that phrase then you have no chance of understanding anything written in the English language. That is probably the reason you so badly fail to understand the science.
Alternatively, you do understand it, but it’s an inconvenient truth. Hence you have to pretend that it doesn’t exist.
10
Just to make it even simpler for you:
“couldn’t be carried out” is synonymous with “prevented” in that phrase.
Get it?
Oh hang on then; “synonymous” means being “alike in meaning or significance”.
Get it now?
30
Unsurprisingly, no link provided to support the claim that I said anything of the sort.
It seems in some circles, erecting a strawman is acceptable behaviour.
11
Not Surprising.
No science from SN.
Just forget which lies you told.
That’ll make you “feel safe”
10
Those ‘few’ ideal days might be because the people allowing hazard reduction burns keep office hours when so doing.
Up here in CQ it seems that the Red Truck brigade likes to start their fires mid morning, just in time for the increase in wind and heat for the day – and the Yellow Truck brigades are following suit, unfortunately.
The old practice of starting near or after sunset when the wind has dropped and the dew is starting to come in has disappeared from the collective memory, it seems.
10
Brian, so true. Here in Vic I have been told that if the local CFA and Parks Vic decide tomorrow would be a good day to do some hazard reduction burning, in the morning they must submit their detailed request to head office at 9am. The head office bureaucrats, well removed from the local environment, then consider the request and may approve by 11am. So half the day wasted before the locals, who have a detailed knowledge of the local environment, can start the work.
00
There actually is a link between CO2 and bushfires and it’s FUEL; increased CO2 increases biomass growth rate, CSIRO says 1% per 5PPM but other research and basic math (see upthread) suggests 1% per 2PPM. This is a good thing because it’s feeding our expanding population. But it also makes the grass/forests grow feeding fuel loads. This is pretty much the only proven effect of slightly higher CO2, on balance it’s great for the planet, but downside is it can feed fires
Appropriate adaptation – do the fuel management.
70
BobL.
They really have no excuse.
The more that they claim to KNOW that Climate Change is going to bring higher fire danger, the more responsibility they have to prepare in the only cost-effective means that we have available.
40
Exactly,
Di Nutty Teller made a fool of himself yesterday claiming that a climate policy would mitigate bushfires. The only thing that can be done is to increase fuel reduction measures and increase firebreak distances around structures, both of which the misanthropic greens oppose (of course).
50
In the meantime here is an issues brief c2003 prepared for parliamentarians prepared from one of our very bright research staff
https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/Publications_Archive/CIB/cib0203/03Cib08#Fire
and here is greens policy
https://greens.org.au/backburning (I hope no one saw me opening that)
and here is a leftoid fact check on this very topic
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/12/is-there-really-a-green-conspiracy-to-stop-bushfire-hazard-reduction
12
” leftoid fact check “
No such thing exists, anywhere, and never will.
Gruniad, seriously GA !! get back to reality. !
30
GA…
The briefing paper is interesting.
Note that in the section relating to the effectiveness of HR it does not distinguish between single burns and the effectiveness of a properly designed program with multiple burns at appropriate intervals.
While a single burn may kill and “cure” taller scrub, multiple burns at intervals shorter than the minimum reproductive cycle of scrub species will alter the species mix, much reducing the tall-scrub component, and thinning sapling regrowth of the dominant tall species.
This is the mechanism used by aboriginals to produce the southern forests described by early explorers, and which are now gone from much of the landscape – well-seperated large trees with a grass-dominant understory.
The Greens press release is pure prevarication.
The claimed need for “best” scientific knowledge of outcomes becomes a totally unreasonable hinderance when applied across a widely varying landscape. Studies take years to complete and delay effective action by at least that length of time.
An example is a timbered range bordering one of our regional cities. Following a wildfire decades ago, a rare form of Spider-Orchid was indentified. Because of its rarity, regulations now profit us (the local RFS) from conducting HR burning to protect the suburban interface….. Because no burning can be done, the effect of fire on the Orchid cannot be studied. Despite the reasonable assumption that fire benefits and stimulates this rare species , the requirement for perfect knowledge locks us into a do-nothing strategy.
Nobody wins except those who don’t have skin in the game.
30
PREVENT, not “profit”…..
30
On the subject of what the Fire Services are saying….
Phil Koperberg – the intensely politicised former Commissioner of the RFS, before he became a Minister in a Labor Government – was trotting out the same level of denial back in the 90s, before AGW was getting much attention at all.
