Pandemonium in Australia: Seven people have died (this season) and in the last day or so another 176 houses were destroyed in the NSW fires. At least two more are missing. It is a surreal debacle on the East Coast. People are driving into lakes to save themselves and their cars. (See the whole video). Take your breath away. What a spectacle. They chainsawed trees to cut a path to the lake so they could drive in. 89 houses were lost in the town near here.
89 houses were lost in Lake Conjola township but a few saved their cars in the lake. (Image pieced together from the video pan)
Meanwhile, apparently the ABC is cleaning Facebook posts up where two locals of Nowa Nowa (East Gippsland) protested a few months ago and stopped a prescribed burn. One said she was “more worried about climate change”.
Could be a clue here about how the nation got its priorities so screwed?
Back in September ABC Gippsland put a story on Facebook about how locals were protesting the spring prescribed burns which were “killing baby birds alive”. The East Gippsland locals managed to stop the hazard reduction burns. We note also that the Forest Fire Management Victoria local manager said that the burns were planned “after extensive community consultation”. Which tells us just how impossibly hard it is to get even a small (tiny) cool burn done. We’re only talking about 370 ha.
Sharp eyed Michael Ayling noticed that the ABC deleted this Facebook post below. Most of it is still captured on Google Cache, though for some reason, if you wait on the google cache page even that will disappear soon too. Luckily skeptics with no budget are here to help the ABC and Google Cache keep historic records that may help explain the mystery of how a first world nation created such a catastrophe.
It’s probably not the protesters’s fault that she thought climate change posed more threat than bushfires. She probably watches Their ABC.
*UPDATE: This is not about the protestors (or about a tiny 370 ha, which wouldn’t have changed anything yesterday). Accountability lies with decision-makers. Everyone has the right to protest and after twenty years of one sided and well funded propaganda it’s no wonder people are confused. The ABC cheered for “climate change”, and asked no hard questions. They mentioned fuel loads but didn’t put those experts on high rotation. They did repeated interviews with people who know nothing about climate change like Greg Mullins. He was free to repeat the mantra. The ABC decide what message goes out.
h/t to Panda who sent in a Cauldronpool link.
ABC disappears the Planned Burn Protest story?
Facebook, Nowa Nowa, prescribed burns protest, deleted story.
In October the ABC reported that the planned 300 ha burn was reduced to just 9 ha.
ABC reporting on relief at stopping the prescribed burns
I don’t know (can anyone confirm) whether fuel reduction at Nowa Nowa, Mossiface and Lake Tyers has been completed by mother nature?
Who misled the nation, and who knows it? Feeling guilty ABC?
That whole Lake Conjola Video.
Prayers for those still in the path.
*300 ha corrected to 370 ha.
Past time to defund the bastards!
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I suggest defunding is just the beginning. In a rational world, those who are a danger to both themselves and the general public are forcefully sequestered so they can’t hurt themselves or others. In the world we have, at the moment, is not rational so they are fully funded by the government (meaning We the People), and are allowed to run free to do their thing without restriction. Then, when they have destroyed almost everything, they are given more to be able to do more of the same.
The rational thing is that when what you are doing is not working for you, you stop doing it and do something else until you find something that works. Clearly, what they are doing is not working for us but since they continue doing it, it must be working for them. They INTEND to destroy! They are doing it on purpose.
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The more one reads about this lot the more disgusted one becomes.
The ABC simply has to be either shut down or be put in order with a complete change of management from top to bottom.
I would recommend Alan Jones for Chairman & CEO.
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I can only hope for the sake of the friends I have made over the years through this blog that people having to take refuge on the beach and in some cases apparently in the water in NSW as reported here in the states, will finally enrage the voters enough that they will throw out the [snip] who run things in the interest of everyone and anything except the citizens of Australia.
