This is how the paradigm changes. The old activism is quietly dropped down the memory hole…
Buried in a save-the-koala story on ABC News tonight is an ABC journalist saying for the first time that it is “current fire management practices” that are the problem. Rani Hayman didn’t say fuel load, but she might as well have. The reference to “indigenous fire practices” makes it obvious that the ABC means more hazard reduction burns (not that they can say so). She also didn’t say “climate change” — write it in your diary. On November 14th, the same ABC journalist was only interviewing the posterboys who blamed “climate change” for the fires.
UPDATE: Holy smoke — the Sydney Morning Herald also appear to have flipped hours earlier in the morning and in a much stronger and more direct way. Regular SMH reader Dave B sends in the link and says “wow… here’s a huge surprise”. Finally a spot of real journalism. Was this story the last nail in the ABC fuel-load denial?
Prescribed burning ‘key to controlling fires’.
By Tim Barlass, Sydney Morning Herald
Expert says blazes have burnt where hazard-reduction took place two years ago. “
Tim Barlass, SMH: A forestry expert has condemned bushfire prevention strategies in an open letter to the Prime Minister and premiers, saying it is entirely within their power to put an end to the situation by prescribed burning. Vic Jurskis, a fellow of the Institute of Foresters of Australia, the body representing more than 1200 forestry professionals, says Australians are being told that “fires are uncontrollable in extreme weather and there’s nothing we can possibly do”. He said the “simple solution” of preventative or prescribed burns to reduce fuel levels of leaves, dead twigs and other vegetation emerged from a House of Representatives inquiry after the 2003 Canberra fires, which destroyed 488 houses.
Mr Jurskis said: “The fires that burnt Canberra in 2003 jumped over miles and miles of bare paddocks. The problem is if you have three-dimensional, continuous fuel and extreme conditions, you can generate ember showers that travel tens of kilometres ahead of the front.
“A fire break is going to do nothing at all. You have to manage the whole landscape.”
“It is bogged down by green [environmental] and red tape which makes getting approval for a prescribed burn a very slow and complex process.
“They have introduced a system that makes it virtually impossible to manage the bush in a sustainable way. I am just one of thousands of volunteers out there who are frustrated.”
Skeptics have been mocking the ABC and Greens and Fairfax news for years:
Jo Nova 2013: ABC plan to stop bushfires with windmills and buckets of your cash
2013: ABC Fire Management Plan according to Jo Nova
Also in 2013: Fuel Loads Not Climate Change Are Making Bushfires More Severe
Suddenly on the ABC, the reason for the unprecedented fire situation is described as the way we manage our forests. The moment that marks the flip is when she uses the magical groupthink terms — saying “most agreed” – as if it was never contentious, and as if the ABC hadn’t been blaming climate change for years and wheeling out lame excuses for why we can’t do hazard reduction. Tonight we heard without fanfare that we need to use indigenous fire practices. The ABC reporter interviewed an aboriginal and a koala expert. She didn’t interview the old fire experts (mostly old white men) like the SMH did. They ignore people who’ve said this for years (apart from indigenous elders), nor did Hayman mention that climate skeptics were right, and years ahead of the ABC science unit.
It looks like the ABC are figuring out they were wrong. Shame they don’t have the honesty to say so.
The primetime news item below is no-news for skeptics — what’s interesting is the way the big shift is disguised, and the old agenda morphs to a new-old one. It’s easy for the ABC to swap climate change activism for being an indigenous cheer-squad. But if there is no honesty, there’s also no search for answer they really need to figure out. Why were the best funded journalists in the country, and the flag waving fans for all-things-indigenous also the last ones to figure out what fire specialists and even unpaid bloggers have been saying for years.
Did the best-funded academics in Australia let down the most incompetent reporters in the country?
(Probably, but only after the best-paid journalists in the country rewarded the most incompetent academics… it’s a chicken-eats-egg thing.)
The politically correct octopus strangles investigative journalism just like it does to everything else. The most strangled and useless journalists are the publicly funded ones. At least the SMH finally gets the whole message. It doesn’t matter if we do little bit of hazard reduction here and there, if we let twenty years of fuel build up anywhere, nothing will stop the conflagration once it starts.
If the ABC were serving the nation they would have interviewed Roger Underwood and the team at the BushFireFront decades ago. They could’ve interviewed the great Bill Gammage who wrote the book on indigenous fire management.
How many houses and lives would have been saved if the ABC had done the job it was supposed to do years ago, but has just barely started?
Sell the ABC and save the Koalas.
….
Uh huh. That was fast. What happened to climate change?
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The Climate at the ABC has changed. In fact they and their friends are to blame for the carnage. But being Green means never having to say sorry.
And Labor is supporting ‘metallurgical’ coal. Which is exactly the same as any other coal in CO2 output. Except that it is used to make steel. Just like carbon is used in every smelting process to remove Oxygen from oxides of aluminium, lead and every other metal. You would have to think Labor has just discovered chemistry, but more that they have been kicked out of Queensland Federally.
In the communist bastion of Victoria though while the Coalition is trimming the public service, Daniel Andrews has paid another amazing 50,000 people to join the Labor party by hiring them as public servants. Public servants should not have the vote, it leads to appalling waste. What exactly are the extra 50,000 people doing which was not done before?
And they have banned just about everything with their Climate Emergency. This will be an interesting summer politically, when and if it arrives. We had a few hours of 38C in Melbourne today and now back to 13C. Global Cooling may just save Labor in Victoria. Except for the inevitable bushfires, which they will blame on Climate Change and capitalism.
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Yesterday’s forecast 39c lasted a few hours in Geelong and rapidly backtracked to below 30 with cool winds. By nightfall, it was back to 13 or 14 degrees.
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Same story in Mt Barker SA.
A few nice warm beach Summery days would be good
For my garden.
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What happened to climate change? A disaster so big that the powers who bring you bad government at every level and their media enablers fear the backlash??? Just a guess of course but I think enough angry Australian voters can move mountains without any trouble. And if I was Australian I sure would be angry.
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Roy, it all goes back to the beginning of the argument, when the “Warmists” insisted that weather and climate are two different things. This was a lie. Weather and climate are exactly the same thing, viewed in different time frames. To describe climate, you must examine a year’s worth of weather, then build on that.
So where are the boundaries for describing climate? Climate is a long term thing, but weather can change climate in a week when we get a heat wave.
This fire situation is quite extraordinary, driven by an extraordinary drought. But two aspects of fire management contribute too. Firstly the use or non use of cool burning to reduce fuel loads. Secondly refraint from extinguishing lightning fires in National Parks in hot seasons. This I see as a particular critical factor in our fire management. The Canberra fire which did so much damage was lit a week earlier by multiple lightning strikes in the National Parks, and these were allowed to burn there for the week until a big wind blew them through.
Time and again we see this. Despite massive expenditure on modern equipment, they don’t extinguish bushfires. They seem to have forgotten how to. They have forgotten the power and efficacy of hand tools.
Then, too, there’s OH&S.
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As for the koalas. This fire season will certainly do horrendous damage to our fauna. Those that survive the fire will struggle to find anything to eat.
And I wonder how our other national treasure, the Wollemi Pine, is faring. I’d imagine the worst thing they might be able to do for it would be to drop some fire retardant on it.
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You can only live in a fantasy world for so long.
Reality has a way of catching up and slapping you in the face.
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10
Climatephobia is addictive. Just say No!
Source: https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2017/03/14/spreading-climatephobia/
Reality demands solutions – isn’t about time Australia pitched some?
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Reality….. is that the solutions to fire have already been clearly identified.
They are neither cheap, not easy, but the fire-deniers offer nothing that isn’t far more expensive and far less effective.
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“Uh huh. That was fast. What happened to climate change?”
Alas Gordon, it may have been a momentary lapse. The SMH has latched on to a comment by State Minister Matt Kean (an accountant by trade) linking the fires to climate change. The collective has gone full alarmism but at least sceptical comments are getting more “respects”.
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Yes , its all full throttle on the ABC news again for “Climate Change” causing fires and drought.
SNAFU ..
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So they finally get it! Better late than never I guess.
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I suppose when you get alarmists in positions of authority such as Greg Mullins , now on the climate council(whatever) you get the climate change meme in spades. I’ve seen these blokes come in to our local area full of “know all” and tell us how to fight fires- not knowing the particular area. The heads at RFS and its political wing the Rural fire association are an obstruction in many cases.All the fires that have threatened our properties have their origin in the Nandewar NP. The political class,media and such will get it when it rationally looks at the parameters and addresses these seriously.Same goes for the MDBA.
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The winter 2019 Volunteer Fire Fighter magazine has a copy of “Fire and the Eucalypt” by Clarence Hungerford(et al) He was well known around here (Berambing, Blue Mtns, Au) for his practical approach to life. The booklet says …”The idea of directing anti-fire measures for the whole State from a central office in a capital city is quite impossible. Conditions of temperature, wind, moisture content, etc, etc and are never the same anywhere at a given time. Appropriate action has usually to be determined hours or even minutes before execution and such decisions can only be made on the spot.”
In the local fire brigade we are often hampered by directives from the local region’s Fire Control when we know what needs doing but the “know alls” are incapable of delegating responsibility until it is often too late to take advantage of a window of quiet weather.
It is unfortunate that the type of personality who wants to be in senior fire positions is probably unsuited to the job and perhaps Greg Mullins in one of these. The current NSW Fire Commissioner is famous for shouting over the radio from the safety of a helicopter “Hey, you guys, get the f’ out to there”. The crews on the ground ignored him and got on with the job. A fire ground is no place for “panic merchants” and big egos.
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BUT….
Even the Environment Minister ..(Matt Keen ?) has openly declared that ..
“ no one can deny that the bush fires are not caused by climate change “…
I am all for freedom of opinion, but if you are an elected Minister of the state, you need to get your fact straight before opening your mouth in public !
…(A*s hole !)
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Hah. Read what you quoted:
“no one can deny that the bush fires are not caused by climate change”
“No one can deny” is the same as “eveyone must accept”. So:
“Everyone must accept that the bush fires are not caused by climate change”
Seems fine to me.
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ah ah ah! Don’t get over confident!
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Wait for it. ABC will blame CO2 for the fires. Excess CO2 means more vegetation in the spring. More fuel in the summer.
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Make sure they get their earlier words get quoted back to them, forcefully.
Although they will probably either deny them or say that you didn’t understand what they said.
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Is there any chance they will come to their senses and recognize that the Sun and not CO2 drives the Earth’s climate? Perhaps they will also realize the foolishness in the proposed remedies to a perceived threat that the laws of physics precludes?
Unfortunately, common sense is incompatible with a politically biased media so it’s unlikely that the scientific will prevail any time soon.
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I meant to say that the “it’s unlikely that the scientific truth will prevail any time soon”.
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It’s not as if you do not see the difference every single day. The CO2 ‘blanket’ is constant at all times and latitudes, but the daily variation in temperature is dramatic anywhere but the water moderated tropics. That should not be possible with a ‘blanket’. It is certainly not possible with cloud cover which is far closer to constant temperature.
Consider that in a desert with a clear sky, a typical day is 38C and nights down to -4C. So the constant and invisible CO2 ‘blanket’ is obviously rubbish. This is everyone’s daily experience in most of Australia, but still we are told CO2 controls the temperature. No, it doesn’t.
So 97% of Climate Scientists are wrong. And a peer reviewed paper is not needed.
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“And a peer reviewed paper is not needed.”
Yes, the fact that COE and the Stefan-Boltzmann LAW apply to thermodynamic systems is already settled science.
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I’ve always considered the blanket to be made of wire (or any other material) netting where the joins are CO2 molecules. The increase in CO2 has caused each hole to reduce in size ever so slightly. Totally ineffective for keeping anything warm.
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I like to think of the GHG effect as working like a greenhouse with more than half of the glass roof panels removed.
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No, with 99.96% of the roof panels removed. 😉
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I really like that. A great metaphor. Can I use it please on my warmist in-law family. I just can’t wait to see them screw up their faces to see where the catch is!
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Sure Peter. Let us know their reaction!
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Will do. Thanks
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Rani Hayman — is she native or partly so? Is she a senior-type person of ABC? Was she the only one left in the office this week? Has she just been fired?
A quick search only revealed that she has been with the ABC for some time, so this report is not “an abberation let through by a Christmas-slowdown-editor.”
Besides it is only the 9th. Surely the senior editors are not off already — or maybe they went to the big UN Party in Spain. A catamaran from Sydney Harbour to the Gulf of Cádiz is a longish trip.
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Yes, possibly this is a Christmas piece, a bit like April Fool’s day.
However helpless and cute koalas are a sensitive topic and the creation of fires so hot the trees all die and the gentle wildlife is incinerated is very hard for vegan Greenies to take, especially as it is dawning on them that they are the responsible parties not the evil capitalists, miners and farmers.
The fires may do some good after all, the dawning realization that the Australian bush is not some fairy green paradise for weekend getaways.
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Green opinions come from overseas. So three decades of pointless and wrong public anguish over Polar bears which are in record numbers. Polar bears are white, like most arctic creatures but they are the one tonne top predator, not cute or cuddly or helpless but giant fearsome often bloody carnivores.
There has been no worrying about our own Koala bears which are absolutely harmless, cute and wiped out by Green ignorance and refusal to protect them or anyone else in the bush. In Victoria we are not even allowed pick up sticks, graze cattle in the high country or even climb rocks, all of which are sacred apparently. And I fear we have not reached peak stupid yet with inner city Climate Emergencies.
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Don’t worry. What was prohibited becomes optional. Then becomes mandatory.
If you have ANY vegetation on your property, it soon must be burned! Only if you clear your property to 100% mineral soil will you have an excuse for not burning. Finally, if you have ANY improvements on your property, they must be burned too. The goal is to strip the earth free of any living thing. This result is no different than the results of the past 47 policies they put in place and forced you to live and die by.
Interestingly, your property taxes will then go UP because it is more valuable as a fire break than it was as land producing abundant food for humans – especially food for yourself and for selling to willing buyers.
They cannot be trusted. They never say what they mean nor mean what they say. Look at what they do and at the consistent results of what they do. They are for the destruction of wealth and the quality of life for every living thing. They are against anything done by humans in order to live and thrive even at the cost of their own lives.
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So the pendulum swings back to where you lost your selection if you didn’t “improve” it by ring barking etc?
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Yes. wait for the next mandatory policy, necessary revisionism by our Green Party doctrinal authority…
‘Two legs bad, four legs good’- wait!
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Hey Lionell,
Don’t get too far ahead. Something good just happened. At least wait to see what it shakes out of the trees. There must be some trees left to be hiding all sorts of things.
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There is nothing good to drink in a poisoned well.
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Lionell,
Knowing you I won’t argue the point except to say that sometimes good happens in spite of the poisoned well. This could be such an occurrence.
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In spite of my recent more cynical attitude about the world I would like to see a better day and I have not abandoned all hope. You and I live in the middle of one of the worst possible nightmares, the corruption circus in our House of Representatives. But there is still hope because the people are waking up. And that’s what keeps me from depression my friend, that hope for justice, both at home and for Australia.
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Just a minor correction to your last paragraph, Lionel:
… in all nations which belong or belonged to the Western Bloc. Everyone else can do as they like.
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Nothing but a smoke screen. If you knock down the productive nations, what is left cannot survive.
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The Savage Frontier. fire was raining down from the sky
I had an author signed copy of this book, which I sent down to Sharon Molloy ABC far north Cairns.
To research background, for an interview of the author. The author RODNEY LIDDELL was staying for a few days in Mossman on a book promotion tour, and I had conversations with him.
He was planning his next book, to be on the Stasi-Starzy.
His research is in-depth, recorded events and does not include Chinese whispers.
If ever there was a book, that should be made into a factual series of exploration, this would be my choice for our Cape York peninsula But certainly Not produced by the ABC- sanitizing the truth .
