Big Government strangles our ecosystems just like it strangles scientific research. Australia has had 57 bushfire inquiries since 1939. We knew what was coming and we knew how to stop it, and we’ve known for eighty years (and indigenous people for thousands). Instead we paid a garrison of gravy trainers to not-read-those-reports and to create the exact conditions we knew would turn into a pyroconvective catastrophe. State Premiers missed a major threat to their people, their industry, our environment. On top of the death and destruction toll, just one industry, tourism, is looking at a $4.5b loss. Heads must roll. If they were misled, then name the names.
Our institutions failed us: The CSIRO didn’t save us, the ABC didn’t. What’s the point of them? Academics and CRC’s could’ve warned the nation, but instead most experts and the “reporters” said renewable energy would prevent these fires, even though climate change has made no difference to rainfall or droughts, which are driven by ocean currents, and solar cycles, not carbon dioxide. Let’s promote those who got it right, and turn off the tap to those that didn’t. Who pays damages? Who gets sacked?
Just do it: less fuel, less rules, more roads, more dams. Read Viv Forbes.
Cartoon thanks to Steve Hunter and the Saltbushclub
Government by Enquiry
by Viv Forbes
Politicians hide behind enquiries – their magic answer to all problems, especially bushfires.
Announcing enquiries give the impression of decisive action, they generate fees for armies of barristers, lawyers and bureaucrats, and provide momentary excitement for the media.
The proposed 2020 Australian Bushfires corrobboree will provide a grandstand for the Climate Rebellion Mob who will get starring roles on ABC/Fairfax. Big business will probably propose a carbon tax to fight bushfires while foresters and land owners will hardly be heard.
When the final report is ultimately delivered, the media will be off trumpeting some new climate “emergency” to scare the public. The expensive new report will be quietly filed with all the others.
We’ve had at least 57 bushfire enquiries since 1939 – about one every two years. Anyone who bothers to read them will soon deduce what should be done. Nothing much has changed except there are more people living in fire prone zones with no protection, and more forest and private land was locked up with heavy fuel loads.
The current bushfire tragedy has occurred after 30 years of unprecedented government control of environmental policy at all levels of government. Many of these destructive policies have been imported under so called “international agreements”. As a result, ordinary Australians have been dragged into court for constructing firebreaks or removing dangerous trees on their own land. Governments and green advisers have assumed total stewardship of the environment and they own the results – massive destruction of lives, homes, property, animals and vegetation – over five million hectares and 2,000 homes burnt.
Here is a five point plan which should come from Bushfire Enquiry number 58.
- Firstly, reduce the fuel load especially in national parks and forests by cool season burning, grazing, timber harvesting, slashing/mulching and collecting dead fire-wood. Appoint trained and experienced foresters to maintain safe and healthy public forests. Private landowners should also be enabled and obliged to become fire safe. Green-tinged politicians and bureaucrats have prevented or hampered all of these reforms.
- Secondly, create and maintain wide clear trafficable roads, tracks and firebreaks through the forests and around towns and private properties. In fire seasons, these patrolled fire-barriers will help to confine any fire to one sector and provide a prepared line from which to back burn if there is an approaching fire.
- Thirdly, build more dams and weirs to provide water for fire-fighting and to provide fire havens for humans, animals and vegetation. Increase penalties for arson in times of high fire danger.
- Fourthly, abolish all restrictions on responsible management of “protected” vegetation reserves on private land – especially the private land sterilised to fulfil foolish government Kyoto Protocol promises or under government-enforced vegetation protection orders. Governments have created these fire hazards by trying to wrap vast areas of vegetation in cotton wool and green tape (both of which are flammable). Government “protection” of flora and fauna has proved to be the fiery kiss of death.
- Fifthly, decentralise fuel and forest management out of the cities and into the regions.
City based politicians and bureaucrats have done enormous harm by locking up land and opposing fuel load reduction.
Decisions on vegetation risk management should be handed to property owners, park rangers, forest managers and rural fire wardens.
There is no useful role for the Commonwealth unless asked by States or regions for logistic support or to help fund bushfire training and fuels management. Otherwise it is better if Canberra politicians keep out of the way – send them all for a holiday in Hawaii.
Viv Forbes
To download this article with all images click: Saltbushclub PDF
Viv Forbes has been an explorer, pastoralist and weather-watcher in Queensland and NT for most of his long life. He has lit fires (accidentally and deliberately), and he and his wife have fought fires and had their camps, fences and pastures wiped out by fires. They were both members of a local bush fire brigade for over 25 years. (Judy even had formal training).
More information:
- Climate change and bushfires — More rain, the same droughts, no trend, no science
- Climate change is the excuse to hide an Inferno of Incompetence — heads must roll for the billion dollar bushfire mistakes
- Inferno on Black Friday 1939: 71 deaths, 3,700 buildings, too much fuel and “lit by the hand of man”
- Aboriginals didn’t need a water bomber God to save them from Government nurtured firestorms
- Solar cycle effects on rainfall, jetstreams, river flow
- Posts on rain, drought,
Completely agree. Since time has elasped since the last there is a role for amalgamating and reviewing the infomration collected from the last 20 years of inquiries and providing parliament with an update, but this is at a much lower level than a RC and can be done within months.
Since it is me I’ll just pick on one thing. Dams and weirs are not an answer and can be counter productive. They can withhold water that is otherwise in the environment preventing drying (see recent reports on China’s drought for example).
634
So let me get this straight, dams harvesting rainwater runoff in catchment areas are starving the catchment area of water?
But when there are no dams the rainwater runoff goes into creeks and rivers and eventually out to sea, keeping the catchment are wet?
420
you need to read up on waterways my friend
330
Good idea Gee Aye, lets discuss the role of dams / irrigation / soil moisture. It’s not the main issue in this post.
If we build dams, and use that to hold the water on the land, generate well managed plantations / forests / crops, that’ll help increase rainfall, income and jobs (which means resources, people, equipment too), it may reduce wind speeds a little (reducing fire spread a bit) and increase soil moisture which reduces some temperatures and the drying effect downwind. It should also reduce dust and erosion (not related to fires, but a nice bonus).
So convince me, perhaps you are right. I don’t see how increasing river flow to the ocean reduces fire risk?
530
for a start the water is not destined to stay in the dam catchment, it runs down the river at a flow rate different to that regulated by the dam. You can’t just dam and let downstream be damned.
07
Wow.
You’ve convinced me.
Such an insightful piece of analysis. Best submit it for publication.
I’m sure the peer reviewers will give it a tick. Especially if they have access to your raw data.
70
as insightful as the stuff I was responding to?
03
No.
As insightful as your raw data.
11
What about the 28 locks and spillways which kept the Murray river full of water throughout the Millenium drought, the worst drought in 100 years. They were all built before 1939 and would not be allowed today because of such ignorant thinking.
Perhaps the best quote I heard was Victoria Premier Steve Bracks, a primary schools swimming teacher who said “dams do not make water”. So we spent a billion or two on a useless desalination plant. As did four more cities. Dams work. Every farmer depends on them. Or we would have no food.
The Romans, Iraqis, Nabateans all knew that water was precious. And their engineering was amazing. All illegal today because of the profound ignorance of people like Steve Bracks who think technology answers problems humans solved over millenia without electronics and osmosis. And all this at a fraction of the billions we spend every year on utterly useless windmills which we will have to replace soon. Renewables, not reliables.
It’s amazing how Progressives stop all progress. But then they know nothing except how to stop things. Fascists who call themselves AnitFa as if that fools anyone. Communists who say they are Socialists but want to take everyone else’s money and nationalize everything. Destructive individuals who pretend they are constructive.
In dry Australia we desperately need to husband water and we have plenty but like fuel on the forest floor, it is illegal to use free resources. We are told the government must legislate to stop freedom in the name of freedom. Utterly destructive nonsense.
20
Jo,
That link ” climate change has made no difference to rainfall or droughts” doesn’t exist?
00
I suspect the dams they are referring to would be the smaller dams, up to 10,000 m3 or so. Not the big concrete dams that block the entire river. The helicopters can use local dams to fill up the water bombing baskets.
Weirs are simpler to build, but they stop fish migration. So in reality are more difficult to build and get approval for. And they don’t hold enough water anyway. So not a real option.
40
Diversity and especially the Australian ‘species profile’ has changed. From the beginning of settlement in Australia, agriculture required fast growing fodder grasses to turn a bigger profit. It was not profitable enough to wait for slow growing native Australian species like Kangaroo Grass and Wallaby Grass to grow, even though the super slow growing grass that are green all year round, and can even stay green in extreme drought like ‘weeping grass’ (Microlaenna Stipoides). What an incredible Australian grass, that is as a bonus, able to to grow green and endure under towering trees, right up to the base of the tree where the trunk meets the ground. and harvest moisture/dew from the air during the night returning it to the ground. Letting further cattle grazing on slow growing native grasses is part of the exact recipe of the conversion process whereby native slow growing grass that is green all year round and as a bonus is also very slow to grow allow fast growing weed grasses to proliferate. Through this conversion process, Australia is now mainly fast growing weeds and ultra fast growing crops in general. Attacking the native grasses with a wipper snipper each year or a roadside slasher kills them after three strikes, which is also the three strike method of getting rid of Bracken fern.
So many instant, ‘just add water’, experts. First and foremost, as i say and am sure one might agree, the species profile has changed ultra-considerably over the recent 200 hundred years with respect to the geographic region and the species profile, and this absolutely has to be taken into consideration.
Post fire is a good time to take an inventory/survey of plant/species diversity. Post fire is also a ‘gold-framed-window-of-opportunity’ that presents as the perfect occasion to perform some follow up weeding that might pose a dangerously fast fuel build-up in the near future.
If the complexity of the current scenario were even by the smallest fraction, ‘less-simple’ than the well established contemporary formulation, ‘she’s/he’s a witch! burn her/him, then the ‘automatic’ heard/herd instinct might not be so problematic, and then perhaps actually ‘help’ environment, whatever it may be, no matter the condition. So far, any environmental track record is not looking good.
Our track record has not been very good for witches and warlocks either.
27
All of them grasses are susceptible to frost
Once frosted they died back to the ground
And are useless as live stock feed.
The dead frosted tops need them to be mulched
Or burnt in a cool burn.
40
Just remember that about 70% of Australia is rangelands where your recipe is more a recipe for disaster
60
Summer active native grasses are not particularly “slow growing. They merely have a compressed growing season, due to erratic summer rainfall across much of the southern landscape.
TIMELY burning in late spring will destroy/sterilise much of the seed from winter-active introduced grasses, leaving the grassland open for the re-shooting of summer-active natives. The problem with the sipummer-actives is not so much slow growth as their susceptibility to persistent grazing. If they cannot generate leaf area to produce seed and store carbohydrate in the root system for next year’s regeneration, they cannot persist.
70
Peter
At best rangeland species might get about a 6 week growing season on a rainfall event.
Then brown again till the next event – if any
30
What a farmer wants to grow on their own land for fodder or any other agricultural activity is their own business, however bigger/wider fire breaks should be legislated into law around mono-culture juvenile ultra highly inflammable, super-ultra-thirsty plantation forests.
Very complex problem..For example, a good start would be to declare fast-growing-incredibly-invasive-Kikuyu a weed (Other than on private property where fines could be imposed if allowed to spread onto public land.) instead of investing billions every year on slashers and the like to maintain it, manicure it, give it all kinds of elaborate haircuts. Even cattle cannot eat it.
Even if a simple law was passed, that lawn grass/Kikuyu is a declared weed and a mega-fast-growing-fire-hazard is all we ever achieved, it would be a pretty big thing, with respect to fires.
As for tourism, tourist don’t come here to see more lawn grass and out-of-control-lawn-grass-infestation.
Very complex problem.
The reason native grasses burn so cool is because they are predominantly green all year round, especially in Victoria unlike Perennial weed/fodder grasses that turn brown in their entirety each and every single successive subsequent season
Our species profile has changed and this has to be assessed.
44
“Cattle won’t eat Kikuyu “?
Dopey misinformation ! There’s many a dairy farmer feeds their cattle on Kikuyu !
They love green grass !
70
KiKuyu: https://www.agric.wa.gov.au/livestock-biosecurity/kikuyu-poisoning-livestock
Some resources and pics of what Australia might still look like when not infested with fast growing weed species that brown off and produce fuel on an industrial scale.
https://www.wgcma.vic.gov.au/our-region/projects/alpine-peatlands-2
https://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/resources/a9897cf2-9d38-4201-bea2-13dadf3af9a8/files/major-veg-summary.pdf
https://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/pages/c838080e-2efb-4718-9342-472bf9da70e6/files/mvg5-eucalypt-woodlands-draft.pdf
10
From the https://www.agric.wa.gov.au/livestock-biosecurity/kikuyu-poisoning-livestock
“What is kikuyu poisoning?
Kikuyu poisoning can occur in livestock when they are placed onto heavy kikuyu pasture during certain environmental conditions. It can cause signs of neurological disease and death. Noticing signs of kikuyu poisoning early is important to prevent production losses”….
12
Had you read my comments in the previous post you would have heard that just about every plant known to man has caused or been suspected of causing poisoning of livestock at some stage. Phalaris staggers, ryegrass toxicity, paspalum ergot poisoning, clover bloat, Lucerne bloat etc. There are hundreds and hundreds including a lot of vegetables that we eat. Get yourself a vet textbook and it will confirm what I said. The native grasses are not all innocent either, such as Spear Grass etc which causes debilitating physical injury to animals.
I’m no fan of kikuyu, but it forms the backbone of a lot of dairy and beef pastures where I’m from and certainly does not normally poison cattle. Kikuyu is the least of a farmer’s worries. It’s a pest when it gets away though. Near Gunnedah there is a kikuyu seed farm that sends the stuff to new areas.
Its saving grace is that a very light dose of Roundup will knock it for six, but I imagine you are against Roundup too.
Just so you know, kikuyu is green all year round too, even under frost, just winter-dormant. We had to spray it to knock it back enough to sow winter pastures into it.
60
… only if no provision is made for it.
This is the ideal time for experiments. Choose a couple of creeks as near as dammit the same as each other.
Don’t do anything with one of them and add lots of small weirs to the other.
Measure them both over a fire cycle –
– water retention in the stream banks
– growth rates of plant life
– growth rates of animal life
– fire resistance (if there’s any such thing).
In other words: measure everything
Use more creeks/rivulets etc to determine optimum height of weirs vs rate of flow. if there is such a thing. Whatever. Do it with scientific enquiry; not opinion through Fling-the-Blame-and-Hope-Some-Sticks Enquiries.
You’re not out to provide water reservoirs for fire fighting: that’s a separate issue, to be managed separately. You’re out to learn rivulet/creek and small river management — the basics. Aus is a dry country and you lot haven’t done the basics.
I’ve not seen nor heard of any management of anything! Just enquiry after enquiry all finding the same problems. Oh Yeah: and Desalination plants. And you wonder why you get firestorms. You don’t get the best/most out what water Ma Nature gives you except to complain about her parsimony. Idiots, the lot of you.
Well. it’s not my problem: I don’t reside in Oz … thank goodness.
Then draw some conclusions.
I’ve seen some who appear to be in the know strongly recommend stream/creek management with weirs
GA doesn’t. So: there’s a difference of opinion. Settle it: through experiment.
You have your orders so go do it.
50
🙂 :-)now that’s being proactive!
KK
20
oh, yes: nearly forgot.
Add to the research which trees should be planted along the banks and why, or should the banks remain treeless? If so, why?
If not, why?
River Basics 101.
40
In 1980 the Dept of Water Resources engineers decreed that all the rainforest trees along our riverbank must be poisoned to allow the water to flow more efficiently and get away quicker in a flood.
Result: massive slumping of the banks which is still being felt even though they replanted some pathetic gums when there was an outcry.
Lesson: don’t let engineers near a natural system. Their next plan will be to concrete the river.
Revised plan: 30 years later in the next valley over they are spending a few million positioning reclaimed logs in the riverbed to maintain stream flow and stop erosion. Who’da thought?
40
these exist Greg but they dry out in drought.
01
Leaf I propose we refill Willandra Lakes with water from Lake Argyle, no dams required.
50
that will help the fires in the great divide
28
You’re right, its mainly dust storms out that way.
https://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/bom-tells-dubbo-to-expect-rain-but-massive-dust-storm-sweeps-through-nsw-instead/530923
40
GA….
You have obviously never had to fight a fire without water.
There are possible penalties for storing water in the landscape, but “dehydrating” is is not one of them. Especially if you understand the difference between small local water storage’s, and the kind built to supply toilet-flushing for millions of urbanites.
The point is to have hundreds of small storages through the landscape (very much the way a farm has a dam in every paddock) not two or three Warragambas over the length of the a Great Divide.
Funny how your contumacy leads you into error, every time.
120
I don’t see the relevance. You want to collect water to fight fires that could be prevented by that water greening the landscape (and not to mention the loss to pastures and crops).
114
Dams are of course for water storage by harvesting from rainfall related river flows but engineered not to harvest all of the water and provision made for environmental flows downstream.
This is a major concern during times of drought when environmental flows are carried out despite the shortage of drinking water for people and animals.
One of the major dams on the NSW Mid North Coast is filled using pumps from the Manning River to the dam and pumping is suspended once the river level drops below a certain level at the pump intakes.
The problems in China are rise and fall of rivers with hydro power stations operating from dam storage and downstream river flow fluctuations creating flooding at times.
Harvesting and storage of water has been taking place for thousands of years.