It’s nothing new.
The reality is that appointments to heads of Service are political, and it takes a very brave Commissioner to publicly state that the Minister on whom he is dependant for both his tenure and his budget, is grossly negligent and has blood on his hands.
The TRAINING that firefighters receive confirms at every point that Fuel loadings are vital and the fuel management is the most cost-effective strategy. It is backed up by our OBSERVATIONS, but the politicised leaders would rather support their masters than the on-ground firefighters.
Taking responsibility for fuel management is the acceptance that management has been lacking in the past. Blaming external factors like putative warming – despite the lack of scientific evidence – avoids responsibility while making a case for more powers and bigger budgets.
30
Greens policy was changed on the 8th of November but no one seems to know what it used to be .
20
moderation moderation moderation
3 sausages went to the station
one got lost
one got squashed
and one had a bad operation
16
No threat to Shakespeare there
40
He was that fella who defended Sydney Cove wasn’t he?
lol
10
Dad joke:
Did you hear about how they track the danish, swedish and norwegian ships?
They put bar codes on them so when they return they scandanavian……
My daughter threatened me with all sorts of punishment for this one….hee hee 🙂
20
“He was that fella who defended Sydney Cove wasn’t he?”
Along with the bloke who “circumcised Australia with a 16 foot cutter”
20
🙂 🙂 :-).
00
Uh oh…the Victoriastan glorious Leader apparent mismangement of its electrical infrastructre is coming home to roost…..
They in deep doo doo now….and they know it too…..redefining “complete balls up” to make it look not so bad, perhaps?
Victoriastan residents could call for the State Governor to legally remove Dangerous Dan and D’Ambrosio.
https://www.theage.com.au/business/the-economy/victoria-pushes-for-urgent-overhaul-of-energy-rules-as-blackouts-loom-20191112-p539yl.html
“Victoria pushes for urgent overhaul of energy rules as blackouts loom
“Victoria will fight to overhaul energy market rules in a bid to prevent summer blackouts amid concerns that ageing power plants are increasingly unreliable during heatwaves.
“The plan, to be presented at next week’s meeting of energy ministers, seeks to reset how authorities measure the amount of backup power required to keep the lights on during summer when the grid is under the most strain.
“As concerns deepen about an elevated risk of blackouts facing Victoria in the coming months, the Andrews government argued the existing method of calculating how much reserve power needs to be available to meet demand fails to consider the rapidly diminishing reliability of coal-fired power plants and the growing risk of multi-day heatwaves.
“Victorian Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio will push the proposal for a fast-tracked review of the reliability scheme at next Friday’s Council of Australian Governments (COAG) energy meeting in Perth.
“”It’s clear we can no longer stand by and let this out-dated measure of reliability threaten our power supply,” she said.
“”At COAG next week I’ll be pushing for a new standard which accurately reflects our current energy needs.”
Victoria in particular is increasingly susceptible to energy supply failures as it relies on ageing coal-fired power generators in the Latrobe Valley.
“A rising number of unplanned shortages at the plants has caused instability in the market. There have been four unplanned unit outages in Victoria over the past 10 days.
40
True, Victoriastan can place absolutely ZERO reliance on wind power. It is totally UNRELIABLE.
Wind Reliability = ZERO
If the coal fired power stations have become a bit unreliable with age (despite have a reliability factor magnitudes ahead of wind), then they should be replaced with NEW RELIABLE coal or gas fired power stations
BUt since they aren’t allowed to drill for gas, NEW COAL IT MUST BE
100
Drought and catastrophic bushfires in 1946?
Back then, hardly anybody owned airconditioners, drove gas-guzzling SUVs or had three widescreen, energy-burning TVs, so how is this possible?
120
Oh Oh, I can answer this one. The world was full of planes and ships shooting at each other. So all that oil and fuel in the air caused, um, the temperature to sky-rocket. Therefor fires broke out randomly all over the world (not just Europe).
60
7/10 because you forgot to pin the blame on white supremacist capitalists.
70
That German Diesel produced from Coal too.
00
But that was all over in 1946. Must have been caused by the thump from the sudden lack of?
10
They can’t do hazard reduction because locking up land as a ‘carbon sink’ is part of the ‘carbon mitigation strategy’, notably started by Howard to meet the Kyoto Protocol.
60
So now that it has burnt in a bush fire
Does it still count ?