In it you will see references to fire, I cannot quote exactum, as copy was not returned, but in the book, there was a reference to a vessel, I believe off the cost of Victoria, where those on board thought the end of the world was a nigh, as fire was raining down from the sky. Obviously bush fires.
for those interested
Order Books | Cape York Books
https://www.capeyorkbooks.com/order-books
RODNEY LIDDELL: Author of the books Cape York -The Savage Frontier, Concealed and Exposed, Children Of Destiny, Pacific War Relics & Festivals of Perth 1978-1980
Cape York The Savage Frontier | Cape York Books
https://www.capeyorkbooks.com/cape-york-the-savage-frontier
Cape York The Savage Frontier Chapter 2 “Corsairs of the Coral Sea” Massacres of shipwrecked castaways who were beheaded and eaten by aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders during the 1800’s. Includes the massacres of the passengers and crew of the “Charles Eaton” in …
Order Books – RODNEY LIDDELL: Author of the books Cape York …
https://www.capeyorkbooks.com/order-books/
All books are sent in 3kg express post bags, which hold up to 4 books. For overseas postage costs please phone or text (+61) 428 883 602 before making your order; Please send a bank cheque or postal order along with your printable order form to: Rodney Liddell, PO BOX 116, Greta, NSW 2334; BOOK PRICES. Concealed and Exposed: $25.00 + $15.00 …
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I was told yesterday about many years ago near Eden on the NSW south coast fishermen was shocked by a fireball that jumped across the bay between the two headlands, we think that was when the historic whaling station hotel lost its roof in the fires.
Excellent book by the way, Cape York by Rodney Liddell.
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GD
Could have been referring to the 1851 fires in Victoria when almost a quarter of Vic was on fire and embers were seen 20 miles out to sea.
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Sigh…it will be racing out the door at that knock down price….
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This change of tone and the clearer message from Albanese that he supports exports of our coal against the demands of the Greens who want them shut down could be an early sign the ALP+ABC are seeing the light, but I need more from them to be convinced of that. Let’s see how the pigeons react now that a (small) cat has been unleashed. Likewise in the US some Democrats are seeing the light and realising the attempts to impeach Trump are backfiring.
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He is heading off on another listening tour of Queensland, wait until he starts campaigning in inner city electorates again and listen to what he says there.
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THe same with his previous leader. Wearing two hats will not suit and Albanese will have to decide whether he is on side with his preferred mob(greens and fabians) or the old Labor.
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It isn’t bad news, but I’d say this defense of coal exports is in line with globo policies. Australia does, and should, export its coal in huge quantities, which suits just about everybody. It suits the Guardian-perusing classes who vaguely know that money has to come from somewhere; and it suits that business community which, as Julia loved to say, is “on board” with government and knows there’s more to be had through subsidy and plunder than through tedious production.
What we’re not encouraged to do is consume our own Australian coal for the common Australian benefit. Though we consume far less than we export and the renovation of our coal power gen from mine to switch would result in obvious “carbon” savings, it is our domestic consumption which is perpetually under fire. (Well, maybe they can look away if Mr Gupta just happens to acquire a bargain smelter in SA then just happens to acquire a bargain coal mine in NSW…because some people are so green it doesn’t matter what they burn.)
There’s something about a boat-trip which makes coal less naughty. Go figure. It’s like this whole green shebang was never about carbon or climate.
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Mr Fitz will be in soon, to defend the indefensible.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-09/mt-nardi-fire-community-defenders/11766036
Aunty won’t give up without a fight, but ultimately the old girl is going to be roasted by the Murdochs.
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All that Lantana is not helping. I noticed also that the fires look largely in sclerophyll forest. I will check this area out soon.
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Yes, the Lantana that your local council will fine you for not clearing but which literally covers much of state and council land. Hypocrites.
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Who is Mr Fitz?
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If the cap fits, you wear it.
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In my script Mr Fitz is the new teacher who has to contend with a class of very naughty students. We are all google masters and in revolt against the status quo, its a comedy.
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Yes, reading this article I remember well hiking some of the National Park trails from the Mt. Nadia Picnic Area in the ’90s and being struck then at the amount of Sclerophyferous forest, especially on the ridgelines above valleys, such as Tuntable Creek: site of one of the first “communes” in the 1970s that turned the grassy paddocks of a former dairy farm into an overgrown valley, choked with Lantana and Crofton Weed, a fact commented-on by Don Burke when he did a 1993 Special Episode of Burke’s Backyard “20 years after the Aquarius Festival”
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Terania Creek rainforest mentioned in the article is the same rainforest that burnt out completely in 980AD, as I pointed out the other day.
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Reinventing the wheel.
This is how my grandfathers ‘ generation formed the Brigades that were cooped to form the RFS in 1997. Communities self-organising for mutual self-defence.
It is disappointing that the RFS has strayed so far from its roots.
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Yes it all went downhill, especially after Koperberg became a media star in the Jan ’94 fires. The bureaucrats got their claws into the brigades and needed bigger, more disastrous fires to justify building their RFS empire. Over the years the fire-fighting gear got better, but that led to centralised control. Gone were the wet chaff bags and knapsacks; gone also was independent, local management of fires by the people who lived in an area and knew it intimately.
Our gear in the 60s consisted of a tanker on an old WW2 Blitz that used to get stuck in gear at the worst moments. Someone had to get underneath and take a hammer to the gearbox to jar it into/out of gear with a fire racing towards them. There were 3 or 4 dedicated fire trailers scattered strategically throughout the district in haysheds. The Blitz got rolled by the local copper on the way to a fire in the early 70s. From memory they got a better truck after that, paid for by the locals.
Now they have 2 big shiny tankers with all the trimmings, flash uniforms and a flash fire station, but no independence. He who holds the purse strings at head office also holds the power over the brigade’s activities.
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Without direct experience, in Victoria it seems to be all about the money. The Metropolitan units are union members. The last time there was a fracas in Victoria, it was about forcing all the volunteers compulsorily into the Union, which meant $600 a year for the privilege of risking your life without wages. For the union,the addition of 60,000 volunteers at $600 each means $36Million a year for holidays in Thailand. The days when Unions were volunteer organizations fighting for better conditions are long gone. It is about the Union management getting rich and unaccountable.
We had this at University. You had to pay $600 a year to join the Union, which was a huge amount of cash at the time , so I had to work a summer job to save to pay the Union. For this you received nothing at all. With scholarships the government would give you free education but you had to pay the $600 yourself. It made the Student Union management rich, as with all Unions. Rich and unaccountable. After all, its their money. A gift.
It’s been a long time since Unions fought for workers rights, as Dr. Peter Ridd found in his epic fight against JCU although they have belatedly joined the action after he won on his own.
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I recall the old Blitz truck *(we had 2) had crash gearbox and ya had to get the right revs up to change gear.No good in hilly country.
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A story of such Ford gearboxes from one who was there.
WW2, North Africa and a desperate shortage of transport drivers. By regulation it was permissible to “snick” a little on a gear change.
A timber carter gave it a go. He could change without “snick” without the clutch and was thereby failed.
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It is quite interesting that the ABC has changed its tack on controlled burning.Hmmm I just wonder maybe it has something to do with the “flavour of the month”book
Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe in which he states that aboriginal fire practices produced parkland like forrests and had minimal impact on wildlife .I’m also sure that this change
has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the ABC (Australian Brainwashing Corporation) is about to produce a multi -part documentary on Bruce Pascoe’s book.
Cheers Mike Reed
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According to Jo: The ABC reporter interviewed an aboriginal and a koala expert. Did the reporter interview any koalas? They’re an indigenous species too and just might have an opinion … after all 97% of scientists have. I bet the book wasn’t even mentioned.
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<ridicule>
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ….
My comment 10.1 …is awaiting, moderation.
ROTFL
That script is now worse than the abc! And that’s a fact!
🙂 🙂 🙂
</ridicule>
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It must be bored … not enough to do.
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Hey, I have only gone into “moderation” once since my short break, and that was because of a link, I think.
You must be being a very naughty boy. 😉
Just email support AT joannenova.com.au (its on the left side frame just above the statistics.) They will get to it when they can.
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right side frame, not left !! DOH !!
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Thanks Andy — I am aware of that.
I don’t usually bother chasing, because the moderation on this blog is pretty darned good.
Anything drops in, it’s usually fixed in good time.
(take a bow mods! you’re actually appreciated).
That one just triggered my sense of the ridiculous …
and I had to have a laugh … and try and share it. (Note the pseudo-tags 🙂
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Because of the vilification laws in this country we cannot mention the name of some racial groups, even if they have been in Australia for 60,000 years.
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I think the major words are *boriginal, *slam, *uslim. Every other religion and race is fine. I suppose it is meant to be a blog on science but considering climate change, *boriginals, *uslims and politically correct thinking are all the same basket of ABC ‘received opinion’ science and history and culture, it’s hard not to mention them in context. Especially when the *boriginals torched the place 50,000 years ago and halved the rainfall and utterly wiped out all the mega marsupials and now are revered as caretakers of the land? I would have put them down as the apex predator which utterly devastated the place. It would be nice to see the occasional giant wombat. And I do not think burning the place to the ground regularly is a good solution either.
A good friend says that at least they survived 50,000 years, but so did we. And we’ve improved the place a bit.
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And if you want your forests or even gardens to look nice and not destroy lives and property, it pays to do some serious pruning of overgrowth in the winter. What passes for Green caretaking is in fact ignorant and devastating and culpable neglect.
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Nope. That doesn’t work either, notwithstanding that it did at 36.1 and 36.4 below.
sophocles must be on the black list.
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The script is not the problem. The problem is Section 18C and in Australia, the lack of any right to free speech.
The other problem is that there are 30,000 comments in the spam file since the start of September. Behind the scenes there are multiple scripts trying to pick human from robot as well as to look out for legal issues.
Comments about moderation may disappear at any time….
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Thanks for the added enlightenment, Jo.
I’m not at all surprised about the size of the spam file — in fact, from some past experience I had with an email server nearly 2 decades ago, it seems to be on the small side, which means you and yours are efficient!
NZ is like Aus when it comes to speech: we have a “Human Rights Act” — which doesn’t even compare with the US’s Constitution, having several notable omissions, like freedom of speech, some rather … unpleasant … umm “other” laws, and in its entirety, it reads like a clump of tepid and soggy tea leaves. (The HMNZG politicians had a chance to do good and they failed.)
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Apropos that “American Thinker” had this to say recently:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/12/new_zealand_not_the_paradise_americans_think_it_is.html
Read on. (And that’s not Kieran).
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Pascoe has been shown up as a fabricator of history…. but there are good sources that have been saying this for decades. Gammage has the highest profile, although I believe he romanticised. I favour Eric Rolls.
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The romanticization, even fabrication of *boriginal culture is out of hand. Agriculture was only discovered 10,000 years ago in the rest of the world and changed everything. Then paper, ink, cheese, wine, metals. Fossil fuels are very recent too with the discovery of fractioning in the 1850s. The Romans grew millions of Olive trees for the oil, which they used for light at night. Fossil fuels saved the forests of Europe with the discovery of coke instead of charcoal. It seems that Finland was completely stripped of trees and there is no tree over 200 years old. Still we are being told *borigines had it all and fossil fuels are the work of the devil. There is almost no part of the amazing quality of modern life for which fossil fuels is not responsible.
But then there are *boriginal solar panels, a surprising innovation. Made from a couple of leaves and twigs. One of the many *boriginal technologies, like writing.
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And ultimately oil saved the whales as well, not Greenpeace. Sure as Dr. Patrick Moore said, some kept going unnecessarily and he was instrumental in shutting them down in Australia, but hunting whales for oil was no longer either necessary nor economic.
The list of good from fossil fuels is endless. Trust the socialists who hate Western Democracies to hit at the very root of Western success, cheap plentiful energy. Any anyone who thinks Socialism is an alternative form of democracy with equality for all can look at Venezuela or Cuba or Nazi Germany or Stalin’s Russia or East Germany as it was. Today’s black shirted Anti Fascists are the Fascists. Like the Greens, its all about power. Their power.
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There is a lot to dislike about the politicisation of pre-European history.
The most sensible narrative was Geoffrey Blainey’s….. that @boriginals were human beings, working within the constraints that existed at the time.
The cost of romanticism is that it views burning as something other than a set of skills that any sensible person can learn and use.
90
Oil and coal cleaned up the large cities, saving them from drowning in equine effluent. They enabled citizens/residents of those cities to enjoy much higher levels of good health from that cleanup and the large reduction in the rat population it effected. We can thank the automobile and trucks for that along with efficient sewerage systems.
40
Not sure whether Bruce Pascoe should be seen as a “Fauxboriginal” or Australia’s latest Helen Demidenko, but either way he appears to have exceptional lilly gilding and long bow drawing skills.
And of course their ABC and SBS just lap it up without question.
Peter O’Brien over at Quadrant has written his assessment of Mr Pascoe’s fantasy, and has (very quickly it would seem) written his own book on the matter ….. aptly named “Bitter Harvest”
https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2019/12/the-bogus-aboriginal-world-of-bruce-pascoe/
00
[…] Jo Nova flags a flip on the ABC and the Sydney Morning Herald re the cause of fires. […]
10
In the US action against the electricity provider nearly bankrupted it, whilst the greenies escaped all blame for the intensity of the California fires. So whilst it is someone who lights a fire who is primarily to blame it is the greenie policies of local councils that makes those fires so damaging and lethal. I think it would be hugely beneficial if local councils both here and the US faced legal and financial consequences for the losses that people have suffered in these fires. This would very quickly encourage more prudent fire management practices in countries where bushfires are a constant risk.
170
Well put.
Yes, criminal firebugs start fires and they should be punished as a deterrent.
Unfortunately, they should not be the main focus and in some sense they’re a distraction from the main issue which is Surviving fires when they start.
Regular, small pre-emptive hazard reduction, “cool” burns must be done if we want to survive in the real world.
Failure or refusal to implement such control measures leads to more extensive, more intense fires that incinerate more animals and endanger those trying to stop the fire.
No lessons were learnt from the 173 deaths in the Victorian tragedy.
Government mismanagement led to those deaths and is responsible for the extent and intensity of current fires which have also caused deaths and injury.
The link between this carnage and negligent government must be made public and perhaps even those responsible could be charged.
173 KK
150
There’s a double standard in NSW.
If the RFS identify private land that is an obvious fire hazard, we can legally require the landowner to do something about that. If they refuse, we can get it done and send them the bill.
Government land is another matter.
130
I’ve just met a situation in Qld where it seems potential fodder for traveling stock over-rules a fire permit for burning off on crown land around the town.
More when I know more
60
We consider grazing to be HR. Most Travelling Stock Reserves are grazed prior to the fire season. If there are no travelling stock, then by arrangement with local landholders.
But this is a different state.
60
The Impact Of Fires: an historical perspective from the 1990s
http://www.anpsa.org.au/APOL3/sep96-1.html
60
Of course it is now too hot for controlled burning programmes, the extreme warming hoaxers claim.
60
They’re delusional.
Their IPCC tells us that “The total increase between the average of the 1850–1900 period and the 2003–2012 period is 0.78 [0.72 to 0.85] °C, based on the single longest dataset available (see Figure SPM.1). {2.4}”
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf
A mere 0.78 C° over 132 years.
They’re delusional.
70
SSam
…and this is how they do it?
Original raw data for Darwin up to 2010.
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/show_station.cgi?id=501941200004&dt=1&ds=1
Cooling climate.
New adjusted.homogenised/cleaned data for Darwin after temp plateau scare.
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/stdata_show_v4.cgi?id=ASN00014015&ds=14&dt=1
Warming climate.
Easy to get up to 0.78C. And there are many more examples like this.
BoM itself has increased all annual means since at least 1995 by around 0.1C – why? Weren’t the ethermometers accurate enough or weren’t they giving the required result?
70
Thanks Sam, I have copied this over to donaitkin.com, to stir up a “true believer” who keeps telling us the rate is much higher, and “we are all doomed, doomed!”
20
Good point – what is the link/details of them saying “we are all doomed, doomed!”
00
Skeptical Sam
Your calculations look wrong to me. If the average of two subsets differ by 0.78 degrees this does not mean that the total change is 0.78 degrees.
Do you agree?
It looks like this misunderstanding has been spread.
00
Kevin85,
Good point.
Unfortunately the IPCC doesn’t give the data sets for the two calculated averages.
The 50 year average (1850 – 1900) data set must have temps higher than the average within it and possibly even higher than present temps. You can understand why the IPCC doesn’t want that to be published under its imprimatur. Clearly, that average must must be calculated from temps that are both higher and lower than the average.
Just another IPCC porky?
Anyway, the 0.78 C° is very good for pricking the pomposity of the alarmists who insist that doom is just around the corner.
10
Great reading : a long term historical perspective
Going back millions of years.
I wonder how many Greenies have ver read this ?
Bugger all I suspect
50
Bill
Seems if you are “woke” that reading is so “yesterday”
20
It appears it’s all wishful thinking thanks to Turnbull’s outburst on ABC. He lashed out at Morrison’s government blaming him and the others on the “right” for being climate change sceptics. Morrison now has to go on the front foot and lash out double time against Turnbull to make sure there is no attempt of the left within the LNP to regain control.