130
GA…
Dams do not prevent water from “greening the landscape”. That is a foolish idea.
The water collected by dams has already run off the land surface and is flowing only through the river channels. You only have to look at the lower parts of the amurray-Darking. These rivers flow through arid land which is not “greened” by those rivers except on the relatively rare occasions in which major flooding occurs.
Floods do not occur during a drought, but fires do. So the idea that fewer dams produce a greener landscape and no fires, is ridiculous.
If further evidence is required, examine how many fires are in areas of unconfined catchment or ABOVE dams, where the dams could have no effect. Bingo…. no dams and big fires.
120
Extinguishing fires promptly avoids using a lot of water.
– Some of the big fires in Gippsland started five weeks before they became raging infernos
– Some of the current fires in NE Victoria started on New Year’s day and then really took off about a week later when winds were hot and dry.
The prompt attention to these fires shortly after they started would have meant little water was used and little or no damage was done.
“It would be too difficult,” they said. What?? Do they mean that losing one’s house, livelihood and perhaps friends wouldn’t be as difficult as putting out a small fire?
70
John
IIRC prompt attention is why the US has the “Smoke Jumpers”
00
We have RAFT teams (remote area fire), that are deployed by helicopter.
Have you ever tried to parachute into a eucalyptus forest?
41
Just don’t smoke on the way down … eucalyptus oil makes even the air flammable.
30
They manage it into redwood forests. Each fire district has its hazards – try the Snake River. This via a friend who put himself through a forestry degree by going on fire crews, including a couple of years as a smoke jumper.
The comment was more about the quick getting at the fires in remote areas rather than about the how though.
00
I wonder what specialists could do on the ground to be effective when you get there though Ian? A fire can travel faster than people can move with it on foot, and people can’t carry water, and can’t make a fire break in a dense forest. And you dare not get immediately in front of it. At best they could jump into its projected path and back-burn along a cleared track, if there was one that’s fit for purpose (which is doubtful). In remote rough terrain it’s a bit dicey jumping into that, what if the back-burn goes wrong? You’d need to shelter on burnt out ground, and have just created an even bigger fire.
Alternatively you could use fast observation drones to get on scene in under 30 mins, and provide data and video on the fire’s character and size plus local weather data, and use drones to deploy fire to back-burn with along such a viable trail, with no one at risk if it all goes wrong. Even then you still end up with a huge fire and are relying on a team of water-bombers to quench it quickly.
So it seems wiser to use a fast deploying long endurance drone, to monitor any fire’s early stages, and to coordinate a rapid response by fast water bomber aircraft, while the fire is still small. So have patrol drones in the air 24/7 to monitor high-risk regions and fire-bomber aircraft on standby to hit a new fire while it’s still small. Even then I do wonder if they could get to the location of a fire quickly enough to be effective, as you’d need a lot of aircraft on standby 24 hours a day to be sure you could contain shrink and defeat any fire early.
Then perhaps people on the ground to make sure it’s out.
To keep costs low the 24/7 fleet of standby aircraft would need to be a specialist fire-fighting drone water-bomber, but nothing like that even exists yet. But that could potentially reduce the number of fires that then grow to unmanageable proportions and makes the situation generally more manageable and permits more auto-coordinated wireless tactics (minus the input or leash holding of the ‘overseer’ class in white and black shirt uniforms).
10
Roman candles.
20
Unlike the urban firefighters, rural fire fighters are more fire lighters where combating bushfires. With the massive fuel loads that frankly insane park management policies encouraged, truck water and air tankers are most appropriate for controlling spot fires in advance of a major conflagration, past containment lines or to try and protect a building. Back burning containment lines is the only way to slow a major fire down and get it under control. To put this in perspective, if 30 mm of rain over 24 hours fell on a fire front 30km long by by 1 km deep it would slow it down but not extinguish it. Yet that is a total of 9 Gl.
40
You deserve a half green tick & half red thumb for this comment.
Dams & reservoirs are part of the solution.
Wasting water by sending it down to the ‘preserve’ the fresh water character of lake Alexandrina in SA is completely dopey. It is naturally an estuarine lake – just like Lake Victoria in East Gippsland is.
70
I wasn’t even thinking of that – I didn’t think the main flows of the Murray Darling were part of the dot point.
00
GA
Somewhat agree!
Australia has the biggest existing irrigation system already – The Murray Darling.
Now reduced to a fast flowing canal with quick releases to the downstream areas for the “environment”
It is an eroded dead channel.
It was a slow moving series of wetlands & choked river areas. It would hydrate the whole country side for 1,000 square kilometres!
The salinity problems of today would be solved if it was restored between the dams & weirs to soak the ground in flood time.
It can be recreated again between existing or future weirs to reinstate the natural ground water.
The tree canopy today is the worst in 200 years in regard to weight.
Tree density in most of the fire out of control area are over 20 times more today!
We are draining the lands water and building Fire Stacks!
70
thanks Dave…
10
Viv says
You suggest
What part of drought and flooding rains did you miss? Your otherwise preventing drying water goes out to sea in the good rainfall years and whatever we can store evaporates into atmosphere preventing drying..
China’s drought or anyones drought is irrelevant and a poor excuse for not utilising best technology available to build storage.
100
I see no one took up the challenge to look beyond the positive aspects of a dam to weigh up those with the negative. It appears that, as usual, it is easiest to be in denial that the world is complex. No one took the time to look at the Chinese drought?
02
I had a look sir, they spent billions on canals bringing water from the south to supply the north. Unfortunately there is now a drought in the south and I’m almost certain climate change is behind it.
10
Yep, natural climate change. Apparently there is nothing unusual, unnatural or unprecedented going on in China.
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V22/mar/a15.php
10
Aah, an adherent to the teachings of that intellectual giant Steve Bracks.
00
What a great article Jo. It’s short, sharp and to the point.
Having two generations of foresters in my ancestral line has given me insights that absolutely concur with Viv Forbes.
240
So let me see if I’ve got this right then.
How much will this Royal Commission cost?
The Legal profession must be rubbing their hands together with glee at the prospect. A guaranteed goldmine for them, right now naming their ‘first chairs’ and setting up ‘billable hours’. The Government Printers making umpteen copies of the proceedings and results for all to read, look sternly concerned while the cameras roll, and then behind closed doors, do what they have always done with every other Commission of enquiry, throw that book into the trash, clap hands together, and say ….. ‘Next’.
The Government, any Government of any persuasion across the last, well, many Decades really, after shelling out millions and probably billions of dollars, will now shell out millions more of our money ….. to be told almost the very same things that have been with the findings from the last 56 whatever Royal Commissions and enquiries into bushfires.
Why not just set up a Committee of MHR’s and Senators to go through the findings of all those earlier Commissions, and see if any of the findings were similar, and then implement those. It won’t cost us a penny. Those
foolselected representatives are already on the publicteatpayroll.And seriously, I wonder how many of those findings will be exactly the same this time round.
Tony.
290
Tony, there will also be a string of private litigation following the Royal Commission, possibly claiming that the state government allowed the state-controlled lands and National Parks, under their management, to become unsafe. I would think the photos of overgrown fire trails that vehicles couldnt navigate in the emergency will be damning for the various responsible authorities.
170
Sure those obvious findings will be there but the huge difference with this one will be its underlying message of climate change and how more legislation is needed to control it.
Regardless of how much compelling evidence from sceptics and experts in the field produce these people are zealots of the highest order and the agenda will continue as long as they have access to positions of power or influence.
60
Rinse and repeat.
The problem is that there is no way to enforce states to follow the findings of a Royal Commission. A Royal Commission simply recommends.
If the findings of a Royal Commission into bushfires was enforceable, we would probably have on had one or two since 1939.
70
Damn fingers! That should have been ‘…we would probably have only had one or two…’
I swear my keyboard has a mind of its own.
50
Sounds like you’ve got my keyboard’s twin sibling 😀
20
sounds like willful ignorance
01
You talking about yourself again, gee aye?
Not seen much else from you.
11
You mean that no government can pass a law after a RC?
111
???
30
No, it means that mostly they don’t. Or even if they did would they obey it? One of the major challenges of recent decades has been getting governments to obey their own laws and regulations. An inquiry now will deflect attention from government, especially state governments. By the time the report appears the public will have forgotten what the fuss was about; football will have taken centre stage, if nothing else. Fire authorities might try controlled burning but the EPA and chatterboxes will scupper that initiative.
So, no change.
10
I wish there was a big belly laugh icon to choose for this Tony !
Absolutely spot on.
And funny !
10
An inquiry will be different this time because “Climate Change” will be on the agenda. No one can accurately describe it or predict it; it points the blame at everyone instead of a few, and it has numerous, vocal supporters. An inquiry will be just another platform for pressuring government policy action on a make-believe issue.
40
The inquiry would call only the experts in associated fields and the prosecution wants to know if the bushfires this season are unprecedented. People from academia like Karoly, Ashcroft and Gergis.
No doubt they will also call head honchos from BoM and CSIRO to confirm what we already know, its not unprecedented and AGW has no part to play.
20
Tell me, why have National Parks at all?
16
Another incinerating post for the Politics Jo, but can I make a small suggestion.
The word “garrison” has about it a sense of structure and purpose.
Would the new word give a better idea of the sense of direction of those involved.
“Instead we paid a gaggle of gravy trainers to not-read-those-reports and to create the exact conditions we knew would turn into a pyroconvective catastrophe”.
And, love that “pyroconvective catastrophe”.
KK
80
KK — They have structure and purpose. They all ask for money and cover each others failures.
The ABC won’t expose the bad policies and institutions that let us down because it is one of them.
It isn’t a conspiracy, it’s just the incentives that all point the same way.
Many mortgages are paid off in the process of destroying so many houses.
200
Point conceded.
The first option has exactly the right sense of purpose to describe what’s happening.
KK
30
A Chorus of backside Covering …
10
Who’s making these enquiries?
Surely we can spare them the odd Bushfire or two, at Mate’s rates?
The Bushfires were caused by Arsonists, Viv.
Yet you haven’t made any mention of that.
Yeah, you’re Rabble Rousing against the Pollies, like you always are, but if you’re not
talking about Arsonists as the cause of possibly all the big Bushfires that we’ve ever
had, then you’re still on the same page as the Pollies.
221
Forgive me hatband — On arsonists:
Do we 1. take away the temptation and “reward” (mass conflagration so large it gets on international news)
or 2. install camera’s on every road and track and send them to jail after they’ve destroyed 100,000 hectares, 10 homes and many living things?
Leaving all the fuel lying around in a hot dry climate is like leaving Vodka bottles on street corners and asking alcoholics not to drink.
370
I take your point, Jo.
What i’m saying is that there hasn’t even been the slightest curiosity about the identities and motivations of the Arsonists.
The fact that the Bushfires were Arson was quickly conceded, then the ABC presented an Academic from QUT who pronounced Arsonists to be ”Firebugs” typically youths aged up to 19 and men over 60.
Then it was Case Closed!, and back to the unsolvable Fuel Loads Blame Game.
It just strikes me as odd that there’s no Public discussion about the Arson.
Was it kiddies playing with matches 50 Kilometres inside the forest who managed to get home for DinDins before Mum found out, Operation Gladio, Aliens, Men in Black? …
Where’s the curiosity?
16
Last I heard, 183 were charged with arson. So there is some interest in them, just not the fire report.
50
Arson included people discarding lit cigarettes or lighting bbqs or using power tools. A small percentage of that number were attempts to set things alight. But this has been repeated over and over ever since that number was released. Don’t people look more deeply into “what they heard”. Or is their hearing selective?
10
“discarding lit cigarettes”
IMO, should be considered as being arson.
20
There’s a legal difference between Arson and Stupidity/indifference/arrogance.
There are two options only.
Lock up all the above or manage the fuel load as if your life depended on it.
KK
20
Why don’t you read the analysis?
Australian Institute of Criminology. Proportion of deliberate bushfires in Australia March, 2008.
https://aic.gov.au/publications/bfab/bfab051
Now refute that.
00
I have no intention of doing so. Does the 2008 study somehow look into the future to break down the 183 crimes into their categories like Greg C seems unable to do?
00
No. I thought not.
You’d rather sit back and pontificate about things you no bugger-all about.
Self-righteous sanctimony is an end in itself for you and your green left comrades.
I suspect that your “183 crimes” will break out just about along the same lines as the 280,000 vegetation fires from 18 Australian fire and land management agencies that were included in the analysis I referenced.
20
you don’t need to suspect you can easily find what they were. Stop distracting
00
You’re the one doing the distracting.
Reread the post you made.
You’re the one who raised the issue and made the bald assertion:
You made the assertion; you provide the evidence.
Otherwise it’s more green-left BS. Purposely designed to shift the focus onto your pet fiction.
10
None of the big fires here in SA
Are the result of arsonists
Power lines and lightening strikes
Were the major causes of our own big fires here in SA
Have arsonists been ‘at work’ ?
Yes, but an acute local awareness of strange cars in the rural areas,
Dash cam footage
And speedy action by SAPOL & firies
Had stopped their efforts.
And it’s important NOT to go by the paradigm
That these arsonists are young males ‘on a spin’.
Some yaears ago here in the Hills
We had a spate of 60 odd arson fire.
Among them my organic farm was targeted.
Eventually the person was spotted.
And a ~ 40 year old housewife with two kids in the back of the car
Was arrested fleeing the scene.
Was sentenced to 15 years behind bars.
GOOD !
41
SAPOL were fortunate to find her fingerprints on the items she used to get the fire going after she had left the scene.
And her husband ? A local framer & CFS member !
totally surprised and bewildered !
10
The only mention about an arsonist’s background that I’ve seen referred to an individual that was a loner with zero friends who apparently wanted to be noticed. He then went around to offer assistance to people to escape the flames – it was this activity that was suspicious and led to his arrest.
00
Hatband… you repetition is not making your argument better.
Arsonists can try to start fires. It’s the landscape and weather that makes them run. Do you think they didn’t try last year or the year before or the year before that?
152
Plus ideal fire-weather often includes conditions for dry-lightning as the front arrives too, which has been the case multiple times this fire season.
91
yup
52
Plus one pyroconvective reality TV show inspires so many arsonists.
I don’t think there were as many arsonists last year as there just wasn’t enough episodes of Fire Hell Coming Your Way and Fire Hero Saves The Day!
130
Bring on the world where only approved content is allowed on the media. It’s worked out well the last few times it was tried
219
“world where only approved content is allowed on the media”
You mean like NOW, when discussion of man MADE-UP climate change is basically forbidden in the ABC, BBC and many other parts of the media ?
203
Lucky truth is not a shark Fiz, you’d be its dinner, you’d never see it coming.
141
Never said I wanted approved content. Gimme one TV Channel that puts the Deplorables and non-left voter arguments forward and allows real debate with the best of both sides, and Australians will give you smashing ratings. nothing like that here in Oz.
And may the best channel win, eh?
130
Sure Jo – is Sky not good enough? I’m not sure about deplorables, but it certainly supports the ‘non right’. Pity about its ratings though
17
It is the ABC’s role to provide fair and un-baised comment and news
They have FAILED utterly and complete..
… like you have when it comes to evidence.
And ratings.. good thing the ABc doesn’t have to pay its own way, hey 😉
11
I mean “non left”
24
I don’t know what they did last year or the year before that, and I can’t see how you could either, unless you’ve got Second Sight?
As far as repetition goes, you and Peter Fitzroy have been running the same old Dog and Pony Show for a while, but plenty of the commenters here can’t get enough of it.
111
What? Do you know the “arson” figures for last year? Stuff didn’t burn so much the previous fire seasons because it wouldn’t burn or outbreaks could be contained quickly in the poor conditions for fire, not because of a lack of arsonists.
00
During the recent conflagration the police visited all known arsonists and told them to stay in doors, but of course there is always the new kid on the block.
Cool burning along the whole Great Divide would prevent bushfires in future.
72
Was this the Newcastle Police, the NSW Police, Victoria Police?
Was it an Order or just one of those unilateral ad hoc decisions which police are well known for?
29
Pretty sure it was the NSW police, but I’ve had no luck finding the report. While looking I found this from 2011 and thought you might be interested.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/police-and-govt-create-arson-watchlist-20111031-1mrl2.html
10
It is very simple. It is a decade or so between major bushfires, so the politicians and their fellow travelers ignore inquiries and Royal Commissions, because it will be another governments responsibility the next time. In the mean time they virtue signal and buck pass until the outrage passes.
A pox on all of them.
160
People need to read this…the US ecperience of eucalypts and declaring them a high fire hazard – from 2013….
https://www.livescience.com/40583-australia-wildfires-eucalyptus-trees-bushfires.html
“Australia’s Wildfires: Are Eucalyptus Trees to Blame?
“By Marc Lallanilla
“21 October 2013
“The threat posed by eucalyptus groves spreading beyond Australia was highlighted in 1991, when a wildfire torched the hills surrounding Oakland, Calif. That conflagration killed 25 people and obliterated more than 3,000 homes, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and was blamed primarily on the thousands of eucalyptus trees found throughout the Oakland Hills.
“Despite their well-earned reputation as a firefighter’s worst nightmare, eucalyptus trees remain a favorite landscape specimen, renowned for fast-growing stands of tall shade trees that, according to some research, help repel insects through the same fragrant eucalyptus oil that’s blamed for fueling wildfires.
………..
“A ‘dangerous plant’
“But local experts are steadfast in declaring eucalyptus trees public fire enemy No. 1.