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And I do not have control over this browser. But that was me nevertheless
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Hi Roy,
We have been blanketed by smoke for the last few months and it’s a constant reminder that the political system has failed us. As I write this I can hear boats exiting the harbour sounding fog horns although almost certainly they need to be renamed “smokehorns”.
The main effect of the smoke where I live is that it’s a reminder that others further inland are doing it tough.
Theoretically this disaster should awaken voters to the need to change politics here, but that’s just a dream I have.
Voters are mesmerized by the first thing they get from the media every day. The Media World is the new reality.
KK
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Keith, we’re seeing the systematic elimination of centuries of hard learned lessons about how to conduct a successful society. It’s all being tossed in the toilet and then they pull the handle with no more consideration for the consequences than if they were sitting under a tree swatting a fly.
What the hell, admit it, the fly gets more consideration than you and I do. At the current rate of
progressthe world better end when AOC says it will or it will lose its finest achievement, an animal with a brain that has allowed it to conquer every environment on earth and live there, save one, Antarctica.Well, that’s exaggerated a little for effect but not much.
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Check this 2018 map of high risk areas due to limited prescribed burn offs, I.e. no forest management.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-13/is-the-prescribed-burn-window-closing-in-australia/10236048?pfmredir=sm
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Jo I have a suggestion.
Please keep an active blog of the fire situation here in South Eastern Australia
In that way commenst & insights will e gathered in that blog
And not half lost across lots of other posts.
And I have a link for all interested in the ‘perspective’
Of Greenies actually caught in the fires in East Gippsland
Jill Redwood at Goongerah, North of Orbost
Has been at the heart of the greenie movement in East Gippsland for decades.
She actually stayed at her home in remote isolated Goongerah on the 31st
And fought to save it.
And somehow has maintained internet contact as well.
And so her Facebook page is a live blog of what is happening there.
I do not agree with her extreme greenist views.
But here is a woman & a greenie, i
n the midst of these fires at her front door.
https://www.facebook.com/jill.redwood?__tn__=%2Cd-%5D-h-R&eid=ARDafoD6RHLpSBj8Op8E-AcojumYoliWNhDvYyibuTgH7AGRPlLjwqH1OMZ402B66RUJmtVaD1YW98df
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Does she work and pay privately derived tax?
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Has anyone actually been watching the ABC News Network or listening to ABC Radio’s amazing emergency coverage o the bushfire situation? Absolutely amazing. Hats off to them and thank God for the ABC. Worth every cent and more!
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In what way are the ABC misleading the public? They reported the story about the opposition to the prescribed burn. If a Facebook post has been deleted, it was probably for the same reasons that you have pixellated their faces.
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Google “ABC: Climate Change” then come back and tell me how the ABC recognized that a lack of forest management was a greater threat to lives, property and wildlife than a “lack of a carbon tax”.
Proven death toll to “climate change” this year = 0
PS: I didn’t pixellate, and I don’t blame Mary.
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Jo, I had someone who is actually currently stuck in Ulladulla, call me to describe how things are going.
He said from the discussions he has had with locals on the side of the road or out and about, they are spitting blood about the greenies stopping hazard reduction burns.
At some point, we need to have a full purge from any govt body ( local, state or federal ) that is stopping safety burns from taking place.
If these fires don’t wake people up to sling these fools out, what will?
[Check your email – Jo]
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Yes, well I can tell you half of the population on the south coast on NSW are stuck. The only road out is the only Highway that the government authorities have been able to open for a very short window for evacuation purposes. It traverses Brown Mountain from Bega to Cooma. The holiday makers have turned it into a nightmare drive. The road is about 100 kilomteres without any overtaking lanes, except for about 800 metres up the mountain. This is a National Highway provided by government incompetence and political negligence over many yrears.
I’m staying put where I am. We are surrounded on three sides by water (two lakes and the ocean) while the western side comprises a narrow isthmus which is defendable.