230
Poor Mr Turnbull, Always on the wrong side.
Conned his way to being Liberal leader, while all the time being a far-leftist psychophant.
Yet refused entry into the far-left Labor ranks.
Such a sad, sorry, pathetic little man, you ought to just fade away.
270
Ably assisted by the other LINOS.
180
Yes, but not so many LINO left in positions of power now, consider that PM Morrison prevailed with his support for Jim Molan to fill the Senate vacancy, he was previously handicapped by the LINO BH faction and in a position on the ballot paper at the May 2019 election he could not win a seat from.
The Abbott Government policy of cutting back government departments, defunding non-government organisations and removing red and green tape is underway again, “back to basics” in state public education is being implemented as the NSW Premier recently announced and other Morrison Government reforms and policies.
220
Andrew Bolt names the remaining LINOS. Trent Zimmerman, Simon Birmingham and Paul Fletcher.
120
I expect to see Mr T next leader of the opposition.
60
I hope so. That way it will prove to everyone else he was always a mole to try and turn the LNP into another left leaning party, which we already knew.
20
He already is. It’s a party of one.
He’s the leader.
It doesn’t have a seat.
10
Apparently there are billions of dollars of investment (wind, solar, etc) held up by the federal government’s lack of climate change emergency focus.
The Born Lucky people are becoming nervous as the federal government winds down subsidies, plans legislation to force more competition in the electricity sector and seeks to promote reliable power station generators including a committee reconsidering nuclear (modular) generators.
Of course the power station/modular unit generators cannot go ahead without state government planning approval, etc., but it appears that the renewables industry is worried and spokesman Turnbull is not happy. After all nuclear is emissions free and far more reliable that “farms”.
240
Dennis:
And Alice Springs being blacked out for up to 10 hours because a cloud drastically reduced solar supply.
The solution suggested by the current lot in power is for more solar.
110
Maybe we’ll now see a drop in the number of fires lit.
40
After the 2009 Victorian bushfires the Royal Commission recommended that the government quadruple the amount of proscribed burning.
Since 1939, there have been at least 18 major bushfire inquiries in Australia, including state and federal parliamentary committee inquiries, COAG reports, coronial inquiries and Royal Commissions.
A common theme is the importance of prevention and mitigation activities before fires occur: including protective burning/fuel reduction (both in the landscape and around assets).
No doubt there will be more investigations into the Qld and NSW fires, but will we ever learn?
170
And a further little gem from that report: “local knowledge and experience is being ignored by an increasingly top heavy bureaucracy.”
160
Isn’t state government controlled local government councils the main problem, they issue burning and clearing permits.
An interesting situation at NSW Mid Coast Council, the Mayor is a volunteer firefighter and former police officer and he has spoken passionately about the neglect of the bush that allowed too much fuel to develop and about indigenous seasonal burning. The Deputy Mayor at the height of the bushfire crisis signed the climate emergency letter. The Mayor when asked replied that if people take notice of emergency to look after the land better than we have been then he supports an emergency being called.
During 2018 a volunteer fire fighter in the council area told me about a serious fire that had taken place where permit to burn was not granted in 2017.
There are Greens in local government and many pretend to be independent candidates at council elections, one council on the Central Coast north of Sydney is now controlled by an indecent group of councillors, their campaign logo was obviously Greens but not so named.
160
Opps, “independent” group of councillors.
lol
60
This is a very important point, because they have little real power we tend to ignore council elections in terms of ensuring the ideological straitjacket isn’t being imposed on us forgetting that councillors have power over land use. When we go to council elections we need to make sure we choose pro-development (economically sensible) councillors who care about people, and don’t accidentally put some greenie neanderthal in charge.
100
Green Councils for Agenda 21. It’s pervasive.
https://beththeserf.wordpress.com/2018/11/01/55th-edition-serf-under_ground-journal/
100
In all but one Coronal inquiries Australia wide, only one did not recommend increasing hazard reduction burning. The recommendations were in the range of 8 to 10% of the vegetated area. This will give rise a mosaic of fuel loads.
Western Australia have woken up to themselves and have gone back to the practices of the 70-90s. It is time for the east coast states to do the same.
110
There’s still plenty of koalas. Koalas are a novelty for tourists, city dwellers, ABC agitprop and suburbanites. However, for us country yokels, the koala cuteness coefficient soon falls close to zero when their mating time coincides with human sleep needs. The coarse growling of the male combined with the high pitched squealing of the female is infuriating for the sleep deprived.
90
A.B.C. were the last to find out,
What the skeptics for years knew about,
That when embers from hell,
On dried kindling fell,
Spreading bushfires were never in doubt.
190
“the Sydney moaning hypocrite” and the truth, an unlikely pairing <:o)
80
Angus Taylor is off to Madrid with a bag full of Kyoto carbon credits and the SMH is not happy, this from today’s editorial. They lie like a pig in mud.
‘The UN says countries must – at a minimum – stick to their existing promises. Ideally, they must cut faster if there is to be any chance of keeping the rise in global temperatures to below 2 degrees. A higher rise in temperature would turn the forests of NSW and Victoria to cinders and obliterate most coral reefs everywhere.’
80
White Island — Whakaari — erupted in the weekend. Apparently a cruise ship had landed passengers, a few short of 50, on the island. It’s about 350km south east of Auckland, and c. 50km off the coast from Tauranga – Whakatane (NI east coast). I was (mechanically) razing grass at that time — didn’t want embers from Oz setting fire to it :-). Didn’t feel any earth tremors.,
The island was last `clearing its tubes’ in 2016.
Sadly, it killed at least 5 people. Most, including the dead, were taken off successfully. My condolences to the friends and families of those killed.
Apparently some visitors were seen walking down into the crater. There were a few still missing at the time it hit our news services. (I’m not particularly up to date.) Some were Australians. According to this article there were about 20 Australians. A cruise ship Ovation of the Seas, was “on the island.” Clever trick if true. I’ve sailed around it but that was on a Navy frigate and it didn’t try parking there.
Anyone going into the crater of an active volcano at this part of the solar cycle, is offering themselves as a target/sacrificial-victim to the volcano gods. Whakaari has been the subject of heightened alert for months now. That little volcano loves throwing rocks — lava-bombs too.
Given the current high levels of Galactic Cosmic Rays because of the low solar activity, I can’t say I’m surprised. It’s the country’s most active volcano and GCRs are ground penetrant and do heat magma chambers. (Campi Flegrei — Naples — and Yellowstone — North America — have also been fizzing over the last decade) My attention has been on the central North Island volcanoes: Egmont, Ngaruhoe and Tarawera which have a lot of monitoring instrumentation. They are part of the same field as Whakaari (White Island). So far, there’s been no news from those quarters.
Tarawera seems to like hikers, Egmont skiers. Ngaruhoe just sits and smokes and Whakaari throws rocks at helicopters. They are Active Volcanoes and just because they aren’t flinging stuff around right now means nothing — they are temperamental and dangerous.
I had better start watching Taranaki too. It’s still asleep, so far, and so is Taupo.
130
Pompeii award, rather than a Darwin award ?
140
🙂
30
Gisborne’s just had a 5.3 rumble this arvo, 29 km deep.
Only 7 days to go (of a spotless sun) and 2019 will take out the award for the Deepest Solar Minimum of not only the Space Age but also the last 106 years.
How can Gutteres’ Gang at the UN tax the sun for being such an impudent non-believer in Mann-made Gibberish? How long is a piece of carbon fibre…
https://www.spaceweather.com
110
A few more deaths reported this morning. No sign of life on the island. The cruise ship wasn’t at the island – a company runs tours from the closest port out to the island. This company has also lost its young tour director. Sad.
50
heard this raspberry story being previewed on ABC last nite. no way can I find it, however I search – not even on the Hobart Mercury website:
paraphrasing:
1h50m20s to 1h51m10s: What the papers say: ABC’s Philip Clark: Tassie’s raspberry season is off to a slow start. that’s no good, there ain’t nothing better than fresh Tassie raspberries.
Hobart Mercury: yes, and that’s because it’s been very cold, in the past couple of weeks and months. Richard Clark, raspberry farmer in the Derwent Valley, said soil temperatures were 4C lower at the end of November than the readings were at the end of October. it actually got colder. Mr. Clark said they were having one of their latest ever starts to the season – the cold weather in November had held up all the fruit ripening by at least two weeks. early December was bitterly cold & windy, hovering around 10 to 12C days. Philip Clark not interested in the cold, just thinking of more raspberries might come eventually.
3h02m to 3h37m: Issue of the Day: should Australia’s fossil fuel export emissions be counted? ABC’s Clark shoots down caller’s concern about blackouts in Vic this summer, because we have a national grid to help out. but what happened in SA, asks the caller. just an accident, stuff got blown down, says Clark.
AUDIO: 3h54m: 9 Dec: ABC Nightlife with Philip Clark
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/nightlife/nightlife/11758752
110
Gees, I hope they have enough raspberries by Taste of Tassie time. 🙂
My regular visit-the-family time.
100
Head into the Snowy Mountains National Park former grasslands grazing areas now banned from use, lots of blackberry bushes there and spreading along with other undergrowth potential fire fuel hazards.
90
We could always blow them (the ABC) one, I suppose.
60
Phillip Clark is a younger version of Phillip Adams
Between the two of them they hold us all captive to
Greenist BS on ABC radio every night after 10.00 pm
70
If you don’t have controlled burns you will have uncontrolled burns.
200
And burning must be planned over the long term, not hit and miss permitted when council/government bureaucrats deem it acceptable.
120
Climate change or not climate change:
The ONLY factor that we can have short term human influence on is fuel load.
We MAY have some way to influence temperature in the future, but there’s no talk of a reduction in that within the next 100 years.
And I think it’s pretty clear we can’t create rainfall, influence the duration of droughts, control wind or control relative humidity.
That leaves controlled grazing, selective logging (with its resultant fire access tracks and firebreaks and noxious weed control), firewood gathering ….. and CONTROLLED BURNING.
And for those who say the window for burning is too short some years: that’s why you need an established program of doing some EVERY year.
And, most I importantly: burn off decisions must be made at a LOCAL level. Central Soviet style administration taking months to make decisions is an obvious debacle when conditions are different in every area, and change daily.
120
‘We MAY have some way to influence temperature in the future …’
Highly unlikely, the system is solar driven.
70
Old farts talking about how things have gone to the dogs after they retired, ever so Science! [Tread lightly. I’m just as likely to stomp all over you for getting out of line as I was to stomp on AndyG55.] AZ
For example: IPCC use 10 years as an average for CWD (coarse woody debris) decay, the CSIRO use 5-90 years, depending on veg type, average temp, and diameter of the wood..
So to say that there is 20 years of build up is nonsense, as from the moment CWD forms it is being broken down by termites, bacteria etc.
We could, of course, pave the planet, that would work.
314
See #35,
38
In the context of fires, 20 years of build up means 20 years of fuel growth without a fire.
What’s the rotation time for NSW forestry — how many years is it Peter?
130
Around here the stated aim is 20 years, but in actual terms it is double that, as their projections never match reality. Please note: there is a lot of fuel build up in a state forest (and in national parks – but in NP’s for a different reason). Firstly the practice of clear felling means that there is a lot of undesirable regrowth (woody weeds in forestry parlance), then there is the removal of undesirable side branches (reduce knots in the final product) and then there is thinning (to maintain growth rates on healthy trees) . All this contributes to the fuel load on the forest floor.
But…
Case one: small diameter CWD high average temps – you might see break down in 5 years, meaning that none of the fuel is more than five years old
Case two: large diameter CWD, low average temp (like the Tarkine eg) – 90 years to break down
28
Now try that with a lump of mulga
50
“but in actual terms it is double that”
So 40 years of fuel build-up
And CWD only works if there is sufficient moisture.
Bonfire, waiting to happen !!
Stop trying so desperately and pitifully to distract from the facts, PF
We know they hurt your greenie little mind.
90
So back to ad homs, is that the best you can do?
08
Another non-evidence post from the little pseudo-greenie.
Getting desperate, hey PF ! 😉
[Andy, he baits you whenever he can. You have no reason to take the bait. Honestly, you can hold your own against him on your terms not his.] AZ
70
Funny that you think being referred to as a “greenie” is an ad hom 😉
Understandable. !
70
…. But Fitz’ real problem is that the fuel is there.
His theory says it shouldn’t be there, but it is. Maybe he should go tell it to the Koalas.
100
Yep the fuel is there all right. Or it was until last week, down here. 🙂
So, yet again the observations undermine Peter’s hypothesis.
Clearly, he is no scientist whatever his qualifications might be.
To be a scientist you need more than a couple of bits of paper from a left-leaning academy.
You need to have internalized the process of scientific thinking. The scientific method.
Unfortunately, Peter Fitzroy has not passed that test yet. He allows the green propaganda and disinformation to dull his critical faculties.
90
Love a good anti intellectual rant, you thinks this up yourself, or are you quoting a shock jock?
As I keep repeating, fuel is only part of the picture. But simplistic solutions are so attractive to simpltens
012
“Love a good anti intellectual rant”
We had noted that in all your comments, PF
Very little sign of any intellect in any of them.
Only simpleton here is you, PF.
You can’t even produce any scientific evidence for warming by atmospheric CO2.
But your handlers tell you what to believe.. so you do.
“Simple Jack” has nothing on you.
80
To be a scientist you need more than a couple of bits of paper from a left-leaning academy.
You need to have internalized the process of scientific thinking. The scientific method.
Other than “a left-leaning” (replace with “an academy”), there is nothing wrong with that comment.
50
Ad homs are welcome Peter.
It proves you have lost the debate.
Try thinking instead.
🙂
10
It is still 20 years of build up, PF
Or more.
Still massive dry fuel-loads, just waiting for adverse weather conditions.
And again, you produce a complete lack of any science.
111
Your own source of authority seems to think that it is anything but “nonsense”
The other fallacy in your argument is the idea that debris is the only fuel.
Scrub, is a major source of what we refer to as “ladder fuels”. Elevated fine fuels which carry the fire from the forest floor up into the canopy.
In drought – which we measure as soil dryness – shallow-rooted scrub becomes moisture-deficient before the deep-rooted dominant canopy species.. Under these conditions, a larger proportion of the leaf and fine twig die on the stem, while remaing “green” leaf and fine twig also become
available fuel.
This is why proper fuel management REQUIRES changing the species mix, instead of pretending that long unburnt forests represents some kind of ideal.
120
If you had bothered to read the link, you would have seen the full picture, which did include soil moisture, which as you know, I have referred to on many previous occasions.
The point I was making, and which you are ignoring is that wood rots, decomposes, is eaten by detritivores – I repeat to say there is 20 years of build up is nonsense. This is easily proved, once you get away from the edge of most forest types, there is little fuel on the ground. Even your wood shrubs are absent.
Just once – read what I post with both eyes open.
111
You’d better come down to the south coast of NSW and take a good hard look Peter. And be quick about it before the next lot goes up.
There’s impassable undergrowth and dead wood, leaf-litter, branches and the like. It’s been there building up for twenty years. I walk through it (or did before it became almost impassable) most years. The old forestry tracks are all overgrown, the access ways across the creeks are all “gullied out”, the has been bugger all cool-burning undertaken, the gates are locked and the fire trails are useless.
If I had the facility to post some photos on this site I’d show you exactly what it looks like.
I doubt even that would make you open your eyes and your mind though.
120
Then you should be asking why? up here all the forestry tracks are open, graded and ready to go, and well marked on every GPS. As to the fuel load, I’ll take your word. but as PeterW is wont to harp, there is more than just the fuel load at play here.
Soil moisture, vegetation type, aspect, soil type, previous season rainfall time since last burn…. etc
(hint – climate changes is making it worse)
014
“climate changes is making it worse”
LOL, There you go with that anti-science parrot-like regurgitation of yours, again.
There is no evidence of human caused global climate change.
You have never been able to produce any.
You know the drought is because of cold oceans above and below Australia
You know that drought is a regular occurrence in Australia.
You know the intensity of the fires is because of the build-up of fuel load due to bad “environmental” practices brought about by the greenie agenda..
But you just ignore those basic facts in a pathetic attempt to push some of your anti-science garbage.
It really is getting quite childish.
But its all you have in your life, isn’t it PF.
So sad.
80
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/GM029p0187
T.W. Anderson, M. Boyko-Diakonow, R.W. Mathewes, J.V. Matthews, J.H. McAndrews, R.J. Mott, P.J.H. Richard, J.C. Ritchie and C.E. Schweger, Quaternary Environments in Canada as Documented by Paleobotanical Case Histories, Quaternary Geology of Canada and Greenland, 10.1130/DNAG-GNA-K1.481, (481-539), (1989).