“”Eucalyptus groves on steep hillsides — like those in the East Bay hills — are extremely flammable when hot … winds of late summer and fall start blowing and make control of a moving flame front impossible until the winds stop,” Tom Klatt, UC Berkeley campus environmental manager, said in a report from the university’s Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources NewsCenter.
“”As a result, CalFIRE [the state’s firefighting agency] has categorized the East Bay Hills, particularly Berkeley and Oakland, as a ‘Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone,'” Klatt added.
………
“Eucalyptus trees also aren’t winning any friends among ecologists concerned about invasive species. The California Invasive Plant Council (Cal-IPC) considers the eucalyptus a moderately serious problem, considering its rapid spread and its ability to displace native plant and animal communities.
10
Steve we don’t need to read this in Australia
We already know mate !
One old fashioned way to manage Eucalyptus forests was to harvest them for logs and chipping
That is not done in the USA I suspect
And it is becoming much harder here because of Greenist thinking in governments
00
Also….
https://baynature.org/article/burning-question-east-bay-hills-eucalyptus-flammable-compared/
“From unclear comparisons of leaf chemistry, we are led down progressively less rewarding or elucidating scientific rabbit holes. The high oil content of eucalyptus leaves also means that they burn hotter than less oily leaves. After an extensive search, I came up with four studies that concluded blue gum leaves have a heating value of about 10,000 BTU per pound, which is a little less than coal and about 1,500 BTU more than your average plant material. But again, this is not necessarily more than native species—for example, coyote brush, an early-succession bush that could replace eucs in unshaded areas, has a heating value of about 8–10,000 BTU per pound, depending on the time of year. (For context, a single kitchen match is worth about one BTU.)
“Ignitability—how easily something catches fire—is a combined result of its architecture, chemistry, moisture content, and caloric values. Like dry grass, blue gum leaves have a high surface-area-to-volume ratio and tend to build up in well-aerated piles. But, as with the BTU comparisons, there are few applicable apples-to-apples (or blue-gums-to-bay-laurels) studies of ignitability in the Bay Area. Jack Gescheidt, a fervent euc-defender and photographer who makes pictures of nudes posing with trees, told me that he conducted an informal test, lighting both wet and dry leaves from blue gum and bay laurel trees over his stovetop. At his urging, I did the same. The wet leaves didn’t burn, but the dry leaves of both species flared impressively and smoked up my apartment.
………….
“Andrew Sullivan, a bushfire expert at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Canberra, says that in Australia, dry eucalypt forest might accumulate eight to 12 tons of debris per acre. Like the other Australians I spoke with, Sullivan called the Bay Area blue gums “supersized,” treated to better soils than those in nutrient-poor Australia and untrimmed by their native pests. Its native decomposers are missing too, meaning fallen leaves and bark decay slower than usual; here, eucalyptus groves can accumulate 30 tons of debris or more per acre.
“According to a 2006 National Park Service study, that’s compared to California bay laurel trees, which average 18 tons per acre, and coast live oaks, which average just 11; an acre of grass, meanwhile, contains somewhere between one and four tons of plant material. Furthermore, the majority of the blue gum litter is small sticks, bark, and leaves, collectively known as “fine fuels.” These fine fuels are the source of a forest fire’s power, Sullivan says, easily ignited and quickly consumed. “Eucalyptus is flammable,” says Scott Stephens, a UC Berkeley fire ecologist. “But the thing that’s most concerning is the volume of material it can produce.”
00
This websites listed reveal low flammability options to plant along the anticipated new and improved firebreaks, dreaming, that are wider and are actually vegetated with plants of low flammability…..or just simply legislate highly inflammable crops of Blue Gums are to be restricted in size so that tree cropping can actually create a mosaic of both low flammability spotted gum for example. Spotted Gum plantation can act as fire breaks to the high inflammability cousins. There must be billions of combinations possible to work with and adapt to our ……”climate”..lol Everyone can be happy!!
https://www.fire.tas.gov.au/userfiles/stuartp/file/FireResistingPlants2010.pdf
Or here… https://www.education.vic.gov.au/Documents/school/principals/infrastructure/bfpronelandsc.pdf
Construction in Bushfire Zones – Boral https://www.boral.com.au/sites/default/files/media/field_document/12297_BushfireBro_Gen_v04b.pdf
http://www.agroforestry.net.au/main.asp?_=Spotted%20Gum
https://www.recreatingthecountry.com.au/blog/farm-plantations-can-reduce-bushfire-risk
10
Even Spotted gums have to be cared for to make them less flammable.
1: Mow or graze the grass between the rows
2: Prune off low branches to reduce crowning by fires.
00
If you had to pick one person in Victoria who is mainly responsible for the bushfire devastation, my call would be Daniel Andrews. He is responsible for the state government departments that have failed to burn off state forests and National Parks to the accepted 2009 Royal Commission recommended levels, and also allowed councils and green activists to hamper even those much-reduced burns. No wonder Andrews was quick to call his own enquiry, rather than leave it to the coming federal Royal Commission to perhaps find he was the person most at fault.
261
Spot on.
The chief “firebug” is ,,,,,,
How is he still there?
100
This is the data that demonstrates Andew’s incompetence.
Victoria’s recommended annual planned burn target agreed to from the Royal Commission into the 2009 bushfires is 390,000Ha.
Actual fuel reduction burn area:
2018-19- 130,000 Deficit- 260.000
2017-18- 74,728 Deficit- 315,272
2016-17- 125,052 Deficit- 264,948
2015-16- 197,940 Deficit- 192.060
2014-15- 234,614 Deficit- 36,674
Cumulative deficit over the last 5 years totals 1,068,954Ha. Planned burns only achieved 45% of the target over the last 5 years. An honourable premier would stand down over such a dismal performance on such a critical target. Unless he is brought to account over this it makes any Royal Commission recommendation pointless.
120
Rick that is fascinating
Do you have any like info for SA ?
10
The data is from departmental reports in Victoria. I do not know if SA have ever had a nominated fuel reduction target. You may find something using Google.
10
Apaprently Canberra hit with huge hailsotnes size of golf balls…..100s of cars have no windows apparently….
Of course living at 650+ m above sea level in a sub alpine zone with notoriously fickle weather cant happen…it has to be caused by “climate change(tm)” of course…..
Canberras summer storms are quite notorious apparently…..
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6588613/that-might-just-be-the-first-wave-heavy-storms-and-huge-hailstones-lash-canberra/?cs=14225
“There has been significant damage to the Winchester Station in Belconnen in photos seen by The Canberra Times. It has reportedly affected the intelligence centre.
“Windows have also been smashed in the John Gorton Building which houses the Department of Environment. Belconnen Basketball stadium is reporting damage to the indoor courts.
“Images posted online also show considerable damage to glasshouses at the CSIRO.
“The ANU has issued a “shelter in place hail event” alert, telling staff and students to “shelter in place if it safe to do so … There may be more more storm fronts on the way so travelling at this stage is not advised”.
70
“It has reportedly affected the intelligence centre. “
???
I didn’t realise Canberra had an intelligence centre?
Not many occupants !!
180
Wouldn’t that be a vacuum?
50
Whatever you do, don’t stand out in the hail. Follow your warden. It’s hard to believe that children don’t know what hail looks like – after all they’re snowflakes.
20
A university had to tell its employees ( a lot of academics ) *not* to go out in the window smashing, size of golf balls, hail…..
Hmmm….and these people rigorously believe in un-scientific climate change?
A picture is starting to emerge…..
30
While it is hailing, stay inside to watch the fun and keep the windows closed; large hail will bounce into the room otherwise. Just open a window enough briefly in order to scoop up a few large hailstones to put in your Gin and Tonic. Then enjoy your G and T from the safety of your room while watching the storm!
That’s what we did in France in the Jura while helplessly watching the storm that badly dented our Volvo all over! We can still make out the odd slight dent on the roof despite weeks of work undertaken by the insurers (we were surprised they didn’t write it off but glad too).
10
Just in case the current storms are blamed on the usual suspect, from Trove with a search for “Canberra hailstorm”:
07Sep1897 – Phenomenal hailstorm
15Oct1934 – Heavy hailstorm at Canberra
28Dec1936 – Hailstorm at Canberra
17Dec1952 – Hailstorm after heat
16Feb1956 – Hailstorm Canberra’s Longest
02Nov1963 – Aftermath of a hailstorm
Nothing unusual but CAGW will be raised as the main cause
140
We had hail the size of hail here this morning , it was terrifying and unprecedented!
100
As they say these days, KEEP SAFE Robert.
00
Once lived in a house near there a long time ago…,
Hail storm left the whole of one side of the house (vinyl cladding) looking like the surface of a golf ball.
00
As a poor collage student I bought an old used convertible. This was in 1968. That spring a storm brought hail and the cloth top was no match for hail. The cloth was a moldy gray color, about the same as duct tape (at least in the U.S.). I had the holes patched in 20 minutes. Squint, and it looked great.
20
Viv overlooked one more important issue. It is to not allow people to build homes within say 200 metre’s of the forest. It is obvious that folk who choose to live in a forest are asking for trouble. There needs to be local government bylaw introduced that requires buildings prone to bushfires have a large rainwater tank installed and equipped with a firefighter that is plumbed into a sprinkler system on the around the perimeter of the building. Also it should be mandatory that metal gutter guard mesh be installed to prevent leaf litter build up.
10
Phil
Have you ever lived in the bush ?
I’ve seen open cleared paddocks transform into closed in bush in about 15 years
So all too often people have houses in safe possies
But later by your argument they cannot live there.
And what about properties close to the forest
But unmanaged by the authorities ?
Or perhaps the council idiots
who demand that land owners allow native bush to take over.
Your suggestion is this BS!
21
Take it back one step and ask why can someone own a small block in Bushland anyway?
Because Council allowed some hungry Cocky to subdivide part or all of a farm to get rich.
13
You have never lived in the bush !
IMO : You are An ignorant city bound latte simperer !
02
More likely done in a “government enthusiasm of the time” –
like the 160 acre blocks around here subdivided for “selection for wheat growing”. There are a couple of plows left in the district but they’re long rusty.
20
Why have National Parks at all?
79
Pockets in pristine condition, fauna and flora feral free, managed correctly they become tourist attractions. Wollemi National Park could be reduced to a viewing platform overlooking the gully, the rest of the park is open to discussion.
60
Make a good site for one of those dams, after all it is just an old remnant, we could have a picture instead. The environment has no other value right?
214
I find that comment to be somewhat id10tic Peter.
101
And I didn’t really need the somewhat!
71
If you have a National Park, and like a lot of ours, the park has significant world heritage or wilderness value, then fuel reduction burns, fire trails, and all the rest are contraindicated. This is a cost to the budget, and we are all about having a go to get a go! Those parks have to earn their keep, who cares about world heritage or wilderness – certainly not you.
Far better that they turn a profit, be it as a Dam, or a mine, or farmland, or plantation timber. And those old pines are so inbred they are not really a viable population going forward.
If, on the other hand you believe that the national parks have some value, what price the preservation of that value.
213
“then fuel reduction burns, fire trails, and all the rest are contraindicated”
So you DON’T CARE if the National Parks become over-grown fire traps.. OK. !!
Why does that not surprise me.
“what price the preservation of that value.”
And just how well are they “preserved” now. ???
Your cognitive non-functionality is coming to the fore… still. !
110
‘ … national parks have some value, what price the preservation of that value.’
It has nothing to do with the bottom line, governments are prepared to do the hard yards to get this right for future generations.
We have two options, open up areas for logging that have no particular heritage value, and allow live stock and human settlement. The alternative is to invite in backpackers and guestworkers to practice cool burns for a minimum wage. Known arsonists on the register may also apply.
50
As if you care, el gordo. These parks are by your definition, are a waste of resources. The will be some nice holograms for future generations.
110
Wollemi is the second biggest park in Australia and should be reduced in size to avoid future bushfires, and that goes for the rest as well.
‘The national park is bounded to the north by the Goulburn River National Park and the Bylong Valley Way; to the east by the Yengo National Park, the Parr State Conservation Area, and the Putty Road; to the south by the Blue Mountains National Park and the Bells Line of Road; to the south–west by the Wolgan Valley and the Gardens of Stone National Park; and to the west by open farmland that surround the towns of Rylstone and Kandos and the Capertee Valley.’ wiki
This has nothing to do with exploiting natural resources for profit and everything to do with quality of life for a burgeoning population.
40
Why do you think it as made as big as it is?
There are/were very good ecological reasons behind that. So it is as i said, overall the park has no value to you, and therefore hound be urned into only making ventures like mining, dams farms and so forth.
010
@Fitzroy
“The[re] will be some nice holograms for future generations.”
There had better be, that is all there will be available as Nature itself reshapes our “parks” to its own liking.
But, hey, it is quite possible that humans will prefer naturally occurring Nature to that imposed by Green Aestheticians.
40
‘There are/were very good ecological reasons behind that.’
It was more like a Bob Carr feel good moment, for the most part its inaccessible wilderness with limited ecological importance.
‘Eucalypt dominated open forests comprise 90% of Wollemi National Park, with over 70 species of Eucalypt recorded. The remaining 10% of the National Park comprises rainforest, heath and grassland. The variety of habitats within Wollemi National Park allow for large diversity in animals.’ wiki
00
@Fitzroy
“Why do you think it as made as big as it is?”
Plenty of available space?
“There are/were very good ecological reasons behind that.”
Which ecological reasons are no longer very good and which remain very good?
“… overall the park has no value to you, and therefore [is b]ound [to] be [t]urned into only making ventures like mining, dams farms and so forth.”
Whereas Nature is bound to turn it into a desert, or a mountain, or an ice field, or an ocean bed, or … at some time in the future as your park journeys around the globe.
10
@Street
Ecological reasons? How about species habitat sufficient to provide a viable population. But then you have discounted that already, as that does not fit with the need to make a profit.
As I said, we should just get rid of the parks, and the plants and animals, they protect. life would be better without all those unique and cute animals, goats and cows that the shot!
by the way love the argument that into the long term we’ll be consumed by the sun (after the park journey’s around the sun) nihilism rules
06
How about habitat protection so we don’t have these massive build-ups of fuel-load again.!
Why are you SO UNCARING that you want to see a repeat of these devastating fires next time we have major drought?
Did you actually ENJOY it this time around ???????
00
The lie is the claim that fuel management and National Parks are incompatible.
If National Parks ARE intended to preserve a unique natural environment – like is was in, say, 1787 – then the processes that created and preserved that environment must also be preserved.
Our current National Parks are anything but “natural”, because we exclude the patchy, low-intensity fire that has been the norm for ten thousand years or more, and promote occasional high-intensity mega fires.
Again… it is a lie to claim that we can preserve an environment my removing all human management. We have already made irreversible changes by introducing other species. To retain as much of the original features as possible, requires management.
100
Peter
A comment from a former CSIRO rangelands notable
“in the Australian rangelands Clementsian succession is botanical astrology”.
Try “state and transition”
00
No – I’m say one or the other, If you want active management, dam it, crop it, mine it – you admit that it has no other value
05
Yes, we know you would rather see the fuel-load build up again to inferno levels….
… so as to destroy the ecosystem again in another decade or two.
00
Silly question Fitzroy … it’s so large so that Fitzroys have somewhere large enough to get lost in.
20
“If you have a National Park, and like a lot of ours, the park has significant world heritage or wilderness value, then fuel reduction burns, fire trails, and all the rest are contraindicated.”
But “heartless, witless Nature will neither care nor know” of its “significant” World Heritage or Wilderness Value.
The Environment will thus change, flora and fauna will change, and humanity can thus only preserve a Heritage or Wilderness site by defying Nature.
30
“and all the rest are contraindicated”
There’s that “Lock up and neglect” greenie attitude coming to the fore.
That is what caused the intensity and severity of these fires..
Yet you want to maintain the status quo so next drought, it will happen again.
That is pretty sick minded. !!
30
Why not?
Merely replacing one environment with another.
A change of flora and fauna which future “environmentalists” would fight to preserve.
40
Good question, the bush got along quite well without them.
One theory [from the U.S.]is that they were originally created by Theodore Roosevelt on Land donated by John D.Rockefeller for the benefit of the Intelligentsia to commune with Nature, at a time when the working man was toiling 6 days a week, 50 weeks a year, and on foot.
That worked to their benefit for 50 odd yearsup until the mid 1950s, when the newly mobile working classes started showing up in the National Parks
Panicking over the prospect of breathing the same air as the Lower Orders,
the Intelligentsia leant on their Cousins in the Goobermint, and the Lock Up started
Then they founded the Sierra Club in the 1960s, to make sure the Hoi Polloi were kept out.
54
And there was I a few weeks ago in both Sequoia and Yosemite, with a two week pass for 30 dollars, def keeping the hoi polloi out.
The first great expansion of the parks systems (both here and in America) was during the Great Depression, as a way of employing locals. Using your logic, that would be a way of keeping the hoi polloi in
115
“def keeping the hoi polloi out. “
But you were there.. stop contradicting yourself.
51
mmm..in the States Peter!
How long did it take to sail over there Greta?
30
There was a big shakeup of the National Parks in the US because of the New Deal, didn’t happen in Australia.
‘Royal National Park, established south of Sydney in 1879, was Australia’s first and Belair National Park near Adelaide was the second in 1891. Victoria’s first national park was at Tower Hill in its Western District, followed by Wilson’s Promontory (1908). In Queensland the first large national park was Bunya Mountains, also in 1908, and in 1915 Lamington National Park was created. Similar patterns emerged in the other states, the increasing urbanization of Australia’s population throwing into sharp relief an emerging community expectation that natural or near-natural areas near capital cities would be set aside for recreation and conservation purposes.’ SA Agriculture
During the Great Depression homeless men converged on the The Royal and built shacks.
