Here’s the anti-witchdoctor kit for bushfires and “climate change”
Hi to all the new readers. Keep these graphs handy…
To Recap: In order to make really Bad Fires we need the big three: Fuel, oxygen, spark. Obviously getting rid of air and lightning is beyond the budget. The only one we can control is fuel. No fuel = no fire. Big fuel = Fireball apocalypse that we can;t stop even with help from Canada, California, and New Zealand.
The most important weather factor is rain, not an extra 1 degree of warmth. To turn the nation into a proper fireball, we “need” a good drought. A lack of rain is a triple whammy — it dries out the ground and the fuel — and it makes the weather hotter too. Dry years are hot years in Australia, wet years are cool years. It’s just evaporative cooling for the whole country. The sun has to dry out the soil before it can heat up the air above it. Simple yes? El Nino’s mean less rain (in Australia), that’s why they also mean “hot weather”.
So ask a climate scientist the right questions and you’ll find out what the ABC won’t say: That global warming means more rain, not less. Droughts haven’t got worse, and climate models are really, terribly, awfully pathetically bad at predicting rain.
Four reasons carbon emissions are irrelevant
1. Droughts are the same as they ever were.
In the 178 year record, there is no trend. All that CO2 has made no difference at all to the incidence of Australian droughts. Climate scientists have shown droughts have not increased in Australia. Click the link to see Melbourne and Adelaide. Same thing.
Rainfall trends, cycles, Australia, Sydney, Graph, 2019, 1840 – 2020. All the data we have, looked at in all the ways we can think of shows CO2 is not controlling our rain.
A warming world means more rain. Mega droughts were worse. 178 years of CO2 emissions have no measurable effect on rainfall in Australia.
LindenAshcroftabDavid J.KarolyacAndrew J.Dowdyb(2019) Historical extreme rainfall events in southeastern Australia, Weather and Climate Extremes , 100210
And even more droughts and trends graphs here.
2. No more 40+ hot days either (unless you “adjust the data”)
The raw data shows no trend in days over 40C since World War I.
There are a hundred ways to measure a heatwave or a hot day. This is one from our 60 best and longest stations. The BOM could easily slice, dice and change the parameters and create a scary graph. The only antidote to being bamboozled is to read the old newspapers. Go Trove.
History changing before your eyes.
Here’s a PDF copy of these three animated graphs side by side. Thanks to Chris Gillham WAClimate for this work.
3. Rainfall trends across Australia have gone up not down
Despite the Cracked-Earth propaganda there is not, on average, across the nation — a trend towards dryness. Some regions are drier, and since climate models can’t predict where or when that’s just something that happens.
Australian national rainfall trend, Bureau of Meteorology, 2019.
I’ll leave it to Professor Andy Pitman to explain how there is no a priori reason for a link between climate change and drought.
To be fair he clarified this later saying “we don’t understand what causes droughts” but “the indirect link is clear”. This sort of clarity happens all the time in the climate world.
4. Climate models can’t predict the rain thing:
A lack of rain causes fires, but climate models can’t predict rain. (See the whole post about the five different models predicting five different rainfall patterns). Only solar factors appear to be linked to rainfall, and none of the models include those factors (could be a clue there). For ideas about the solar influence see here, here, here, and here. Send them to your neighborhood climate modeler.
Here are comparisons of 5 different models over Australia. Is CSIRO Mk 3.6 the “right” model, and who predicted that in advance?
One of them might get it right, accidents do happen, especially if you predict nearly every possible outcome.
Figure 2.1.1: Leading mode of annual rainfall variability over Australia, from observations (Bureau of Meteorology), the CSIRO Mk3.6 and Mk3.5 climate models, and three leading international models: HadGEM1 (United Kingdom), GFDL CM2.1 (USA) and MIROC 3.2, medium resolution (Japan).
Source: Indian Ocean Climate Initiative
4. Prescribed burns are the only way to stop massive firestorms.
Fuel reduction in WA has reduced fires for 60 years. Here’s that graph from WA for the sixth time… let’s keep repeating this killer graph as long as people are still blaming “climate change”.
As prescribed fire reduction declined, wildfires increased in South West Australia. (Click to enlarge)
5. The worst recorded fire in Australia was in 1851
Read some of that misery at the link. CO2 was perfect and five million hectares went up in flames.
Last word: The is one risk that extra CO2 incurs and that is that burnt areas will regrow faster. Thanks to CO2 the biomass of greenery has increased all around the world. So preparing for climate-change means we need to do even more hazard reduction than we did fifty years ago.
Great stuff re drought.
What happened to midweek and weekend unthreaded? I am missing the more general climate news and fun discussions thereof. Sorry to nag.
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Real science !
Reasonably easy to understand !
Far better than anything found in the mainstream media
Happening right here in the ‘Blog Science’ page !
Thanks a huge heap Jo !
May Christmas be good to you and your family !
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Merry Christmas, David. 🙂
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Morning all,
And Merry Xmas to you all.
There’s an article by Clive Hamilton in today’s SMH (Sydney Morning Herald):
…
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/how-to-lose-friends-and-influence-the-security-of-your-nation-20191222-p53mc1.html?btis
…
In it he explains the importance of evidence, how some actually changed his mind, and resulted in a book he wrote and is promoting. He also urges all sceptics to accept the science and believe him.
Interestingly, the only evidence he provides in his diatribe is:
” The evidence that the catastrophic bushfires ravaging our country have been intensified by climate change is overwhelming, and consistent with everything climate scientists have been warning about for more than 20 years. ”
…
I guess the word “overwhelming” would be sufficient in his evidence-deprived eyes.
…
Cheers (and Happy New Year also, in case I forget later),
Dave B
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I guess I really should have recommended the SMH article above. It’s a rather good example of the sort of science, perhaps “science”, that has determined the SMH editorial position.
Cheers
Dave B
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Flimsy evidence is all that it takes. It makes a lie out of so-called intellectuals like Hamilton to accept blindly without any scrutiny of the issues. On the face of it I’m disposed to disbelieve his Chinese position except that what he says on the subject is true. I read some of 5he SMH readers and they are emotive illiterates. Like most of the populace.
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“Sorry to nag.”
I guess its horses for courses. 😉
Thread topics have been highly apt the last couple of weeks.
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And on a slightly different note, check out how our politicians use these fires for their advantage:
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Excellent article Jo. I would suggest the following link be added to further assist understanding of the effects of the Sun.
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/thecloudmystery/251029620
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Van Extel brings up only a “narrow window” available these days for prescribed burns. Mayor says not so on Kangaroo Island and he later has to make the point the whole island isn’t on fire, as Van Extel seems to suggest:
AUDIO: 7m36s: 24 Dec: ABC Breakfast: ‘We’re going to be dealing with this for weeks’: Kangaroo Island mayor
On RN Breakfast with Cathy Van Extel
Firefighters in South Australia are trying to bring bushfires under control on Kangaroo Island.
Extra firefighting resources were sent to the island yesterday, following a visit by Premier Stephen Marshall on Sunday afternoon.
One of the locals who’s been involved in the community response is the mayor of Kangaroo Island Michael Pengilly who joins RN Breakfast…
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/were-going-to-be-dealing-with-this-for-weeks-kangaroo-island/11824798
ABC’s Van Extel has her script. ends with ABC’s zillionth mention of PM’s holiday. is it a good time now to be talking about climate policy? Marshall – govt committed to maybe 80% REs by 2025/26. no mention of Qld Premier’s holiday.
AUDIO: 10m50s: 23 Dec: No respite on the horizon for SA as fire crews brace for another difficult day
On RN Breakfast with Cathy Van Extel
The state has been sweltering under high temperatures for many days and there’s no respite on the horizon.
Guest: Steven Marshall, South Australian Premier
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/no-respite-on-the-horizon-for-sa-fire-crews-brace-difficult-day/11822708
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It’s a long time since KI burned like now.
And there are a substantial number of Greenists living there
Who don’t believe in cool burning.
But this fire now is challenging that deeply help irrational belief.
But in the mean time
Do not expect any common sense out of ABC Radio National.
They will keep on being the
Australian Brainwashing Corporation.
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ABC’s Van Extel: have you ever seen anything like this in your 20 yrs as a firefighter? Are you feeling overlooked? is that an understatement?
AUDIO: 7m4s: 23 Dec: ABC Breakfast: ‘We ran out of water’ while fighting Green Wattle Creek firestorm: Balmoral RFS captain
On RN Breakfast with Cathy Van Extel
If one community has come to symbolise the bushfire crisis, it could be the tiny town of Balmoral, south west of Sydney which has lost over 90 per cent of bushland.
Dozens of homes are feared lost with New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian revealing “there isn’t much left” after the Green Wattle Creek firestorm tore through the town on Saturday for the second time in 3 days.