The power was off for a couple of days. No communications. No fridges. No fuel could be pumped. If you didn’t have cash you were stuck because, without power, there was no EFTPOS. Confusion reigned. The rumour mill is/was fully operational mode. The official websites (RTA, RFS) are useless. Their information is out of date, inaccurate or too late.
Funny thing, the greenies that I know that hang around the place, made themselves very scarce.
As I said a couple of weeks ago, it’s not over yet. The forest stretches all the way to the Victorian border, one National Park after another, Budawang, Currowan, Monga, Deua, Wadbilliga and many state forests such as Moruya State Forest, Mogo State Forest and so on. They are all contiguous. And, all are burning and will continue to burn through January and into February. It’s very rough country in there and there’s little chance of control. The fires will just burn themselves out as the poor old volunteer firefighters battle to save some of the properties and people. However, it is a virtually impossible task.
Hopefully the power stays on long enough for me to post this.
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Thanks Sam, any info you can provide would be useful.
Most mobile phones can be “tethered” to your PC or laptop via either USB cable or bluetooth, so if the phone towers are still running you can stay online.
I notices fores starting inland now south of the ACT and the ACT has gone one layer below state of emergency, so they are setting ready to react I think.
Cash is king, diesel rules. Pity anyone with an EV…you’d be well and truly….stuck….I think this proves my point about how useless are, EVs quite nicely.
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Also the danger period will be just after the fires.
My guess is the powers that be, driven by the green madness, will try and stop people going back into forests or rebuilding, and making life very difficult for forest access.
Be vigilant.
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Thanks Steve.
Yep, the towers were down as well. They’re back up now.
We’ll see what happens over the weekend. However, the forecasts are not encouraging, but, of course, they’re only forecasts from organisations that are proven failures. So they’re not worth much.
🙂
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‘Funny thing, the greenies that I know that hang around the place, made themselves very scarce’.
Really…what proof…your word!
“it’s not over yet. The forest stretches all the way to the Victorian border”,…Pearler, what we know as the Great Dividing Range!!!
As for the holiday makers turning the drive into a nightmare…what ARE you implying?
as for incompetent governments, (agree in part), but with so many variants; vehivles from bikes to vans to semis, along with the myriad of drivers, there is bound to be chaos in particular locations, especially the mountains.
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Nothing to see here, eh Simon?
So just when Gippsland is going up in flames, half the ABC staff are away on hols and the biggest story of the year is taking place, having had 3 months to delete it, they suddenly decide to take time out to clean house and inadvertently “disappear” a bushfire post which covers protests that could be construed as increasing the intensity of these fires? Sounds reasonable to me.
Given the nature of the post and the nature of the ABC, the timing of the deletion on the 29th is more than suspicious.
And SBS is at it too. Another from the cauldron pool.
https://caldronpool.com/sbs-article-claiming-fires-not-due-to-climate-change-mysteriously-removed/
In the midst of the bushfires SBS suddenly deleted a news article from 2013 which featured top bushfire researcher David Packham calling links between bushfire disaster and climate change “an absolute nonsense”.
November 12th it was there; November 13th it wasn’t, as the bushfires kicked up a gear in northern NSW and QLD. When it was linked to and started getting more traffic it got disappeared too.
Another coincidence.
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Dodgy stuff seems to happen when staffing levels are low or times of day are late….
Witness much odious legislation appears to get snuck through parliament in the dead of night…like the Patriot Act…
Why should the Bolshevik Collective be any different?
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You mean the Apolitical Bolshevik Collective?
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staff are actually recalled as in the charter or are you in with someone from abc HR that gives you unique insight?
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The ABC have a charter that guides them ? Maybe they could include things like truth in journalism and something about balanced journalism without bias , nah that would never work .
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They dont appear to adhere to giving sceptics equal air time, so what other rules do they throw out?
I’m starting to think our heavily politicised institutions are starting to resemble rather pathetic mini tin pot dictatorships…….