40
Blue mountains, Gippsland, most of the alpine parks were established in the 30’s.
25
The Far east Gippsland National parks
Only from the 1970’s onwards..
Before that the bush was forest.
And looked after as forest
60
Good for you Bill love a pedant, and their hair splitting
05
With you Fitz
There is always a need to check
The truth of your facts !
Part of your fiendish plan to burden the blog no doubt !
01
The parks established in the 1930s had nothing to do with mopping up unemployment, it was simply a natural progression.
So I’ll add my weight to Bill’s comment, we need to reduce the size of National Parks so that we can manage it as open forest, while still preserving the wildlife.
You may have heard the NSW government is sending in the shooters to kill feral critters, they are out of control after the bushfires.
40
This is one example
https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/heritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=1170735
See the Department of the Interior (1930-39) for the disbursement of fund for these projects
03
Walking tracks were good value and offered work for the unemployed.
It would be even better if we could rediscover the walking tracks before Europeans arrived, so that logging could be kept out of those areas and cool burning take over.
11
See you agree – parks bad, money making forest good
also yet another reason to get rid of the parks and that habitat, refuge for ferals. I would point you to surveys where feral pig numbers are higher around piggeries, and feral cat numbers are higher around housing, but why bother. They are a pest, buy removing the habitat, we could easily poison everything left.
02
We are only talking about selective logging where appropriate.
Creative pocket parks free of feral fauna and flora, connected by wildlife corridors designed to keep cats, dogs, pigs and goats out.
00
This problem would become a thing of the past.
‘Bushfires affect habitat of more than 100 threatened species, department estimates.’ SMH
00
Corridors would become common place and expanded.
https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/nature/landholderNotes15WildlifeCorridors.pdf
00
Yellowstone National Park was the first conservation area in the world formally set aside by Ulysses S Grant in 1872. Henry the 8th set aside the New Forest as his personal hunting ground and any starving peasant found poaching in there was locked up for ever. This action effectively made it a conservation area but was not recognised as such.
80
William the Conqueror was the king who set up the New Forest as his personal hunting reserve with its own set of laws.
Much of the land is heathland rather than trees.
80
The heathland is regularly subject to fires, which keep it as heathland.
The woodlands are mostly broadleaved trees that are less susceptible to fire.
30
Oops, you are right there – poor memory on my part.
30
Some background:
In 1906, John D. Rockefeller[Monty Burns] was the most hated man in America.
His private Police Force had just tossed incendiaries into a striking Miners camp in Colorado, incinerating many families.
His P.R. genius, Ivy Lee [Smithers] decided that a P.R. blitz could pull the old rogue out of the murk.
So he donated a whole lot of worthless land, and that’s how the National Parks started off.
10
No reason. Burn them all and plant avocados, or any other thing you like.
– – winking smiley face – – Poe’s Law
51
Give them all away to local Aboriginal groups
Willing to care for them
And if they don’t care for them
They lose any title !
Simple !
20
The Aborigines have been gone from the forests for a hundred years, Bill.
As a matter of fact, until about 1970, there were plenty in the inner suburbs of the Capitals.
You’d be battling to find any there now, apart from the homeless.
34
In many cases, we have National Parks so that governments can signal their “green” virtue to ignorant voters such as yourself.
I would argue that there are definitely some high-quality areas that are worth preserving, even when that preservation requires costly management. Putting up a few signs and declaring former farm-land (whether livestock or tree-farming) as a “Park” does not make it high-value. Mostly, it just makes it a preserve for weeds and pests, until the inevitable fires.
The hypocrisy of the more-parks lobby is obvious.
Either they are making parks out of clapped-out farmland…… or the farming practices that they claim the land must be “protected” from, are not actually as damaging as they claim.
70
So what are the values? How do map them onto the landscape? How do you protect them?
All you want is a photo op.
110
There was a saying abound the time of Kakadu
“Have you been to Kakadu? Kaka-don’t”
10
Entry free for NT residents.Tourists pay park entry fee of 50dollar per vehicle. Digs at Cooinda or West Alligator costs over 300. Sad place there as I lost my best dog to a crocodile there in the early 80’s.
20
Bob Hawke MP, the then Prime Minister, another of Labor’s green sympathizers, expanded Kakadu in 1991 to prevent the mining of Uranium at Coronation Hill.
That was just another example of the Labor/green love-in. Anything to stop mining.
In the case of Coronation Hill it was regarded as nothing more than “clapped out buffalo country”, to use the words of biggles, Hawke’s Minister for resources at the time.
Six months later Hawke was rolled by Keating.
01
Hawke was probably the worst thing that ever happened to Australia before
John Howard came along, but Coronation Hill was the one thing he got right.
00
So those who think they are some form of pristine Eden can wail over their demise?
40
@Street
Why not – those wailers are not important, but those parks cost money, and as you admit, there is no need to care about ecological values. So mine them, graze them, harvest them or dam them. That is what you want.
04
“there is no need to care about ecological values.”
Which is why you want the fuel load to build up to inferno levels of fuel again,
… so you can enjoy another catastrophic bush-fire season next time there is a drought.
.. destroy the ecology… that is what you want to see happen.
Your pretense at “caring”… nuh!.. you are only fooling yourself.
10
I stated that Nature does not share our “Ecological Values”.
I prefer flourishing farmland / wild moors and heaths / seascapes … the usual stuff. And, yup, I find mines, dams, wind turbines, solar panels, power stations, factories, towns, etc. a distasteful imposition on the landscape.
However, “some of these things are not the same” and I accept that mines, dams, power stations, factories, towns, etc. are necessary for a comfortable existence.
Personally, I comport myself so as to be as environmentally friendly as I can, and my immediate family does much the same.
00
The Garden of Eden is still reproducible and always will be.
The basis is this:
Man is a Carnivore and eats meat, drinks water.
Apples pears, mulberrys mangoes, all the rest are food for birds, bats, and bees.
Mice like seeds, rabbits eat carrots, and elephants like sticky buns and
knocking trees over.
Bottom line: Don’t eat the animals food, and everything and everybody gets on fine.
Anyone doesn’t agree, deport her to New Zealand.
00
The Royal commission will have its terms of reference so carefully selected so as not to upset the states , but I would love to be surprised .
As for enquiries they only have them when they already know the answer .
40
Here are some terms of reference.
https://apsvic.org.au/fire-resistant-and-retardant-plants/
00
Jo,
When will Viv Forbes (and others) start realizing that it is not just the solar cycle that affects Australia’s climate on decadal to centennial timescales?
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MdYK0M033mo/XBGiJXU2HQI/AAAAAAAABYE/L-ImxNbZ6CMuLGLkhmXrKrH4VtGC49JHACLcBGAs/s1600/Lunar_Victoria.jpg
22
?
10
I thought the catchment soaks the rain up and channels it into creeks etc , so what is the drama of more dams and less water going out to sea .
30
If anything; it comes down to the size of the dam. Small to medium private dams don’t hold much water. A large concrete public water supply dam is a different animal and does have a large effect on the river water.
There are of course laws in place whereby the larger dams must release a fixed amount of water so that the downstream creek bed isn’t completely dry year after year.
20
I think it would be good for the government to increase the education campaigns and encouragement for people to make their properties more fireproof.
90% of houses in regional areas were built without any fire resistance regulations.
Any small ember can quickly turn them into bonfires.
30
DIB, DIB, DOB, Be Prepared
1. Clear any combustible material back 40m from the building.
(no trees over your house, get a chain saw)
2. Motorized steel shutter on all windows.
(cheap and more manual version, steel roofing material and tek screws)
3. Wet down, then cover with sand any timber decking.
4. Reticulated sprinkler system on the roof.
-a) IC 6.5 HP Pump 1000l/min $220
-b) 2000l tank $600
-c) pipes, hoses and fittings ~$180
-d) installation (DIY if you an ozzie) -8hrs
-e) Cost $1000 Large house may need 2 -$2000
-f) Home not being burnt down -Priceless
90
Good plan, I wouldn’t be surprised if very few do this sort of thing.
20
And metal mesh covers on air-conditioning units. During the Yarloop 2016 fires, several houses burnt from within because embers entered the air conditioning units.
50
Plan from the start !
A dam or large concrete tank
On Top pf a hill
Then no need tom worry about
Pumps failing or running out of fuel.
Gravity never fails !
00
Assuming you have a hill to start with! Our land is nearly flat.
20
That’s an unfortunate choice of site Annie.
00
We wanted somewhere we didn’t have to mountaineer lugging mowers into old age. Our old place in Marysville was on five levels! Quite enough work here (too much really). There is a bit of a fall from the dam so gentle gravity feed from that. Not enough to put out fire though.
20
Annie,
not normally one to say such things, but
hope you are always safe.
30
Thank you Jack. We do what we can though I guess more is always needed! The wind has undone all my clearing work over winter and spring…roll on autumn! 🙂
20
Got ta love gravity Bill!
More dependable than Politicians.
30
Gravity keeps us grounded,
kinda’ like common sense.
00
G’day Jack,
I suspect a lot of people already had the tank, but it’s gotta be full. After several years of drought that tank can get to needing to be refilled just before… Opps too late. And power for your windows? Often not available… Without warning.
Cheers
Dave B
30
Hey Dave
The 2000l tank should be dedicated for such a purpose and remain full during the fire season.
And yes if you do not have a consistent alt power, pre-cut gal steel sheet is preferable.
I am saying look at possible hazards and have a mitigation plan in place,
just like life jackets, radio and good maintenance when you go boating.
50
In some local government areas in is mandatory that the domestic water offtake from your rainwater tank must be a certain distance above the base, and a dedicated fire-outlet installed at the bottom. That way there is always a certain amount of water in the tank only available for firefighting purposes.
I’d want more than 2000L, tho.
31
Hi Mr W
Living in this country (that I love), because the British judiciary gave an one of my ancestors a free ticket here a few hundred years ago, I have come to notice we have bush fires every summer. Due to its common occurrence, it is that of this problem that has occupied my mind(among other things).
The 2000l tank is not so much for fighting the fire, than through reticulation, wetting down the roof and gutters of the house. The system must be capable even with the loss of external utilities. ‘Flooding blocks’ on the down pipes should also be used to pool water in the gutters before it runs back to the tank. You may need 2 of these systems on a house and one for each shed.
If your environment demands a 1000l tank on a trailer with small IC pump and 25mm (1″) hose for boundary spot fires and save your neighbors house.
30
We have to keep 10,000 litres for CFA use, with the required fitting. Mandatory with all newbuilds hereabouts.
20
A poem on yer water tank by Oz poet, Les Murray.
‘Rainwater tank.’
Empty rings when tapped give tongue,
rings that are tense with water talk:
as he sounds them, ring by rung,
Joe Mitchell’s reddened knuckles walk.
The cattledog’s head sinks down a notch
and another notch; beside the tank,
and Mitchell’s boy, with an old jack-plane,
lifts moustaches from a plank.
From the puddle that the tank has dripped
hens peck glimmerings and uptilt
their heads to shape the quickness down;
petunias live on what gets spilt.
The tankstand spider adds a spittle
thread to her portrait of her soul.
Pencil-grey and stacked like shillings
out of a banker’s paper roll
stands the tank, roof-water drinker.
The downpipe stares drought into it.
Briefly the kitchen tap turns on
then off. But the tank says Debit, Debit.
70
Even by the standards of Australian rhyming poetry, that’s
sickmakingly dreadful verse.
00
Another 10 cubic decilitres of rubbish.
It’s a race between Fishy, Fitsy and that bloke with the tight headband.
Who will win the coveted greenhouse IPCCCCC award for real science blog clogging.
KK
11
Loosen yer ‘atband yer drongo. It’s making yer yap squeaky.
10
[SNIP]
11
Given the natural cycles, repetitive nature of bushfires, the pointlessness of enquiries, the buck passing and now the blame on fictitious warming/CO2, methinks the brainpower should be expended on viable firefighting techniques. You can’t rely on ground crews with limited water, air bombing, cutting fire breaks etc.
How about a dedicated thread for ideas on radical solutions to severe fires?
I have 2 already.
20
Yep.
Why sweat the never ending Fuel Loads when you can go straight to the Fuel Source?
Cull the Eucalypt Forests til it’s manageable, then thin it out, then
introduce Herefords to restore soil fertility.
26
I’ve got an idea. If there isn’t enough water, could we try spraying the fires with carbon dioxide?
20
Have to be more than swearing
10
Who or what is a national park for ?
To satisfy UN and what Greenie wants .
They say the Aboriginals used to burn the bush as required even without a bic lighter
yet cannot determine that it would have burnt anyway from nature as in drought then lightning .
IOW , a national park left alone will probably go up in smoke every few decades of its own accord.
70
That requires repeating !!
31
Wrong thumb Andy !
Meant Green !
00
Plenty have gone up, but any ”of their own accord”?
There’s no evidence, so i’m finding that scenario a tad hard to credit.
12
At least some were started by lightning strikes. There are known arson cases. And many named fires this time started from earlier named fires, either from spotting or crossing some sort of boundary, eg the “Grose River” started when the “Gospers Mountain” crossed the Bells Road.
But it’s the 37% “Suspicious” ones that intrigue me. Does that label apply to any of the big and fatal fires? Or where homes were lost?
How many of them started on the windward end of National Parks, on hot, windy days? What has earned them the title “suspicious”?
Cheers
Dave B
30
HB.
Please don’t lie.
It has been pointed out repeatedly the lightning is a significant source of ignitions.
Right now, the Green Valley and Dunn’s Road fires in southern NSW have a combined total of more than half a million hectares. This is despite our best efforts to limit them.
Both of them were started by lightning strikes.
50
Arson as the cause of Bushfires doesn’t seem to concern you at all, would that be correct?
14
Decades or centuries , nature will take its course .
CO2 is incognito
Arson has fingerprints .
All require fuel to burn
31
George,
Ignore those comments.
🙂
12
CO2 extinguishes fires.
Arsonists light fires
00
Your crazy, irrational fact-free ranting that all fires were started by arson,
… is making you look a bit like fitz and his ravings about CO2.
34
Hat is lazy with the truth, the best estimate is that only 50% of bushfires are caused by arsonists.
https://aic.gov.au/publications/bfab/bfab051
01
All good ideas. My take on implementation is to leave people and groups free to consult on the ground and in season. What we don’t need is a burn-and-clear police replacing the protection police.
A bureaucracy with programs, quotas, guidelines and statistics can’t do as well as neighbours deciding on the timing and extent of a winter burn. If people feel free to clear and burn off the situation will improve. If this is balanced by more active maintenance in forests (and returning all those Bob Carr Vanity Parks to forestry or other ownership) things will be better again.
What we don’t want is snooping and intrusion. If someone is a bit optimistic about gum trees near his house, provided the rest of the neighbourhood is more realistic it’s not going to matter much. Just free things up. Offer information, let people know it’s okay to scrape away some regrowth, fell a few gums for use and safety.
Just by chance, forestry had improved access near me before the fires in preparation for logging after decades of absence. With new roads made during the fires their access is even better. Now, on the first fine day after the rains, I can hear them working.
This is not crown fire country. It burns from the bottom. In extreme conditions any forest can crown, but most of the danger is averted by keeping the ground-fuel low, especially the grass and leaf litter which gives the “flash”.
Another thing. Now that the posh left thinkocracy has discovered “The Market”, what used to be services have started to act like monopoly businesses. Forestry charges lessees for grazing rights on road easements which are untouchable but ungrazeable scrub, forcing occupiers to avoid the charges by erecting pointless fences and creating strips of fire-trap, often along boundaries. What started as a small technical payment is now a big rort, and it’s hard for an underfunded department to say no to the money. Of course, everyone’s access is impeded, often along boundaries.
If a government department can turn a quid while it serves that’s good. But it’s there to serve, not turn a quid. I know that I could be after forestry right now for all sorts of real violations, but I regard them as a neighbour, just like the private owners and the indigenous land corporation I live near. It may not work, but sorting things out among neighbours is the very first thing that needs to be tried. This means not nit-picking when people are doing a rough-and-tumble job like forestry. A lot of these guys get snippy because they have been treated like outcasts by tree-changers and green finger-waggers. We have to remedy that by remembering that they are neighbours, even when they stretch the friendship.
Lastly, if we are to have yet another Royal Commission let’s run it with volunt…Hey! Why are all you lawyers running away before I even finished the sentence?
80
🙂 🙂
20
The problem we have is that for a coronial report or royal commission to investigate these fires and be tabled, a year or two will have passed.
During that period, the parties/organisations responsible will blame anything that can cover their backsides.
They have internal media departments that will push their agendas by releasing propaganda to the Msm.
The Msm do not investigate what they are being told. They will cut and paste the media release and publish it as fact.
Many in the public will believe what is reported or published.
When the RC and coronial reports are finally tabled, the public will have forgotten. Msm will be focused on current news like the next scandal or catastrophe.
The reports will be reviewed, by those whom are inept, ignorant, culpable or have a political agenda, then suppressed, quietly filed and forgotten by all.
The cycle repeats again and again.
How do I know?
Maybe its because I have had a career of over 27 years spent on this ferris wheel.
100
Yeah I wonder how many thousand pages will be in this report , just enough to hide whatever you want .