Guest: Brendon O’Connor, captain, Balmoral Village Rural Fire Brigade
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/over-90-per-cent-of-balmoral-bushland-destroyed-green-wattle/11822556
a couple of gotcha questions.
AUDIO: 4m19s: 23 Dec: ABC AM: ‘Scorched earth and white ash’: Adelaide Hills Mayor
By Kim Landers on AM
Featured:
Jan-Claire Wisdom, Adelaide Hills Mayor
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/adelaide/programs/am/scorched-earth-and-white-ash:-adelaide-hills-mayor/11824782
below: ABC’s Beech: climate change, (Considine) says, will bring more fire seasons like this, presenting additional challenges for resourcing (CAN’T HEAR THAT ON AUDIO). Considine does say it’s unlikely they would need to look further afield.
ABC ends with in the years ahead, we might have to turn to places like South Africa and the EU for more resources.
AUDIO: 3min 13sec: ABC: Does NSW have enough bushfire resources?
By Alexandra Beech on AM
Featured:
Paul Considine, Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council capability and assurance director
Gladys Berejiklian, NSW Premier
Rob Rogers, deputy commissioner, NSW Rural Fire Service
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/adelaide/programs/am/does-nsw-have-enough-bushfire-resources/11824726
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“For each degree of warming there is about seven per cent more moisture in the atmosphere, so there is more moisture now than, say, 50 years ago,” he (Dr Andrew Watkins the manager of climate prediction services at the bureau) said.
https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/cyclone-blanche-is-latest-to-cross-land-in-second-consecutive-quiet-season-in-australian-history/news-story/220bd07cbd24d1db32cfd2175d3ec2ac
How does carbon (sic) make everything drier when
If trace CO2 causes more moisture in the atmosphere, why should we expect –
a. droughts and bushfires
b. to get worse and
c. soils and everything to get drier??
CSIRO/BoM Science: 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
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Oops. delete:
How does carbon (sic) make everything drier when20
Because Bob Brown is full of schist?
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Well he’s not tuff. Life’s a bit of a fag really.
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Nah! Venice stole it — twice!
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I have just now played a key role in a social science experiment with info from your site.
My daughter was talking to a friend on social media, the friend like most young adults has gone full retard on klimate change and on the fire story, my daughter has a foot in both camps due to a decade long campaign by me to limit tbe indoctrination.
Tne friend was sayinv its the worst bush fire ever, armed with the info you provided i educated my daughter on fire history in this country, my daughter in turn educated her friend to tbe point the friend questioned the info they were being fed and also hardening my daughters rezolve to reject fake news.
A small victory yes but a very satisfying one, thank you very much for provided this forum to make that happen.
Cheers and Xmas beers
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Good job, Crakar24. One convert at a time will beget others down the line.
I’m going through the same process with my teen daughter to offset the indoctrination from her school.
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You must take the schools science and maths masters to task too. I sent a letter with some of the math I’ve done here before that shows AGW to be A implausible and B violate the law of conservation of energy and insisting they at least teach the null hypothesis and treat AGW as a hypothesis only – to the science and maths masters.
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The very best of good fortune with that task Analitik. Hope you succeed.
This could help your case:
https://notrickszone.com/2019/12/23/study-no-discernible-link-from-co2-forcing-to-climate-for-97-of-the-last-425-million-years/
(Note: the 97 in the link is 97% … ) 😀
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Exponential curves start this way
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Great post Jo. Keep up the good work
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I agree this is one of the best articles I have read on Jo Nova’s website – this information desperately needs to find its way to Oz’s MSM outlets – the public needs to be educated with correct scientific facts not “Alarmist Climate Change” rantings from lefties.
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Cognitive dissonance runs deep with left retards. Rusted on to a meme that keeps on track to freak out the hoi polloi.
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AUDIO: 52m59s: 23 Dec: BBC OS with Divya Aria
Australian PM Scott Morrison says he will not make “reckless” cuts to the nation’s coal industry, despite criticism of his response to climate change and a deadly bushfire crisis. Young people on the messaging app Tic Tok have been reacting. We hear what they say from the Frances Mao, BBC’s reporter in Sydney.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w172wrvykqcz47g
10m5s to 18m22s: backlash against PM/holiday. Frances Mao, BBC correspondent in Australia, with all the Tic Tok jokes, mocking the PM, etc etc. ends with a volunteer firefighter from Balmoral who lost his home – we must act on climate action now; conversation has to begin now.
27m to 36m20s: second segment on bushfires. BBC’s Ben Davis with Margaret, Bilpin Fruit Bowl, experienced firefighter, surrounded by National Parks.
—
the BBC correspondent Frances Mao’s twitter page is everything you would imagine it to be:
Twitter: Frances Mao, BBC World journalist covering Australia
pinned at top: Frances Mao
Feel free to join my cult
(replying to)
TWEET: Shane Dowd
@francesmao Haha. Listening to @BBCWorld earlier. An Australian looney-leftie caller banged on about “climate change”, heatwave, bushfires and #ScottMorrison on holidays. At the end, the BBC host farewelled her as “BBC World ‘journalist’ in Sydney”!!
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part of my comment got lost!
…At the end, the BBC host farewelled her as “BBC World ‘journalist’ in Sydney”!! “Cult member” more likely
17 Dec 2019
Mao re-tweets:
Tim Soutphommasane Professor & Director, Culture Strategy @Sydney_Uni. Political theorist. Formerly Australia’s Race Discrimination Commissioner (2013-18).
Will people’s concern about a lack of leadership on climate be transient or is it part of a decisive shift in sentiment? That’s a good question LINKS to Katharine Murphy, Guardian
TWEET: Katharine Murphy
Can Morrison’s ‘she’ll be right’ strategy on climate work forever? Or is this the summer of the big, decisive, shift? My final column “Can Morrison’s ‘she’ll be right’ strategy on climate work forever?” LINK
20 Dec 2019
Mao TWEET 19 Dec
2GB has deleted the tweet linking to Scott Morrison’s chat with them this morning. Here’s the interview (and confirmation of Hawaii) LINK
https://twitter.com/francesmao?lang=en
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Can anyone explain to me why it was such a big issue that Scomo went on a one week holiday – when almost all the experienced journalists at our National Emergency Broadcaster are on a W.E.B of 6-12 weeks?
For that matter why has there been little to no issue made of Puzzle-chook taking her holidays?
Me – I’m all for playing fiddles, but do we really need all those bloody Neros.
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Because ScoMo is a Liberal who doesnt play the whining nasty lefty game of climate change…..
Guaranteed if a Lefty PM had taken holidays, the MSM media would be running happy snaps of the PM at play.
Just another reason the MSM is a red ragger joke.
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playing “the whining nasty lefty game of climate change…..”
You won’t find anything nastier than Richard Flanagan’s “Xmas Message” on/to the PM:
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/people/2019/12/24/richard-flanagan-scott-morrison-hawaii-bushfires-gaslighting/
“His government will not change its criminal course of inaction on climate change. It can’t and it won’t, in part because many of its leaders are climate change denialists, in part because of the curious, inexplicable hold the fossil fuel industry has over it, and in part because it owes Clive Palmer big time, and he wants his giant Galilee Basin coal mine in return for buying Morrison his one-seat majority.
And in part because, when all is said and done, it’s winning.
Labor appears Morrison-lite, and there is no effective political expression for the growing national anger about the climate catastrophe and our political leaders’ determination to make it worse.”
Next year will be immensely important. Should Trump lose in November, expect a surge of CC aggression on a scale we have not seen before. Morrison should be more forceful, but he can’t because LNP want to walk/talk both sides of fence and hence comes across as weak.
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If you’re going to walk both sides of a fence, make sure it’s not a barbed wire one!
That’s where Morrison is being foolish. He has to come out as either against wasting more money and further ruining the economy (as Abbott was, regardless of his inability to achieve anything constructive), or being a shill and supporter and beneficiary of the CAGW scare and its attendant investment in “renewables” with OPM (as Turnbull was.).
He can’t be both, or swap in and out, constantly hovering above that nasty pointy, trouser-tearing barbed wire fence.
If he chooses to come down on the side of Australian prosperity and progress, and ditch all the destructive green/UN CAGW nonsense and its impositions, he’ll find himself with a stronger support base than ever. Fail, and he’ll deservedly be consigned to the dustbin of political history.
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Yes, funny how the concept of the Deputy Prime Minister has gone out the door with all this woke, MSM backed activism.
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Imagine if Tony Abbott was still PM. The lunatics of the MSM and their lefty running dogs would be in meltdown.
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Whitlam was excoriated for not returning from his Greece holiday when Tracy leveled Darwin in 1975, and the bushfires are a bigger deal than that, plus he went O.S. after it was happening.
Morrison did a phenomenal job to win the Election, but he could’ve picked a better time to go on holidays, it’s not like Parliament sits 48 weeks of the year.