Seems all dopey to me !
30
Nope, all that ‘carbon sequestration’ just got vaporized and returned to the atmosphere.
20
In terms of death and property destruction, the highest risk zones have been in the lower corners of Victoria, WA and Tasmania
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Bushfire-risk-in-Australia-source-2_fig1_245481369
As you go north the risk of death and destruction gradually reduces to very low beyond the northern coast of NSW.
So you could say as the climate warms (further north) or dries (inland) the fire risk reduces rapidly.
Seriously question – isn’t this what they claim is happening with global warming ?
Surely any changes to the climate is just as likely to reduce the dangerous fire zone if anything.
60
Risk is mostly driven by fuel load and year-year climate variability.
If it’s always dry, little grows so Fuel is relatively low.
If it’s always wet, plenty grows but it’s rarely dry enough to burn intensely.
A wet season or seasons, followed by a dry season means plenty of dry fuel and intense fires.
That is why we occasionally get large fires inland. A wet autumn and spring lead to high levels of grass growth and a hot dry summer…… In droughts, there is very little grass to burn.
Aboriginal burning regimes resulted in grassy woodlands dominated by summer-growing grasses. These grasses die off above ground with the first frosts, were burnt by the aborigines in spring, as soon as they were dry enough to carry fire, and regrew on soil moisture and summer rain. Thus grass was sparse and relatively green through the hottest part of the summer.
50
Agreed, so they would have to argue that long droughts followed by long term rains are becoming more common,
because a drier climate overall with open woodland and pasture is a lot less dangerous.
Also any change in the climate would likely reduce the complete domination of oil filled flammable plants like eucalypts.
Actually an increase in variability would encourage more water storage plants like bottle trees and cactus type plants, and these have very low flammability.
10
George, look at the unsafe places people build. In thickly timbered areas or right on the edge of an escarpment.
In my rural Fire Warden (local Rural Fire Brigade area) district, there is only one home that I rate as a fire hazard – leaves and bark in gutters, trees close to and surrounding the shed and house, thick Brigalow scrub both sides of the driveway – owned by a refugee (many years ago) from Victoria.
All other properties have very few, if any, trees within 30 metres of houses/sheds, and even then they are scattered so that there is no chance of crown fires occurring.
10
An observation on fuel management burning.
The landscape does not dry off evenly in spring and summer. North facing slopes dry off faster than southern faces. Thin soils dry off faster than deep soils, and ridges dry off faster than gullies.
The strategy of aboriginals, and observant stockmen who imitated them, was to light up ridgelines as soon as they would burn, while moist gullies and slopes prevented fire from spreading across the broad landscape.
This done, when a drought dried out everything, gully environments were protected by the network of burnt-out ridgelines.
Not these days….
90
Thanks for that,
I’d suspected something like that was true, but haven’t heard it said, or read it previously.
Thanks again,
Dave B
20
The reduction of human involvement and presence in the bush has to be looked at now, before it’s too late.
The globalists have shown their plan, and the globsters are so well represented in left/right politics, planning, councils, Park and Forestry, media (duh) etc that their plan is already well advanced.
They want fewer people, and they want those people in tight urbanisations, called “smart” because of constant intrusion and surveillance.
The other part of the plan is re-wilding, something already happening through underfunding, neglect, Bob Carr parks, hyper-regulation and a host of sly measures.
So what happens if there are no people and the bush is just abandoned? Well, that bush changed massively before and during aboriginal presence, changed massively again through European presence with its extreme transformation policies followed now by extreme abandonment policies. Ferals and fire will rule. Management, without commercial, residential or recreational imperatives, will be an empty bureaucracy. Nobody will care. Maybe a lazy hundred thou will be spent on a new logo every few years, but nobody will care because nobody needs to care. It will be arbitrary rule by fire and ferals.
Here’s the thing: we have to take the game up to the excluders. We have to stop feeling guilty and fatalistic. There may be a downside to tree-changers, equestrians, 4WDs, hobby farms, professional farms, loggers, fire-wood gatherers, shooters, MTBs, dirt bikes etc etc. But that human engagement should not only be encouraged but demanded.
We can’t go back to pristine because pristine does not exist. Those who love the bush need to be in the bush, profiting, watching and learning. If a horse does a poo and leaves a few unwelcome seeds or if some heavy use erodes a track…too bad. We should avoid what damage we can avoid, but we need to be present and engaged on all levels in the Australian bush. The globalists have already guilted us out. Heads are already urbanised through refuse media, the bodies just need to follow. Bundled into smart cities to eat buggy and live tiny.