30
The Teague royal commission into the 2009 Victorian bushfires recommended burning a minimum of 5 per cent of public land annually (at the time it was only 1.7 per cent). I wonder whether 5 per cent is enough, but has it been implemented. There was also a recommendation for clearing beside roadways. There was a total of 66 recommendations. So I propose for the newly announced RC the following term of reference: What was recommended by all the previous RCs on the topic, and how much of this has been implemented? Indeed, if that was the only term of reference, the commission could be over quite quickly and we’d know a lot. Here’s a link to the Teague report: http://royalcommission.vic.gov.au/Commission-Reports/Final-Report/Summary/Interactive-Version.html
50
When I was still in high school (1950s) there was a big fire either in the Royal NP or the Blue Mountains and one old timer said “Well, that won’t burn again for 7 years”, a number I respect. If valid, it suggests a bare minimum of 15% clearance per annum for continuing protection. Or, allowing for a safety factor 20%.
Cheers
Dave B
60
Reducing 20% /year, you’d still have 3 years annual litter left at the end of six years.
The problem is insurmountable, even with logging and grazing.
The forests have got to be bulldozed back to a manageable size, then thinned, and logged.
I’m fairly sure if any Not- Suitable -for -ABC TV indigenous men were asked for their
opinion, they’d say ”Push it all over with a dozer, and burn the lot.”
01
Salome:
The Adelaide Hills Council has today had contractors “clearing” the main road into Woodside (south side which didn’t burn). Also includes the Amy Gillet bike track (which isn’t used by the bike riders who want to ride on the main road), running alongside the main road.
The metre high dry grass has been whipper-snipped and left lying there. It looks neater.
Is this to protect the population or to look good for the Tour Down Under which will go through the town (with TV cameras) on Wednesday?
80
The latter.
70
Well Graeme after todays rain
It will rot down quickly !
30
If a bike track is available to cyclists, fine the pants off them if they ride on the road instead of the available bike track.
30
But it’s ‘Touristas Down Under’ time !
And the Hills after the fires needs the touristas
Some of them even drive cars !
10
Remenber that they are unregistered, unlicenced. uninsured and a great number of the bikes are modified to a degree that they are unconrollable in the case of a fast and accurate response to events has to be made. The physical condition of a rider pedalling at full tilt on a public road is many times worse than a driver(licenced etc)is in when in excess of the alchohol limit.
30
Believe it or not, Campbell Newman passed a Law allowing cyclists to ride in the middle of the road, and motorists had to stay 1 metre clear at all times.
Even the cyclists were shakin’ thar haids at that one.
00
We have these big bushfires every decade or so, and the subsequent inquiry.
But in the 1930, 40, 50s there was very little in the way land clearing restrictions, national parks, green legislation etc, but still the big fires repeated.
Could it be that tax/rate payers were unwilling to pay the high cost of all the continual clearing and maintenance required to totally control a fire, and were satisfied with just basic maintenance.
At the end of the day it is a balance between cost and prevention.
21
Human settlements tend to impinge much more on natural bushland nowadays.
As such, we need to have much better bush fire awareness than has generally been shown.
50
Human’s impingeing on the sacred bushland?
The cheek of them.
Just start knocking the awful things over, and put the land to productive use that
benefits the whole 25 million of us, not the tiny minority that likes to live dangerously.
27
If you have a few minutes, here is interesting reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_fires_of_1988#Fire_management_since_1988
30+ years ago. Maps and photos.
10
Premier Daniel Andrews in Victoria has cut back the role of the CFA, and reduced funding across the board to country Victoria resulting in minimal hazard reduction, less for park maintenance, and poorer roads.
He doesn’t need votes from small country towns that mostly vote conservative. Why should he care about a few bushfires and a few hundred houses destroyed?
He appeals to city voters with feel good promises such as more (un)protected state parks, less logging, no more dams, and more windmills.
He will make all the right noises in the short term, but by the time the next bushfire inquiry publishes its results, he will be focused on the next election, which means targeting city seats with promises of school and hospital upgrades, more sporting facilities, with nothing but tokenism for country Victoria.
Dan the Denier will claim fires are not his problem, (and probably PM Scott Morrison’s problem due to lack of action on climate change), and get elected again by city voters.
Unless there is a way to guarantee funding to country areas on the basis of area, not population, the bush will continue to degrade until the next bushfire wreaks havoc (and decimates the wild life).
130
A bit of off track fun.
Grabbed a few paragraphs of Chapter 2 of old Karl baby’s, Commo Manno.
Applied text replacement:
Communists -> UN sustainable agenda
proletariat -> Greens
bourgeoisie -> Deniers
Read On for a laugh (but really not that funny).
Chapter II. Greens and UN sustainable agenda
In what relation do the UN sustainable agenda stand to the Greens as a whole?
The UN sustainable agenda do not form a separate party opposed to the other green parties.
They have no interests separate and apart from those of the greens as a whole.
They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the Greens movement.
The UN sustainable agenda are distinguished from the other green parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the Greens of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire greens, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the deniers has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.
The UN sustainable agenda, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the green parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the greens the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.
The immediate aim of the UN sustainable agenda is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the greens into a class, overthrow of the deniers supremacy, conquest of political power by the greens.
30
No Royal Commission is needed. We just need to follow the unimplemented recommendations of numerous previous ones.
And basically that is to do regular fuel reduction burns.
If we don’t, we get the mother of fuel reduction burns and EVERYTHING gets destroyed.
50
Peta Credlin back on Sky. at start, she called on the PM to put aside CAGW and get moving on hazard reduction. if States don’t implement, call them out.
she has just finished an interview with David Packham and Roger Underwood. will post it once it is available online. simple…and brilliant, of course.
ABC…please explain why these two men have not been on your multitude of stations, programs daily?
get over your obsession with grant-seeking “academics” and start dealing with real people who know what they are talking about. listen, and stop preaching. It’s not as if you know a thing about the subjects bushfires or CAGW.
a billion-plus $ a year from the taxpayers! you need to start earning it.
120
OMG Credlin has now brought on regular, Labor-ite Nicholas Reece, Principal Fellow, Melbourne School of Government, Director of Strategy, Policy and Projects, The University of Melbourne (lol) and he is explaining the problem with hazard reduction – narrow window, hotter days, CAGW. he could be a parrot.
one of the best things Roger Underwood said about our bushfires – which Reece clearly didn’t listen to – was it doesn’t take a hot day. it can be a mild day.
Reece now going on about our exact temperature rise! and if we are going to step up to stop CAGW blah blah.
he is precisely the type Australians don’t need preaching at them.
90
Perhaps the management required her to display “balance”.
KK
30
Poor Nicholas doesnt realise the damage he does to his side of politics going on shows like Peta’s. He had a classic last year, he was crowing how the seas were rising by referencing the increase in tide height in Port Philip Bay…poor lad surely should have realised the hydrodynamics of the bay would change with changes to the channel at the entrance to the bay. Deeper and wider means even small changes to the tides within the bay.
00
Thought Chris Kenny was starting tonight Pat , yes good to see some commonsense back on TV with Sky .
30
I saw that and she was forensic…quite brilliant
40
Chris Smith on in Bolt’s slot following Credline. will be having Craig Kelly on the show. has he been muzzled, etc?
60
Nah Pat, as I understand it Chris is about to get his own show.
70
If Craig Kelly doesn’t bring up the Arsonists, then he’s just a pathetic Cuck, like the rest of them.
13
Kelly hasn’t been muzzled, so he’ll say the number of arsonists this bushfire season was about average.
41
Of course he’s been muzzled, without Scotty intervening in that Preselection,
Craig would be living it up in Cockroach Castle now.
22
That is history, Craig survived and is now the most popular politician on facebook because of his views. The PM cannot muzzle him, he is a backbencher free to speak his mind.
Now that the silly season is drawing to a close I predict Craig will help set the agenda, particularly for the narrow terms of reference at the RC.
11
Oh thank crap, a storm finally, this was a sweltering day, time for the light show.
http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR733.loop.shtml#skip
30
That would be right, it collapses just as it gets here.
30
Jo
Maybe heads should roll, $400,000+ salaries for ineffectiveness is outrageous.
But being an advocate of small Government, who main purpose is the protection of fundamental rights and liberties, I believe it is the individual responsibility to ensure the protection of their property.
On the level of protection of a town, you would elect and allocate resources to local people to define and mitigate potential hazards (including pyroconvective invasions) to the town. They may even in their spare time come up with ideas to increase the prosperity of the town.
Let the feds do national defense, weights and measures, and maybe a few other administrative tasks.
The states policing, courts and also few other administrative tasks.
While it is nice to have a big brother to look after us, with its ever increasing cost there is the foundation of true unsustainability.
70
Agreed.
Smaller government, lower taxes, individual responsibility.
It would be good to transfer the funding for the water bombing fleet to locals for fuel reduction burning.
20
Maybe there is a God, judging by the size of the (global warming induced) hailstones that fell in Canberra today.
50
do you think He was listening to you?
10
No, I haven’t prayed for hailstones to fall on Canberra. Nor for anything else for that matter.
20
Oh Turtle
If Thy is.
Thy set things in motion 4 Billion years ago.
Thy is kicking back on the most comfortable couch in the universe.
With a remote control that would make Netflix green with envy.
Saying to itself “Why haven’t they sorted this out yet?”
30
Throwing baby out with bathwater.
So Jo you are happy to have endangered ecosystems cleared below viable limits to support property rights.
Totally bugger the ecology?
Just asking. Clearing to endangered levels has happened with softwood scrubs, wallum and lowland rainforest. As far as agriculture is concerned enough is never enough.
08
“Totally bugger the ecology?”
And how good is that “ecology” looking now ?????
Bathwater is no use now, is it !!
90
It’s rope a dope time – the system I have used as examples are almost extinct. Now clapped out cow paddocks and cane fields scraped bare hy bulldozers. Or covered in pine trees from North America. It “gone” you utter fool.
Jeez at least get some minimal education before drivelling.
19
Totally incoherent abuse.
Does our blog really have to accept this type of aggressive input.
This is not free speech: it’s free abuse for little people who haven’t the courage to express their anger with life face to face.
KK
81
Let me explain it simpler. AndyG has form – so be even-handed. So I take it you are happy to exterminate unique vegetation types with limited range that have survived for millennia with bulldozers? Really?
16
Still gibbering mindlessly and incoherently about some little fantasy, hey. !
ie .. WTH are you talking about !!
31
Why would a plant need a bulldozer to survive.
50
wow, it didn’t take much to trigger you back into your usual nonsensical ranting, did it. ! 🙂
30
“So I take it you are happy to exterminate unique vegetation types with limited range that have survived for millennia with bulldozers? Really?”
Uhm, if the “unique vegetation” of “limited range” has already “survived for millennia”, how do you know it won’t survive a controlled burn now for another millennia?
Also, can you include next weeks winning lotto numbers or other proof of previous successful predictions.
Thanks in advance.
50
So where we are up to: the lads have no idea about land clearing politics and Australian vegetation ecosystems. Zero. Wow.
You are uninformed. Which is why you can’t comment. You would expect some basic literacy.
Travis – Wallum doesn’t mind a burn. How Banskisa seeds sprout.
06
Only person here that is un-informed is YOU, vishy
Why do you want this firestorm catastrophe to repeat again in a decade or so ??
Destroying even more of the ecosystem.
Why haven’t YOU read any of the basic literature ??
30
Come to terms with it Vishnu, humans are the “natural ecology“.
Quit being a species snob.
90
How many species would you like to obliterate then? You know – not being snobs.
37
You should be out there making sure elephants don’t step on ants.
90
That’s why we should be looking after out National Parks and State Forests, and not letting them go rampant as fuel for out of control bush-fires.
How many species would you like bush-fires to obliterate next time, little-vishy.?
Seems you WANT this to happen again.
70
As usual, everybody but you, is clueless what you are talking about.
Not sure you have the faintest idea either.
Just gibberish.
41
Agriculture has its limitations along the Great Dividing Range, selective logging and cool burning is the future.
‘The PM insisted Australia is carrying its weight under his policy and again ruled out a carbon tax, while leading aid groups issue a plea to address the “climate crisis”. SMH
60
You betray your profound ignorance Vishnu
This land has evolved with droughts & fire & floods
For millions of years.
( There are a just few exceptions – Woolomi Pines and the scarce rain forest areas )
It is your ignorant desire to ‘preserve’ this ‘ecology’
As in formaldihyde, I think !
Which is destroying it completely
By huge bushfires
60
My profound ignorance !- are you actually mad. Yes these ecosystems did persist until we erased them from the face of the earth with bulldozers. GONESKI ! Removed. Never to return. You have no clue by your most stupid of comments. I’m appalled. We are not talking about what’s a reasonable fire regime. Spare us!
27
Of course oh great one, we of reason are so ignorant of the wisdom of such a deity.
You must be the great one, for it would be a debased egotistical human to use such name.
80
More abusive Rubbish
50
You should try paleontology for a planetary science wake-up call. Random asteroids, supernovas, geomagnetic-reversals, and end-of-the-world scale volcanism and seismicity do not share your precious sense of pre-ordination of a perfected paradise and it’s innate natural value and divine sacrosanct need to protect its special species-virginity from any sort of evolutionary adaptive challenge and change.
This is a planet of creative destruction, in a Cosmos of creative destruction.
Deal with it.
Grow up in your head and adapt or don’t, it’s your problem to ‘agonize’ over so you can virtue-signal your higher sense of consciousness and stuff.
70
Oh brethren, do not be disquiet from the absence of voice of Vishnu.
It is sure, he in council with Apollo and Dionysus (and maybe goggle),
to be noble from all entities before he imparts his wisdom to us mere mortals.
50
Just wondering if “Vishnu” is modeled on the “Luke” that used to infest Jennifer Marohasy’s blog?
60
Begone foul fool !
With your own comments
You pollute the name you claim
61
Again.. what warped little idea are you rambling on about this time ?????
The area that burnt was not the farmland, it was the National Parks,and State Forests, and anything that got in the way when the fire-storm came out the other side.
And those forest are huge area of unkemped fire-stock.
These are the area where ecology has been destroyed..
Hopefully some of it will return, but we need to take better care of it before the next drought.
70
“My profound ignorance !”
Headings for your posts…
.. are not needed. !
41
Weird Verbalism. Just what it means is anyone’s guess.
KK
51
Obviously not an English speaker. We are here to help
25
Oh great Vishnu you bless us with you presents.
Forgive us for that language that transcends your wisdom.
For what can a mere century of knowledge compare to the infinite.
Oh, by the way who is we?
50
“Oh, by the way who is we?”
I think he is referring to the Royal “we”.
50
Wee
50
You might know the English words,
… but you have yet to put them forward in a coherent, meaningful sentence.
41
‘We are here to help.’
Good, you get the job of PM for a day. A news conference is coming up, what are we going to do with the National Parks to avoid future conflagrations?
60
In case little-vishy is wondering what the topic is, its the controlled clearing and access to National Parks and State Forests.
That ecology that has just been destroyed by fire.
Only a complete fool thinks leaving the forests alone won’t yield exactly the same result again some time in the future.
But little vishy may have decide he has some other little personal problems he wants to expose us to….
in a totally incoherent rant, as usual.
52
And have I complained about that? Nope. I am saying if you take Viv Forbes suggestion of having no land clearing controls endangered ecosystems will go extinct. Happy with that?
As the urge to clear is insatiable.
Viv’s point 4.
We are talking minimum literacy standards here AndyG
04
“We are talking minimum literacy standards ”
Which you have yet to reach.
Viv is talking about on private land.
You missed again, arrogant fool. !
30
Vishnu, this lot has no regard for ecology, and as their responses higher in the thread prove, they want to turn it into mines, farms, plantations or dams. They do not give a flying f for the environment, nor the damage they are doing to it. They worship one god and that is money. They want one thing and that is domination of all that grows, moves or can be burnt. Using any argument for the environment will only make them angry, mostly because they they are old and scared.
28
More abusive rubbish, it never stops.
51
From you? that is a laugh. I seem to remember you being snipped repeatedly for abuse. But back to the point. You have no regard for the environment, discount anything remotely related to ecology, and would prefer a landscape devoid of anything that could not be turned into a dollar
05
Pristine environments need to be managed for recreation and tourism, a large theme park where people get to walk along ancient trails and relive the past.
The forrest outside of these pocket parks, with no real heritage value, need to be selectively logged, while at the same time preserving wild life corridors. We thin out the trees in an aesthetic sort of way and the whole environment, both flora and fauna, is reinvigorated.
20
I’m so glad you can recognize which areas have ‘value’, and once those few hectares are identified, we can move on to phase 2 and destroy any cultural, wilderness or ecological value outside those areas. Platypus, koalas etc are better seen in a zoo anyway, and they make money for the operators at the same time. Take a leaf from the chinese and make it a theme park (like they did with the eiffel tower) – that what you want? maybe make a road so that you don’t even have to get out of your car?
is that the sweet smell of hypocrisy? – opps no, just smoke from the still not quite out fires around me.
14
“is that the sweet smell of hypocrisy? “
Yep, your post REEKS of it.!
So disgusting that you want the same fires as now, again in another decade.
All that devastation from massive fuel loads…
… yet you are quite content to let it build up again.
That is just sick !
30
I’ve given this a green tick.
Anyone who can contemplate ” taking a leaf ” from the Chinese and provoking all out war, obviously has the capacity to think big.
KK
30
It’s still rubbish of course, but high end rubbish.