Besides, what’s Hawaii got, apart from volcanoes, that Australia hasn’t got a hundred of that are better?
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Why Now ?
Well parliament is in recess and it’s the usual Summer holiday time.
Why Hawaii ? That’s a good question. Howard and lots of other PM’s holidayed here in Oz. But maybe he & his family just wanted some anonymity.
That’s much harder to come by nowadays..
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Firstly I’m definitely no fan of Morrison, but:
• His family week away from the office before Christmas was booked well in advance, given his upcoming attendance at international conferences in early Jan.
• The local beachside place they normally go to was apparently not accessible due to fires I believe, as are a great many places on the South Coast of NSW this holiday season, hence the last minute diversion to Hawaii.
• The bushfires have been going for months. What was Morrison going to do differently for a week over Christmas that was suddenly so vital? He should have stayed here for what exactly? To look concerned? To pretend to hand out sausages a la Albinese?
• Cyclone Tracy — if you’re old enough to remember it — was a one-off event in terms of its surprise element, its level of destruction, its isolation and lack of communications with the outside world. It required resources that only the Commonwealth could provide, like RAAF flights, military personnel and equipment and situation management where civil order had broken down.
• Darwin was a Commonwealth town in a Commonwealth territory in 1974, so naturally the Feds would take charge there — it was entirely their show. There was no state government in the NT to run the recovery effort.
• At all times there was a Deputy PM on the case ready to offer whatever Federal help was required for these current fires.
• Bushfires are a state responsibility.
• Comparisons by some to VIC’s Christine Nixon stuffing her face while dozens of people burned to death in 2009 when she was Fire Commissioner are totally invalid. Bushfires were the core component of her job and she was missing at the height of the action when most needed, downing 5 courses, and acting in a way no responsible person in her position would have acted given the circumstances.
• Morrison should NOT have apologised. Doing so only made the complaints of his detractors appear valid.
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Beowulf
She was the Police Commissioner of Victoria.
Not the ‘Fire Commissioner”
But still not a good look.
by the way, why did that fire happen ?
Lots of fuel – yes
Lots of wind- Yes
But also a white ant eaten out power pole which fell and dragged power lines down
And sparked the fire.
One of Victoria’s private power companies did not do it’s due diligence on line maintenance !
Bugger !
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My bad. I thought it was after she was Police Commissioner. Her duties were “both the deputy co-ordinator-in-chief of the state’s emergency response and a co-ordinator in charge of the state’s disaster plan.”
She also resigned as chairwoman of the Bushfire Recovery and Reconstruction Authority.
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2GB audio, as promised in comment #51 on Jo’s “2019 wildfires” thread re interview with:
Vic Jurskis, B.Sc. (Forestry) Australian National University, was a Silviculturist with the Native Forests Division of Forests New South Wales. He has written extensively on forest management issues
Vic Jurskis segment 45mins to 1hr5min20sec:
AUDIO: 2h45m27s: 23 Dec: 2GB: Nights with Jane Marwick
https://www.2gb.com/podcast/nights-with-jane-marwick-monday-23rd-december/
for those who enjoy Tim Blair’s humour – he is the guest from 5m20s to 42min.
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There’s a 3rd broad heatwave on the way in the west of SA from the 27th, which reaches a peak on the 29th and 30th, in SA and VIC, then fades off into northern NSW on the 31st. It looks like a rerun of last week except the forecast temps are down compared to last week. 90 km/h gusts forecast for Western Victoria on the 30th. Melbourne is 21 deg C at 3 PM on 31st Dec at this point.
Thunderstorms right across the north next week with a monsoonal flow showing up from mid to late next week with early indications of a Cat-2 cyclone in the Timor sea on New Years day, NE of Kimberly, which comes ashore near Broome, headed SW into northern WA with rainfall as far west as central Pilbara. So cloud cover and rain may take the edge off the NWesterly heat flow after that.
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That should be, “NW of Kimberly”.
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Yep that’s the way I see it too. Looking for accentuated infeed of moisture soon with the long wave trough.
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Fuel reduction burning seems to be a very complex issue,
just browsing some of the research reports.
For instance to cherry pick a negative among the positives.
Is Fuel Reduction Burning the Answer?
https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/Publications_Archive/CIB/cib0203/03Cib08
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Any assessment of FRB that relies on assessing the results of single burns is rubbish.
It’s like mowing your lawn once and claiming that it didn’t work because the lawn regrew.
It really is that stupid.
We are talking about a biological system, not a static one. The aim is not just to remove dead fuel, but to alter the species mix. Nothing wrong with that. There has been no such thing as “wilderness” across most of Australia for millennia.
The only valid Fuel Management program is an ongoing one with multiple burns over an appropriate time period.
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Exactly so Peter.
And, dare I say it, for fuel-management reasons (to say nothing of weed-species reduction), we need to let the high-country cattlemen back into the high-country.
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24 Dec: ABC: Bushfire devastates Adelaide Hills vineyards, with around one-third wiped out
ABC Rural By Cassandra Hough, Bridget Herrman and Brooke Neindorf
The Adelaide Hills is one of the most intensively farmed regions in South Australia and it’s estimated 25,000 hectares has been burnt.
On Kangaroo Island a further 13,000 hectares has burnt…
‘An intensity you can’t believe’
Owner Jan Siemelink-Allen said the fire came through quickly and when she left all she could see was a wall of flames.
“In my 35 years in the industry I’ve never seen a bushfire go through vines like it has here and completely decimate them, they’re normally green and lush and they don’t burn easily,” Ms Siemelink-Allen said.
“They burnt out in less than half an hour, and with an intensity that you can’t believe…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2019-12-24/adelaide-hills-bushfire-destroys-one-third-of-vineyards/11824064
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The switch to dripper irrigation
is what’s changed.
Drippers are very water effective at watering plants in normal situations
But not when a bush fire is approaching.
Then old fashioned over head sprinklers are needed.
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This is bad…..you dont normally think of wineries being burnt.
Low humidity and plenty of fuel to burn, no wonder it was hot.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2019-12-24/adelaide-hills-bushfire-destroys-one-third-of-vineyards/11824064
“Jared Stringer, vice-chair of the Adelaide Hills Wine Region, said the industry was still assessing the damage.
“”What we do know is approximately 1,100 hectares of grapevines are burnt,” he said.
“That makes up approximately one-third of Adelaide Hills production, so for any industry to lose one-third overnight it’s going to be incredibly devastating.”
“‘An intensity you can’t believe’
“Woodside’s Barristers Block was also badly damaged in the fire with the vineyard destroyed.
Owner Jan Siemelink-Allen said the fire came through quickly and when she left all she could see was a wall of flames.
“”In my 35 years in the industry I’ve never seen a bushfire go through vines like it has here and completely decimate them, they’re normally green and lush and they don’t burn easily,” Ms Siemelink-Allen said.
“”They burnt out in less than half an hour, and with an intensity that you can’t believe.
“”Mr Stringer said the Henschke family who pioneered grape growing in the Lenswood area may have lost their entire vineyard.
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for the record:
SA Govt Nat’l Parks & Wildlife Sce: Find a Park: Adelaide Hills
Only 20 minutes from the city of Adelaide, the Adelaide Hills is a wonderfully relaxing destination home to the famous town of Hahndorf, the garden village of Stirling, Mount Barker, Lobethal and Birdwood.
The Adelaide Hills offers you numerous walking and cycling trails…
Some of South Australia’s best known and most frequently visited parks are found in the Adelaide Hills…
Parks in this region:
•Angove Conservation Park
•Belair National Park
•Black Hill Conservation Park
•Blackwood Forest Recreation Park
•Brownhill Recereation Park
•Cleland Conservation Park
•Cleland Wildlife Park
•Ferguson Conservation Park
•Horsnell Gully and Giles
•Mark Oliphant Conservation Park
•Montacute Conservation Park
•Morialta Conservation Park
•Mount George Conservation Park
•Mount Lofty Summit
•Mylor Conservation Park
•Para Wirra Conservation Park
•Scott Creek Conservation Park
•Waterfall Gully
•Warren Conservation Park
https://www.parks.sa.gov.au/find-a-park/Browse_by_region/Adelaide_Hills
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Pat the issue is whether they are being managed in a way that reduces
The bush fire risk.
I suspect they are being managed to stay with in the budget provided.
But of course once they are alight with fire
There is always money to fight the fires !
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first 7m28s: Michael McCormack; Prof ***David Bowman, Uni of Tasmania.
BBC’s Doucet & Bowman only really concerned with CAGW. Bowman: increasing frequency of bushfires. how are we going to decarbonise?