As the russians used to say during Soviet days : “They pretend to tell us the news, and we pretend to believe them”
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Government institutions by and large have very little credibility.
This bushfire season is likely to extinguish any remaining vestige.
The politicians are negligent. The government institutions are incompetent.
Together that makes fertile ground for disaster.
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RR
A link to the commercial radio one at #35
If it is good enough for commercial radio to have to abide by it is also good enough for their bloody ABC (IMO)
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What has ABC Human Rights got to do with anything.
They act like tame sheeple.
On big salaries and outstanding, perhaps even unprecedented, conditions paid for by the taxpayer.
Something that could only be defended by someone guilty for enjoying similar public “generosity”.
KK
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oh dear. Was that an attempt at humour?
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I actually hadn’t noticed; but now that you mention it…
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just in case it wasn’t HR= human resources. Modern (post 1980’s) speak for the people who look after pay and leave. Now mostly a server rack.
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And are you seriously suggesting that no ABC staff are having Christmas holidays?
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no
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What makes you think that the charter is followed to-the-letter?
Without something concrete, it seems like you might as well be discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, unless you are “in with someone from abc HR that gives you unique insight?”.
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GeeAye…if the ABC crew were following their charter they would be allowing sceptics equal air time.
Do we see that? No.
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Flat earthers demand the same. Thank goodness the airways are not clogged by doing what cranks demand.
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GeeAye, flat-earthers don’t cite 28 million weatherballoons. And the Cranks in this case are obviously the ones that think solar panels could have stopped these fires.
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flat earthers cite all sorts of things and come to the wrong conclusions.
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The ABC charter does not dictate that free time be given to skeptics, or anti-vaxers, or flat-earthers.
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No because they are not taxpayers, citizens or permitted questions comrade.
If they only had some evidence on CAGW they wouldn’t have to shut skeptics down.
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ABC charter ????.. LOL
To be ignored at every level possible !
You really are naïve if you don’t realise that by now, GA. !
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So Simon its Ok for the ABC to relentlessly air any pro biased climate change thought bubbles without scientific merit or fact checking on a daily basis but when they’re caught out deleting evidence that shows the same climate ideology in a negative light its OK too?
The entire Climate Change argument is emotion based as the scientific one was won very early on by sceptics, the Green believers seem to think they can have it both ways, emotive when facts are absent and factual when their promoters slip up, to be a habitual liar you have to have a good memory or come across a feckless individual.
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Be true, be true, be true!
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Simple.
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Simon.
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The ABC mislead the public relentlessly on this and other issues, typically by omission.
If it were not woke/PC to oppose preventative burning then the ABC would not just have this story left on Facebook, they would have cameras and microphones in the faces of the ‘protesters’ while firing ‘gotcha’ questions at them, rapid fire.
V simple risk assessment – maybe some native animals vs a lot of houses and other buildings and a number of human lives.
The slithering, slimy, sanctimony of the ABC is starting to make the Catholic Church look like an icon of true repentance.
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In what way is the abstinkingc misleading the public:
https://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com/2013/10/can-australia-afford-abc.html
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Thanks Anthony. Interesting outline.
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Mary from Nowa Nowa says “Burning in Spring is the worst time….”
No Mary, burning in Summer is the worst time… as is now plainly evident.
Burning in Spring is the best time to remove the excess fuel on the ground.
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True. Slow methodic burns.All hands on deck as it were to prevent outbreaks. Kerosene drippers and working in outward circles.SLOW….
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Spring being the season for nestlings that cannot escape, that was the whole point…did they suggest summer, autumm/winter being the most opportunistic.
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Fire came close to Mossiface, so it may have completed the job in that location. Lake Tyers and Nowa Nowa appear untouched, though fires have been close and are not yet under control. I think the general point, though, survives the specific test.
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Thanks Guran. (And others below, were caught in the filter).
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Jo
Some links in comments here
“Hey, you know who the real fire heroes are? ABC journos.”