30
Peter I am amazed at the level of knowledge on some topics. I raise a reasonable caution on one of Viv’s points.
And get a pile-on response. The responses are incoherent and reveal little or no knowledge about land clearing in Australia.
Pretty hard to have a discussion even if they were to take a contrary point of view. They don’t even understand enough to debate – just go the biff.
I must say though I don’t think even the hardest of agropolitics supports clearing of endangered ecosystems. But here they do. It’s impressive in its sheer violence. I am shocked.
Even Delingpole loves his species!
14
This is from Gee Aye, and as usual he nails it
“I do find the sensitivity of some commenters perplexing and contradictory. Disagreement is immediately called disruption. Presenting evidence is labelled distraction and is dismissed without being countered. Not following the script is a tactic. Writing something that is provocative to the receiver is baiting.
I could but I wont but I can if you want, find and label disruptive, distracting, tactic driven and provocative comments who agree completely with the blog topic. They are frequent. This is why I find the objections to such comments perplexing. Can they really not see how this is manifest in comments of posters who they agree with? The labeling of the disagreeable posts as disruptive or whatever is often an empty and tactical attempt to shut down debate. It is tedious and transparent.”
17
I can’t believe that you actually had the gall to write this Fitzroy.
This is exactly what you are doing.
What you need to do is to look into the mirror as you repeat every word you wrote, word for word.
You come here to this site knowing that is EXACTLY what you expect, and then complain like this when we don’t immediately AGREE with everything you write.
So again, why is that you actually come here?
You’re not going to change anything we say.
You have nothing but disruption and subject diversion.
And on top of that, you don’t even want to learn anything new, or to see the actual truth, because as you have so often said, we are all li@rs in everything we write.
And seriously, Fitzroy, you have no evidence ….. for anything.
Tony.
60
Miss the quotation marks did you?
here are some more quotes from upthread
“You missed again, arrogant fool. !”
“totally incoherent rant”
“Begone foul fool !”
As to your argument, I post more references here than anyone else except Pat
another quote “Presenting evidence is labelled distraction and is dismissed without being countered”
Where is your evidence? where is one uncontested peer reviewed paper?
As to not learning – not true, I’ve now know that denialism is real.
06
YAWN, you really are getting petty,
Know you are fighting a LOSER battle, hey.
No evidence of your favourite scam, so you want to burn the place down again in a decade or so.
“I post more references here than anyone else except Pat”
That’s a lie, of course, and any you do post are empty or totally irrelevant.
STILL WAITING for that empirical evidence, that you know doesn’t exist, because the whole “climate change™” thing is MADE-UP.
And i ask again, because you are TOO COWARDLY to answer.
What is it that we DENY that you have real empirical evidence for.??
You have nothing but empty ranting,
and from your desperation, it is obvious that you know that to be a fact.
30
““totally incoherent rant”
Again, why dismiss the facts. !
That is all you ever have.. totally incoherent rants, unbacked by any actual evidence.
And your arrogance is shown, almost as much as your ignorance, in every post you make.
30
“denialism is real”
Yep your DENIAL of the fact that you can produce no empirical evidence to support even the most basic meme of the AGW cult religion.
There is nothing we DENY, that you can provide scientific proof for.
Not believing in Fantasy and Fairy Tales, is not denialism.
It is REALISM, excepting facts for what they are.
You should try it some time. !!
30
“You missed again, arrogant fool. !”
“totally incoherent rant”
those are your quotes – did you not recognise them
you have never, along with the munchkins bill and tiny and Mr Keith provided any evidence to support your assertions.
04
Fitz your references and links have proven time after time to be either rubbish or contradict your argument .
40
So people describe you posts for what they are
Grow a backbone. !!
You are an arrogant fool,
And most of your rants are self-aggrandizing irrelevant incoherent rants.
Live with yourself.!! Its who you are.
And we are all STILL WAITING for you to produce any evidence of warming by atmospheric CO2
You are an EVIDENCE-FREE abyss. !!
30
And I ask again, because your deceit and cowardice is still showing the worst of you.
What is it that we DENY that you have real empirical scientific proof for.?
Why are you running around like a headless chook in distraction, trying to avoid answering.
Could it be that you cannot answer this simple question.
From your incoherent ranting, it is obvious that desperation is setting in.
You know your arguments are totally empty.
Only people in denial here are you and your buddies.
30
It’s so nice to have another “contributor” picking up the load, even if he does have a remarkable resemblance to the fillosophy of that fellow Goe Bells.
Do appreciate that extra coffee every day Peter.
KK
20
Now he’s writing above the “feelings” of someone else.
A victim once removed.
Rubbish.
30
“It is tedious and transparent.”
Yep that little rant of yours most certainly was “tedious and transparent.”
We expect nothing more from you… only less.
Pity you can’t see yourself as what you really are…. but you ego would never let you.
30
“Presenting evidence”
LOL, when have you ever done that !!
You are basically an evidence free zone.
30
Fitz this site is far from an echo chamber it allows the likes of yourself to mount an opposing argument and provide proof to back up whatever it is your saying .
Your problem is that since you’ve been here you just keep coming up with typical greenie rubbish lifted from typical leftie websites and insist it’s all true .
Andy keeps asking for proof that man made CO2 causes climate change and I’d just like to know what difference does one degree warming make to the current fires as a percentage .
And if we completely ban all fossil fuel use in oz how much of a temperature difference will it make .
As for will it stop future droughts , fires or floods it would be good if you could put a figure on them too .
40
So to answer your question Roberta.
1 degree rise on evaporation – https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/eco.1701
1 degree rise on Fire – http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/materials-based-on-reports/booklets/warming_world_final.pdf
general overview of all aspects – https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2865/a-degree-of-concern-why-global-temperatures-matter/
adds up to this
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/event-tracker/catastrophic-wildfires-southeastern-australia-2019-20
over to you, your rebuttal please
03
1. No warming in the Australian atmosphere this century
Your article is meaningless, because Australia has always had droughts, and some far worse than current.
2. Just a mantra rag for climate zealots. Contains no actual evidence.
Every point in the pre-ramble is provable wrong the rest is based on model based erroneous un-scientific assumption. FAIL. No science, No evidence. !!!
3. Again based on erroneous unvalidated models. Makes unfounded, unscientific mantra statement
Designed as propaganda for the cultist, like ytou.
4. Yes we know we had catastrophic bushfires. We should never have let the fuel load get so high.. but that’s what happens when you listen to the greenie agenda.
No evidence of any CO2 warming or man MADE-UP climate-change be the cause.
What do you think happens to daytime high temperatures in a firestorm, dopey !!
The number of extremely high temperatures as measured at UNFIT-FOR-PURPOSE temperature sites.. LOL !!!
So, as usual, a bunch of mostly irrelevant, non-scientific mantra based links.
The reason for the drought has been explained to you.. you ignore it.
Facts about massive fuel loads are obvious to the eye and from anyone on the fire front.. you ignore it.
You are destined to remain ignorant for the rest of your life, because you refuse to let any facts in that are contrary to your warped fantasy view of the world.
Now because they are your links, please point out exactly where the empirical evidence of warming by atmospheric CO2 is.
We are waiting, waiting, waiting !!!
20
1. No warming in the Australian atmosphere this century
Your article is meaningless, because Australia has always had droughts, and some far worse than current.
30
3. Again based on erroneous un-validated models.
Makes many unfounded, unscientific statements
Designed as propaganda for the cultist, like you.
30
4. Yes we know we had catastrophic bushfires.
We should never have let the fuel load get so high..
but that’s what happens when you listen to the greenie agenda.
No evidence of any CO2 warming or man made-up climate-change being the cause.
What do you think happens to daytime high temperatures in a firestorm, doh !!
The number of extremely high temperatures as measured at unfit-for-purpose temperature sites.. really !
30
So, as usual, a bunch of mostly irrelevant, non-scientific mantra based links.
The reason for the drought has been explained to you.. you ignore it.
Facts about massive fuel loads are obvious to the eye and from anyone on the fire front.. you ignore them.
You are destined to remain unaware of the facts for the rest of your life, because you refuse to let any facts in that are contrary to your warped fantasy view of the world.
Now because they are your links, please point out exactly where the empirical evidence of warming by atmospheric CO2 is.
We are waiting, waiting, waiting !
40
for Andy again
https://theconversation.com/five-climate-change-science-misconceptions-debunked-122570
https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-why-carbon-dioxide-has-such-outsized-influence-on-earths-climate-123064
you can look up the sources quoted here all by yourself.
But since all you can do is dismiss, I’ll call you a [snip. “fake”] instead, as you have not ever presented any support for your wild claims (an unverifiable wiggle from allegedly UAH makes my case here)
finally I was answering Roberta’s question, common decency would have let him answer first
01
for Andy again
https://theconversation.com/five-climate-change-science-misconceptions-debunked-122570
https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-why-carbon-dioxide-has-such-outsized-influence-on-earths-climate-123064
you can look up the sources quoted here all by yourself.
But since all you can do is dismiss – there is nothing I need present
03
Nothing on the CON-versation counts as science.
Absolutely no empirical evidence on either link.
Just regurgiation of the same tired old fallacies.
FAILED again
30
Point us to exactly where you think this empirical evidence is.
Or remain a total FAILURE.
30
I know that basic science is beyond you, but it has now been proven from balloon data that the atmosphere is in thermal equilibrium
That precludes any warming from the unscientifically named “Greenhouse Effect”
In effect, IT DOES NOT EXIST, because the natural atmospheric gradient is totally in control.
Atmosphere in thermal equilibrium.. PROVEN BY DATA.
Get over it. !
30
“please point out exactly where the empirical evidence of warming by atmospheric CO2 is.”
such a simple request..
But all we get is an abyss.. a total void of actual evidence.. !!
30
Knowing your links Fitz I picked just one “why globull temps matter” and I think Andy has eloquently shredded the link as a joke anyway .
But your faith in models that can’t predict the past but somehow can predict the future shows just how ideologically driven you are but for someone who has done a biology degree (supposedly) you still seem to think that the oceans are becoming more acidic .
All the claims made in this link are bedtime scare stories for uneducated kids and propaganda for lazy uneducated greenies .
If this is your proof of anything at all it’s proof you’ve forgotten your schooling .
30
“common decency would have let him answer first”
from you, that is hilarious..
You have none, so you deserve none.!
I will post when I want, where I want.
Start you own blog if you want tell people what they can post.
00
Robert, if my memory serves me correctly, this is the contributor whose efforts aroused 50 red crosses on one occasion.
That’s very unusual.
KK
30
“This is from Gee Aye”
WOW, great source. NOT ! 😉
Is his victimhood and self-pity has deeply based as yours?
Not one relevant word in the whole rant
And absolutely no evidence of anything.
30
“I am amazed at the level of knowledge on some topics”
Yes, rather high isn’t it.
But none of it is coming from you or peter.
You are knowledge and evidence free zones.
If anything, the garbage you two, and your foot-licker GA, come out with..
…. could generally be classed as anti-knowledge.
40
Your base level ignorance yet again comes to the fore
You put onto others, what is built into your own fetid morality.
Yes, Vishy and you seem to have extraordinarily LOW levels of knowledge on basically everything
All stemming from basic lack of comprehension of what was actually written, and a extraordinary lack of understanding that farmers want to look after THEIR land , and are not allowed to do so.
Viv is totally correct in point 4.
Your comments are from your sick, deep-seated, far-left totalitarian “we know best” fallacy.
You don’t, and you never will.
30
That’s the word I was looking for : fetid, as in foetid rubbish
30
Sorry,
I forgot to put a full stop after rubbish.
30
“this lot has no regard for ecology”
Yet YOU are the onse that wants this latest firestorm devastation to happen again in a decade or so.
YOU are the one that hates ecology, and want to see it destroyed.!!
40
Well right now, because somebody listened to the ecologists and the so-called environmentalists, a lot of pristine bushland has been destroyed, properties have been lost and people have died. It’s seriously damaged and may not fully recover, and some people’s lives will never be the same. What the hell do you think we care about, if not people first, then the environment and animals? We didn’t damage the environment, your lot did, and they need to take responsibility for their actions and not blame the problem on some dreamt-up poor excuse. Get real mate and realise what you have done.
60
“Get real mate and realise what you have done.”
He cannot allow himself to see the reality.
He already feels the SHAME of the disaster and devastation that he and his ilk have wrought..
…but admitting it properly to himself requires inner honesty that he can never possess.
30
Vishnu: a lot of the flora, — that’s the plant life — as Bill has said, has evolved to the point where it needs a good fire for its seeds to germinate.
Sit back and watch it regenerate. You will be amazed, especially now it has rained.
The indigenous population knew this. Why didn’t you?
40
Because he’s Indian maybe ?
And knows not our flora or fauna ?
If he had a knowledge of Shiva
He might be aware of the natural process of destruction and renewal.
30
In moderation !
I wonder why ?
30
Bill in Oz asked:
Ah … ‘Coz it wuz your turn?
60
You mean those plants which are part of a secondary succession? Can you explain more?
04
Well you now have primary procession, so act like a man and carry your load as Prime Contributor.
40
If you’ve wondered where the climate cooling has gotten to, don’t worry, it’s alive and well and living in the North Atlantic:
https://notrickszone.com/2020/01/20/north-atlantic-sea-levels-have-been-falling-at-a-rate-of-7-1-mm-yr-since-2004-in-tandem-with-2c-cooling/
and you’ll also be able to see why the Al Gores et al are still buying coastal land.
I found the bit about Antarctica interesting … and Skeptical Science’s 0.3 °C proposed cooling maximum seems to have been beaten handsomely.
Just can’t trust these psychologists …
50
Interesting.
In the longer term, sea levels falls are obviously a proxy for cooling.
Over the last seven thousand years sea levels have fallen by a minimum of 4,000 mm.
All of that water is no longer in the oceans.
It’s accumulating as ice/snow on the poles and lower.
Anecdotally this summer, despite maybe 5 “hot” days, has been cool compared with heatwaves of 60 or 70 years ago.
In the northern hemisphere the last few winters have been desperate.
So much for Wobal Glorming.
KK
30
“Anecdotally this summer, despite maybe 5 “hot” days, has been cool compared with heatwaves of 60 or 70 years ago.”
Anecdotally it’s been cool compared with 10 years ago !
no week long heat wave periods at all
Just 4- 5 individual hot days
!
40
Weatherzone has the January average maximum in Newy as 0.2ºC below the long term average
30
What really concerns me most about this situation is that the reduced ocean volume over the last 7,000 years still contains the same quantity of salt and I’m surprised that the rising concentration has not affected coral growth.
00
and here’s a real warmist’s nightmare — two of ’em:
https://notrickszone.com/2020/01/17/ireland-temperatures-cooling-since-1988-and-deep-blue-vermont-says-no-to-wind-power/
30
I remember once when holidaying on the West coast of Ireland
At the end of July
It tried to hail
And definitely was freezing cold rain !
Wet too ! None of the farmers could bail hay because it was all rained on.
And getting colder ?
Ummmmm !
30
this will help the perspective https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/16/world/blob-seabird-study-intl-hnk-scli-scn/index.html
14
What perspective ? There is no evidence that CO2 causes climate change or these events aren’t natural .
On this planet extinction is the norm and survival the exception, ocean currents change which is likely some of the problem and as for fewer storms isn’t that the reverse of what the rest of your religion say will happen .
60
What perspective – of that would “in contrast”. No evidence – yes apart from a massive literature on paleoclimate, the PETM, chemical, physical and empirical measurement. Phew.\
If extinction is the norm well why are we all here with so much diversity.
14
Personally I prefer a well maintained grove of fruit to the former wild landscape it sits upon.
50
“No evidence – yes apart from a massive literature on paleoclimate, the PETM, chemical, physical and empirical measurement”
No evidence of CO2 warming that you are capable of producing.
Rant on, its you can do, because you know you have no evidence.
Fact is , that empirical evidence has shown that the troposphere is in thermodynamic equilibrium,
That fact precludes any warming from the mythical, never observed, CO2 greenhouse effect.
Why is it all your posts seem to rely totally on nonsense ??
51
“If extinction is the norm well why are we all here with so much diversity.”
Have you researched the number of extinctions since life on earth began?
We are lucky to be here at all.
But don’t worry, at some time in the future all oxygen respiring species will be killed off.
Unless mankind, the only one of such species to be environmentally aware, adapts the natural environment to its needs.
How dare they?
40
I could be wrong but I’m sure I’ve seen a figure that 99% of all the species that ever existed are extinct .
But none from CO2 causing climate change .
30
It’s at least that many, it’s a conservative number to put things into perspective.
When bio-addicts fret about species extinctions they’re simply demonstrating their complete lack of understanding of the scientific nature of the planet, and its habit of wiping-out species en-masse, with no such “emotional intelligence”, or ‘conscience’ (take note the spelling, CONscience), or hand-wringing, tears, faux-regrets, or a sense of neurotic deep ‘loss’.
And given we’re speaking to the scrambled-egg mind of a genuine divinity, apparently infinity that we all sprang from has no conception of, “the loss of species diversity“, as infinity has the capacity to create and destroy an infinite number of oh so precious ‘species’, over infinite time. Either way we have no control over this and life was not meant to be meddled with to preserve all species. Doing that is simply biological stagnation.