AUDIO: 52m59s: 21 Dec: BBC Newshour: Bushfires continue to burn out of control in Australia
Presenter: Lyse Doucet
As bushfires continue to burn out of control in Australia, the acting prime minister has acknowledged that more needs to be done to tackle climate change.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w172wq531kk9nmn
lengthy, read all:
20 Dec: ABC/RMIT Fact Check: Are hazard reduction burns effective in managing bushfires? The answer is complicated
Principal researcher: Christina Arampatzi
Speaking on Sky News, (Barnaby Joyce) said: “One [issue] is a lack of controlled burns — fire reduction burns … that policy needs to be changed so we can get those controlled burns.”
Similarly, Queenslander and One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson accused the Greens and Labor Party of restricting fire-reduction burns.
“They’ve actually shut down the national parks, where you can’t actually even clear the fuel on the floor,” she claimed.
“…They won’t allow farmers to actually clean up their own properties.”
NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro also pointed the finger at the Greens…
RMIT ABC Fact Check considers the facts…
As explained by bushfire expert and University of Tasmania professor ***David Bowman in The Conversation, back burning is “a last-resort measure” to stop a progressing bushfire from spreading to specific areas.
“The difference between fuel-reduction burning and back burning is effectively the same as the difference between elective and emergency surgery,” Bowman wrote…
According to QFES records, approximately 28,000 permits a year were issued for controlled fires since 2015…
“This includes 108 of 175 planned hazard reduction burns, 83 targeted education activities and 38 fire line upgrades.”
However, such activities were “highly dependent” on weather conditions, it added, with not all planned 2019 burns able to be completed…
University of Melbourne associate professor Trent Penman, who studies bushfire behaviour, told Fact Check: “Prescribed burning effectiveness decreases with [increasing] FFDI; when you exceed an FFDI of about 50, you switch from fuel-dominated to a weather-dominated fire…
Barnaby Joyce elaborates
When invited to expand on his media statements regarding prescribed burns and bushfire preparation, Nationals MP Mr Joyce sent Fact Check a list of grievances which focused on higher burn targets, a lack of dams and the imposition of bushfire permits, and pointed to a number of policies that in his view needed to be amended to allow better bushfire management…ETC ETC
However, the bushfire experts Fact Check spoke to dismissed Mr Joyce’s claims, saying they failed to address key issues.
They countered that reasonable safeguards ensuring landholders and neighbours were kept safe during prescribed burns were an important component of current fire management practices.
“There is a deliberate misinterpretation of the ecological thresholds and there is still the inherent assumption that a fuel reduction burn will reduce wildfires,” said Melbourne University’s Professor Penman…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-20/hazard-reduction-burns-bushfires/11817336
ABC links to:
8 Aug 2014: The Conversation: Explainer: back burning and fuel reduction
by David Bowman, Professor, Environmental Change Biology, University of Tasmania
Disclosure statement: David Bowman receives funding from ARC, NASA, TERN and NERP
In Victoria, for instance, the 5% fuel-reduction target means a given area of bush will be burnt every 20 years. But ecologists are concerned that such high frequencies can have damaging effects on plant and animal species that require longer fire-free intervals to complete their life cycles.
There is also much debate about the effectiveness of fuel-reduction burning, given that a huge area of landscape needs to be treated in order to increase the chance of significantly influencing wildfire behaviour…
Finally, a serious side effect is smoke pollution, which can briefly fumigate nearby communities. Because of these constraints, attention is increasingly being focused on managing fuel without burning. This can involve using herbivores and thinning vegetation, including burning the debris in specially designed portable furnaces that have low smoke emissions…READ ON
https://theconversation.com/explainer-back-burning-and-fuel-reduction-20605
20
What useless nonsense, the man has no sense of proportion.
110
The lie is the claim that fuel management makes no difference when the weather gets bad.
The reality is that most big, lethal fires burn for quite some time. Low fuel levels and good access allow us to get them under control BEFORE a blow-up day takes them across boundaries to burn houses and people.
I am sitting , waiting for deployment at the Curtawan Fire right now. It is cool. Humidity is relatively high and there is only a light breeze. Light fuels and good control lines might let as get a lot of it under control before the forecast bad conditions next weekend.
Probably won’t happen.
There have been other periods of mild weather in the last month. The ability.to take advantage of them requires depends a lot on work done before the fire starts.
60
May I throw a different view into this discussion. A long time back it was generally agreed that a prolonged negative Southern Oscillation Index (SIO) meant droughts or at least dry spells in Eastern Australia, while a positive SIO indicated good rainfall. To have good summer rainfall needed strong or persistent trade winds to blow moisture across the Pacific Ocean, the La Nina phase. Lesser trade winds resulted in an El Nino event.
El Nino events recur but not at regular intervals, so what else could cause the lessening of the trade winds? Consider volcanoes. They often throw a lot of debris and gases into the troposphere and even the stratosphere, enough to reduce or just diffuse the solar insolation (energy) reaching the ocean surface, hence reducing the trade winds. Big eruptions cause cooling and a drought. Depending where on the planet, prolonged eruptions or a sequence of eruptions result in negative SOI and so can cause lengthy dry periods in Australia.
A published study of this topic prior to 1990 indicated a good statistical correlation between these events for Eastern Australia, but was not in accord with the acceptable wisdom, so rubbished and ignored.
Over the last year the SOI has been negative, there have been continuing eruptions in Central America, two eruptions of just a few days which penetrated the stratosphere added to the effect and Eastern Australia is having the worst drought for a long time.
The study did not include the Indian Ocean, but prolonged Indonesian eruption could explain the lack of rain from that direction and its negative ‘dipole’ state.
60
Interesting reading from Bom on the dipole .
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/iod/
20
Must say I’m staggered by the adjustments in the number of hot days from the RAW through the two versions of ACORN-SAT. As an earth scientist myself that has dealt with a lot of data I just wonder how BoM can call that science.
170
Criminal misrepresentation I say. There ought to be a way of launching a prosecution against these hoaxers.
120
Alan … have a bo peep at http://www.waclimate.net/very-hot-days.html which I’ve recently uploaded, and associated pages in the top left link panel.
The pages analyse very hot 40C+ days since 1910 in northern, southern, western, eastern, south-west and south-east Australia, showing rainfall correlations and a few individual station case studies. The rainfall patterns have shifted since 1910 and the very hot day frequency mirrors those patterns.
On the eastern Australia page I also analyse the 20 ACORN stations within the drought and bushfire areas. Rainfall since 2015 has been consistently low in the drought areas, resulting in the last few months of bushfires, and has slightly decreased since 1910 (737.0mm in 1910-1963 v 717.6mm in 1964-2017).
Rainfall in the very hot day months of November to April is down a smidge (73.1mm in 1910-1963 v 72.6mm in 1964-2017), but very hot days have nevertheless declined 14.6% – until ACORN 2.
80
Thanks Chris. I gather the graphs of hot days in Jo’s post are yours- well done, lots of work and nice presentation. I will now have to take some time (after Xmas) and have a closer look at what you presented via the link
Again thanks and have a great Xmas and New Year all
30
https://twitter.com/Bud_Doggin/status/1194360721158500358
Don’t know if his is the correct place, but had to share this…
Clean energy, Yeah!
20
Look at the comment by Brooke Storm. A blue caused by a dip in the road!
00
Reminiscent of UN Agenda 21, a barrage of TV ads in Victoria is now promulgating Target 155. Commissar Daniel Andrews has decreed Victoriastanis must not use more than 155 litres of water per day – or else! It’s unbelievable. Soon the brownshirts with machine pistols will be at the bathroom door, timing your shower.
This is not socialism. This is not communism. This is fascism.
Andrews is the Ayatollah of Sustainable Water Use.
131
You are watching Victoriastand turning into a eco-dictatorship……
Power systems basically sabotaged, water supplies run down, next will be a decree to stay off meat.
They have already vandalized the kids minds through what appears to be a marxist-driven “safeschools” program and unrelenting climate lies.
Seriously…why do victorians put with with Comrade Andrews? When is enough enough?
80
Powerful unions, including those covering public sector employees, and large ethnic support bases, keep the Victorian Labor electoral machine running. That’s my take, anyway.
40
Sooner they learn that they’re actually paying for that the better
20
Zane how dare you besmirch the excellence that is our glorious leader !
60
11. Thou shalt not have any new Dams!
60
The difference between Socialism and Fascism is cosmetic. Nothing more than the slogans.
50
Sounds more like Green Capitalism to me.
Someone somewhere must be making a killing out of it all.
20
There is hope in that –
A saying up here is that
“You can tell a Victorian but you can’t tell them very much”
20
And when that fails will there be a splurge on advertising the merits of “APC washing”
“Arm pits and crutch” ?
10
I doubt you could tell them very much anyway.
10
You could try telling the bloke just below.
Everything would be just dandy if city dwellers would only be fair and stop using water.