No! We need to hurl the guilt back at the globsters. Start with Big Green’s demented fire policies.
Do tradition, privacy, family, property. And do coal.
90
Correct.
They attempted to “rewild” New Orleans – this is why they delayed so long sending relief in. They waited 4 days – about the time most people in aged care or hospitals die without life support – before sending in the army etc. Coincidence?
The Elite splan, plain and simple, i to kick humans out of 85% of all land, and tightly restrict usage of all other land to “protect: thier mythical gaia. This is just New Age occult mumbo jumbo, but the sickos who make up the Elite believe it and are currently acting it out.
The UN is the tool of choice, but funnily enough all govts keep giving it money – why is that?
Time to call for defunding the UN.
80
UNexit
60
When do we want it?
Now!
30
What the backwards greenie mental cases can’t compute is that climate-change is a geologic process, not a meteorological-scale process. We know perfectly well at this point that decadal and multi-decadal scale cycles in the oceans are just further overprinting weather cycles, not ‘climate-change’. The 1930s were a hot or hotter than now, while the 1970s were much colder than now. Those are weather cycles.
‘Climate-change’ is seen only after centuries of long-term averages, which markedly changed the height of the ocean’s surface. These things were discovered by geologists looking at palaeo marine deposits on coastlines, and above coast lines, and below coastlines (underwater via drill coring). The movements of the oceans over the past 1,000 years has been not much. You have to go back about 3 to 4 thousand years before you easily detect globally that the sea surface was about 3 meters higher than now. The reason why sea levels fell ~3.5 meters in 3,500 years is because the earth has been on a long-term cooling trend since then. The palaeo-data we have is not even ambiguous about that.
Last 3,500 years sea surface trend:
http://www.sullivan-county.com/id6/images/cooling.png
The earth is in a long-term natural cooling phase after the Minoan warm period:
https://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/gisp-last-10000-new.png
That’s the actual CLIMATE-CHANGE TREND earth is in right now, it’s cooling off with lumps and bumps in temps, but in a downward overall trend!
Natural CO2 levels are close to the lowest they have been been in hundreds of millions of years:
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/historicalco2_ward.jpg
That’s anything but a CO2 crisis, even if it were anthropogenic, and we know 96% of the recent rise is natural!
Facts be damned! Lies must rule! The Green scourge has vomited!
No matter what the known observations have shown us, no matter the ‘science’, the opportunistic greenie clown-show will always prefer baseless lies, innuendos and distortion of reality and fake ‘science’, to scare children and act like utter fools, just to foist an irrational, pointless and unconvincing agendas towards patently idiotic and self-defeating pseudo-political ends. I say pseudo-political because the greens are much too stupid, fake and worthless even for politicians to embrace. Only a minor fraction of people and media are stupid, ignorant, dishonest, ill-educated and ideologically warped enough to vote for them for long. Even ignorant teenagers catch-on, grow out of it and stop voting for them.
But regardless of the 96-hours of short term high skill weather forecasting, which matters to bushfire-fighting and bushfire effects, the utter clowns like Adam Bandt still won’t get Sectioned under state mental-health Laws for being a patent raving lunatic who is deliberately trying to scare children and the community, with blatant known outright naked lies.
Scurrilous piece of CRÂP!
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just another excuse for theirABC to push the anxiety/bushfires/CAGW meme, with an ABC-friendly lecturer Van Dam:
AUDIO: 29min19sec: 13 Nov: ABC Life Matters: Talkback: feeling overwhelmed? Your brain can save you
Presenter: Hilary Harper
Perhaps work, your family and social lives, or news has filled your brain to the point you are approaching information and emotional overload. Find out what your brain does to cope…
Guests:
Nicholas Van Dam, Senior Lecturer at the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne
Derya Guzel, Senior Psychologist, clinical lead for Assure Programs
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/talkback:-feeling-overwhelmed-your-brain-can-save-you/11564312
paraphrasing:
ABC’s Hilary: some times being exposed to bad news can fill your brain to a point where you’re approaching information & emotional overload… it can seem like there’s a lot of bad news out there…
Derya Guzel is a psychologist, who specialises in anxiety counselling & trauma etc…
it doesn’t take long for Hilary to direct the conversation:
2min47sec in: ABC’s Hilary: Nicholas Van Dam, what about the news, like the terrible bushfires at the moment? is the way the news is reported contributing to that feeling of overwhelm (sic)?