Species are themselves always changing form to adapt, and they all go extinct as some point. People like Vishnu seem to have a crippling psychological problem with the fact that life is temporary, that birth leads to its natural ending, same for speciation (which is not far off the spelling of the human concept of ‘special’). Scientific observation of fossil ‘specials’ makes clear that species are not special or precious, they are disposable, they have proven to be readily replaceable by ‘better’ species layouts, and they are all meant to end, that’s their natural path to improved adaptation of life, which then follows as a naturally self-emergent phenomena.
Nothing is supposed to be ‘special’, or ‘preserved’. Life is not interested in conservation,a s conservation and protection is actually evolutionary stagnation. Meanwhile, the factors ending in species extinction just keep coming anyway. As we see with totally burned out national parks, preservation does not work when greenie idiots try to press home their idealism. In fact the exact opposite occurs (as seen in the cartoon in this article).
That’s not the way of life, nor the way of this planet, nor the way of the wider cosmos, nor of the super-being Vishnu. It has no such warm favorable feeling about cute and charismatic species. Infinity does not like or favor wales, it despised floppy happy dolphins, it does not like humans, and it especially seems to disapprove of Koalas lounging about all day in pyro-convective fuels.
Extinction is the norm, but so is Infinity’s tendency to reproduce life, in whatever random form which can survive reality long enough to reproduce to evolve into something more suitable. At present that is best exemplified by Humans. And things won’t remain that way for long, doom is in fact assured for us, but best not to let that rule your life as it will certainly turn you into a philosophizing ‘loser’, dear Vishnu.
Species in context are only useful to humans if they serve humans survival and reproductive plus life-cycle needs and even their gratuitous wants (which becomes self-limiting anyway). Species that don’t aid us or enrich our capacity to survive and thrive are irrelevant. Personally I particularly like antiseptic, soap, bug spray and fresh meat.
No Vishnu, you can not ‘school’ humanity in what “should be” ‘preserved’, or ‘conserved’. A species is either beneficial, or it’s not relevant to us. Humans didn’t make the natural ‘rules of life’ and survival adaptions, and one would hope a conscious supreme super-being ‘species’ didn’t think it up either. Nevertheless, it does work out over time, and we did not come with a warranty, nor a promise that everything would work out just swell (see Koalas), or that doom would be preventable. On the contrary, it’s a certainty.
Relax and enjoy your temporariness Vishy, you are never going to conserve or preserve a single species, of that you can be 100% certain, and nor will you be preserved.
I’m fine with all that – and tough luck if I’m not.
51
So WXcycles – just so I can get an indicator on the barbarian index here. I guess you think national parks are worthless, species not worth conserving and humanity can trample everything it wants to. If so – wow !
03
Go study paleontology and get a clue, leave your ideology at the door.
30
“just so I can get an indicator on the barbarian index here”
Vishnu = 11
And keeps dialing it up further.
Not content with the recent build-up of massive fuel load causing devastation to wildlife and human habitats……
…. he wants the same thing to happen in another decade or so.
Barbarian… thy name is Vishnu.
30
Stop pretending you understand evolution
03
Stop talking to yourself, GA !
20
Yep I have and gee that’s cheery.
04
Rubbish
30
You mean the hotspot of plastic rubbish. Yes I see. Bit off topic but you’re improving.
15
You should go preach this stuff in Tianamen Square.
(I’m betting you don’t really care about it that much)
70
Like that one in Carnarvon National Park that wrecked the rock art?
30
was that the rock art it supposed to protect?
10
Vishnu, the myth about a huge amount of plastic accumulating in the Pacific is well known. If you believe otherwise, please support your belief with some solid evidence. No sane person would be fooled by such rubbish.
20
The rubbish swept into the sea after Fukushima was washed and rinsed by the tsunami back in 1986 was most likely the source of that rumour. A rubbish tip was one thing washed out to sea and it was possibly the source of that story. A lot of rubbish was swept into the Northern Pacific. Due cause. A Fukushima house washed ashore on a California beach a year or so later.
The northern gyre must be pretty clean now, because recent journeys to check it have not found it.
So you can go back to sleep.
They’re still looking for the southern gyre. It’s playing Unicorns still.
There have been lots of pumice rafts.
30
The images that were supposed to be in the Pacific were actually taken just off a coast somewhere, some time ago.
10
This will give perspective:
Cold kills thousands of fish
“Rarely do waters get so cold in this region of the country that a massive amount of fish dies all at one time, but that’s just what happened last week in Gulf Shores, Alabama,” says the Pensacola News Journal.
https://www.iceagenow.info/cold-kills-thousands-fish/
More than 4 dozen sea turtles killed in Cape Cod cold snap
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_coverage/2018/11/more_than_4_dozen_sea_turtles_killed_in_cape_cod_cold_snap?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_content=tw-bostonherald
Is there nothing carbon (sic) can’t do?
40
That was careless of you. You shouldn’t have left it lying around.
10
Vishnu, please go back and read the contents of your link again. It clearly says that the seabird deaths were caused by El Niño, a NATURAL warming event. You seem to be having some comprehension problems…
00
It’s anybody’s guess for the Southern Hemisphere. Nobody lives here so don’t worry about it …
30
Youtube: 12m40s: 20 Jan: Sky Australia: Ferocity of bushfires in Australia will experience ‘exponential effect’ without intervention
Peta Credlin Show with David Packham & Roger Underwood
Without adequate management and fire reduction burn offs, the ferocity of Australia’s fires will continue to incur an “exponential effect” to the point “no firefighting force known to man” can stop them, says bushfire specialist Roger Underwood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2udzHHdvA
80
Credlin’s op-ed at beginning of show (11.00) is good:
https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6124864574001
30
Something else for them to focus on – the terrible desal plants.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/fear-desalination-plans-could-set-back-nsw-emission-goals-20200120-p53t13.html
30
Hang on. WA makes very good use of its desal plants, but then again, WA is not short of relatively cheap energy.
00
hmmm.. no-one has any ideas at all to combat such bushfires..
Not surprised really..reality moves on..
So..pick your employee level in life..
1. Put 400 bricks in a closed room.
2. Put your new employees in the room and close the door.
3. Leave them alone and come back after 6 hours.
4. Then analyze the situation:
a. If they are counting the bricks, put them in the Accounting
Department.
b. If they are recounting them, put them in Auditing.
c. If they have messed up the whole place with the bricks, put them
in Engineering
d. If they are arranging the bricks in some strange order, put them
in Planning.
e. If they are throwing the bricks at each other, put them in
Operations.
f. If they are sleeping, put them in Security.
g. If they have broken the bricks into pieces, put them in Information
Technology.
h. If they are sitting idle, put them in Human Resources.
i. If they say they have tried different combinations, they are
looking for more, yet not a brick has been moved, put them in Sales.
j. If they have already left for the day, put them in Marketing.
k. If they are staring out of the window, put them in Strategic
Planning.
l. If they are talking to each other, and not a single brick has been
moved,
congratulate them and put them in Top Management.
Finally, if they have surrounded themselves with bricks in such a way
that they can neither be seen nor heard from, put them in Government.
140
Jo,
Gimme one TV Channel that puts the Deplorables and non-left voter arguments forward and allows real debate with the best of both sides, and Australians will give you smashing ratings. nothing like that here in Oz.
And may the best channel win, eh?
How difficult is it to start a TV station in Australia. Perhaps there is enough capital and expertise available among those commenting here. If it seems to be a viable it would likely even be profitable. It would be nice to see every opinion along with a counter opinion and and balanced documentaries and news stories. Perhaps even an existing station could take up the cape with sufficient investor and advertiser pressure. I am going to try suggesting the same for my side of the world.
30
Rick sky news channel has what you ask .
30
Isn’t sky news a British channel. I Have never seen it quoted anyplace on my feeds in Canada.
10
Think it’s a seppo channel but you may call it cable tv , I believe fox in America have similar views to the one in OZ .
20
I checked out the British and they seem to follow the same line as BBC or in other words more of the same if perhaps a little less sensationalist.
00
Isn’t sky news a British channel. I Have never seen it quoted anyplace on my feeds in Canada.
00
An informative article on United Nations Agenda 30, originally Agenda 21, meaning target for completion by 2030.
Consider how much influence or interference in our sovereignty the UN has been given by the people elected to represent us;
https://www.cirnow.com.au/agenda-2130/
20
Agenda 21 refers to the 21st century. Agenda 2030 refers to the year. One is local and one is national. Both are current.
00
Not exactly O/T if you read it all
“The Meat Wars: JAMA Stirs the Pot”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/01/20/the-meat-wars-jama-stirs-the-pot/
30
OT , seen this yesterday about why we are reading our forecasts wrong and wonder if anyone knows how they work out the percentage?
https://www.theland.com.au/story/6581470/why-youre-reading-forecasts-wrong/?cs=4941&fbclid=IwAR1lAds53qulUQLVVuga9EnKInyMe_1f4GFf4VoDTIinIAc2ysIuLTxZuLE
20
I think we need an enquiry into cutting power in areas to stop bushfires , the gold plated poles and wires should not be a hazard so what’s going on here .
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-21/fire-prevention-technology-refcl-link-blackouts-apollo-bay/11883380
40
Maybe the approach should be that
“the gold plated poles and wires need protection from what is going on around there”?
10
paraphrasing:
10m52s in: Murdoch segment. downplaying CAGW. Andrew Bolt/Sky grab. as recently as 18 months ago, James was the Murdoch heir apparent. still serves on News Corps board. but he lost his 21st Century Fox job in 2018 when the company was sold to Disney and didn’t take up another position, so perhaps there’s a little more to the story than the climate issue. he left with a lot of money, MONEY HE IS NOW INVESTING IN BUSINESSES THAT CHAMPION GREEN CAUSES AND DEMOCRATIC REFORMS; companies with a far more liberal stand-point than the Murdoch empire he has left behind. GISBERT: or that left him behind. ENDS 12m44s.
VIDEO: 25m55s: 18 Jan: Aljazeera: Listening Post
From this Episode:
On our radar
Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Johanna Hoes about cracks appearing inside the Murdoch empire when it comes to reporting on Australia’s bushfires.
https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/listeningpost/2020/01/iran-patriotism-protests-200117231148880.html
pretty meaningless, but just noting:
20 Jan: AP: Climate not considered a top 10 risk by CEOs – survey
By PAN PYLAS
DAVOS, Switzerland — Climate issues are set to be one of the main talking points at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos this week, but a survey of CEOs released Monday shows that they are not even ranked among the top ten threats to business growth.
In its annual report ahead of the gathering in Davos, financial services group PwC said climate change and environmental issues are ranked as the 11th biggest threat to their companies’ growth prospects. Though up one spot from the same survey a year ago, climate-related issues lag way behind other concerns such as over-regulation, which ranks as the number 1 worry. Other concerns in the top 10 include trade conflicts, lack of skills among workers and populism in politics.
According to the survey, 24% of CEOs are “extremely concerned” about climate-related issues, compared to 38% for over-regulation.
PwC said pessimism was widespread but particularly so in North America, Western Europe and the Middle East.
“Given the lingering uncertainty over trade tensions, geopolitical issues and the lack of agreement on how to deal with climate change, the drop in confidence in economic growth is not surprising — even if the scale of the change in mood is,” said Bob Moritz, Chairman, of the PwC Network…
PwC conducted 1,581 interviews, mainly online, with CEOs in 83 countries between September and October 2019. It weights the sample by national GDP to ensure that CEOs’ views are fairly represented across all major regions.
https://apnews.com/8d3a6fea62ebbf9f26975cc34cbce5c0
40
19 Jan: CNN: Residents are digging out of record-breaking snowfall in Newfoundland, Canada
By Dakin Andone; CNN’s Derek Van Dam contributed to this report
PIC: A resident struggles through the snow in St. John’s, Newfoundland, on Saturday
St. John’s International Airport recorded 76.2 cm (30 inches) of snow Friday, according to Environment Canada, breaking the previous daily snowfall record set on April 5, 1999, of 68.4 cm (26.93 inches).
Footage from the area this weekend showed residents digging themselves out of deep of snow covering streets and cars…
PIC: A resident digs out his walkway in St. John’s, Newfoundland, on Saturday…
A state of emergency remained in effect for parts of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador on Sunday morning, including St. John’s and Paradise.
St. John’s officials still wanted people to stay off the roads, but lifted some restrictions Sunday morning, allowing gas stations to open and pharmacies to open from noon until 7 pm…
On Saturday, CNN news partners CBC reported that the federal government had approved the province’s request for assistance…
The Canadian Armed Forces announced (LINK) it was planning a response to the “unprecedented winter storm.”
TWEET
More snow is on the way, CNN meteorologist Allison Chinchar said…
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/19/americas/newfoundland-snow-trnd/index.html
20 Jan: Fox News: Florida water parks shutting down as freezing temperatures hit state
By Michael Hollan
Universal Studios tweeted out that its Volcano Bay water park will be closed Monday through Wednesday due to the unusual wave of cold weather slated to hit…
Arctic air is funneling into Florida starting Monday, causing the coldest temperatures of the winter so far, Fox 51 reports. Temperatures could dip below freezing, which has caused freeze watches to be issued across several counties…
https://www.foxnews.com/travel/florida-water-parks-closed-florida-freezing
30
Remember a time when we did not worry about what happened in Newfoundland, or freezing in Florida or record cold in Bangladesh or even bushfires in far away places, like California and Greece? And people at conferences in Madrid were utterly ignorant of bushfires in Australia and are still completely ignorant of how common they are.
The overwhelming impression is that there are terrible ‘climate events’ all over the world when in fact 7 billion people are now living in very strange places, in dangerous places and anything which goes wrong is reported instantly. It is perfect for people who say Climate Change is causing every problem in the world, even wars and droughts and mass migration and culture clash. It’s easy to get away with this sort of deliberate conflating of perfectly natural events with the vilification of a single tiny gas essential to all life on earth. We are now told Carbon Dioxide causes everything, every natural event.
It would be laughable if the problems were not so serious. And of the course the most worried are the Insurance companies and the banks. Rates will have to go up. And the EU/UN where world carbon taxes have to go up. And the industrial who demand we buy more windmills and power plants and use hydrogen to make metals and drive around in new electric cars.
If you thought $1.5 Trillion a year to prevent things over which we have no control was a big price to pay for fantasy, I suspect we have seen nothing yet. And the extra 6 billion people in the last century is ignored as a problem because we are trying to save the environment by letting precious fresh water run out to the sea?
The total lack of science and logic in all aspects of man made Climate Change is breathtaking. And politicians are being instructed on science by an autistic girl who dropped out of school and Hollywood actors who know even less.
100
It Must Stop!
40
Yes, but how to stop it?
Now almost 70 years of UN interference and influence, manipulating and brain washing and dumbing down.
60
My intent is to publish a web site showing live the very small % of man made CO2 in the air. Currently it is under 5% and the way equilibrium works, the more CO2 moves away from the equilibrium state, the greater the forces to push it back. And with 98% of all CO2 in the ocean, that is quick.
I need the latest data continuously on C14 from the various laboratories. Much of the published data is very old, ending in the last century. If anyone has a (live) link to later data, I could get started immediately.
Once the fact that CO2 levels are not anyone’s fault and we cannot control CO2 levels is well known, it devastates the whole man made thing. The idea that CO2 stays in the atmosphere forever is not anyone’s science. It is a ridiculous idea.
As CO2 levels are totally natural and man made CO2 levels tiny there is no need or ability to do anything, like shutting down Australia, paying the world’s highest electricity prices and blowing up power stations. If the climate changes, that is not something which is taxable or actionable or anyone’s fault.
The IPCC was founded on man made Climate Change. It ceases to have any reason to exist if Climate Change, whatever that means, is not man made. And carbon taxes and the RET cease to have any point at all, except an international ripoff.
20
My rough estimate for Australia is 0.0003% but the figures I get that from move around a lot , Human share of 0.04% is between 3 – 5% depending on the place you get your info from and we’re only 1.3% of that .
But yes TdeF a worthwhile excersise .
20
VIDEO: 8m29s: 20 Jan: Youtube: Piers Morgan ‘wanted to bash Scott Morrison’ during ‘appalling’ British interview: Kelly
Chris Smith, Sky Australia
CHECK THE COMMENTS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=383nLONYmog
30
should have made clear, this is the Craig Kelly interview from last nite.
30
Absolutely dead on Jo.
Alas, Australia isn’t alone, I think that you derived this ‘inquiry disease’ – postpone, prevaricate, procrastinate and put off doing the correct thing, and from afar and specifically ex dear old Blighty.
One other thing to note, the greens have been a vital aid in promoting and encouraging governmental inertia, stymying on, failing to tackle the root and branch causes not least aggressively advocating prosecuting Aus home owners and farmers for protecting their land – (rude words deleted).
However, once again, thank your lucky stars that you do have the rampant child abuse scandals and gross misconduct and indeed UK authorities dereliction of duty, endless excuses all down to Political Correctness. Excuses, quibbling, hand wringing for knowing about it but yet, not stopping the majority ‘subcontinent’ rape gangs ripping through the old country, we’ve had two major inquiries and evidently the ‘nothing to see here’ rearguard actions already begin, thus nothing will event.
Know the enemy, is big government.
100
Anybody going to Davos?
May do an article so doing some digging, starting with their Risk Report:
http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Global_Risk_Report_2020.pdf
Upfront graphics tell interesting story. Figure IV says central risk is Climate Action Failure. For the whole world economy! So definitely Action Now! radical types. No wonder Greta gets at least three speaking spots in Davos.
But close by and also big is Global Governance Failure! Governance by whom one asks? The UN? Or perhaps the WEF.
These are definitely lefties of a pretty extreme sort. Their central goal is climate action through global governance.