KK
00
Actually Zane, seeing city people get all their water from the bush, where we are already on self-imposed permanent water-restrictions, to a greater or lesser extent, and generally collect our own water in tanks, I cannot agree with you there.
Yes, I know successive city councils have removed large-capacity tanks from the city, even people’s right to have one, but you’re still wrong on that — city people must stop wasting our most precious resource, especially in what’s shaping-up to be a bad bushfire season.
That at least is not fascism — it’s common sense; for just where do you think your food and water comes from; where do you think the water to fight these bushfires comes from? It’s not from any Victorian city, Zane; and it’s not really city people’s use that is the problem, it’s their sheer bloody waste.
In the driest inhabited continent on earth, 155L per person per day for personal, private use, should be enough for anyone.
12
City people get their water from dams, what’s the bush got to do with it?
City people paid for the dams.
KK
20
Keith….
When the dam is older than you are, I kind of doubt that you paid for it.
Not saying that I did, either, and it’s certain that neither of us made it rain. But I am pretty damned certain that my rainwater comes off my roof and collects in a tank that I paid for.
11
Peter, I have no argument with you. I am old enough to have paid off a considerable amount of the dam debt and seen the financial corruption in the water business.
Don’t blame innocent water users, politicians have not only failed us they have taken huge amounts of our local HDWBd cash off to Sydney.
Why should RDF get away with that sort of “Dan Is A Dope ” misrepresentation?
KK
10
Peter, go back and read his comment.
City dwellers cause global warming, bushfires and lack of water for farms.
No!!
This was all achieved by politicians indulging in decades of neglect.
KK
10
“it’s their sheer bloody mindedness of politicians”.
“In the driest inhabited continent on earth, we would have enough water if only politicians and the media were restricted to 155L person per day.”
DIADKK
00
Keith…
Where did he blame anyone for global warming and bushfires?
I’m not seeing it in the post to which you are replying.
I’m only seeing it said that WHEN we have droughts and bushfires, we should not be wasting water. I’m not sure how you can argue against that other than by somehow claiming that it is your water, and how do you do that?
I’ve helped pay for a lot of things. Doesn’t give me a right to use, waste or destroy a shared resource however I like, either.
By all means discuss the best value use of a limited resource, but going beyond that seems counterproductive.
01
Oh and BTW, while I’ve not only helped pay for water, but see family land drowned every time the Hume Dam fills – without compensation – without getting a skerries of water from that system…… id be interested to hear what you think my fair share is..
Right now, I’m hoarding the last few inches of rain water in my tank. If I want to shower, it’s more water that isn’t fit to drink, from a bore that no-one paid for but me, and which sucks from an aquifer mostly filled from rain that falls on my land.
Meanwhile, I have friends in the irrigation industry suffering, because inner-urban Green voters think it’s more important to keep Lake Alexandria fresh for European carp, and maybe fill the Southern Ocean (/sarc)
Like I said, what’s a fair thing?
10
Sounds like you have been badly treated by politicians in the past.
I stood up to them, it caused me a lot of damage but at least I made the effort.
Blaming innocent citizens and not the politicians who caused this Water_Fire mess is barking up the wrong tree.
KK
00
” that seems counterproductive ”
Dumping blame on innocent citizens is also “counter productive”.
Stick to the facts, this is a disaster created by politicians.
Whether the average citizen uses 155 or 200 litres of water a day is irrelevant.
The other 50 litres has almost certainly been “sold off” to a middle man\person for a personal benefit.
Go ask the politicians to return this water to the system; the Murray Darling Basin should show us what’s going on.
Is RDF running interference for Dan the man?
KK
00
Perhaps we should lump it in with all the teeny bopper zombie movies…..or an Eco-Macbeth perhaps?
Or “The Beach” meets bird shredders….?
https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/dystopian-climate-change-drama-the-commons-will-keep-you-awake-at-night-20191213-p53jrk.html
“Dystopian climate change drama The Commons will keep you awake at night
“He’s referring to the fact that his character, Dominic, in the new Stan series The Commons – who can, at least for the moment, protect his wife and children from what climate change is throwing at Australia (namely acid rain, hair-whipping storms, and nasty new viruses) – is frequently woken at night from nightmares in which he loses all that he has.
……….
“So, The Commons is set in Australia in about seven years from now, when global environmental crises have divided the country’s citizens into haves and have-nots. For the former, there is Dominic’s company, which provides the rich with a refuge via private generators, communications systems, food, water and medical supplies, among other basics that have become – for many – near-luxuries. His company also insulates them from the hordes of have-nots, who have begun to storm Sydney, daily, from areas plagued by fire and dwindling supplies.
…………..
“In this Australia, all pregnancies and “date of hatch” are registered with the government, and at her age – next week she will turn 38, or, as it’s known, “Subfertile 38+” – she will no longer be a candidate for another IVF round, with her last remaining embryo, except for at an exorbitant rate.
“So, with quivering lip, she wonders if she should get a friend to rig her official fertility records and have an “off the radar” pregnancy at a private clinic, behind her husband’s back. He’s against the plan as the treatment would make her vulnerable to new viruses now plaguing Australia.
40
The ludicrous mooted $21 billion solar project in NT to supply Singapore with electricity via a mammoth underwater cable is getting media attention again. How much copper would that cable need??
60
Enough to bugger up the prospective electric vehicle explosion?
10
The greenists are squealing “unfair” coz they get to be slugged by govt taxes too….
Would they like a box of tissues as they cry into thier lattes?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-24/a-proposed-new-tax-on-electric-vehicles-is-a-bad-idea/11813630
“In recent years, false claims have circulated that electric vehicles are “breaking our roads” because they don’t use fuel and so their drivers don’t pay fuel excise.
“Heeding such concerns, both the Victorian and New South Wales governments are reportedly considering a new tax for electric vehicles.
“It follows a report by Infrastructure Partnerships Australia which recommended a per-kilometre tax for electric vehicles.
“But this short-sighted approach risks killing the golden goose of our transport system.
Such a tax would limit the economic, health and environmental benefits promised by electric vehicles which, together, far exceed any loss in fuel excise.
“Instead, Australia needs a mature public discussion about holistic road tax reform to find a fair and sensible way forward.
“The problem is structural
“Fuel excise is built into petrol and diesel prices, charged at around 40 cents per litre.
For more than 20 years — well before the introduction of electric vehicles — net fuel tax revenue has been declining, largely due to improvements in vehicle efficiency, meaning engines use less fuel.
“But if we take into account fuel tax credits — subsidies for fuel used in machinery, heavy vehicles and light vehicles on private roads — gross fuel tax revenue has actually increased in recent years.
“This suggests the tax suffers from a structural problem. Simply applying a new tax to electric vehicles won’t fix it.
It’s also worth remembering that while electric vehicle owners don’t pay fuel excise, they generally pay more in purchase taxes such as GST, because their vehicles tend to be more expensive to buy.
30
The Greenists with their Teslas
Don’t want to pay taxes for using the roads
Like the rest of us do
They are a special bunch of Holy Fools
Who should be exempt from taxes !
Bugger that for a joke !
10
If you can afford a Tesla you can afford more taxes – right?
10
Alan Kohler wants ” clean ” hydrogen to replace ” dirty ” coal as the fuel at existing big baseload electricity generators. Has anyone costed this notion, or is it more green pie in the sky?
50
Zane when it comes to their perception of clean and green, money is never an issue and nor is a sound engineering perspective.
60
As Willis E. pointed out over at WUWT a while ago “the problem with hydrogen is that it is pre-burnt – you can’t just open up a hydrogen mine”.
And you’d better not ignore the laws of thermodynamics in your costings.
70
Koehler is an economist. Nothing more nothing less.A man who needs to get out and about a bit more. In short, a big sook.
40
Green pie, loaded with slime.
Hydrogen is made from natural gas CH3 by removing the carbon as carbon dioxide and emitting it. When you burn this hydrogen you bind it more or less permanently with an oxygen atom, oxygen is a gas we’d rather not have permanently removed from the atmosphere. You can make Hydrogen by unburning (reducing) burnt hydrogen (water) by removing the oxygen but this takes about 60% more energy than you can store in the hydrogen and maybe 3 times more energy than you can recover by burning the hydrogen (given the efficiency of fuel engines). So it takes 3kW of coal fired energy to make just 1 Kw of hydrogen fuel
Hydrogen is a small molecule gas that diffuses (leaks) through most materials and causes most metals to become brittle. It can’t be liquefied so it takes up much more space than liquid fuels and therefore has a lower energy density and it’s explosive (explodes rather than burns). Turns out the best way to store hydrogen safely as a liquid is to use a larger molecule hydrogen compound (hydride) with the hydrogen bound to another atom such as ironically Carbon to form…. errr. Methane otherwise known as natural gas.