Whose holiday shift arrangements have made the National Emergency information system even more unreliable (in comments there)
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2020/01/01/real-fire-heroes/comment-page-1/#comment-3277580
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Albasleezy, Sarah Sea Patrol. ABC Ultimo Greens Warehouse – Labor/Greens/ABC (Sell the Sheltered ABC Workshop Off) </em> – “Dick Heads Anonymous
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From the perspective of a UK citizen who has never visited Oz but has a sister living in Adelaide, the impression given in our media is that the country is burning coast to coast. Is this remotely correct or are we r4eceiving the same one sided view that may encourage those in Oz to believe that we over here are up to our necks in floodwater at present?
A very few areas are affected, the overwhelming majority of the country has seen no impact by flooding. Many of those who are being flooded are living in areas that were formerly flood plains. Existing roads such as ‘flood lane’ watersplash road’ or ‘water street’ should give them a clue.
I don’t know how many people in Oz are similarly living in areas that are the fire risk equivalent of our flood plains?
Which goes on to a deeper question. The population of Oz is growing rapidly. Although it may look a very big place in reality many areas are not inhabitable for one reason or another. or are needed for farming or forestry.
Is there any sort of defined limit to the population of your country? Where will they all go without endangering themselves, or those already there?
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tonyb – none giving the impression of a continent-wide inferno more than the Beeb.
opening 6mins5secs: BBC presenter Dan Damon.
paraphrasing: Don Ashby, community radio for Mallacoota, 101.7:
this really is an end of the fun thing. 2019 is a pivotal year on the planet. when people look back, they’ll say, probably, that 2019 was like the beginning of the end…I think.
AUDIO: 52m59s: 31 Dec: BBC Newshour: Australia bushfires force thousands to flee to beaches
The Australian military is being deployed to evacuate residents and tourists, as bush fires continue to threaten large parts of the country. Lives have been lost, hundreds of people have seen their homes destroyed and the sky has turned red with smoke and flames and ash and embers.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w172wq53s35hgz2
31 Dec: Age: The sky turned black. The beast had arrived in Mallacoota
By Chip Le Grand
When Don Ashby caught a lift through town on Tuesday afternoon, he counted as many as 20 properties destroyed. One was his mother-in-law’s mudbrick cottage. Another was his own home of 20 years.
Ashby had evacuated his family to Melbourne and spent Monday night helping a friend to defend her house.
It had been an exhausting night and morning, punctuated by the rapid combustion of gas cylinders at a nearby storage business.
“It was like we were in the middle of the battle of the Somme,” he said.
When he returned to his own home, it looked unscathed. Then he realised it was just the facade that had been untouched by fire. The rear of the house was a blazing ruin. With no CFA tankers nearby and no water pressure left to fight the fire, he could only stand and watch it burn…
“I have been in a few bushfires before but nothing like this. Nothing like this has happened before. The whole of Gippsland was on fire.”…
***Ms Hilvert-Bruce said there needed to be radical changes to local land management.
Years ago, her family ran cattle along the coastal plain that stretches south from Mallacoota to Rame Head beach.
***Every winter, they would conduct fuel reduction burns. Today, that land makes up part of the heavily wooded Croajingolong National Park.
“They stopped doing those slow, controlled burns in the winter time,” she said. “That has left a lot of fuel for wildfire to go through. It is just devastating everything.”…
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/the-sky-turned-black-the-beast-had-arrived-in-mallacoota-20191231-p53nyq.html
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. . . his mother-in-law’s mudbrick cottage . . .
. . . a beautiful row of mudbricks previously stood . . .
And I wonder if those mud-brick residents were in favour of hazard reduction burns? All the people I know with mud brick homes around here are allergic to matches.
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Not me Beowulf not me , and I cut down every gum tree on the block after building .
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And you weren’t imprisoned?
Perhaps you did it at night?