J.A. Heginbottom, Applied Quaternary Geology in Canada, Quaternary Geology of Canada and Greenland, 10.1130/DNAG-GNA-K1.479, (479-480), (1989).
M. Hantel, 12.5 References for 12, Climatology. Part 2, 10.1007/10367682_16, (105-116), (1989).
R. E. Munn, The design of integrated monitoring systems to provide early indications of environmental/ecological changes, Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 10.1007/BF00394670, 11, 3, (203-217), (1988).
John G. Lockwood, Climate and Climatic Variability in Semi-Arid Regions at Low Latitudes, The Impact of Climatic Variations on Agriculture, 10.1007/978-94-009-2967-8_3, (85-120), (1988).
John G. Lockwood, Climate and Climatic Variability in Semi-Arid Regions at Low Latitudes, The Impact of Climatic Variations on Agriculture, 10.1007/978-94-009-2965-4_3, (85-120), (1988).
Wilfrid Bach, Development of Climatic Scenarios: A. From General Circulation Models, The Impact of Climatic Variations on Agriculture, 10.1007/978-94-009-2943-2_3, (125-157), (1988).
Ellsworth F. LeDrew, Sensitivity of the Arctic Climate: A Factor in Developing Planning Strategies for Our Arctic Heritage, Environmental Conservation, 10.1017/S0376892900036262, 13, 03, (215), (2009).
06
First link .. “if models” .. blah blah
Its a load of wishing ifs and buts.. Did you even read it comprehend it ????
Not evidence of anything.
Rest is just a cut and paste regurgitation of links from somewhere, none of which you have read at all..
And you can’t even post proper links..
… how inept and ignorant of you.
Bet you can’t point out one piece of empirical science showing warming by atmospheric CO2 in those links.
They are your links.. Show us where that evidence is in the links..
Or just run and hide as always.
We are waiting.
And we will keep waiting, while you continue to produce absolutely nothing except garbage.
30
All in all, that was probably your most pathetic attempt EVER of producing evidence
A random load of irrelevant links.
You really are getting desperate, aren’t you PF. !
40
Just another of Peter’s now famous Gish gallops.
20
I “harp” because you lie and deny.
Everything that I listed is empirically and experimentally verified.
…….. unlike your constant invocation of climate change.
80
then link to it
07
LOL, PF asks for links.
Yet all he can manage is random copy/paste lists which he has never read and could never comprehend anyway.
So funny. 😎
21
Don’t lie, Fitz.
Firstly, you called “nonsense” the CSIRO assessment that debris cycling can take considerably more than 20 years… an assessment that you quoted, but pretended doesn’t exist.
You also use the term “might”, then continue to argue as though it is established fact.
Then you attempt to talk about debris as though it is the only measure of fuel loading. This is not about what might be behind the link, but about you ignoring it until you are called out.
So the fuel is still there. Or do you think that it is CO2 that is burning?
100
I did say 5-90 years
17
Ummm …. the important factor in this land of drought and flooding rains, cycles of five years wet and five years dry are clear to see.
Droughty times and strong winds produce catastrophic bushfire conditions, destroying everything including the rotten wood.
80
…… and then contradicted yourself by claiming that over 20 years was ridiculous.
You couldn’t lie straight in bed.
70
I also said depending on the those factors in the article.
06
Dishonesty, PF
The only thing you have left to you.
40
So up to 90 years of built-up fire load. !
WOW
Shoot yourself in the other foot, PF
80
I ran the decomposition numbers through a simple amortisation spreadsheet, with 100% additional fuel deposition each year. I assumed zero fuel at the start and straight-line amortisation, the same each year.
Firstly I used the IPCC figure of 10 years for fuel to decay to zero. At Year 10 the fuel level had stabilised at 550% of the annual new fuel deposition rate. So using those generous assumptions you would have 5½ years’ worth of fuel on the ground at any time.
Actual figures for Karri forest for instance (just decay times for small branches — not trunks) range from 17 to 136 years, with Jarrah at 45 years. Contact with the ground or burial will virtually halve decomposition time, but the more fuel builds up, the more it is held clear of ground contact, so there’s probably a logarithmic effect there but we’ll ignore that.
http://www.fullcam.com/FullCAMServer/Help/reps/TR6%20The%20Decay%20of%20Coarse%20Woody%20Debris.pdf
I used 50 years for the next scenario. At the 20 year mark fuel levels were 1620% of annual deposition and climbing. At 25 years, which was as far as I ran the sheet, it was 1900% and still climbing.
The difference it would seem, is largely academic. Like arguing over whether you were nuked by an 80 kilotonne device or a 100 kilotonne device — you’re just as dead.
50
Haha Fitzy old mate you’ve been bleating on here for weeks how reduction of fuel loads in the bush is useless to stop intense bush fires then your ABC comes out and sheepishly admits it does!
Sorry to sound a bit smug but [snip]
80
have it your way Yonnistone – how much reduction would you have implemented?
07
Yet it doesn’t matter according to you remember?
The undergrowth was all cleared but climate change made it catastrophic anyway blah blah blah.
80
Folklore? good on you
05
Folk fairy tales is all you ever manage, PF.
No empirical evidence of warming by atmospheric CO2
And no, don’t post another random irrelevant zero-content list of propaganda links.
Its petty and tiresome.
30
Joni Mitchell put it better than you ever can, Mr. Fitzroy
Joni Mitchell, 1970, Big Yellow Taxi
[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJIuP7zEVeM ]
30
Thanks Jo,
It’s always pleasing when you’re able to use something I find. Unfortunately, this one may be only a small light at the end of a long tunnel, as today’s SMH includes an article by Bob Carr proclaiming his warmist view. And on the other hand a letter I sent in yesterday was not published.
…
The Bob Carr story:
http://www.smh.com.au/national/a-sydney-circled-by-fire-could-never-have-hosted-the-olympics-20191207-p53hva.html?btis
…
And my letter:
(The second word, “today”, refers to Monday December 9.)
In today’s Letters Charles Hargrave asks ” Could someone please explain how more than two million hectares have been burnt if assets are sufficient? ”
The answer is quite clear: the fires have been “unstoppable”, a term used by some firies and also by some researchers. “Unstoppable” because the fuel loads within the fire zones are too large and produce extreme fire intensities. The source of those fuel loads is the accumulation of plant debris within the line of National Parks east of the Great Divide and the mismanagement of the resultant fuel load by NPWS. Add in Council regulations which prevent protective clearing and the current catastrophe was predictable, which it was.
So, “sufficient” is correct. No amount of people or equipment could have stopped these fires once they got going. The fuel load needs constant reduction over years.
Dave Beach
Cooyal
…
80
Labor Premier Bob who with friends borrowed government department helicopters and pilots to fly them into NSW wilderness areas for their weekend bush walks.
I was not aware that in addition to a taxpayer funded limousine and driver that helicopters were part of the remuneration package. And Premier Bob arranged for himself after retiring from Parliament for the car and driver to become part of his retirement plan, the first NSW Premier to have that benefit.
30
heard this on an ABC news bulletin this morning. BoM emphasised high temps, but then mentioned strong northwesterly winds…and it ended right there, without any mention of the following:
10 Dec: ABC: Fire Weather Warning Greater Hunter, Sydney, Illawarra/Shoalhaven, Monaro Alpine, Sthn Ranges, Cent Ranges, Sthn Slopes & Eastern Riverina
Issued on: Tuesday 10 December 2019, 5:06:00 am (AEST)
Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology, New South Wales
***Hot dry northwesterly winds across New South Wales ***will cause dangerous fire weather on Tuesday ahead of a cooler southwest to southerly change spreading through the west and southeast during the day…
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/sydney/weather/warnings/
50
on reflection, it could have been RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons – and not a BoM spokesman – I heard on the ABC news bulletin.
40
The same people (2 of them interviewed by the ABC)in the 1990s campaigned for State Forests to stop hazard reduction burning.
40
Jo, sorry but you may be just talking about ABC WA, no such thing on ABC TAS. On RN this morning, 10 Dec, Hamish McDonald and his political commentator PVO were banging on about fires and “climate change”. Please, please, please stop saying “climate change” and go back to Alarming/Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming or just say “do you mean Global Warming” every single time someone uses “climate change” otherwise we just play the Warmers game.
30
Peter, The youtube news is “ABC NEws Australia”. I guess the message hasn’t made it to all corners of the ABC yet.
Re Climate Change, I understand. I’ve long fought against their vague ambiguous language. I switch between terms, but here I’m discussing the ABC’s use of the term to mark a shift in their language.
Bear in mind, keywords in headlines matter for search engines. Not many people searching for “Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming”.
80
ICYMI: Profiling The Greens Adam Bandt – from the new master, Johannes Leak.
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2019/11/profiling-the-greens-adam-bandt-from-the-new-master-johannes-leak.html
… and David Rowe’s cartoon of Scomo with buckets of ‘thoughts and prayers.
If Scomo had a wind turbine and a solar panel in each hand, would they be more effective?
https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/thoughts-prayers-wont-cut-it-as-catastrophic-fires-blaze/ (scroll down to cartoon)
50
10 Dec: ABC: Sydney smoke at its ‘worst ever’ with air pollution in some areas seven times ‘hazardous’ threshold
By Paige Cockburn
Updated 17 minutes ago
While smoke has been near-permanent fixture in Sydney this bushfire season, people took to social media today to lament the “worst” air quality they had seen.
“I’ve never seen Sydney like this before,” Lisa Herbertson said on Twitter.
“Woke up this morning to the worst smoke haze I have ever seen in our local area,” Samantha Waterfield in Belmont North said.
“Definitely the worst the conditions on the Northern Beaches have been. I’ve had no voice for three days from the smoke, I can’t imagine how people living closer are coping,” Kelly Owens said on Twitter.
The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) said there would be clearer skies later thanks to a wind change.
But that is also when the extreme heat will hit, with temperatures forecast to reach 42 degrees Celsius in some western suburbs…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-10/sydney-smoke-returns-to-worst-ever-levels/11782892
10 Dec: ABC: NSW bushfires could turn ‘very dangerous’ as hot and windy weather forecast for Greater Sydney
By Kevin Nguyen
Updated about an hour ago
RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said it would be a “very complex, very difficult day” for firefighters who had been taking advantage of cooler weekend conditions to conduct “critical backburning”.
Mr Fitzsimmons said hot and dry winds would bring humidity down to less than 10 per cent in some areas.
“We are going to see hot conditions [and] dry atmosphere, particularly dry air mass that’s bringing this heat from the centre of Australia,” he said.
“Fortunately they’re not as strong as what we’ve been experiencing in the last month.
“The drop in wind strength is being compensated for in the increase in heat.”…
The commissioner said thunderstorms were expected, but there would be little rain.
“That means a potential for lots of lightning,” he said.
The RFS said at least 2.7 million hectares, with a perimeter of 19,235 kilometres, had been burnt so far this bushfire season…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-10/nsw-bushfire-fears-as-weather-forecast-to-deteriorate/11780390
50
The ABC has become a long-running comedy act. Who cares what the ABC alleges, apart from the amusement factor, and any vestigial influence it might have?
60
10 Dec: ABC: ‘Carry-over credits’ will be debated at COP25 and the result has implications for Australia
By national environment, science and technology reporter Michael Slezak
Our next period is 2020 to 2030. Under the Paris Agreement we’ve promised to cut our emissions to 26 per cent below 2005 levels.
That amounts to a reduction of 452 million tonnes over the period — 411 million tonnes of which are going to be made up of credits.
Critics argue this goes against the point of the Paris Agreement.
Using those credits doesn’t change the actual emissions emitted by Australia and doesn’t help the world get closer to net zero emissions in the second half of the century, which was agreed to at Paris.
Others, like the Climate Council (AND ADAM BANDT!), argue it’s a very creative form of accounting…
An option, currently on a draft agenda for debate at the meeting, is a rule that will completely ban the use of such credits.
If that happens, Australia would need to actually lower its emissions to meet the target.
Before the debate, it’s likely other options will be put on the table for discussion, and that option could be removed.
It’s possible that all credits, or those from the second Kyoto period, could be allowed…
Greens MP Adam Bandt called the “carry-over credit” idea “dodgy accounting”.
“The rest of the world does not want Australia to use this dodgy accounting trick to meet its already pathetically low targets,” he said.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-10/cop25-what-are-carry-over-credits/11781040
50
If anyone knows about “dodgy” accounting, its the Greens !!
100
Labor are excellent creative accounting people, consider their last Federal Budget, 2013/14 financial year, two major expense items and agreed by the Abbott led Opposition to continue funding but Labor made no provision for for funding Gonski and NDIS, and they were left to the next what turned out to be Abbott Government to fund, enabling Labor to estimate a lower budget deficit than should have been admitted. And for Labor to blame the Coalition for borrowing money adding to Labor’s debt creation.
And then they used Senate numbers to block Abbott Government budget repair measures contained in the 2014/14 Budget and Labor claimed that it was a badly flawed budget.
60
Thanks Pat,
I’ll paraphrase this one sentence:
” If that happens, Australia would need to actually lower its emissions to meet the target.” , to:
” If that happens, Australia would need to withdraw from the Paris Agreement”.
Stronger wording may be appropriate…
Cheers
Dave B
80
MARCH 4, 2015
Hundreds of koalas killed in secret mass cull.
HUNDREDS of koalas have been killed in a secret cull that was kept quiet to avoid a backlash from locals and activist groups, according to reports.
NEARLY 700 koalas have been reportedly been secretly killed in a mass cull in Victoria due to concerns over starvation in a key habitat.
The Australian reports that 686 koalas were culled near the Great Ocean Road in 2013 and 2014 in response to overpopulation in manna gum woodlands in the area.
https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/animals/hundreds-of-koalas-killed-in-secret-mass-cull/news-story/efa2026cb8f8d13bdabb94deb1de5baf
90
The koalas had denuded the Cape Otway area. They were destroying their habitat:
https://images.theconversation.com/files/74402/original/image-20150311-20540-996i0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip
I drove through this area in 2013 and cars were parked bumper to bumper with people taking photos. I have never seen so many Koalas in one location.
80
Perhaps we should put the, back on the menu….. although eucalyptus-tainted meat may be an acquired taste.
Early reports suggest that they were relatively rare due to hunting by the indigenes.
20
Have we all seen this?
Greens want to save the planet by ‘exporting Australia’s sunshine’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBCjc1pBLJ4
40
Well his timing is good. If he starts immediately he can bottle some in Sydney today and preserve it. It’s well smoked.
Cheers
Dave B
40
Rani can do CAGW as well as the rest of the ABC mob:
Updated 15 Nov: ABC: NSW bushfire death toll rises to four after body of Barry Parsons discovered near Kempsey
By Kevin Nguyen and Rani Hayman
‘If not now, when?’
In the wake of the devastating bushfires taking grip of eastern Australia, a coalition of fire and emergency service leaders across the country have called on the Federal Government to take national action on climate change.
The 23 former fire chiefs and commissioners said the bushfire crisis in NSW and QLD is unprecedented and an immediate response was needed.
“We’re calling on the government to take urgent action on the fundamental problem that’s leading to these catastrophic fires and that’s climate change,” former NSW Fire and Rescue commissioner, Greg Mullins said.
Despite the Government’s earlier reluctance, the Federal Minister for Natural Disaster and Emergency Management, David Littleproud, will meet with the firefighter coalition next month to discuss preparation for future emergencies.
While senior firefighters were grateful for the invitation, Mr Mullins said it’s been a frustrating process to put the topic of climate change on the conversation table.
“The Government fundamentally doesn’t like talking about climate change … if it’s not time to speak about climate change and what’s driving these events, when?” he said…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-14/nsw-fires-death-toll-rises-after-fourth-body-found/11703328
30
more Rani – read all:
2 Apr: ABC: Will climate change be devastating for Kakadu National Park?
By Rani Hayman
While the grim forecasts for the Great Barrier Reef have garnered international headlines for years, the harsh realities facing Kakadu National Park are not as well known in the public sphere.
But during a trip from Queensland in 2018, Troy Turner began to wonder if the dual-world-heritage-listed icon was set to suffer a similarly devastating fate in the face of climate change.
So he got in touch with Curious Darwin — our story series where you ask us the questions, vote for your favourite, and we investigate.
“We know that the ocean’s rising and the rest of Kakadu’s pretty flat, so I just thought that with ocean levels rising, is it likely that the Arnhem Land escarpment might become an ocean cliff face again like it used to be many millennia ago?” he said.