Van Dam: yes. the fact is the news has got more sensationalist over the years. the lowest common denominator. who can grab your attention the fastest…
those positive stories aren’t present as often as they used to be, because they don’t make headlines.
Hilary: don’t they still put a happy dog story at the end of the bulletin?
Van Dam: occasionally. at NYT these days, about 8 stories down from all the Trump headlines, you maybe get the happy dog….who was kicked out of the White House! (giggles all round; Hilary completes the joke).
Van Dam: personally, I think it’s really important to think about the source of news you use and get. ***personally, I quite like ABC and I quite like BBC and sources of news that are non-partisan and try to provide information rather as opposed to opinions and interpretations of what is going on…
7min27sec: SECOND CALLER:
the things that really upset her are the things govt is doing or not doing, such as the destruction of the environment, and not listening to people about climate change, suppression of all kinds of things and new laws they want to bring in. so many things. that’s awful. causes her lots of anxiety, feeling of powerlessness. and when the federal govt and Gladys in NSW got re-elected, we all, a lot of us, just fell into a pit…
Hilary: like you say, those are things that can really strip away your feeling of control. they seem so big and distant…
15minsec: CALLER: switched off news a couple of years ago because it was depressing her… chooses positive podcasts that interest her instead. does that all day, every day and then, a couple of times a week, she chooses a program that she knows is high quality, that has good solid information, ***like ABC Insiders on Sundays…
City of Melbourne: Speaker at May 2020 event:
Nicholas Van Dam is a Senior Lecturer in the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne and holds an appointment as Adjunct Assistant Professor in Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
He completed an MA and PhD in Clinical Psychology and did Post-Doctoral Fellowships in Psychiatric Neuroimaging and Big Data…READ ON
https://mkw.melbourne.vic.gov.au/speakers/dr-nicholas-van-dam
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***clearly, Dr Read would KNOW:
13 Nov: AFR: Climate change is not the only man-made reason for the fires
***Global warming is responsible for the fire crisis. But we also need to tackle the other man-made cause – arson.
by Paul Read
(Dr Paul Read is a Senior Lecturer, School of Psychological Sciences at Monash University)
The current fires in Australia are attributable in part to the localised effects of the natural cycles: a combination of drought, the influence of El Nino since late 2018, and recent westerlies from the negative Southern Annular Mode.
But there are also global, more long-term trends in climate that increase the risk of bushfires. Human-induced climate change is already increasing fuel load, then drying it out, then altering weather patterns…
Apart from local weather and global climate, two main things are needed for massive bushfires – fuel and ignition. Fuel load is usually highest after periods of rapid growth and rain, followed by drying out. Hazard reduction is a preventive measure that reduces fuel load in vulnerable areas. If done with sensitivity to habitat, it works well.
But the focus on this contentious issue also distracts from another primary cause of ignition – deliberate and malicious arson…
Deliberate or suspected arson is responsible for almost 50 per cent of bushfires. For example, the recent fires in Queensland and NSW in September were caused by arson and recklessness. There were no lightning strikes on the worst days…
About half of all deliberate fires are lit by adolescents (10 per cent female). Most of these adolescents are not truly malicious – they are troubled kids, victims of child abuse and neglect, with cognitive and development issues, often coming from chaotic families, or experimenting with fire-play that gets out of control…
https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/climate-change-is-not-the-only-man-made-reason-for-the-fires-20191112-p539um
12 Nov: Australian: LiveNSW, Queensland bushfire emergency: Nine emergency warnings with Sydney suburb bathed in fire retardant
by Kieran Gair & Emily Ritchie
Kieran Gair|15 HOURS AGO | 9.24pm
Police investigate Sydney fires
Police are investigating whether a fire in Sydney’s upper north shore was deliberately lit by a suspected arsonist on Tuesday afternoon.
A crime scene has been established near scorched bushland at South Turramurra and police are investigating the origins of the fire.
According to reports, officers were seen searching a car and speaking to two young males at Canoon Road…
Meanwhile, RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said a fire in the Royal National Park at Loftus was “clearly suspicious”.
The Commissioner said the fire had “multiple ignitions” points.
“Many of you in Sydney would know that for the last few months and years we’ve had a number of fires started in the Royal National Park .”