Woohoo!
David
00
This is the link to Peta Credlin’s interview with two fire risk advisors:
https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6124872778001
They paint a truly alarming picture for some forests in Australia.
70
Good solid interview with the two experts providing some frightening figures. A lot of food for thought there.
00
***lol. definitely see Aussies as suckers:
20 Jan: SMH: RBA told to ‘mobilise all forces’ to save the economy from climate change
By Shane Wright and Eryk Bagshaw
The Reserve Bank has been warned it may have to buy up coal mines and fossil-fuel power stations as part of extraordinary actions to save the economy from climate change-induced financial disaster.
As Australian business leaders grow increasingly worried climate change will hit their bottom lines and the International Monetary Fund warns global warming is now a major financial risk, a new warning issued by the world’s top central bank says the RBA could be forced into rescuing the economy and the environment.
Three separate reports released on the same day, coinciding with Australia’s worst bushfire season and ongoing political division over environmental policy, point to increasing fears among economic policy leaders that climate change could cause the next global financial breakdown.
The Bank for International Settlements, which acts as the central bank to the world’s central banks, overnight told its members they had to start incorporating climate change into their thinking about the stability of the economy…
The report was released as the International Monetary Fund downgraded its forecasts for the global economy through this year and into 2021.
“Weather-related disasters such as tropical storms, floods, heatwaves, droughts and wildfires have imposed severe humanitarian costs and livelihood loss across multiple regions in recent years,” it said.
The warning from global authorities comes as Australian business leaders become increasingly anxious about the threat of climate change.
New research (Deloitte survey of more than 2000 global executives) shows nearly twice as many local executives view climate change as society’s biggest issue compared to their international peers…
***Up to 89 per cent of the 150 Australian executives surveyed viewed climate change and environmental sustainability as the “societal issue of greatest focus,” compared to 54 per cent world-wide…
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/rba-told-to-mobilise-all-forces-to-save-the-economy-from-climate-change-20200120-p53szi.html
20
21 Jan: ThisIsMoneyUK: ALEX BRUMMER: In a battle pitting Anglo-Saxon capitalism against rule-based and risk-averse EU approach to financial dealings, London was always going to win out
The battle for financial sector leadership post-Brexit was always going to be won by the City…
Regulatory consultant Bovill reports that more than 1,000 financial groups are heading in this direction to take advantage of the UK’s sophisticated markets.
Yes, some jobs are going in the opposite direction. JP Morgan chairman Jamie Dimon has made no secret of his belief that Brexit is an act of self-harm. His bank is seeking a building in Paris for 450 people to manage intra-European transactions.
But it is leaving about 10,000 staff behind in the UK, and, of all the American banks in London, JP Morgan has been the most publicly negative…
Revised forecasts for the Davos elites show UK output rising up to 1.4 per cent this year and 1.5 per cent next. That is far below trend growth, but looks healthier than Germany, France and laggard Italy.
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/comment/article-7908957/ALEX-BRUMMER-battle-pitting-Anglo-Saxon-capitalism-against-EU-London-going-win.html
30
“that climate change could cause the next global financial breakdown.””
Yep, that is the WHOLE AIM of the man MADE-UP “climate change™” agenda.
Thank goodness Trump is holding the US together. !!
81
In opposition to that view this week’s Spectator Australia has a Diary by David Frum baldly stating that “Trump is the most unpopular first-term president in the history of polling, the only president never to attain 50 per cent approval in any reputable poll. A plurality of Americans want him impeached and removed. Trump’s fluke success in the 2016 College…”
I was glad to turn the page and be rid of Frum’s sooking; let him tell somebody who cares, Robert de Niro say…
30
Who or what is a David Frump?
Sound irrelevant to common sense to me.
Ideologically driven twaddle.
10
Somewhat inconveniently
“Poll: Trump Approval Among Farmers Hits Record High at 83%”
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/01/19/poll-trump-approval-among-farmers-hits-record-high-at-83/
00
Oh boy, what a bunch of dunces, talk about “mission-creep”, these dimwits think their job is to run the world and make Australian policy, irrespective of the Constitution!
30
TWEET: Menaka Doshi, Bloomberg
Peak Globalisation?
Peak Capitalism?
Peak Central Banks?
Peak Climate Change?
Peak Youth?
Maybe even Peak #Davos…
LINK
19 Jan 2020
https://twitter.com/menakadoshi/status/1219152343729688576
19 Jan: Bloomberg: Davos: Some Strategists say get ready for ‘Peak Decade’
by Enda Curran; With assistance by Zoe Schneeweiss
Strategists at Bank of America Corp. are already telling clients to brace for a “ground-breaking ‘peak decade’” that will disrupt business and investing. Ian Bremmer, a delegate at the World Economy Forum’s annual meeting and founder of Eurasia Group, describes this year as a “tipping point.”
The theme is captured throughout the Davos program, which contains multiple panels on “stakeholder capitalism” and tackling inequality…
Still, the continued development of the digital economy, rising tourism and mounting reliance of companies on revenues generated outside their home market provide room for confidence globalization is evolving rather than ending…
PEAK INEQUALITY?
The pressure to reduce inequality will become more urgent this decade as the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals approach their 2030 deadline…
PEAK CLIMATE CHANGE?
The world faces a sweeping series of climate-related tipping points — from melting ice caps to droughts and dying coral reefs…
Demand Plateau
IEA anticipates a marked slowdown in oil consumption growth after 2025.
This means renewable energy like solar and wind, plus electric vehicles are going to soar up the policy agenda at the cost of fossil fuel gurgling vehicles…
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-19/welcome-to-peak-decade-from-globalization-to-central-banks
they left out Peak Stupid.
Updated 21 Jan: Reuters: Central banks can’t save the world from climate change, BIS says
by Marc Jones, John Revill
BASEL/LONDON – Central banks can’t be expected to save the world from climate change, a new book by the Bank for International Settlement said on Monday, urging instead global co-ordination ranging from government policy to financial regulation.
The book, titled “the Green Swan”, in a play on the idea of “black swan” events, warned of the potentially seismic effects of climate change on the world’s financial system.
???The number of extreme weather events has quadrupled over the last 40 years…
Urgency about global warming comes as rising sea levels put swathes of major cities and coastal areas at risk of flooding while brutal droughts make other parts of the world increasingly uninhabitable…
“There is no silver bullet,” Pereira Da Silva cautioned. “Central banks are not going to save the world again.”…
For full report click LINK
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-cenbank-bis/central-banks-cant-save-the-world-from-climate-change-bis-says-idUSKBN1ZJ19E
20 Jan: Financial Post Canada: Posthaste: Why Canada will be hit harder than Saudi Arabia if the world switches to renewable energy sources
by Yadullah Hussain
BIS — often called the central banks of central banks — has borrowed the swan terminology from economist Nassim Nicholas Talib who famously coined the ‘black swan’ thesis focused on unpredictable events that are hard to measure and can have catastrophic economic consequences…
However, switching to low-carbon technologies and sources could have a major impact on most fossil fuel producers, especially Canada, warns BIS…
Quoting a 2018 report by environmental economists J.F. Mercure and others, BIS notes that Saudi Arabia could keep selling oil in a low-carbon scenario given its competitive prices, whereas Canadian and U.S. unconventional oils could be stranded much faster, with potential significant impacts on their GDPs…
10
Re “???The number of extreme weather events has quadrupled over the last 40 years…”
There is a database of extreme events that has seen great growth, but it is in reporting, not events. The owners say this. Is the bank stupid or lying?
20
Both.
30
Bit sorry that the rains didn’t extinguish all the fires, but at least they helped a bit.
In any event, ref the tourism hit, I am proud to announce the following :-
EO and his missus will be landing in Perth from the UK and heading for Alice in August
EO Daughter and family will be landing in Darwin and heading for Alice in September
The whole lot of us will arrive on the same day for a pint in Bo Jangles in Alice
It had better be open 🙂
50
Why wait until August? The weather is warm, the beer is cold, the seafood is fresh, the wine’s great and Perth’s beachside cafes and restaurants are now open.
00
lots of reasons Graeme, holidays have to be planned in jan, kids have to be off school, cant be too hot (or we spend all day indoors or in the car for the a/c).
we are already sketching out 2021 plans:)
00
John Stanley back on 2GB Nights; Jane Marwick with him for one hour nightly, when subject of Vic and NSW State Govts came up for their failure to carry out sufficient hazard reduction, etc.
Stanley said it should be noted, tho, that Barry O’Farrell increased it 2 and a half times, and it then decreased after his time.
looked for something online and – no surprise – RMIT/ABC did a Fact Check! unattributed. read all:
23 Oct 2013 Updated 1 Nov 2013: RMIT/ABC Fact Check: Has hazard reduction in NSW increased two-and-a-half times under Barry O’Farrell?
Whenever a major bushfire occurs in Australia, it also ignites a debate over whether enough has been done to reduce the risk, often in the form of hazard reduction burning.
The Mayor of Port Stephens on the NSW central coast, Councillor Bruce MacKenzie, recently blamed “bureaucrats sitting on their backsides in Sydney” for the loss of five homes in his area. “Because of the lack of burning off, underscrubbing and hazard reduction, they’ve lost their home and that’s a bloody disgrace,” he said.
As the fires intensified in the NSW Blue Mountains, Hawkesbury and Shoalhaven regions, Premier Barry O’Farrell told the ABC that there had been a significant increase in bushfire hazard reduction in his state.
“In the past two years, we have increased the amount of hazard reduction two-and-a-half times,” he told ABC’s 7.30 program on October 21.
ABC Fact Check assesses Mr O’Farrell’s claim…
Hazard reduction burning is not without risks, including fires getting out of control, and atmospheric pollution.
A recent study by Deloitte Access Economics found there is greater value in measures other than vegetation-management to reduce bushfire risk, such as improving the design of houses and burying electricity cables…
The verdict
A full “two-and-a-half times” increase in two years would have seen 294,083 hectares completed in 2012-2013, not 281,492.
Mr O’Farrell’s two-year time frame is relevant. The Liberal leader was elected NSW Premier in March 2011.
It’s worth noting that in the 2009-2010 financial year, under the previous Labor government, hazard reduction work was completed on 174,705 hectares – a significantly larger area than either 2010-2011 or 2011-12.
But assuming the data for 2012-2013 provided by the Premier’s office is correct, Mr O’Farrell’s claim is close to the mark…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-23/nsw-hazard-reduction-barry-ofarrell/5037662
20
I tried to warn Scott Morrison about the bushfire disaster. Adapting to climate change isn’t enough –
(Greg Mullins, former commissioner of Fire and Rescue NSW and a climate councillor)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/20/i-tried-to-warn-scott-morrison-about-the-bushfire-disaster-adapting-to-climate-change-isnt-enough
>> Sadly for Greg Mullins, he failed to warn Scott Morrison of the flooding rains that follow the bushfires.
60
The new Premier of Tasmania, previously the Treasurer, has stated that we must do more about climate change.
Another climate dill.
60
Ben Davidson has made a major news item those of you who are ignorant about what’s going to be new in the climate models.
See it at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMK319eRhx0 (Suspicious0bservers 20th Jan
and also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frzf0nzX5RU
And here is an informative article: https://solarisheppa.geomar.de/cmip6
It’s my pick that it’s going to take a few years to get things fully shaken out.
It’s also my pick that the MSM isn’t going to give it any attention for as long as they possibly can.
Enjoy.
00
But aren’t those new models already running way hotter?
00
O/T but almost predictable….a timely distraction or just a slow news day?
As the ramifications of lack of hazard reduction burning are starting to take root, almost on cue, something to keep people from focussing on the problem ?
People die of the flu all the time….and SARS is a conronavirus.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-21/china-confirms-human-to-human-transmission-of-new-coronavirus/11884630
00
Jo
Some images of weather station and the recording procedure taken as screenshots from a You Tube Video probably from December. The location is Wittenoom, Western Australia
https://sway.office.com/lqfWTsVR42NCCokk
The You Tube url
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaHw_bGI2ME
I think you will find them interesting
10
Interesting indeed that an Austrian is paid $850 per month to use satellite phone to relay the twice daily Wittenoom meteorological readings to Perth Airport.
10
Wittenoom town is supposed to be closed – all the residents were told to leave. Nobody is supposed to go there, so really surprised that somebody is still recording weather there.
10
Yep, just checked. The last three residents are refusing to sell their properties and leave.
10
In Melbourne the Botanic Gardens are expecting most of their long term plantings to be of different species as it is reported that 3/4 of the plants cannot survive the coming extreme heat of 2090. So it’s goodbye in a Botanic Garden to all the wonderful plants which have thrived there for a hundred years and the end of trying to show exotic species to visitors. I expect it will soon become a bushfire hazard too.
The damage being done by the lie of rapidly climbing temperatures and rapidly climbing oceans and eternal droughts and flooding rains and man made bushfires are endless. Climatebaggers like Flannery and Gore are devastating the country with their ignorant but deliberate misinformation and Flannery now describes himself as an ‘activist’. Obviously being former Chief Climate Commissioner doesn’t come with a substantial pension. He would have one question. How much are you paid to address the UN and Davos? How dare they hire a 17 year old activist?
40
And of course if they left the Botanic gardens
As they are
And these ‘threatened’ species all survived
It would be grossly embarressing for the ‘greenist climateers’
So much runny yolky eggs on faces !
00
As Vinegar Joe’s motto said, referring to Big Government Bureaucracy: “nil carborundum illegitimi”.
10
So why don’t we give the job of managing Australia’s forests, bush and national parks over to the Aborigines of Australia. A friend of mine suggested this an I think that it has merit ..
10
Another ‘wild’ idea; why don’t we here in Australia do a ‘Brax’ on our coal fired power stations? We have lots of forests to produce wood pellets. If it’s good enough for UK greens then where’s the problem? How can Sarah Hanson object?
30
saw the main headline on the front page of the Financial Times UK on Sky UK around lunch-time –
“Downbeat IMF report diverts Davos focus from climate goals”
only evidence I can find for it online is the following:
21 Jan: ITV UK: What the papers say – January 21
A “downbeat IMF outlook” is diverting the focus from climate goals, according to the Financial Times…
https://www.itv.com/news/2020-01-21/what-the-papers-say-january-21/
and this, where you can read a little of it:
BBC blog: The Papers
SECOND PAPER DOWN – Financial Times
“Downbeat IMF report diverts Davos focus from climate goals”
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-the-papers-51184631
it seems FT might have changed the headline to:
IMF trims global growth forecast as Davos delegates gather
Financial Times – 15 hours ago
trillions spent on CAGW policies over the past several decades, and all we have to show for it is a sick world economy…with the exception of the US! lol.
10
20 Jan: AP: BBC chief Tony Hall to step down amid mounting challenges
LONDON — BBC Director-General Tony Hall announced Monday that he will step down from the helm of the U.K. broadcaster in six months after seven years in the job.
Hall said he was quitting so that a new leader can oversee a mid-term review of the BBC’s funding in 2022, and a renewal of its governing charter, due in 2027…
The announcement comes as the publicly funded BBC is facing intense political and public pressure amid a fast-changing media landscape and viewing habits. It has been criticized by both sides of the Brexit debate over its coverage of the U.K.’s impending departure from the European Union, and some in Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government have suggested changing the BBC’s funding model…
***In a warning to the organization’s critics, Hall said that “in an era of fake news, we remain the gold standard of impartiality and truth.
“What the BBC is, and what it stands for, is precious for this country,” Hall said. “We ignore that at our peril.”
https://apnews.com/dec27cc161389167552e4cd22ec6dae6
10
open access:
20 Jan: UK Telegraph: Lord Hall quits as BBC’s director-general after ministers threatened to appoint a Tory as next chairman
By Anita Singh, Christopher Hope, Chief Political Correspondent and Gareth Davies
Lord Hall of Birkenhead quit the BBC on Monday after ministers threatened to appoint a Tory as the corporation’s next chairman and undermine his licence fee deal for the over-75s.
The director-general took staff by surprise when he announced his decision to step down two years earlier than expected…
The 68-year-old will leave in the summer just as the BBC implements its controversial policy requiring more than three million pensioners to pay the licence fee.
The Tories are adamant that the BBC should cover the costs and the Prime Minister has ordered a review which could see non-payment of the fee decriminalised.
The Government will appoint a new chairman to replace Sir David Clementi when his term ends in February next year. Sources said Lord Hall believes the appointee will be sympathetic to the Tory view…
Lord Hall’s position has been weakened in recent months by accusations of political bias in the BBC’s reporting…
“Tony decided some months ago that he was going to go. The one thing that has triggered it is a new chairman coming next year,” a source said.
“It is a political appointment. The Government has made it clear that during the Blair period his acolytes took over [at the BBC], and now it wants someone at the BBC whose views are more in line with theirs.”…
Ministers have been visiting other broadcasters and have been impressed by the efficient way they are run with a comparatively small number of staff. One Conservative source said they wanted to see the BBC learn from commercial rivals about how to cut the costs of programme-making…
Lord Hall joined the BBC as a trainee in 1973…
Former Labour politician James Purnell has been named as the front-runner to succeed Lord Tony Hall as Director-General of the BBC…READ ON
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/20/lord-tony-hall-step-bbcs-director-general/
20
No Jo, this enquiry is so urgently needed. We all know this will be the “Climate Change” enquiry. The outcome will be 1) end all fossil fuel consumption now, 2) More renewable roll-outs and subsidies, 3) More control of land by government, 4) Carbon tax. So in other words another stitch-up.
10