Mr Turner said Kakadu needs to be brought forward on the national agenda.
“I think it’s a real shame that it’s [climate change] going to happen, but we need to be proactive now to think about what we can do to protect what we’ve got,” he said.
“Doesn’t it make sense to protect what we know is stable and really, really successful and thriving in terms of biodiversity, rather than waiting to see what might happen down the line?”…
‘A diabolical problem’
Scientists have been researching the potential impacts of climate change on the Kakadu National Park for over a decade.
But one of the more recent reports predicted the park could begin to see destructive climate change impacts in 51 years.
Kakadu wetlands are “highly vulnerable to future saltwater inundation because of climate change-induced sea-level rise and concomitant increases in extreme weather events such as storm surges and flooding”, according to the CSIRO Marine and Freshwater Research 2017.
The study predicted that by as early as 2070, the park could lose at least 60 per cent of its freshwater flood plains to sea-level rise and saltwater inundation.
By 2100 that number is predicted to increase to 78 per cent, and by 2132 all current freshwater flood plains are predicted to be under sea water…
“It is a diabolical problem that requires complex and possibly counterintuitive solutions that lie well outside the simplistic ‘condition-pressure-response’ paradigm,” the CSIRO’s report said…
(Northern Territory ***Environment Minister Eva Lawler) has called on the Government to pledge the same amount of money for the management of Kakadu National Park in the wake of the latest predictions.
“If you’re going to give $450 million to a group to look after the Great Barrier Reef, lets see also $450 million coming to Kakadu to look after that,” she said…READ ALL
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-02/kakadu-curious-darwin-saltwater-intrusion-climate-change/10957808
Eva Lawler has a new portfolio, it seems, and an election agenda:
12 Nov: KatherineTimes: NT Government minister travels to America on oil and gas trip
by Roxanne Fitzgerald
Northern Territory Government delegates will head to America today to make a case for investment in the Territory’s untapped oil and gas industry…
With the government facing an upcoming election and job opportunities at record lows, the race to turn the Territory around is on.
“Driving jobs and investment opportunities in the Territory is a major priority for this government,” ***Minister for Infrastructure, Planning and Logistics, Eva Lawler said…
She will be joined by public servants and industry advisors on a nine day oil and gas infrastructure and digital investment attraction trip to the US with two things in mind: to strengthen international relationships and attract business to the Top End…
Discussions will be held with American industry about the opportunities and challenges relating to the onshore oil and gas industry in the Territory, with a strong focus on natural gas infrastructure planning, business attraction for natural gas-related petrochemical facilities, downstream gas processing and workforce planning for the industry…
And a visit to a large US Defence supplier, will hopefully support the case for the Territory as the best place to base and maintain their fleet of helicopters…
https://www.katherinetimes.com.au/story/6487506/nt-government-minister-travels-to-america-on-oil-and-gas-trip/
40
CSIRO need to check their maths:
https://ecos.csiro.au/kakadu-wetlands/
With 50 years to go and rising at 1.4mm/year, I get 70mm over the next 50 years. On top of the 0.14m over the last century that gives 0.21 rise by 2070. Where does the 0.7m come from.
120
Poor CSIRO.
They just don’t add up..
or multiply,
But they have wonderful “climate” models 😉
I think the 0.7m comes from 1.4mm/year times 50 years, then getting the answer wrong by a factor of 10. 😉
111
Peer reviewed. At least they are no longer talking metres, as with Robyn Williams from the ABC with 1 metre a year. He was only out a factor of 1000x, but who cares when you get fame? Bangladesk should be under 9 metres of water by now and most of the coral atolls in the Pacific, like Nauru. Strange there are no reports of people drowning in their beds in Nauru?
80
Better check that model code where it adds, subtracts, multiplies and divides then
00
The 0.14m by 2030 (from current) is also out by a factor of 10.
Should be a scary 0.014m !
70
cm and mm can be so confusing :/
60
“cm and mm can be so confusing”
Blame it on the French.
Using the length of the King’s nose worked better.
– – winking smiley face – – Poe’s Law
31
Hyperbole and absolutes are too easy…
google this
site:.abc.net.au “fuel load”
to debunk this
none of this changes the fact that regular prescribed burning is an ecological disaster.
117
Gee. Wow.
I did. And it doesn’t say what you say it says.
But that typical of you and your ilke.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=abc.net.au+%E2%80%9Cfuel+load%E2%80%9D&atb=v79-1&ia=web
Now, do your homework and stop your propaganda. Stop your disinformation. Deal with your ignorance.
Admit you’re wrong. Admit that the Australian Aborigines knew how to manage the land without creating your so-called “ecological disaster”.
Better still, go for a bush walk, anywhere down the south coast of NSW and observe the fuel load build up.
100
What, are you asking GA to leave the fossil fuelled comforts of his inner-city basement.
How Dare you !! 😉
111
Nor are “fuel loads” exactly as they are portrayed google IPCC and CWD or CISIRO and CWD
215
So no-evidence PF strikes again.
Produces a comment with zero content, saying nothing.
101
So funny,
PF still trying to down-pay/deny the huge role that greenie agenda fuel-load build-up has caused to the intensity of the fires.
Despite even the ABC finally recognising that fact.
Despite basically everyone fighting these fires backing up that fact.
Delusional and desperate.
81
It’s not a “fact”.
It’s an assumption regarding the nature of the “ideal” ecology….. which can only exist in the absence of natural fire.
Since when does a man-made ecology of recent origin represent something that cannot be touched? It’s about as rational as claiming that sheep and cattle represent a peak ecology on Australian grasslands.
40
So let’s be clear Gee Aye.
I take it that you don’t accept that the Australian Aborigines burnt off the land?
Or if they did, they were responsible for creating an “ecological disaster”?
You’d better tell that to your ABC.
50
When Europeans first settled in Australia in 1788, they found a landscape dominated by eucalypts. Certainly there were some areas of dense vegetation which contained a greater diversity of trees. However, the dominant feature of the landscape was the ubiquitous gum tree. When expeditions began exploring the countryside around Sydney, they encountered a range of vegetation associations very different to those which we see in the National Parks around Sydney today. On soils derived from Hawkesbury sandstone, Wianamatta shale, Tertiary alluvial deposits, and igneous intrusions, they found environments which reminded them of the manicured parks of England, with trees well spaced and a grassy understorey. Peter Cunningham (1827) described the country west of Parramatta and Liverpool as “a fine timbered country, perfectly clear of bush, through which you might, generally speaking, drive a gig in all directions, without any impediment in the shape of rocks, scrubs, or close forest”. This confirmed earlier accounts by Governor Phillip, who suggested that the trees were “growing at a distance of some twenty to forty feet from each other, and in general entirely free from brushwood …” (Phillip, 1789). It is clear that it was primarily Aboriginal burning practices which maintained an open environment dominated by well spaced trees and grass. Once the Aborigines stopped burning, the underbrush returned where none had previously existed. Benson and Howell (1990: 20) suggest that the growth of Bursaria spinosa in the Sydney area in the 1820s may be related to a changed fire regime, the cessation of Aboriginal burning.
So which is the “disaster”?
The open woodland with a grassy understory rich in herbs lillies and other flowering plants?
50
Thanks Peter.
QED.
Where’s Wally?
00
Greens’ Bandt was on the radio just yesterday saying that our coal was responsible for the bush fires.
170
He cares nothing for the environment. In his early political career it was not mentioned. Then he discovered the Greens.
A professional communist lawyer, it is just a means to an end, power. His model is Lenin, like so many watermelons.
160
His partner at the time was a PM Gillard office staffer.
70
Where was the coal mine where the fire started ?
100
I wish our coal was allowed to burn inside the boilers of power stations.
In Victoriastan they want to fill the open cut coal mine associated with the wantonly destroyed Hazelwood power station with water to make a lake. There was already a perfectly good recreational lake there which was the cooling pond, tropical temperature all year round and filled with tropical fish.
120
It was a good site for mid-winter swim events too. All gone.
60
behind paywall:
8 Dec: UK Telegraph: A perfect storm threatens a fragile energy sector – and there could be more trouble in store
by Ed Clowes
A number of issues that have been bubbling under for months look likely to boil over.
From the first day of 2019, tension has been mounting in the UK’s energy sector. December could be the month when that pressure finally comes to a head, as a convergence of factors strike, putting unbearable strain on the sector.
Big energy suppliers, including SSE and British Gas, have been suffering after an influx of competitors offering cheaper deals, while profits are down after the Government imposed an energy price cap on Jan 1.
The small electricity companies that sprung up to take on the so-called “Big Six” players could be in trouble themselves, though.
While these new entrants are offering cheap deals that are damaging established firms, their low prices could be unsustainable…
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/12/08/perfect-storm-threatens-fragile-energy-sector-could-trouble/
50
behind paywall:
7 Dec: UK Telegraph: Nottingham council frozen amid row over Corbyn’s ‘Robin Hood’ energy firm
By Rachel Millard
Jeremy Corbyn’s electricity supplier has sparked financial deadlock for the council behind it, amid mounting industry anger over state involvement in the energy market.
Robin Hood Energy, Britain’s first council-owned energy supplier, which counts the Labour leader as its most famous customer, has caused a delay of three months to the publication of Nottingham City Council’s accounts.
Officials have been unable to sign off on the books because they are waiting for information about Robin Hood, which has hit financial trouble. The company’s accountant, BDO, is yet to finish its audit…
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/12/07/nottingham-council-frozen-amid-row-corbyns-robin-hood-energy/
50
Here is some video of a “fire tornado” and other imagery of recent Australian fires.
https://youtu.be/w9JdGx8dA7Y
50
I’ve been knocked down by one of those. It was like being hit by a wall
00
I don’t see how regular fuel reduction burns are ecologically harmful.
One way or another, the forest is going to burn. What difference does it make if it’s small controlled burns on a regular basis or massive uncontrolled burns less frequently?
The difference is that with uncontrolled burns, people are killed and property is destroyed. That explains the wishes and objectives of the “greens”.
80
And don’t forget the deaths of birds and animals trapped within it. The number of koalas killed in the Port Macquarie area alone was, according to a news report last night, about 1000.
90
……and the sterilisation of soil, erosion, river sterilisation through deoxygenation and sedimentation…..
A really great environmental outcome.
70
Basically, nature has evolved to cope with/rely on the former but not the latter.
30
behind paywall:
9 Dec: UK Times: Farmers left cold by ‘dud’ biofuel
by Charlie Parker
The winter chill has left farmers across Scotland with huge supplies of “unusable” biofuel that cannot cope with the cold.
More than 400 have logged fuel issues with the union NFU Scotland, complaining that their vehicles had broken down in the recent cold snap. Tractors, snowploughs and construction vehicles were said to be at risk from “expiring” fuel, leaving crops and livestock at risk.
The UK government requires diesel fuels to be blended with a minimum of 7 per cent biofuel, made from materials such as oil, fat and grease waste, under rules introduced to reduce the pollution from diesel fuels.
When biodiesel cools to low temperatures, however, some molecules aggregate, causing the liquid to gel and solidify. This prevents it from passing through engine filters, which must then be replaced…
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/scotland/farmers-left-cold-by-dud-biofuel-gr50dcv83
110
Cold weather “waxing” has always been an issue with diesel fuel…bio or fully fossil sourced.
There are “winter” blends specifically produced for use in sub zero conditions.
Folk just need to get their heads out of their arses !
00
Yes fire “can” burn where hazard reduction has been carried out jut two years before, but only because the fire is running out of heavy fuels. It won’t burn far though as it is only being sustained by the fire running out of heavy fuels. Fire has momentum, something that only those who have worked with it seem to understand.
This of course doesn’t apply to grassland that can burn annually. Even when relatively low fuels are burning under extreme coditions, which are needed for them to burn, fire in these areas is usually able to be controlled at night.
Authorities would do well to learn from men such as Vic Jurskis who have decades of learning and experience behind them.
50
Yes fire “can” burn where hazard reduction has been carried out jut two years before, but only because the fire is running out of heavy fuels. It won’t burn far though as it is only being sustained by the fire running out of heavy fuels. Fire has momentum, something that only those who have worked with it seem to understand.
This of course doesn’t apply to grassland that can burn annually. Even when relatively low fuels are burning under extreme coditions, which are needed for them to burn, fire in these areas is usually able to be controlled at night.
Authorities would do well to learn from men such as Vic Jurskis who have decades of learning and experience behind them.
40
Pray tell – how were the fire-effected koalas, possums, roos, insects, wombats, birds, etc looked after before those horrible first fleeters arrived?
60
Pre-cooked
50
This one might be a bit off topic, but maybe not.
The world is aghast that the Russian dope testing authority fudges real data.
We are so aghast that we have BANNED them from PARTICIPATING for 4 YEARS.
How come then that NASA, BoM, CSIRO, etc, etc, etc are permitted to fudge results on a daily basis and sometimes, the same piece of data might be fudged several times.
I think those establishments are sneakier and slyer than the Russians ever were.
70
In case you’re interested: an update on the Gospers Mountain/Wollemi NP fire. It’s now reported as being 319,503 ha at 10:20 am today, up from 309,607 at 4:23 am yesterday. Status is “being controlled”, alert level is “watch and act”. It’s “officially” 99 kms east of me, but I think its western edge is nearer 80.
This fire has now joined up with several others, but the above numbers do not include the newly joined ones, which include the Yengo and Dharug NPs, and maybe parts of the Blue Mountains NP north of Bells Line of Road. The RFS is certainly working near Mountain Lagoon, Bilpin and Kurrajong.
I’m using the iPad app from the RFS “NSW Fires near me” for my numbers, which are updated at irregular intervals.
The wind has picked up here, is hot and coming from the west. My verandah thermometer has just reached 40C. The combination is not a good one for the firies.
80
I hope that you avoid the worst of the fire David.
41
Some years ago I worked on a “little” fire in the Yengo NP.
As part of my briefing, another officer showed me a large map with the fire plotted and a lot of “control lines”.
He swept his hand across the southern boundary and up the east side. “We’ve pretty much got this under control, and we are working on this over the next few days…… but up there it’s pretty much doing what it wants. We just hope we can get to it before the weather changes…….”
The lines on the map?….. All “potential”, but none of them effective until we got the dozers in.
With limited resources and access, it’s how it has to be in tough conditions…. but a few more maintained fire trails would come in handy. Fires don’t pay much attention to lines on maps.
60
***XR at their spiritual home once more, where there’ zero chance of criticism:
9 Dec: TheNationalScotland: XR Youth protesters call on ***BBC to fix climate emergency coverage
By Nan Spowart
ENVIRONMENTAL activists have staged a protest outside BBC Scotland’s headquarters in Glasgow to demand changes in the way the climate crisis is reported in the UK.
At their demonstration yesterday, Extinction Rebellion Youth and Universities Glasgow called on the BBC to challenge the fossil fuel industry on the “catastrophic” effects of their “callous” behaviour…
The protestors also demand that the BBC “educates” people on the concept of a just transition within the current fossil fuel industry…
???“If fossil fuels must be produced in the transition to renewable energy, we as a planet must ensure that the ones who have already gained the least are the ones to produce them, rather than exploiting the limited resources for financial gain,” said a spokesperson.
The protest was organised by young people, many of whom are still at school.
They say they feel the real perpetrators of climate change are not being blamed enough by the media for the damage they are causing.
They want the media to “educate” the general public fully on the “magnitude” of the disastrous effects of fossil fuel production on the planet…
https://www.thenational.scot/news/18087784.xr-youth-protesters-call-bbc-fix-climate-emergency-coverage/
read all:
9 Dec: BBC: Climate change: UN negotiators ‘playing politics’ amid global crisis
By Matt McGrath
The talks – now in their final week – are bogged down in technical details as key countries seek to delay efforts to increase their pledges, observers say.
Ministers are due to arrive in the Spanish capital this week to try to secure an ambitious outcome.
US presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg is due to attend, while Greta Thunberg will also address the meeting…
PICS: COMPARISONS GRETA AT COP THIS YEAR VS LAST YEAR
???Up to half a million people took part in a march in Madrid in support of rapid climate action…
“The problem is while hundreds of thousands of people are marching outside in Madrid, and school children are striking, countries are playing politics with the negotiations,” said Mohammed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, a climate and energy think tank based in Nairobi, who’s an observer at these talks…
Inside the convention centre, the central question of increasing country pledges to cut their carbon has been pushed aside as negotiators resort to protecting national interests…
Here in Madrid a group of countries including China, India and Saudi Arabia are pushing for these pre-2020 commitments be adhered to – even if it means achieving them post-2020…
While the interventions of Michael Bloomberg and Greta Thunberg will likely gain headlines, there is still uncertainty over whether a final decision can be taken here…
(250 COMMENTS AT TIME OF POSTING – CLICK “LATEST FIRST” TO GET THIS ONE NEAR THE TOP)
COMMENT #248 Rob Wilson 2 hours ago
I want to comment on Guterre’s opening speech at Madrid. He includes 6 complete falsehoods in this opening address and no one has pulled him up on it. So who’s really playing politics? A bit beneath contempt don’t you think? WUWT CRAIG KELLY LINK
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50706236
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Testing
“Tough Times For Climate Alarmists”
https://realclimatescience.com/2019/12/tough-times-for-climate-alarmists/
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Greenpeace & Greta don’t have to provide evidence for their 500,000 claim, but “authorities” get criticised for disputing it! MSM is the biggest problem:
6 Dec: AP: Activists cheer for “Greta!”, urge climate action in Madrid
By ARITZ PARRA and FRANK JORDANS
Organizers claimed 500,000 people turned out for the march, but authorities in Madrid put the number at 15,000 without an immediate explanation for the disparity in the count.
The Swedish teen was followed on her first day in Madrid by a swarm of cameras an reporters…
https://apnews.com/f2ad508ad81d98408357b2fa536bbcd9
crisis/emergency/crisis/emergency and an emergency is an emergency:
9 Dec: Guardian: UN climate talks failing to address urgency of crisis, says top scientist
by Fiona Harvey in Madrid
Urgent UN talks on tackling the climate emergency are still not addressing the true scale of the crisis, one of the world’s leading climate scientists has warned, as high-ranking ministers from governments around the world began to arrive in Madrid for the final days of negotiations…
“We are at risk of getting so bogged down in incremental technicalities at these negotiations that we forget to see the forest for the trees,” said Johan Rockström, joint director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “There is a risk of disappointment in the UN process because of the inability to recognise that there is an emergency.”…
The stately pace of negotiations was in stark contrast with the scenes outside the conference in Madrid, where on Friday evening ***more than 500,000 people marched through the Spanish capital led by the Swedish school striker Greta Thunberg…
“We must bend the curve next year,” (Rockström) told the Guardian, citing stark warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Next year is the year of truth. The year when we must move decisively to an economy that really starts to reduce investments in fossil fuels.”
Even the coal-fired power plants currently planned or in construction are enough to produce double the amount of carbon that can safely be put in the atmosphere for the next century, Rockström said…
The situation was so dire that governments should be starting to consider geoengineering technology, he said. Such projects could use a combination of natural and artificial means, from seeding clouds to erecting reflectors in space.
“Geoengineering has to be assessed, maybe even piloted already in case we need to deploy it,” he said. “It makes me very nervous. That is really playing with biological processes that might kick back in very unexpected ways. But I don’t think we should rule anything out – an emergency is an emergency.”…
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/08/un-climate-talks-are-failing-to-see-urgency-of-crisis-says-scientist
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They’re going to need a bigger tail to wag that dog.
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They could get away with claiming 25,000, maybe even claiming 30,000, because that’s still only twice what the police estimate were present, but when your claim is 30 times larger than the Police’s estimated crowd size, you just look downright laughably dishonest and delusional.
Apparent the Director’s story-board stipulated 500,000 “How-dare-you!” units. If the CNN or BBC special-effects budget stretched that far they could use Improved-Reality™ v4.3 to add half a million extra How-dare-you units in post-production?
30
The GeeUppers will defend no-burn management because it’s a guaranteed disaster with our species and climate. They need disasters and always make bargain hay from drought, flood, heat and fire. No point talking to them about precedents because every fresh event will be given special enhancement while the past will be waved away. If you keep doing it they’ll say that “people here” think disasters are normal and nothing to worry about. Because “people here” and “normal” can mean anything they want that to mean, rather like “climate change” and “global warming”, the GeeUppers can’t be contradicted.
The first people walked under mature canopy and burnt constantly. Hot burns would have destroyed game, left no ground branches for camp fires, and to be possible would have required decades of neglect they couldn’t afford even for a season. The early settlers could move through bush in ways impossible for us. Try walking across State Forest or NP with full pack and musket now.
You can’t regress to a pre-fire regimen with our species and climate on any large scale. Sydney had less rain in 1888 than in any calendar year since, much less than this year. Where is the guarantee that it can’t get drier than that? In fact, we are on our way right now on the midcoast to being drier than our driest years, which were, in order, 1902, 1915 and 1994…Was 1902 meant to be a baseline? 2019 couldn’t happen because 1902 drew a line and said “dry thus, but no drier”? Climate change started in 1902 but decided to call it off?
In short, what Dorothea said.
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I posted here recently an account of the Hunter River completely drying up and the indigenous tribes deferred their fighting and joined together to survive on the springs up in the Great Dividing Range where the Hunter starts from.
That report was mid-1800s from settlers who were told about that severe drought by the local indigenous people.
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“…by the end of the drought the number of sheep in Australia had halved to about 54 million and the cattle population was reduced by 40 per cent. Wool clips fell, and this in turn reduced both railway revenue and export income. Together with low river levels, these conditions sounded a death knell for the struggling Murray-Darling river trade.
“The relentless heat was aggravated by the increased frequency of dust storms as winds out of the hot centre of the continent whipped up and further eroded the exposed soil. Dust storms further stressed struggling vegetation, and permeated everything…”
From Don Garden’s account of the Federation Drought. Of course, what was happening in India was far more terrible, as was the case with the heat and drought which threatened the new colony in the early 1790s, when the Skull Famine came on the heels of the Chalisa Famine. At least most of us ate here in Oz.
On the other hand, there may have been no Federation, which was a near-run thing, without the Federation Drought. A bit of rain in NSW just before the 1898 referendum was seen by nervous supporters as a threat to the Fed vote.
It’s such a mistake to lose the past, to be the New Man at Year Zero with nothing but conceit for a guide.
100
So white man also brought drought, that is if what you imply is correct. Mind you, massive clearing for sheep would do that, so it is probably true. As to the fire regime, a mature unburnt forest would be exactly the same as you describe, but with bonus large trees, photos of which appear in all historical collections up and down the land. (mostly cut down though)
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“So white man also brought drought, “
Wrong, only a totally delusional and ignorant person could get that piece of nonsense from anywhere.
And of course, you are just making zero-evidence suppositions. again.
81
White men brought drought? Even in 1791? Wha?
GeeUp! This PF is broken. We want a replacement. Maybe get that old fire-fightin’ PF who’d vote for HELE USC coal power.
70
Federation drought is your reference, and that is what I’m responding to.
18
You really are clutching at straws and fantasies if you think the Federation Drought was caused by humans.
No evidence, just make it up as you go, your own little non-fact world.
You really are getting desperate and totally delusional, PF !
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Have a look at the 1890 to 1900 period within this graph, which shows abrupt synchronous global glacial retreat which coincided with the Federation Drought heat in Australia.
https://debunkhouse.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/oerlemans_3.png?w=700
Looks like the Australian heat and drought in the 1890s was a synchronous global phenomena. Such as say, a decade length El-Nino event for instance (yeah, they tend to cause droughts in Oz).
But oh nose, that would mean it was just earth’s natural variability doing that. As are all the other steps up and also down within that graph’s trend-line.
That’s not CO2 or cAGW doing that simple one, you’re not going to fool anyone here with that sort of rot.
Perhaps you can write a letter to Mr. Earth and inform him that his glaciers went early and have really mucked up the narrative? But then again CO2 rises always have lagged warming.
Graph source:
A Geological Perspective on Sea Level Rise Acceleration
David Middleton / 20 hours ago December 9, 2019
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/12/09/sea-level-rise-acceleration-jevrejeva-vs-church-white/#comment-2866897
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Peter Fitzroy,
“So white man also brought drought, that is if what you imply is correct.”
An excellent example of your 1+1=3 logic and ability to reason!
Cause and effect is lost on you and that explains a lot.
31
Fitz is lying again.
There is no inference in any post that drought is a post-settlemt phenomenon.
Quoting descriptions of the Federation drought – or any other post-settlement drought – simply serves to invalidate the fallacy that what we are currently seeing in unprecedented.
80
You proof is lacking, again. It is a fact, removing forest removes rain. SE WA is a poster child for this
18
You have never produced any proof of anything , PF
You still are bereft of even the most basic evidence of anything.
You just make things up to seek attention.
41
Proof is the drought of 1788 in Sydney Cove. And the experiences of early explorers moving through unsettled country.
Proof is the aboriginal witness of droughts more severe than anything we have ever seen.
Proof is in the evidence in ice-cores, sediment cores and coral cores, of drought more severe than anything we have seem since Europeans arrived.
Proof is in the hundreds of thousands of data-points supporting historically recorded climate change as global events.
Claiming that WA experience “proves” that drought follows clearing is as unscientific as the South Australians who claimed that “rain follows the ploughing”..
It’s not even true that much of NSW was cleared for sheep and remains that way. Much of it was woodland. Much remains that way….. and there is good evidence that much of the area that is now gidyea and cypress -pine scrub was originally grassy woodland with widely separated large trees. At least one landscape historian has posited that there are probably more trees in NSW now, than in 1788. They are just the wrong size and in the wrong place…..
50
‘ … SE WA is a poster child for this…’
You mean SWWA and the story that the area became more droughty because of deforestation is simply wrong.
For your edification, the intensification of the subtropical ridge for a couple of decades caused south west West Oz to suffer from drought. This ended in July 2017 with the loss of intensity in the STR.
00
This is where PeteF is getting his facts from.
“RAIN FARMING” from the WWF.
https://www.wwf.org.au/news/blogs/rain-farming-drought-assistance-for-tomorrow/?utm_source=Gemini&utm_medium=native&utm_campaign=me_xmas_awareness&utm_content=blog_rainmaker#gs.l3x0ek
00
‘Mind you, massive clearing for sheep would do that, so it is probably true.’
If anything, clearing land for sheep and monoculture has helped to ease the danger.
‘Many regions of predominantly flat terrain in Australia have been almost completely deforested for agriculture, reducing the fuel loads which would otherwise facilitate fires in these areas.’ wiki
20
The biggest number of DSE (dry sheep equivalents) in western Qld was BEFORE the Federation drought – before there was much clearing.
10
just out of interest. Who or what are the “gee uppers”? You seem to be the only person anywhere who refers to them? Do they appear to you?
25
They’re the people who come here to gee up the skeps. What else? Some might wish they’d get up and move on. But I like a bit of abrasion.
Now I’ve explained that I’ll use the term more freely.
80
that’s a useful term. I suggest you use it often.
33
Yes the Leaf is here only to practise the art of distraction as proclaimed in his well read blog , I have a copy from his blog here somewhere .
50
read it closely and read it often
32
For goodness sake guys, look on the bright side. Oxygen partial pressure has reduced from a high of 35% in the Devonian to just over 20% today, and the rate of decrease is increasing. Let’s face it, it take two oxygen atoms to combine with one carbon atom to make CO2 and the human race is doing everything possible to destroy the ocean based oxygen producers. You can’t have fires without oxygen so in due course the O2 partial pressure will be negligible and there will be no fires. No people either and the ecosystem will collapse but hey, you have to make sacrifices.
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“and the human race is doing everything possible to destroy the ocean based oxygen producers.”
?????
30
Most of the Earth’s oxygen is generated by phytoplankton. Real pollution such as persistent organic chemicals, pesticides, fertilizers, plastic, oil etc all impact phytoplankton biomass. Satellite monitoring of phytoplankton densities, which is available since 197 indicates that phytoplankton levels have been declining at about 1% a year over the past half century.
22
Ohhhhhh my God !
Yet another something to feel guilty about !
But guess what I don’t eat phytoplanction
And I don’t know any humans who do
So what’s the guilt trip all about Brian ?
Sounds completely batty to me
10
Well you can rest somewhat easier Brian. With the latest dust storms we should be fertilizing the Tasman with lots of iron to boost the plankton population as in previous Australian dust events. Droughts have their uses.
Incidentally it was found that whale poo is relatively high in iron and wherever they go they leave a bloom in their wake. The availability of iron is a well-known limiting factor in planktonic abundance.
https://theconversation.com/how-australias-biggest-dust-storm-went-on-to-green-the-ocean-47695
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Hey!
We are all-powerful.
We can split CO² into C and O² with a laser.
Who needs cyanobacteria?
10
The ABC is also grappling with how to report the reality of persistent grid instability in Alice Springs. See
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-09/alice-springs-blackout-sees-territory-generation-boss-sacked/11779246
and the underlying expert report
http://newsroom.nt.gov.au/api/attachment/byId/11667
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Well the report WAS interesting. But unfortunately, their terms of reference didn’t include anything about the solar system or its sudden failure impact on the grid that led to the blackout. A big omission IMO.
30
G#4
The “solar system” that failed in Alice was the Roof Top solar contribution which is very common up there.. Alice has no utility solar farms ..yet.
It “failed” because a large cloud bank rolled over much of Alice just as the evening peak demand was building,…hence shifting huge domestic loads from the roof tops back onto the grid,.. all at the same time.
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Thanks for the clarification Chad. It certainly seemed to have a major impact on their grid.
00
Funnily enough, I was flicking through the radio channels last night and caught a segment on TrippleJ where the woke presenter hosted calls about how people were feeling about Climate Change. One caller passionately stated how she really became convinced it was truly an emergency after the recent fires in Northern NSW…
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Guys, guys, settle down. There has been no road-to-Damascus conversion for the GreenStream Media.
Climate change was originally blamed due to political purposes. Blaming fuel loads now can be assumed to be entirely for political purposes too. The groundswell amongst the chattering classes has made this very clear. The fires being mainly in NSW have now been branded the #BerejiklianBushfires and Gladys Berejiklian is being blamed for having cut the rural fire service budget. Fact check: misleading, they did cut the RFS operational budget for 2019/2020 but it was only by 4.8%. As a drop of 4.8% for 2019 is unlikely to stop a high priority activity like prescribed burns, and does nothing to explain the years of buildup that preceded 2019 such as in 2017/2018 when the total fire expense was 5.6% over budget, one has to ask why more of these burns were not done when money was not the limiting factor. The money is a red herring, and the Greens party policy has advocated “ecologically appropriate use of fuel reduction burns” for the last 10 years, so they aren’t the causes. But the role of (lower case ‘g’) green ideology in promoting conservation has to be a factor. So this is mainly about scoring political points against the Liberal party as a short term distraction from the consequences of green ideology, nothing more.
As soon as the Liberals are disposed of in NSW I’d expect the Greens, ABC, and climate Twitterati to go straight back to blaming climate change with their usual unflappable memory loss. Easy come, easy go. They may revert to form even sooner than that given the next NSW election isn’t until 2023, this summer’s hot outlook, and the fact the same fuel can’t burn twice. I would actually be surprised if the #BerejiklianBushfires meme survives until March.
The “founding father” of the RFS was quoted saying as recently as 26 November that
“Something is going on with the climate, and therefore we need to take that into account — we can’t just ignore it”.
This vague statement was spun by the ABC into the more definite statement “that climate change is also making it worse” but was nonetheless relegated to a secondary exacerbating factor against the main culprit of fuel loads.
This is almost exactly what Greens party policy advocated for the last 10 years. The difficult part is never lowering fuel loads or conserving the environment, it’s trying to have your cake and burn it too. If it turns out, as is likely, that you cannot have 100% of both then I am sorry to say that Mr Koperberg is mistaken in assigning the decision to scientists and “land managers”. When there is a tradeoff between protecting critters and protecting civilisation, fundamentally a question of values over public land, we the people must decide what we will sacrifice democratically.
50
Talking RFS funding…
People need to know that the costs of fighting these major fires are NOT limited by the RFS budget.
Once an “emergency” has been declared for any fire under Section 44 of the Act, costs are paid out of the State’s emergency fund.
50
A couple of weeks ago a farmer phoned the radio station I was listening to about allowing cattle to graze on the long grass beside the roads where he lived, near Rutherglen I think, thereby reducing the fire hazard caused by the long grass. The State Government environmental agency apparently told him he could as long as he paid for an environmental study of the area to identify plant species.
90
Would that include introduced weed plants on “the long paddock”, and would they take into account previous grazing periods since pastoral properties were established in Australia and including the movement of cattle and sheep walked from paddock to markets or for other purposes including feeding during droughts in the past?