IE it’s much more efficient just to burn LNG (methane) than it is to convert the methane to hydrogen and burn that. Hydrogen fuel is exceedingly wasteful of resources. It’s about the dumbest fuel possible, so it doesn’t surprise me that it’s a darling of the econuts : dumb, inefficient and ineffective are their specialty.
40
I keep hearing about how the window for fuel reduction burns is narrowing every year but I never hear how much extra green tape is added every year causing the narrow window .
90
Glad I left Australia for South America years ago. You are really going crazy or self emolation with this AGW crap. Count Europe and Britain as WORSE. Again it will be South America having to take Millions of immigrants from these incredibly repetivively stupid countries (Ie WW1 WW2 ect)
40
Perhaps we should have a state by state look at the feasibility of ” Natural Sequence Farming” developed by the late Peter Andrews and his mate Tony Coote . Whereby a study of water flow through the landscape with appropriate action can enhance the water carrying capacity of the soil. Whilst this will never stop droughts it may minimise their severity. Obviously not all areas could be adapted, but certainly inhabited areas would be less fire prone. Malcom Turnbull dismissed “Natural Sequence Farming’ as only applicable to hilly country, however I understand this is not true. It can be applied anywhere in Australia by people who can ‘read’ the water flow. I would think that states who are opposed to dam building ( because it’s never going to rain again) would see this as a cheaper and more environmentally friendly option .
50
Since when did Malcolm ever get anything right ?
I can’t think of a single thing.
30
Bill
That chapter in Kahlil Gibran’s “Thoughta and Meditations”
“The Silver Plated Turd”
00
He refused to nominate Kevin Rudd as UN SecGen on character grounds.
Whether or not that was his real motivation, who knows, but it was one thing he got right.
10
Facts,facts,facts they don’t teach that anymore.
There is no fear in that , only fear of the future .
The climate propaganda machine is the worlds greatest ponzi scheme ever .
It is social engineering and domination at its finest .
The spread of indoctrination is hard to watch , almost unstoppable in western countries and still gaining momentum through children and education policies enaided so much by by media and politicians world wide .
80
Hi All,
Just a comment to add to the discussion started by “Paul G.” as #20:
Recently I came across a book in my local library by father and son William & Nicholas Klingaman entitled: “The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano that Darkened the World and Changed History” (authors’ caps.)
This is an account of the weather events in the Northern Hemisphere during the remainder of 1815 and calendar year 1816 during the period following the huge eruption of the Mt. Tambora volcano in the Indonesian Archipelago on 5 April 1815.
The authors would seem to have meticulously researched the various weather reports, other official reports and documents, newspaper articles, letters, and other correspondence from the period and additionally have sought interpretation of that correspondence by present-day meteorologists to analyse the likely atmospheric mechanisms that caused what were by any estimation extraordinary and prolonged changes to weather patterns and systems.
They show that the Mt. Tambora eruption was the largest, and deadliest, eruption in recorded history, being ten times more powerful than Krakatoa (1883), and one hundred times more powerful than the eruptions of Mt Pinatubo, Mt. St. Helens or Vesuvius.
They then make the point that the resulting thin layer of sulphuric acid, formed as minute droplets suspended around the world high in the stratosphere, remained there for many months, resulting in a diminution in the flux of solar energy reaching both the atmosphere (troposphere) and the earth’s surface below. Furthermore, they claim, it was this reduction in solar energy input that was the principal cause of the profound impacts on both weather and climate.
What I think is interesting for us is that, although various current weather events in the Northern Hemisphere may not be quite as violent or extreme as those reported from 1815-6, these weather events bear an uncanny resemblance to those reported from that period. We know that the one certain event that is common to both periods is that there is a diminution in solar energy reaching the earth. While the reduction at the present time is rather less than that estimated during 1815-6, the important difference is that, with the present quiet Sun, the reduction in our present times can be expected to last for a much longer period.
While the authors make it clear that the aerosol layer blanketed the entire planet from Pole to Pole, the book documents events for that period that occurred in the Northern Hemisphere only. There is virtually no mention at all of the weather events that occurred at any location south of the Equator.
My question for discussion then, is: would any of the expert contributors here be able to determine from such as Trove, etc., what weather was happening here in Australia during that period?
It seems to me that, if the indicators resulting from such an analysis are that Australia could be in for a very long period of both drought and low average temperatures, then our policymakers ought to be alerted to those facts so that they can commence adaptive planning with regard to what would clearly be the urgent needs for water conservation, desalination, and also, (horror of horrors for some), the urgent need to build more coal, gas, and even nuclear, power stations to supply the necessary, vastly increased, energy requirement.
BTW, the book is a fascinating read.
Paul Miskelly
40
Meanwhile, in the northern hemisphere:
“Great Falls sets new daily snowfall record on Thanksgiving day, Montana”
https://watchers.news/2019/11/30/great-falls-thanksgiving-snowfall-record-montana/
And:
Early snow cover record set for USA – a foot of snow in 25 states!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/12/03/early-snow-cover-record-set-for-usa-a-foot-of-snow-in-25-states/
And:
Record November snowfall affects ski stations and roads
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/society/winter-weather-_record-november-snowfall-affects-ski-stations-and-roads/45375462
Gee, it’s almost as if the earth’s weather system is a closed system in which everything averages out. Who’d have guessed!
And if you want to know what has contributed to this devastating bushfire season:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/
“Typically, a positive IOD brings below average rainfall to southern and central Australia with warmer days for the southern two-thirds of the country. Positive IOD events are often associated with a more severe fire season for southeast Australia. Recent flooding in eastern Africa is also typical of a positive IOD event.”
(note: this extract is from the previous ENSO update, which can be found in the archive link on the above web page. The latest version of the above web page mentions that there has been a further weakening of the IOD. Things should be back to ‘normal’ in a week or two.)
A positive IOD is the Indian Ocean’s version of an El Nino. During positive IODs there is rain in Africa and drought in Australia and during El Ninos there is rain in America and drought in Australia – usually.
More info:
“Heavy rains in the East African region explained”
https://www.kbc.co.ke/heavy-rains-in-the-east-african-region-explained/
The article of course contains the obligatory reference to climate change. My response to that is that linking IOD and El Nino frequency to climate change necessarily requires an understanding of what brings about the conditions that cause such events. The mechanisms are not understood.
And if there are leftists reading this who are reaching for their keyboards to type something about it being caused by hotter than normal and cooler than normal water temperatures on different sides of the oceans, don’t bother with your misdirection. The question is: what causes those up and down changes in temperature. That is unknown.
And the over-arching question is, of course: why is the media full of climate change propaganda, with not a single reference to the IOD.
30
Some geologists believe El Nino is caused by seawater seeping into a magma chamber in the fault line between New Guinea and The Solomon Islands. The water is superheated to 100’s of degrees and is forced out into the ocean. As we all know it takes a lot of energy to heat water, but very little energy to retain heat. Nasa has photographs of the El Nino pulses as it moves across the Pacific Ocean, it is not a steady stream of warm water as one would expect if the warming was due only to solar activity. So Australia is currently sitting between the IOD with cold water on the west coast- no rain and no El Nino/La Nina on the east coast which also means no rain. Absolutely nothing to do with CC.
50
” it is not a steady stream of warm water as one would expect if the warming was due only to solar activity.” What about solar activity in terms of the strength of the solar wind? Maybe that gets translated into voltage difference, then that voltage difference should make its way through the atmosphere in serendipitous ways, unlike electro-magnetic radiation.
Hey does anyone want to critique Mikhail Chodorov over at Professor Quiggins place before all his posts are lost forever. Would be interesting to see if you could pick him up on obvious known mistakes?
https://johnquiggin.com/2019/12/23/open-forum-for-climate-denialism/comment-page-1/#comments
11
Also the solar wind has a bearing on volcanic activity. So the solar wind theory is fully in keeping with your suggestion to do with that fault line. You used to be able to go to space.com and link activity on the sun and activity on the earth at 3-4 days delay.
[SNIP. Don’t do it Grame. SNIP Yourself OK? WE don’t have time. – Jo]
50
Right thanks Jo. I think I have the idea now. I wasn’t thinking about these other issues since I was just happy to come back and not be angry all the time and swearing at people. Although I must say that Keith’s spamming is pushing things a bit. But I’m not like before.
10
I think we need to get out ahead of the dumb left with this fires business. Focus everything on hydrating the land. Have a more resilient landscape and water features everywhere for firefighters to have quicker turnaround times when going for more water. First step to land hydration is swales and check dams. After a number of years of progress you can start putting in ponds and dams of the big pond variety. Its amazing what can be accomplished with swales as these guys show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUzqMmnNYaw&feature=emb_logo
I say that because the left are useless and they cannot figure out how to even deal with a non-problem like CO2 levels. We may have to re-arrange priorities just to pre-empt them. You put the water in the land and the carbon is soon to follow. You know like giving a teenager a basketball to keep them busy so they don’t take the car.