🙂
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No I ” pruned” them all to about six feet high then after a year without a knock on the door removed what was left .
Turns out that one acre or under in my area there is no green tape anyway .
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A mud brick family near me wanted to extend. Amazingly a condition of the DA was an inspection by the bushfire officer, since it was on rural land. As they had a forest growing up to their eaves, they were apoplectic when he insisted they clear everything in a 100m radius. I don’t know if they ever put on their extensions.
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And they wonder why they get burned out .
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Thanks Pat,
That article was, surprisingly, also printed in yesterday’s edition of SMH. I found it doubly surprising that this sentence was included, a rare mention of the words “National Park”:
” Every winter, they would conduct fuel reduction burns. Today, that land makes up part of the heavily wooded Croajingolong National Park. ”
(The one closest to me, Gospers Mountain, is today reported as being 508,613 ha at 1:31 am, and still “being controlled”.)
Cheers
Dave B
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‘Is there any sort of defined limit to the population of your country?’
You have noticed that most of the capital cities cling to the seaside, for good commercial reasons, but there is also this fear of raw nature. In this land of droughts, bushfires and flooding rains, the cycle never ends.
So the place is inhospitable and our political masters are visionless, they will have to drought proof the Murray Darling Basin as a priority if they want to populate the region.
‘Where will they all go without endangering themselves, or those already there?’
There is a need to reduce the area of national parks to a manageable size (reintroduce logging) and stop people building on flood plains. There is plenty of room for mass immigration, a bipartisan incentive which should see the population grow rapidly.
New immigrants are encouraged to go bush for a few years if they want permanent residency, don’t know how this will pan out. The government has no plans to spend the surplus on fast rail, to unlock the regions, until they drought proof the MDB.
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El gordo
Many thanks for that insight
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This link shows possible fires and their path for Australia
https://hotspots.dea.ga.gov.au/
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Driving from Balmoral to Mittagong in the Southern Highlands on Sunday was worrying. We drove through fire gutted stretches and then into unburnt patches where fuel loads were terrifying.
Without rain this will get worse.
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I’m staying at Thredbo. They kicked the campers out three days ago and no visitors allowed entry.
The place is verdant, no fuel load on the ground and the chalet is fire proof. There is talk of evacuation.
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tonyb
January 1, 2020 at 7:57 pm · Reply
If you look at Australian News tonight Channel 7, 9, 10 etc – the places burnt out were in the middle of Australian Bush – Dumb – Victoria has closed down State Forests who used to harvest and regrow Trees as well as maintain Fire Trails and do controlled burns – they have closes down National Parks (National Parks Greenie Motto – “No humans shall be allowed in National Park”) and Fire Trails and have done no controlled burns.
In the Black Friday Fires a Bloke who had bulldozed a Clearance around his property was fined $150,000 by local Greenie Council, but his house was not burnt down
I was 4Wd Driving in Vic High Country Fires of 2003: Eastern Victorian (Alpine) Fires. 2005 – 2006, 2009: 7 February, Black Saturday and the devastation caused by those fires was horrendous – in the 2003 we were in a High Country Stockman’s hut clearing and could not see the sun – pitch black and we were joined by brumbies seeking shelter just like us
What the Stupid Greenies don’t reaiise is that by not doing back Burning and allowing the fuel load to grow, is that every animal is incinerated – what is left is just a moonscape – total destruction
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So you just happened to be in the fires zones on all those occasions and there happened to be fires. Hmm
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So you just happened to be in the fires zones on all those occasions and there happened to be fires. Hmm
Yep – it definitely felt that way –Hmm – everywhere we went Bushfires started and we were getting paranoid = surrounded by Fires and no way out in Licola, a bit of light heartedness with a fire crew we had encountered on the way down into the Valley – they recited a Group of Greenies had chained themselves to a Forestry Bulldozer a couple weeks before and one of the workers took a Volvo Front End Loader, dug up a Bull Ants nest and deposited next to the Greenies – with a lot of screaming the Greenies unchained themselves and were complaining about assault – The Front End Loader Driver said – “Welcome to Communing with Nature”
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Humongous!!