50
Former government scientist goes vegan and demands meat tax
UK Times – 7 Dec 2019
A top government scientist who oversaw the UK’s post-Brexit food and farming policies has announced that his work on farming has turned him into a vegan — and suggested a “meat tax” is needed to push more Britons towards plant-based diets….***Professor Sir Ian Boyd will also warn this week that farming is in its last few decades, as humans must eat food from factories if the world is to…
ABOVE IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE –
“This article has been removed”
29 Aug: BBC: Climate change: Big lifestyle changes ‘needed to cut emissions’
By Roger Harrabin
People must use less transport, eat less red meat and buy fewer clothes if the UK is to virtually halt greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the government’s chief environment scientist has warned.
***Prof Sir Ian Boyd said the public had little idea of the scale of the challenge from the so-called Net Zero emissions target.
However, he said technology would help.
The conundrum facing the UK – and elsewhere – was how we shift ourselves away from consuming, he added.
In an interview with BBC News, Sir Ian warned that persuasive political leadership was needed to carry the public through the challenge.
Asked whether Boris Johnson would deliver that leadership, he declined to comment…
He believes the Treasury should reform taxation policy to reward people with low-carbon lifestyles and nudge heavy consumers into more frugal patterns of behaviour.
It was vital, he said, for the changes to be fair to all parts of society.
He also believes Net Zero won’t happen unless the government creates a Net Zero ministry to vet the policies of all government departments in the way the Brexit ministry vets Brexit-related decisions.
Emissions won’t be reduced to Net Zero while ministers are fixed on economic growth measured by GDP, instead of other measures such as environmental security and a relatively stable climate, he argued.
***Asked why the UK should take the lead when China’s emissions are so high, he answered that the Chinese government was very worried about the climate and was taking it very seriously…
PIC: Sir Ian has been in his post as the government’s chief environment scientist for seven years.
Sir Ian, a polar expert with a chair in biology at St Andrews University, suggested that the UK was in a good position to show the world how to achieve Net Zero…
Sir Ian, who leaves Defra on Thursday after seven years in post, said: “The way we live our lives is generally not good for the environment…
“We certainly won’t be able to travel so much as we have in the past, so we have to get used to using modern communications methods.
“Moving material round the planet will be more difficult so we’ll have to do more with 3D printing; that sort of thing…
Richard Black (EX-BBC), from the think tank Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), said Sir Ian’s words were “somewhat surprising”.
He added: “They appear to contradict the mass of evidence assembled on getting to Net Zero, including the major report from the government’s statutory adviser the Committee on Climate Change.”…
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49499521
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Best of British luck to him. Let him loose on this cauldron of chemicals
https://realclimatescience.com/2019/12/tough-times-for-climate-alarmists/
00
Oops – this one
https://www.redpowermagazine.com/forums/topic/119434-the-cattle-thread/page/8/?tab=comments#comment-1363731
00
Another limited hangout. For once they don’t want to talk about climate change, because this time it actually _is_ climate change. Global cooling induced by the Sun’s reduced activity, leading into another mini-ice age, and the major droughts that always occur during the early stages of ice ages.
It’s not just poorly managed ‘fuel’ in the bush, it’s the fact that everything is incredibly dry now. I’m 64, been a bushwalker all my life, and I’ve never seen the bush as dry as it is now. I’m expecting almost everything to burn this summer. Likely helped along by a few mad Warmists lighting fires to try and prove ‘global warming’ is a thing, plus some carelessly tossed cigarette butts. Notice all the fires seem to start alongside roads.
Incidentally, having most of Sydney’s water catchment area hot-burned, is going to have some very serious long term consequences on the city’s already extremely strained water situation. Wait and see.
120
TerraHertz, according the the collected wisdom on this blog – the time (spring to summer), the size (over 2.5 million ha), and the inability of the fire fighters to put it out (despite massive new expenditures on equipment) is totes normal, and happens every couple of years. This is the result of all the agencies tasked with managing fire risk, being asleep at the switch, because of greenies (not chronic underfunding)
So you can stop worrying /sarc off
212
Keep telling you Fitz that fires , flood and drought are a normal cycle of this country and it’s been that way long before coal was discovered.
We can however mitigate some of it by building dams and increasing our forest management practices to what they were but for some reason we can’t do much of that these days because of green tape .
130
The present grave fire emergency is “totes normal” and “happens every couple of years”?
And if we want to know who actually says or thinks that, it was “Collective Wisdom”?
I tellya, Mrs Wisdom sure gave her son a funny name. If only we could find Collective we could ask him why he thinks the present drought and fires are totes normal and we could ask him what happened a couple of years ago comparable to now. Seems very odd, but Peter says he read it somewhere on this blog. But then he said /sarc off so maybe nobody said it but it needed to be exposed anyway.
Peter Fitzroy, by the way, has claimed that aliens are behind black jellybeans and those annoying stickers on apples. It was a statement he made somewhere on this blog. Or maybe Collective Wisdom said it…but I bet PF agrees with CW. Off course, he’ll deny it.
50
Poor PF, massive comprehension issues, all the time
Stop you pathetic attention-seeking. !
You know that one of the main issues with these fires has been the incredible fire-load.
That fire-load is caused by the greenie agenda you worship.
The locking up of parks and land so they cannot be accessed,
The massive green tape basically stopping proscribed burn-offs.
Your mindless and pathetic anti-fact rhetoric is never going to overcome that truth.
And you lying to yourself about it, is never going to ease your feelings of guilt.!
71
Tell that to William x at http://joannenova.com.au/2019/12/skeptics-win-on-fires-abc-quiet-flip-suddenly-its-fire-management-not-climate-change-to-blame/#comment-2238573
10
TH.
Ignore the troll.
I won’t disagree, other than the boring reiteration that one lifetime is an incredibly short period by which to judge the extremes of a variable climate.
Cheers……
60
Peta Credlin just posed the question of what would happen if we had to use electric fire trucks to fight these bushfires.
80
Don’t even want to contemplate that disaster .
70
The same thought did cross my mind along with SA relief firefighters not being able to fly in to Tamworth as reported on tonight’s news. I guess the argument from the climate changers goes along the lines- They’d all be surplus to requirements with Gaia returned to the temperature they only know she should be.
20
Maybe not a complete flip at ABC
ABC Science show with Robyn Williams
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/controlled-burns-destroy-ecosystems-and-may-not-reduce-fire-risk/11774496
I know this is heresy here but I am not so sure that a forest that has not been burnt for 200 years will burn more fiercely than one burnt regularly every 2 or 3 years.
Its just that burning encourages plants adapted to fire like eucalypts that are filled with oil, whereas rainforest type plants don’t burn fiercely but are killed by fire.
11
George.
The mechanism is partly debris reduction, partly fuel alteration and partly species mix change.
If you do not understand the difference that fuel quantity and fuel arrangement, makes……then you’ve had very little or no experience.
The claim that changing species mix “destroys” an ecosystem is not scientific. It depends on an ideologicalpreference for one ecosystem over another. It requires accepting that most of Australia was “destroyed” when the first Europeans settled here in 1788.
We see the consequences of that ideology, locally.
After one range was burnt in a wildfire, an incredibly rare Orchid flowered. Despite the common-sense observation that the Orchid probably flowered as a response to fire, we cannot burn the area because we do not “know” , and we cannot learn, because we cannot burn.
So it – and the houses surrounding it – will wait for the next intense fire.
40
Peter,
I am not advocating what was said,
but I do wonder whether being locked into a cycle of frequent widespread controlled burns is the best use of resources, when it is encouraging the most intense fire plants.
Maybe concentrate and spend more on clearing around houses and fire proofing them IDK.
10
Apologies, George, I missed your response.
There’s a basic misunderstanding in the idea that frequent fire promotes the hottest burning plants. It sounds good, but in comparison to long-turnover species that put a lot of energy into non-reproductive structure, short-turnover plants that put relatively little into non-reproductive structure have an advantage.
Compare a perennial grass to a scrubby Acacia species.
Burn the grass and it will regenerate from the tussock-roots and successfully reproduce later in the same year. It does not produce anywhere near the bulk of fuel that the scrub-species does, and because it is all light, fine fuel, it typically breaks down within 2 years.
Burn the scrub-species and it must regenerate from seed. The next generation must mature before it can reproduce, so burning it again 3 years later will kill that next generation before it can rebuild the seed bank….. It WILL burn hotterafter a 5-10 year interval than the grasses, but frequent fire does not promote it. Frequent fire reduces it.
So you have a species that can successfully reproduce if burnt every year, competing with one that requires longer intervals, but which will burn hotter if permitted those intervals.
See where this leads?
The theory that fire-adapted plants burn “hotter” does not take into account reproductive cycles .
60
That makes sense.
It would be good if the prescribed burns could be done at the ideal time from aircraft and with minimal supervision and reasonable cost.
10
George, consider.
What sort of fireproofing will protect your house from a firestorm? Who fireproofs the koalas?
You’re worried about a cycle of controlled burns. It’s what we used to do and it worked. How is the current cycle of firestorms a better alternative?
When fire crowns it has already got out of hand. Fire can’t just jump from grass to treetops 100 feet above — it needs far more ground fuel to feed it. That’s why we burn off. It’s called Hazard Reduction for a reason.
60
Actually…. What repeated burning at frequent intervals encourages, is a low, grassy understory. . The perennial grasses that used to dominate the understory may burn very readily, but they senesce with the frosts in winter, can be burnt early in spring when risk is low, then green up with summer rain.
Remove or suppress the scrubby understory, and the dominant eucalyptus species don’t burn at canopy level.
Here’s a standard …. if the canopy is involved, or even scorched, the fire is inappropriate.
Incidentally….. I have hundreds of trees on my property that are very much alive, despite having had the grasses under them burnt many times.
80
The most deadly and destructive firestorms seem to race through the eucalypt canopy regardless of the lower understorey.
Water bombing aircraft achieve bugger all at those times too.
30
George,
“Seems”? Pardon my asking, but what are you basing this on?
Drought-time canopy foliage in dry sclerophyl is almost always too sparse to sustain fire on its own. It requires a certain level of pre-heating and ladder fuels to carry fire into the canopy and sustain it. That’s observation, not speculation.
But you are very right WRT the limited capability of aircraft. Simple maths gives some idea of how much water is involved in a mere 10mm shower of rain. Planes can’t hope to keep up., and that’s before with consider the limitations of flying under some of the most dangerous flying conditions outside a hostile war zone.
30
There is a trial site in the Dandenong ranges somewhere where they have been looking at the best frequency of preventative burning and I’m positive the guy in charge said under five years and I think three years gave best results .
That sort of timeline would be impossible these days but maybe before we arrived it was practiced by the locals .
50
I do wonder if 20 or 30 years unburnt is less dangerous than 10 years because of the change in species.
With something like a bell curve of fire danger over the years
Dead plant matter rots relatively quickly and I propose that decaying vegetable matter on the ground does not add a great deal to the fire intensity.
10
Dry grass rots quickly, given some wet weather. Dry branches can last for decades — up to 136 years in Karri forest (see my comment at 24.4.1.2.2 if it ever comes out of moderation). The accumulated fuel loads are immense and most certainly DO add enormously to fire intensity. That’s when you get your crown fires.
60
Robert….
It would be difficult in some areas, but we can do a lot better over much of the landscape.
Part of the problem is that because we don’t burn often enough, Long intervals increase the intensity, increase the risk, and hence increase the cost – as well of the cost of unintended fires.
There are no free lunches. Not funding HR means that we must fund fire emergencies and damage to property.
It’s not just the indigenes who carried it out successfully. Graziers did it too.
An analysis of the diaries kept by the lessees of Mount Buffalo in Victoria, before it was gazetted as a National Park, revealed that that had a number of fires on the plateau. Yet not one fire was permitted to burn right across the plateau, despite the only control measures being hand-tools and firebreaks.
Their technique was simple enough – every autumn that was suitable, about every third or fourth, as they brought the cattle down in autumn, they would light the ridgelines behind them.
Cool, humid weather and dewy nights limited both the intensity and the spread of fire. Because it was lit from the top down, it did not run, but trickled downslope and self-extinguished in the moister gullies. With several month of winter and spring following, there was nothing still alight to escape the following summer.
Now we have heavy machinery and incendiary-equipped helicopters. We could light from safe edges and leave large areas (Buffalo itself is not small) to burn themselves out with minimal supervision.
If a bunch of blokes on horses could do it……
60
These guys over in WA are big advocates of prescribed burning.
https://www.bushfirefront.org.au/prescribed-burning/the-science-behind-prescribed-burning/
Sounds like convincing research, though their employment may depend on it.
40
George…
Excellent resource. That program is almost certainly the best research on this topic done in Australia and under Australian conditions.
……and the Sandgropers don’t have our variation in altitude and aspect…. things which we can use to advantage.
30
That was a great summary that included of good research material. 1961 was the Dwelllingup fire and the start of proper coordinated management techniques in WA.
10
Yes Peter W , the fires up there and Alpine national park nowadays have to be put out and most of the prescribed burning is done during a bushfire to back burn .
Got a photo from a relative fighting the fires up in the high country and couldn’t believe just how green it is on the flats in this one area around Eskdale in Victoriastan.
00
Perhaps one of the bigger problems is that the ignorant are attracted to the big, spectacular species….. and regard the rest as “just grass”.
30
Peter
The Qld Vegetation Management act doesn’t even consider them
10
Large parts of state forest were transferred to national park estate on the east coast during the 1990s-2000s as part of various RFAs (regional forest assessments). RFAs included Upper and Lower NE NSW, Nandewar, Eden, Southern, Goulburn, Brigalow South, East Gippsland etc etc. We are talking 100,000s of hectares which were formerly logged now part of conservation zones. This resulted in significant reductions in areas of periodic logging, which formerly thinned the forests, and the thickening of bush and biuld up of fuel loads subsequent. No thought was given to creating buffers adjacent to townships or farms in the new land use changes. It would not be difficult even now to create buffer zones around towns-especially their western sides where most fires come from-to protect homes and farms, where other land uses (eg parks, golf courses) and logging should still occur.
In fact in some areas, the forests that remained close to towns were there because they were originally set aside in the 1800s as ‘timber reserves’ for the town, no one imagined they would later become tinder boxes to burn down the town, because no one would be allowed to touch them anymore.
When academics say its ‘all climate change’ that fires have now increased, note that academics were not involved in this transfer of land tenure and status, they dont even have access to most of the internal information. You never hear of this change in land management which has changed the nature of east coast forests in the last 20 years. The Greens talked then about a ‘corridor’ of national park extending from Victoria to Queensland, which would no longer be logged or managed by state forests; they never talked about a ‘corridor of fire-prone bush’.
100
thingadonta:
You jogged my memory from 1989. On the south east coast of NSW I visited a timber mill because the owner was listed as using tree roots for sculpture. They were considered useless but rather than leaving them to rot or be burnt, he excavated them and polished the wood. Fairly spectacular although not for the average lounge room.
He was commented on the misdeeds of the Greenies; how they had tried to sabotage the mill by driving iron spikes into the logs in the hope that they would damage the giant saw. He pointed out that the result of the saw hitting an iron bolt and disintegrating into shrapnel could be lethal. After one example (with no-one killed or injured fortunately) he’d installed metal detectors to check all logs first.
His other complaint was that the forests had been classified as OLD GROWTH and therefore not to be harvested. As he put it, rather pungently, those Greenies apparently weren’t aware that his Great Grandfather had been logging there in the 1840’s and 3 more generations of the family had been logging those same forests for 120 years or more, without the Greenies noticing any ecological damage.
He himself was fairly philosophical about the end of his small timber mill, as he was approaching retirement age and none of his sons wanted to be in the business.
60
Having just driven down the 50km section of the A1 Princes Hwy ,which has been closed north of Batemans Bay, for a week due to the Currowan fire, ..i noticed a few things,
Oddly, most of the forrest canopy was still intact..disculred, scorched, but not distroyed.
The fires appeared to have been mostly concentrated on the ground fuel load.
Previously much of this area was impeniterable due to undergrowth and Lantana type creeper blanket, but now its an open (burnt) forrest that you can see hundreds of yards through.
Whilst the fire had obviously burned across the road, the reason the closure lasted so long was most likely the huge number of large trees that had fallen across the Hwy, and had to be cut and cleared. Armco barriers had been smashed in many places by falling timber
They really should clear fell 50m either side of the road to both provide a potential fire break , and ensure falling trees do not prevent access for firefighting or emergency evacuation at least, let alone enable essential supplies to resume quickly after the fires.
80
But Chad, that extra roadside clearing costs council/state government too much money that would be spent on more obvious vote gathering projects.