30
Absolutely Graeme !
10
Look out, Jo!
[Winston, thanks. Point noted. I am in contact. – Jo]
20
He gets settled in with a few reasonable comments.
Then there is the junk mixed in and then the abuse, fully justified because by this time his pseudo science is obvious and he’s being scrutinized too much.
PeterF, Vish, ME262 ?
KK
00
GB…
“Put water in the land” sounds great…. until you realise three things.
1. There are already a bunch of people putting water in the landscape – they are called “farmers”.
2. There is no magic way to have water everywhere during a major drought. Part of the problem is that small, widely-dispersed storage’s do not last in periods of extended drought.
3. You are still focused on fighting fires, instead of managing them. There is no human way of delivering enough water to control large, intense fires. (I wish there was, but only God can do that).
We don’t have unlimited resources. We are doing what we can, with what we have.
20
You are thinking of irrigation. Irrigation is not a sound hydration strategy for a continent. Pumped water contains salt and if you irrigate a lot in the desert, the water evaporates and you salt up the land. What I’m talking about are water retention landscapes. Swales and check dams is not the same as irrigation. Try again Peter.
00
I’m interested in what you have to say about the difference between managing fires and fighting them. If you have a swale you can plant trees on the bottom side of that swale. And in some strategic places you could plant a line of trees that can constitute a fire block. So we can design the land to restrict fires should we choose to. But its not as though every tree chosen will be on the basis of fire resistance. So we have to fight fires. But do you have a different view of managing fires? If not by land hydration, and strategic reduction of fuel then what? Actually fuel reduction through fire is a bit of a crude way of going about things. Some cities use a lot of goats year round.
00
Ah I see now that you fight fires. Very interested in your expertise and will make sure I go back and read a lot of your stuff.
10
A lot of your stuff.
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/05/so-what-is-the-second-darn-law/#comment-348865
00
Yeah I had to admit to a couple of people that I’d taken them the wrong way on that thread. But other than that most of what I said would probably stand up. One tries not to beat up on old Albert these days. Its too much like shooting fish in a barrel, it leads to other uncomfortable subjects, but also there are a lot more whacky science beliefes that didn’t originate with Albert. And they need some attention also. Like clouds generating their own electricity. Thats a nutty idea right there.
10
Australia has suffered an extinction crisis. I speak not of an environmental cause, rather something caused largely by so-called ‘environmentalists’; the extinction of the political centre-left.
When I was young, the centre-left were common enough. They featured in governments, both state and federal. Nowadays, scratch a modern centre-leftist and you’ll likely find a hard left agenda underneath. And even on the surface.
The hard left is the centre, according to the mass media, academia and the modern elites. Thus, the political tools of the tolitarian extremes are also mainstream now. One of these tools is science. Not real science, obviously, but pseudo-science.
Warmist pseudo-science has effectively boiled the centre-left alive. Slowly.
Much of the centre-left didn’t much notice what was happening. Equally, though, much of the right didn’t much care to ever accept publicly that the centre-left had existed at all and, thus, didn’t much care about such a demise. That was short-sighted, although for the Coalition, politically expedient. And it still is.
Now, even the political right is infected with the malaise of pseudo-science, though. It is easy to paraphrase this debate as a left versus right affair, for in some ways, that is correct. Yet, the battle for truth in climate science is much more a battle of right versus wrong.
A left versus right debate on this is, unfortunately, playing into hard left hands. That is easily seen in the typical response to sensible climate questions, where the questioner is attacked and labelled a ‘fascist’ or such like. The hard left are more than comfortable with such gutter politics. They will not be beaten easily there.
What will beat them is moderation and truth. Eventually.
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Objectively speaking, the Coalition IS soft-left or centre-left.
Judged by the policies that they support and their lack of support for some others, they are certainly not Conservative. They are still a party of high-spending and high regulation. We are conned if we think that being not-as-bad as the loony left actually makes them “good”.
Tax and regulation are the true measure of a political philosophy. It’s a lie to pretend that there is s true difference between Facism and Socialist. Boil it all down and it’s only a matter of slogans and identities.
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The Wet Tadpole blogger attacks Jo in his latest post… as usual it is quite lame and poorly documented straw man set up.
Just for a good laugh…
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Yeah I think you are right Philip. Where have all those union bully-boys gone. When they were here we didn’t necessarily like them all that much. Now that they are gone they are sorely missed. Since for all their faults they wanted a high wage labour force. They wanted that in a visceral sense. In their nerves. These guys would never go in for de-industrialisation and energy-deprivation. The current left would barely have gotten their hands dirty. Most of them have a public sector emphasis and are always sucking up to big business. They seem to actively hate the working class and small business or at least they don’t have time for such people.
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My memory of the 70s and 80s is of Communist Union officials gloating when a factory closed down, never to reopen, and I don’t recall them ever doing much to prevent pointless strikes.
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Yeah there was plenty of negative stuff going on there for sure. But the left now has abandoned the working class. They appear to be in contempt of the working class. I would have wanted the high wages to come from an over-supply of producer goods, and sound money and banking. But these guys wanted us to have higher wages through militant action. But we were kind of flying on two wings, neither of which were perfect.
Now who wants high wages? No-one. The left isn’t interested. The right is not interested in banking reform. They have a system of state-supported usury. A “no banker left behind” system. So now loanable funds go to all manner of nonsense but very little to producer goods. I am as exasperated with the right as I am with the left. Imagine supporting a form of capitalism where its free enterprise for the worker but they want rich bankers to be welfare queens? This is quite perverse. So to me its a pox on both their houses.
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Yes.
10
“These guys would never go in for de-industrialisation ”
Newcastle state dockyard tends to contradict that.
It was always “conditions” above functionality and future viability.
In the end South Korean shipbuilding was going great guns with workers getting the same pay as their Australian counterparts.
Meanwhile the locals stuck to the union guidelines and shut local industry down.
Nothing has changed.
KK
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We need to get that ship-building back. We should try and be world leaders in every transport system that doesn’t fight gravity.
21
After 30 years of decay?
Decay in Government, industry and skills.
It’s a long road back.
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Why should we be “world leaders” in shop-building?
What world-liberating advantages do we have that make it worthwhile to try?
Sometimes it simply is more sensible to concentrate on some of th3 things that we can do better, and buy wha we don’t from those who ave other specialities.
You don’t expect to be your own lawyer, doctor, plumber, butcher, baker and grain-farmer, do you? If it doesn’t work at a personal level, what makes you assume that it works at a national level?
10
Why can we not do ship-building better than anyone else? Our ancestors certainly could. Is there some sort of taint that we have developed in the meantime? We have a continent to defend and being great ship-builders and ship-sailers would help underpin naval functionality. You may have a superstitious view of comparative advantage. One time John Humphries announced on Catallaxy that Australia didn’t need manufacturing. This was at a time when almost everyone on Catallaxy took a superstitious view of comparative advantage. So there are some weird views around about what we can or cannot do in manufacturing that need to be teased out. You don’t want to point the bone at us Australians as manufacturers, when its policy and particularly banking and monetary policy that has hollowed us out.
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Your only serious comment in the whole time I’ve been here. Yes Keith its a long road back. And yes there has been 30 years of decay. I would say the decay started around the end of Bretton Woods for manufacturing more generally. So maybe quite a bit longer than 30 years. It will take a great deal longer to repair the damage. When I talk about re-industrialisation I’m talking about very long time horizons. When I’m talking about becoming world leaders in all transport that doesn’t fight gravity I’m not thinking about rushing anything. It might take 100 years. Or two hundred years. I just think we ought to get started.
00
GB…..
They may have campaigned for high wages, but they didn’t give a damn who they put out of work in the process.
We’ve seen them choose to put workers on the street rather than permit them to continue working at a rate that would let a struggling company keep operating. They’d rather destroy people and businesses that they didn’t even have a conflict with, in order to purblind pressure on those they did.
They were all about the protection of privilege and the denial of Rights and choice to others.
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Yes , no doubt about it.
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Everyone elses comments are quite reasonable objections and reminders. What are you doing here Keith? Are you a professional blog clogger?
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Just wanted to check if I was moderated more generally or if I said a bad word. Yeah my argument is that the left then was really bad in many ways. But the left now is even worse. So they make you miss the old guys. Just like someone as atrocious as Obama makes you miss Jimmy Carter.
02
More waffle.
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Yes thats all we get from your Keith. Waffle and reversalism. You could be a leftist bot for all anyone knows. This is a science blog so a certain amount of reading capacity is expected. Particularly as you are a dopey leftist coming in under a fake name.
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http://joannenova.com.au/2019/12/climate-change-and-bushfires-more-rain-the-same-droughts-no-trend-no-science/#comment-2245716
Now I remember.