A chain of suspicious fires have been lit by suspected arsonists throughout the National Park in recent years…
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/nsw-queensland-bushfire-emergency-most-dangerous-week-in-our-history/news-story/45d62d1277ff67cced5540f37af21f23
theirABC briefly notices!
13 Nov: ABC: NSW bushfires ‘ain’t over’, expert says, as RFS investigates ‘suspicious’ blazes in Sydney
By Patrick Begley
Updated 27 minutes ago
Authorities are investigating several “suspicious” blazes in Sydney, as early estimates revealed 50 homes were damaged or destroyed during yesterday’s bushfire crisis.
NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said investigators were treating several fires as “suspicious”, including two in Turramurra and one at Loftus, in Sydney’s south.
“It’s awful. It angers every firefighter and angers everybody in the community and our frustration,” he said.
“Clearly we are looking at those as suspicious, particularly the one in Loftus were there were multiple ignition points in the Royal National Park there.”
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said anyone who deliberately lit a fire yesterday would face the “full force of the law” and that the punishment for arson exceeded 10 years in prison…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-13/nsw-bushfires-conditions-set-to-continue-expert/11698322
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12 Nov: 7News: Child accused of committing act of arson as NSW bushfires continue to rage
by David Barden
NSW Police has taken action against three men for allegedly breaching a state-wide fire ban as well as a nine-year-old boy who has been accused of committing an act of arson…
Just before midday Tuesday, a small grass fire broke out in long grass in Worrigee, a suburb of Nowra in the state’s Shoalhaven region.
Police say a nine-year-old boy, who was with a group of other children, made admissions to lighting the fire with a blowtorch.
Due to the boy’s age, he was issued a warning under the Young Offenders Act…
On Monday afternoon, a 27-year-old man was issued an on-the-spot $2200 infringement notice for allegedly lighting a small campfire at Fowler Reserve, Wallacia, west of Sydney.
Then at around 7pm, a fire broke out while a 35-year-old man in Prestons allegedly burned fence pailings in a barbecue.
According to police, embers from the burning pailings fell to the ground and ignited other pailings.
Police also allege a 46-year-old man in the western Sydney suburb of Lalor Park lit a fire in a coal barbecue at about 5am Tuesday…
https://7news.com.au/news/bushfires/child-accused-of-committing-act-of-arson-as-nsw-bushfires-continue-to-rage-c-553173
AUDIO: 7min43sec: 13 Nov: 2GB: Alan Jones: ‘These fires are suspicious’: RFS Deputy Commissioner’s astonishing revelation
https://www.2gb.com/these-fires-are-suspicious-rfs-deputy-commissioners-astonishing-revelation/
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lengthy, read all:
13 Nov: MirageNews: Community asked for continued assistance as police begin bushfire investigations across State
(NSW Govt – Police ress release – link at bottom)
State Emergency Operations Controller (SEOCON), Deputy Commissioner Gary Worboys APM, praised the community for working together and supporting each other so positively…
“Now we need help from the community again – this time to assist our detectives who are beginning investigations into the cause of fires suspected of being deliberately lit across several police area commands and police districts,” Deputy Commissioner Worboys said…
As investigations continue, police are urging anyone who may have seen anything suspicious or has information about the following fires from yesterday to contact the relevant police station or Crime Stoppers…
LIST OF LOCATIONS …ETC
https://www.miragenews.com/community-asked-for-continued-assistance-as-police-begin-bushfire-investigations-across-state/
12 Nov: AFR: Queensland Police says some of state’s 55 fires were deliberately lit
by Mark Ludlow; with AAP
As than 1000 fire fighters are expected to confront worsening conditions on Wednesday, police said they had launched criminal investigations into how the fires, including the catastrophic blaze at Yeppoon in Central Queensland, started.
Queensland Police deputy commissioner Steve Gollschewski, who is also the state disaster coordinator, would not say which specific fires were being investigated but said it was clear some had been lit on purpose.
“You have people ignoring fire bans, sometimes just ignorant of what’s going on around them, taking risks when they think they can control it and they can’t, ranging to people just acting maliciously,” he said.