Not to mention overseas fact finding trips that are so vital in the current environment.
173 KK
40
thank goodness that they didn’t rot. How awful if they had not turned a buck but had been digested by a community of organisms
15
Bugs before people, GA?
60
Or ash before cash….. Because that’s what it really is.
50
Are you inferring that they would rather see ashes than spend money on avoiding the ashes?
173 + 4 KK
30
Ok Gee Aye and Fitz,
don’t go to Wikipedia, or google. You don’t need to, when you can just ask me.
Both of you know I have served as a professional firefighter with 27.6 years service.
Catastrophic bushfires.
Have they happened before?
Yes.
An example of what I did and experienced in a “catastrophic” bushfire that happened 25 years ago.
Sutherland 1994.
Our crew was part of a task force under the control of Inspector Arthur Owens of NSWFB. Due to the risk to property from the intensity of the fire, A section 41f was enabled and in place by the govt to be acted upon by the fire service management.
Our task force of 4 appliances (Fire trucks) was split by command, due to a fire growing in intensity at Menai.
3 of our 4 appliances were tasked to stop the Menai fire. We were subsequently left on our own to protect the reserve and houses in Sutherland.
The Menai fire was releasing embers across the Woronora river into the reserve that was behind the Woronora boat ramp. The wind was from the west. Dry and hot and at a high wind speed that was blowing embers towards us from a fire approximately 2 kilometres away. The Woronora reserve was thick with natural ground litter, Up to 2 feet deep in areas.
The spot fires were increasing in the reserve, from the flying embers.
Firefighter SW and I were instructed to climb the slope to attempt to put out the spotfires 1 by 1. We did so but were driven uphill.
There were too many small fires, too many embers and too much ground litter and only two of us fighting it.
The fire eventually took hold further down at the base of the slope and the resulting heat driving up the incline caused the eucalyptus trees below us and above to emit oil as a vapour. As a result, a fireball occurred when that oil vapour ignited. This fireball consumed almost everything in its path and self propagated through the crown of the eucalptus trees.
At a speed estimated by the fire investigator at 100m/s.
The sound when that happens is hard to describe. The closest is the sound of a freight train approaching next to you and the roar as it passes.
Firefighter SW saved my life, on that afternoon on the 7th January 1994 , He pushed me down behind a fallen tree, that was approximately 4ft in diameter. He layed on top of me, and turned the 38 mm hose on both of us whilst that fireball exploded around us.
I was unable to breath. The heat was intolerable. every breath felt like a razor. I felt that I was going to die. Unlike before, everything around us was burning.
Somehow we were alive due to SW
When we were able to, we retreated down the slope.
To the Woronora boat ramp.
Our appliance subsequently relocated to the road behind the ridge above and as a crew we managed over the next 4 hrs to save every house we fought for in the fires path. School buildings were lost. Our appliance was scorched, paint bubbled. The gear stored on top of it was destroyed.
SW and I were admitted as patients, to Sutherland Hospital that night, due to suffering from smoke inhalation and burns.
We both mutually self discharged ourselves at approximately 2am. We were not released by a Doctor. We walked out when the staff weren’t around. We knew that sh@t was going to happen on this new day and we may be needed.
The next day was.
Como Jannali, January, 8th 1994.
We were deployed and spent that day fighting for our lives and others. on Washington drive, Lincoln crescent and the streets behind. The fireball that exploded around us was at least 8 stories high. I have photographs in my possession shot by the media to support that.
what happened?
104 houses were lost. a suburb saved. 1 life lost. The person who passed away. Her name is Pauline O’Neil. I will never forget that. I was there and I will tell you that full story If you want to hear of it.
I ask that what occurred before is not lost in history.
Please do not describe these current bush fires as unprecedented, catastrophic events due to climate change.
It is not true.
Bushfires are something that I have fought against every year of my career.
Nothing has changed apart from the massive increase in government redtape. Media ineptitude in reporting facts, and a lazy scientific and political view to blame these current fires on climate change.
I humbly ask that you do not use climate change as the reason for the current bushfires.
People, scientists, Govts and the media should be smarter than that.
Bushfires happen, they always have.
Nothing will get done to save life or property, flora or fauna. If you or our scientists and govts absolve themselves from responsibility, by blaming the devil of climate change for the current bushfires.
I am tired of putting my life at risk for your ideologies and beliefs.
I am tired of seeing property lost by your ideologies and beliefs.
I am tired of seeing fauna and flora destroyed by your ideologies and beliefs.
I am tired of seeing life lost by your ideologies and beliefs.
Do you understand the destruction and loss of life you may cause by not recognising the past is normal.
why do you use it to promote your ideologies and beliefs?
Can you not recognise a fact when you see it?
Finally, don’t hide behind your self importance as having a higher knowledge than others because you have a university degree. I have one as well.
220
william x
God bless you sir!
You, like so many firefighters the world over, are true heroes.
90
No I am not a hero. 343 firefighters died 9/11. They are the heroes. I am not worthy to be compared to their courage and sacrifice. I appreciate your post, take care tomomason.
80
William — powerful words.
Jo needs to make a separate post of this.
Nail it to the doors of Parliament. Rub the noses of Bandt, Di Natale and Hanson-Young in it.
I am tired of putting my life at risk for your ideologies and beliefs.
I am tired of seeing property lost by your ideologies and beliefs.
I am tired of seeing fauna and flora destroyed by your ideologies and beliefs.
I am tired of seeing life lost by your ideologies and beliefs.
Do you understand the destruction and loss of life you may cause by not recognising the past is normal.
Why do you use it to promote your ideologies and beliefs?
60
William.
Kudos to you, Brother.
I will add two thing.
1. I have stood on the site where two CFA crews – Panton Hill and Narre Warren – lost their lives in 1983. There was nothing wrong with their equipment. Justthe wrong place at the wrong time under those conditions . There is nothing new about lethal fires.
2. I very much doubt that those wanting the push the Climate-Change narrative how lived very much of their lives with the certainty that fire is a real threat, most days of most summers. It is easy for them to claim that it is “unprecedented” when it is only the first time that they have been threatened….. but not for us.
The largest single-ignition- fire recorded in the Southern Hemisphere, started 20 minutes north of my home. It burnt 90 kilometres in 36 hours. …… 1952.
Stay safe…… Peter
50
The worst fire in the Hunter Valley that I know of was in either 1949 or 1954 (can’t remember which). It started somewhere near Singleton in the Upper Hunter and burnt across the valley with a hot WNW wind pushing it.
It burnt through open grazing country mostly and jumped the Hunter, Paterson, Williams, Karuah and Myall Rivers — all substantial rivers — until it was stopped by the Pacific Ocean at Hawks Nest Beach. It took roughly 2 days to get there.
40
William X that is one of the most powerful bushfire stories I’ve ever had the pleasure to read , if you don’t consider yourself a hero for your actions back then , consider yourself a hero now for that amazing historical account .
And yes this needs to be required reading for every politician if not the public of Australia.
20
So the MSM loudly proclaims that wild fires are attributed to man made global warming, but when it turns out to be wrong, they only quietly walk it back. Sigh…Typical.
70
There is never any mention of the other aspect of fire hazard reduction. I’ve seen a program on the ABC about cool season burning in the NT. Apparently cool season burning produces less CO2 that hot season wildfires, so much so that an oil company pays local communities to do the cool season burning and claims carbon credits.
20
Slightly off topic, but-
I am in regular contact with an eminent scientist in the USA, he asked a very strange question yesterday, ‘Why is the RAW temperature data always reported as xx.0’
Conversations are on-going and he will look into what the local state and USA reporting methods actually are!
I suspect that the recording device is exactly the same as in use worldwide and measures temperature in Centigrade and that some conversion process is doing the truncation.
I will keep you posted.
20
Yes I keep hearing about these “indigineous management practices”, ie burning the land.
Strange the way the ABC considers it good when indigineous people do it, and bad when non indigineous do it.
60
‘NSW Energy Minister Matt Kean has told a national conference that climate change is behind the state’s current bushfire crisis and there is no use in “beating around the bush”.
‘Mr Kean began his speech by saying the bushfires had been caused by extreme weather events, high temperatures and the worst drought in living memory.
‘The Minister went on to say it was what scientists had warned of for decades and politics could not get in the way of winning the “climate wars”.
ABC
20
Everyone, especially PF and GA, should read #61 by william x. A horrifying piece about his experiences in fires.
40
Yes Annie,
it provides an important reminder of just how raw life can be , and when this is contrasted with the Politoco-Legal-Pseudoscience described in the next thread it just leaves a feeling of emptiness and disgust at politics.
KK
40
could you summarise it? Is it all anecdotal?
05
Is that how you get your information, GA?
A dumbed-down summary , received second-hand, because actually looking at the evidence and thinking for yourself is too hard?
50
Read it all GA.
30
The bit I first read assumes a position that I don’t hold so I didn’t go further but on your recommendation I did. It is filled with personal experiences to make a victimhood argument. If he feels that science, research and data are trying to invalidate his efforts that’s a matter for him. It’s not an argument I have anything to do with.
04
I find that ‘victimhood’ insinuation quite offensive GA. William went on to fight for many more years and in no way was/is acting as a victim. I didn’t think you could sink so low.
40
what has anything he wrote got to do with me or my position on conservation. He’s putting forward his self sacrifice to make this argument
I am tired of putting my life at risk for your ideologies and beliefs.etc
That is victimhood. I could rephrase it as a misguided attempt to use emotive language to try to shout down science I suppose. What would you prefer?
05
Stay safe in your inner city ghetto, GA.
You will always be a victim, of yourself.
41
“to try to shout down science “
What science ???
You have produced none.
40
“That is victimhood”
And that comment is pure slime.
40
The hypocrisy of accusing others of playing the “victim” card when your entire climate-change narrative revolves around how you are a victim of evil coal ….. is obvious.
Quit whining.
20
Annie you are spot on he is not playing a victim , just trying to warn that if we ignore the past we do so at our own peril .
And shame on you Gee Aye for denigrating what William X has written , certainly a new low .
50
I denigrated his argument that was trying to attack me, as it has no substance and was based upon a straw man (ie projecting onto me a particular opinion he thinks I have). Try to imagine that worthy people can say worthy and true things but still not be correct in the context of what they are trying to prove. I can prove that the earth goes around the sun but it doesn’t mean that fish acquire oxygen through their gills.
01
“assumes a position that I don’t hold”
So you just ignored reality because you didn’t like it.
Is that what you are saying, GA ?
No wonder you remain wilfully ignorant… and totally unable to learn.
41
…….and that is why you have no credibility here, GA.
Because you lie.
William is not claiming special consideration because he is a “victim”.
He is relating observation and fact which contradict the narrative that you have supported.
He is not anti-science. You are….. because you seize on any excuse to discard observations and data that do not support your preferred theory.
20
Over here in Sandgroper Land we have very strict fire regulations and fire risk management. They were particularly heightened after the Margaret River fire of 8 years ago which destroyed 40 homes courtesy of the DEC government greenies.
40
We stayed at Prevelly a few years ago, before the fires. It was beautiful but there was certainly a lot of flammable scrub around.
20
The latest proposal by “experts” is to listen to the traditional “first nation” people and how they “managed “ the land with fires.
Is there anyone else ,( other than me,). Who is struggling to understand how our first people ancestors, (numbering <1 mill ) actually “managed” bush fires in what was a much larger bush forrest area ??
Sure, i can accept they did controlled burns on grassland and scrub, but when a major natural bush fire ignited in one of the large, remote, inaccesable, forests, i cannot believe they could do much about it, but let it run its course.
And no, i do not believe they had the manpower, resources, or need, to do any significant preventitive burns in those large forested areas to produce those grassy forests described by the first settlers.
Even today, with all our resources and equipment , we could not hope to do preventative burns in a fraction of the much smaller forested areas..
So, my guess is, that at least part of the reason we have the problematic fires now is that the ground fuel load is greater now because whenever possible, we prevent regular natural fires from running their natural course, and in doing so reduce the ground fuel build up.
Controlled burns, and preventitive burns are not natures way.
We should learn to live with nature, rather than try to control it…. dont build residential areas in forests,
00
Chad…
My understanding is that they used the seasonal changes a lot more than we do.
For example, there is a period in spring in which I can watch the landscape changing . The ridges dry out before the gullies do, so fire lit on a ridgesystem will only burn as far as the next green gully.
Then, when the gully is dry, the ridges were already burnt.
They limit fire by applying frequency…. burning the different vegetation communities as they dried enough to burn, meant that subsequent burns were limited by previous burns. We try to limit fires by narrow fire breaks, which are far more easily spanned by embers, andwe tend to do them when we have the men and materials lined up. That and the need to protect static property, makes us inflexible. Indig had no property to protect and little concern about escapes because everybody was fire-aware and able to move to other burnt areas if threatened.
Everything we really know, sugggests that the burned a great deal of the landscape every season. The question is not if, but how.
The northern Australians still do it, anda lot of it appears more or less random. They appear very relaxed about it.
30
That is the classic accepted explanation Peter.
But it does not explain how they might deal with these unplanned fires (lightening strikes etc) that can occurr anywhere at any time.
Indig just did not have the resources to deal with that in any form…even if they were aware it was happening ..( sparse population, large forest areas, no communications, etc)
However , i can believe that after a few hundred years of these natural burn outs= cycles, there would not be the major ground fuel accumulation, such that subsequent fires would be less severe, and hence less distructive.
Our current method of preventing/stopping fires, just enables ground fuel to accumulate.as we are not able to do controlled burns on all the forresed areas…..nor do i believe our predecessors could either.!
10
Agree with that Chad.
Same sorts of practices apply to flood plain. Cover them with concrete, road pavements, inadequate storm drains, insert weirs, and mess with the soil permeability and drainage, naturally houses will get flooded.
But if you’re putting houses into forests, at least have the common sense to allow people to clear an adequate anti-fire clearing width around their homes (whether they do or not then becomes their responsibility). It’s not just the other furry critters that need protection from being roasted and losing their natural habitat, humans are also permanent natural inhabitants of the bush and need to not lose their natural habitat and home in it either.
Who says humans should be in suburbs, and not in forests? Most feel better when living in a forest so of course we want to take care of the forest and preserve it.
So who are governments or tree-hugging greenie fanatics to stymie natural adaptations to the environment around us, to provide for our required survivable niche within it? Evolutionary adaptation is for survival purposes, and bureaucratic nitwits want to prevent human survival due to their own narrow minded immature ideology.
We are all the ‘indigenous’ population, we are all connected to the land, so spare us the mystical and mythical BS about land-management from the same antithetical misanthropic people who’ve stuffed that up for decades, while presiding over a shameful failure of common sense, at our expense.
Reverse Midas Syndrome, anything a government touches immediately turns to a brown smelly slurry.
20
Not only flood plains WX, but any form of drainage line or blockage in even mildly sloping terrain puts modern homes at risk. People forget that our house building methods have changed since our grandparents’ time. Aussie homes were built 3 feet off the ground on piers (stumps if you’re Victorian), mainly for termite deterrence, not at ground level on slabs like they are now. The classic “Queenslanders” were more than twice that height for ventilation and to create a useable space.
Blind Freddie can see that the risk of flooding rises exponentially when you lower your home to ground level. Naturally the insurance losses will be greater when you have Mcmansions sitting on the ground.
10
In 2000, Transgrid was prosecuted by the NSW Government and the ACT Government for clearing a 60 metre wide strip along high power lines. Bob Carr, creating national parks where ever he could to garner environmentalist votes castigated Transgrid for environmental vandalism and promised to throw the book at them. The company were forced to pay $500,000 split between NSW and the ACT governments. A couple of years later when out of control bushfires were sweeping through the Snow Mountains, wildlife and three workers survived by seeking shelter in the power lines cleared zone. Subsequently Transgrid received a commendation from the RFS for their level of clearance. The clear lesson was ignored and now days farmers are still fined and have even been jailed for daring to make firebreaks on their own land as mitigation against nearby national forests. In twenty or thirty years time you can almost guarantee that the fuel load will have been restored and the State will burn again.
60
Yes,, as i said at 60.1.1 above, it is obvious in hindsight that there should be significant clearing alonside power lines AND NATIONAL HIGHWAYS. A good tree height + on (50m ?). either side to prevent fallen trees pulling down power lines and blocking the roads.
I would not expect to be able to drive roads during a fire storm, but you do want to keep access open for firefighters and emergency services.
Further , the time and resources needed to clear fallen trees from long stretches of road is not insignificant.
The recent southern fires effectively cut off major towns south of Ulladulla for over a week due mainly to blocked roads.
20