That dog, chasing its tail.
He eventually caught it but then he began to eat it.
Then there was a blinding blue flash of light and the whole mess just disappeared.
Tangential science at work.
Apparently, you come highly recommended.
Good to have another contributor.
KK
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Ummm Jo !
I think we have a problem with the new bloke
Graeme Bird.
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I think we have a problem with Keith’s spamming. Everyone else is good. Keiths been chasing me around and hasn’t brought up any science in doing so.
10
NASA satellites measure the global fire trend:
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145421/building-a-long-term-record-of-fire
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/90493/researchers-detect-a-global-drop-in-fires
“…MODIS [satellite instruments have measured] a decrease in the total number of square kilometers burned each year. Between 2003 and 2019, that number has dropped by roughly 25%.”
Here’s a graph:
https://sealevel.info/NASA_building_a_long_term_record_of_fire.png
10
I had to check this blog to see Nova’s response to these epic fires in her own land. Sure enough, this Aussie equivalent to a Fox News babe is in too deep to recant her denial of AGW. Nothing will convince her that Man can simultaneously cause more than one problem, e.g. both global warning and ruining the countryside with wind turbines. Anti-wind-power arguments are how I first discovered Nova; eco-hypocrisy we agree on.
To accomplish the ideology-driven “solution” of mass-managing plant growth to stop fires, millions of acres of brush and trees would have to be pruned and thinned each year. Fires don’t just start in convenient locations and known perimeters. To really get it done, vast crews would have to spend a large part of each year walking millions of rugged acres with saws and weed whackers, along with doing prescribed burns close to homes (overpopulation encroaching on forests is a big reason small fires aren’t allowed to burn).
Nova claims to be an environmentalist and presumably doesn’t want to turn all fire-prone areas into sterile tree farms, but that’s what it will take if nothing is done to control CO2-driven heat. Nature will have to be completely tamed, and species that depend on “messy” old growth will go extinct. In America, lowbrow loggers had the slogan “wipe your ass with a spotted owl” because they favored toilet paper over standing trees. At least 500 million animals have died in the Australian fires already, so Aussie trash may as well kill them by pillaging their habitat for timber and making a buck off it (more rural jobs, like clear-cutting for Big Wind).
In a non-environmental context, AGW-denial is as nutty as saying people can’t be committing arson and murder in the same city at the same time. It’s like claiming there “must be” just ONE crime or another against people (or nature). Right-wing ideology is centered around dismissal of all evidence that doesn’t fit a rigid narrative; 30 years old in the case of AGW-denial. Nova became a denier much later, but once you’re in that camp you’re stuck towing the line or you look like a flake to your tribe.
I could also write about the ills of leftism, but at least they’re not stupid enough to think global warming is a hoax. Their main flaw is too much faith in the “equality” of humans, even with brain-dead ones so common.
https://falseprogress.home.blog/2018/08/15/right-wingers-are-evil-for-not-respecting-nature/
P.S. I unchecked “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail” because this forum is full of crazies and it’s a waste of time to post followups; may as well crash a Flat-Earth blog. But you’re welcome to comment on the above link to bolster evidence of right-wing idiocy. It shows an image of California burning in 2018 for the same heat-based reasons Australia is burning now.
05
You must be the fellow who has the evidence for CO2-warming. You are the gentleman that we have been waiting for all this time. Hand it over then. Don’t be bashful. Lets have your evidence or your retraction right now.
As to our bushfire problem, one of our experts has been saying for the last few years that we had the highest fuel buildup at any time since human habitation of the continent. If thats true thats the alpha and omega of this fire business. You have no evidence for this thing you are calling “climate change.” You are a moron. Face up to your new self-image.
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I’ll reply just to you, covering all the other commenters who claim to seek evidence but continually discard it. It’s a waste of time to present evidence to people incapable of receiving it with normal cognition and risk-assessment. Casting pearls to swine is another way to put that.
What you people are doing is akin to walking along train tracks, and when a distant train horn is heard, instead of getting off the tracks (like intelligent people) you declare that the horn is just a loudspeaker operated by someone who wants to “control” you and prevent you from walking along the tracks.
You’re so wedded to your ideology that nothing will wake you out of that denial-state. This sort of thing was tolerable when the debate was just Evolution vs. Creation (same human omnipotence angle), but now such attitudes are dangerous and downright evil.
https://falseprogress.home.blog/2018/08/15/right-wingers-are-evil-for-not-respecting-nature/
https://www.google.com/search?&q=australian+wildfires+death+toll (“Ain’t got nuthin’ to do with AGW heat!” say the brain-dead Nova groupies.)
12
Come on if you have this faith-based belief you ought to have some kind of evidence you can give us? Whats going on here? Let me tell you what you need. You need at least sixty years of data (taking in the full ocean cycles) of temperature, unaffected by data-rigging techniques or by the heat island effect. So we would want sixty years plus of rural data. Then you want an honest CO2 record. Then we need to be able to relate one to the other by a process of human reason to see if you can find if CO2 might be driving temperature.
Let me get you started. Here is sixty years of balloon data.
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/2016-03-07060229-1.png
Do you see net CO2 warming in that graph? CO2 can cool a tiny bit in some contexts and warm a tiny bit in other circumstances, or so you would think. So do you think you see net warming in that graph? COULD BE right? I think I might be seeing the tiniest scintilla on the net side. Particularly as cycle 24 is so weak as judged only by sunspot count. COULD BE right? Could be just a tiny bit of net warming hiding there like the twelfth Iman of Shia hiding down the well.
Let me know if you think you can see any warming if you find data that is rural, local and unrigged.
20
Oh look, yet another brain-washed AGW toady.
Cannot produce one bit of empirical evidence of warming by increased atmospheric CO2.
Hasn’t even got the guts to try to produce any evidence.
Quite PATHETIC.
There is in fact ZERO evidence of CO2 warming in any real data set, anywhere.
00
California is of course one of the most far left states of the USA..
so it is a great comparison to the NEGLECT and disrespect of nature that is so common in far-left ideologies.
Shoot your other foot, bozo. !!
00
A live feed of a Qld fire last month by Channel 7 provided one of the best examples of high fuel load behaviour in what is known as the IZone, communities built in bushland. It’s shows clearly that the change in the last 30 years of increasing fuels and communities built in high risk areas are probably the greatest causation of the fire behaviour we are seeing.
And more water bombers will not be the answer!
It’s distressing that after retiring as a Deputy Fire Control Officer the inaction in addressing the fuel loads remains, in spite of many inquest recommendations…
https://vimeo.com/382967172
10
Wrong wrong wrong. Australia is a big place! If you treat all Australia as one you find little change, but if you look at south-east and north west Australia separately you find huge and opposite trends in rainfall that have continued for over 70 years now. The conseqent drying out of the land in the south east(the princple requirement for enhanced forest or grassland fires) has been directly observed by the GRACE satellites. On the basis of that science a great many published journal papers have predicted the current fires there
e.g. “Global heat stress on health, wildfires, and agricultural crops under different levels of climate warming” by Sun et al., Environment International, Volume 128, July 2019, Pages 125-136, DOI: 10.1016/j.envint.2019.04.025.
see also “On the use of the GRACE normal equation of inter-satellite tracking data for estimation of soil moisture and groundwater in Australia” by Tangdamrongsub et al., Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 22, 1811–1829, 2018, DOI: 10.5194/hess-22-1811-2018
00
Grace satellites are far too short a record — what, 40 years?. Even 70 year trends are not long enough.
Rainfall in SE Australia shows no trend in 100 years. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/#tabs=Tracker&tracker=timeseries&tQ=graph%3Drain%26area%3Dseaus%26season%3D0112%26ave_yr%3D5
Megadroughts were likely worse and longer.
Australia’s long term 178 years of rainfall shows no trend at all. Ashcroft et al.
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/12/climate-change-and-bushfires-more-rain-the-same-droughts-no-trend-no-science/
More http://joannenova.com.au/tag/drought/
00
Supposing the trend you are seeing were to continue Mike? Still its not okay to suggest CO2 is doing it without generating competing hypotheses. CO2 cannot nucleate (or neutralise the nucleation) of raindrops. Plants can affect rainfall. Soil loss can affect plants. Monocultural growing leads to soil loss. So soil loss could be having an effect. You want at least 3 hypotheses to test. We cannot see anything bad and say “climate change” and pat ourselves on the back here. I don’t know if you were doing that, but just in case.
Soil development through land hydration would seem to solve all problems, the real ones and the imagined ones. Droughts and floods would be solved and fires made much easier to manage. Its not just the water retention landscapes that solve the problem. But the biological and carbon in the soil act as a sponge. I’ve heard it said that for every extra 1% of carbon in the soil the land can hold another 20 000 gallons per acre.
00