“So we are going to be absolutely resolute and relentless in tracking down anybody who does the wrong thing.”…
https://www.afr.com/companies/agriculture/queensland-police-says-some-of-state-s-55-fires-were-deliberately-lit-20191112-p539rg
Police investigate two ‘deliberately lit’ fires in Wollongong
Illawarra Mercury – 12 Nov 2019
Police are investigating two small Wollongong bushfires that may have been deliberately lit during “catastrophic” weather conditions and a total fire ban on Tuesday…
Police appeal for information after Illawarra fires
Illawarra Mercury – 24 minutes ago
They are also appealing for information on fires that started at Moonbi, South Turramurra, Katoomba and Morisset…
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G’day Pat,
To my surprise the SMH has a story on people lighting fires. But nothing about the big ones.
…
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/firefighters-race-to-control-bushfires-ahead-of-difficult-weekend-conditions-20191112-p53a3z.html?btis
…
Cheers
Dave B
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Newman to Perth by air is about 1,000 km. I remember one night in 1983-4 when a fire was visible out of the port window of a commercial DC-9 for more than half an hour. Rough estimates make this a fire 400 km long. There might even be a record of it in the Met files, I have not looked. Geoff S
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I’m going to post this again, as it easily gets lost in the comments.
https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/bushfires-the-solution-is-clear-20030508-gdgq4v.html
Note that the Nature Conservation Council is not an independent professional advisory body, but a green advocacy group accorded stakeholder status alongside the Fire Services and land management agencies….. here they repeat (again) the lie that advocates of fuel management think it a “cure-all”.
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I have sent a copy of this to all my family……thanks
40
Neighbours of mine who have tenancy of State Forest land tell me that back in the 1980s when they first moved in there were annual cool burns by Forestry. There have been no burns at all in the last twenty years.
Also, in desperation for funds, Forestry was charging my neighbours for grazing rights on a strip of overgrown scrub which constituted an easement along a boundary. To avoid the annual charge, which started low and went high, the neighbours had to fence off the area so nothing could graze the already ungrazeable land. Seriously! So now its a fire-trap like before but with reduced access due to a fence which everyone knows to be of no use.
Look, I’m not knocking Forestry for being underfunded. But where are our heads and where are our hearts? The koori has left and it is up to someone to maintain by keeping good access, by killing ferals and by regular cool burns. $444 million would cover it for a while. Know anybody with a lazy 444 mill?
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Know anyone with the $$, well there’s George Soros but nope, his $$ are tied up behind the Green Door, invested in social justice warrior ‘education’ and elimination of free speech via funding Anti-fa and XR, and funding to manipulate federal elections, and there’s Soros and the UN globalist funding Agenda 21- land grabs that our local councils support, here’s the US Agenda 21 blueprint for the US signed up by Bill Clinton. No cits land-management there, only technocrats management to which cit/serfs will not be privy, certainly not party. http://allnewspipeline.com/images/UN_SimulationMap21.jp-
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Link above, allnewspipeline now denied, huh? Here it is, comment November 1/18.
https://beththeserf.wordpress.com/2018/11/01/55th-edition-serf-under_ground-journal/
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no names:
13 Nov: Yahoo: Protesters vow hunger strike to push U.S. on climate change
By Ellen Wulfhorst, Thomson Reuters Foundation
NEW YORK – Climate change opponents plan to stage a hunger strike to demand a meeting with U.S. Congressional leader Nancy Pelosi, they said on Tuesday, in the political battle over global warming.
The protesters said they want a one-hour on-camera meeting with Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, to discuss reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2025.
“You have yet to pass even symbolic legislation recognizing the climate crisis as a national emergency. With all due respect, you have failed,” they said in an open letter.
“Meet with us or leave us to starve while you jet to your Thanksgiving feasts and cocktail parties in the glow of a burning world.”…
They are part of Extinction Rebellion, a grassroots green movement launched in London in 2018…
https://news.yahoo.com/protesters-vow-hunger-strike-push-200440608.html
Extinction Rebellion: XR Global Hunger Strike – 18-25 November 2019, Worldwide, London, United Kingdom
Everyone who will participate as a hunger striker will need to fill in this form (linked below). The form is mandatory and if a striker is not registered, they will not be considered as part of the Extinction Rebellion Global Hunger Strike. This is for safety reasons!
Furthermore, we are imposing a strict 24 hours limit for participants under 18 to hunger strike for health and safety reasons. For an under 18 to participate they MUST have both medical and parental consent…READ ON
https://rebellion.earth/event/global-hunger-strike/
all over the FakeNewsMSM:
11 Nov: UK Metro: Extinction Rebellion in bid for Christmas No1 with song about climate change
by Faye Brown
The protest group has teamed up with rock band The Jade Assembly to produce a track called ‘Time for Change’…
Clips show the House of Parliament on fire, Downing Street flooded and MPs including former PM Theresa May wearing gas masks.
Urging listeners to ‘act now’ the lyrics call for action on climate change ‘before we’re all dead’…
The band say they are passionate about the climate crisis and wrote the song in response to the UK government’s ack of action in dealing with it…
https://metro.co.uk/2019/11/11/extinction-rebellion-bid-christmas-no1-song-climate-change-11078642/
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A song…really?
That is soooooo lame….
whats next….a ClimateAID concert?
“Do they know its warming , at alllllĺl…..?”
Apologies to Geldorf….
00
behind paywall:
12 Nov: WaPo: Capital Weather Gang: Record-crushing cold and abnormally early snow sweep over eastern half of Lower 48 states
By Jason Samenow
A November cold snap of historic intensity has surged from the Plains to the East Coast. Hundreds of records are falling, some of which have stood for over a century. The Arctic blast is not only sending temperatures toppling but has also left behind a blanket of snow from parts…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/11/12/record-crushing-cold-abnormally-early-snow-sweep-over-eastern-half-lower-states/
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Has there been any reports of pyroconvection in the recent fires http://media.bom.gov.au/social/blog/1618/when-bushfires-make-their-own-weather/
and lightning associated with https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/2017GL076654
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The last big Vic fires this phenomenon was visible from our place , if you didn’t know it was a bushfire you’d swear it was a storm complete with lightning.
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I saw a reference in the last couple of days, but didn’t record when and where. Sorry.
Dave B
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Moral of the story:
Anything greenie idiots want to do, the correct, sensible and effective thing to do is the diametric opposite.
50
Just heard that a Helicopter fighting fires Crashed in Toowoomba!
Hope no one is hurt!
The firefighters, helpers, pilots etc all brave people.
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Just in, Pilot is OK!
40
Really glad…. Great blokes those fellas.
30
Funny how the big fires mostly started in or near timbered land.
Funny how most of the fires that started in farming land were put out relatively quickly.
Funny how most of the damage to people and property is caused by fires coming out of timbered land.
Climate change must only happen on public land………
Or maybe Fuel does matter. Same days…… Same winds…. Same Temperatures….
Fuel and access. Fuel and access.
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Off topic, but a great link to energy reality: https://fee.org/articles/41-inconvenient-truths-on-the-new-energy-economy/?fbclid=IwAR1lxDS0jXhwKhodwSrLwsbKtNT7sf6SCLQhXohvx1GlmkEtKSqPZR4ilKo
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Is this enforcement of morality/value system via State edict, therefore does this codify climate change as a State based religion?
The Elite are panicking – Brexit, Itexit, Trump, real science trashing the climate lie….this is desperate stuff….the UN in effect dictating pathetic psuedo science as “fact”.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/the-feed/italy-introduces-compulsory-climate-change-study-for-all-state-schools
“Next year Italy will become the world’s first country to make it compulsory for school children to study climate change and sustainable development as announced by Education Minister Lorenzo Fioramonti.
“In an interview on Monday, Fioramonti said all state schools would dedicate 33 hours per year, almost one hour per school week, to climate change issues from the start of the next academic year in September 2020.
““The entire ministry is being changed to make sustainability and climate the centre of the education model,” Fioramonti said.
“I want to make the Italian education system the first education system that puts the environment and society at the core of everything we learn in school.
“Many traditional subjects, such as geography, mathematics and physics, would also be studied from the perspective of sustainable development, said the minister.
“Fioramonti is the Italian government’s most vocal supporter of green policies and was criticised by the opposition in September for encouraging students to skip school and take part in climate protests.
00
There Is No Climate Crisis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dbjk0lhx95w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWJBOwSa4h8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4H1N_yXBiA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJGnYAjU8OY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tIxyOemF9k
03
What a load of mindless propaganda garbage.
00
Maybe some has mentioned this before.
The focus of the Firefighters seems to be “Put the Fires OUT”. But is that the correct stategy? Maybe, where property is not threatened they should be left to burn out by themselves. That reduces fuel for quite a few years.
Previously in remote areas there was little choice. Now with aircraft the fire can be attacked anywhere. Is that what they are doing?
Peter Fitzroy, you have experience in fire fighting, what do you say?
00