🙂 🙂
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That’s gold……!!!!
[Snipped at Steves request lest it be misunderstood]
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…figuratively speaking of course….
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Just so were clear…my post above at 8.1.1.2 is intended as humour/figurative only, not to be taken literally….
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Since that was actually my post, I take that as an insult.
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Um…no it wasnt.
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yeah it was… the moment passed and the post structure changed.
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Well I guess you will have to cry yourself to sleep on that one….at the time I requested the posts removal, the numbering was correct.
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yo could exit through Matlock
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No – all roads were closed out of Licola we were there for 2 days
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You having a Peter Fitz moment ahhgee ?
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Maybe they could parachute out?
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31 Dec: BallaratCourier: AAP: ‘We do have very real fears for their safety’: Military to help in Victoria’s east
“It’s not pleasant, it’s pitch dark here and the emergency vehicles have disappeared from sight,” resident and local community radio presenter Francesca Winterson told ABC Gippsland.
“The power’s been out here a long time and we’ve run out of solar.”…
https://www.thecourier.com.au/story/6561435/we-do-have-very-real-fears-for-their-safety-military-to-help-in-victorias-east/
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Run out of solar!!!!!
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and we’ve run out of solar
That has a tendency to happen when there is thick smoke and no storage batteries but greens don’t think about such things – they expect the government to provide.
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Now consider the impact on the greenie nirvana of solar everywhere, when during the coming LIA the amount of sunlight intensity is reduced greatly…..
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News coverage in NZ is pretty much this is the end of the world.
The south Island is hazy from the smoke, and the sun in the capital this afternoon was stop light orange.
All of this plays into the perfect storm of Climate change hysteria. All we need now is a tropical cyclone, coming down from Fiji, and dumping some heavy rain on us, and people will have fits of panic in the street.
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Plus they can work the volcanic eruption into their end of world scenario as well.
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Old Maori weather saying goes:
Pohutukawa* trees flower early – long dry warm summer;
flower late – cool wet windy summer on the way.
Last summer, the *NZ Christmas tree* flowered early and it was a long dry warm summer (epic vintage); this so-called summer’s effort was late to start and some are only flowering now, 1-2 months behind schedule.
Ex-TC Sarai petered out and drifted into obscurity, while cold front after cold front have raced up the country, dusting the tops with fresh summer snow/sleet on an almost weekly basis. All of which is nothing out of the ordinary but whoah hey! – we were promised ‘runaway warming’ and yet the only place it appears to exist is in doomsday computer models.
And on their ABC.
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Greg, I lived in NZ decades ago and was aware of the Pohutukawa flowering link to summer. But the peny has now just dropped as you link it to the current scenario. It suddenly becomes clear that those NZ trees are responsible for climate change…..emergency….armageddon…..global extinction. So we need to take a chain saw along Tamaki Drive Auckland for starters…..LOL
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Doncha know Tamaki Drive is 6 feet under now because of, um, ah, ooh, the Maldives! Tuvalu! Too many diCrapio models…
The blooming flower doth maketh the climate: Gospel of Mann.
Meanwhile, it’s snowing until next weekend:
https://www.snow-forecast/resorts/Mount-Cook/6day/top
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Orwell’s “1984” is their instruction manual!
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It is instructive that a “protest” by two people was able to stop life-saving fuel reduction burns. [snip “Is Daniel Andrews”] now going to be charged with manslaughter after the inevitable result? Thought not.
[Edited to focus on where we could start asking about accountability. That’s not the protesters fault. – jo]
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What are the odds some bureaucrat will try to prosecute them for cutting down a few trees to save their lives?
Well done those people; thinking and acting and doing what needed to be done in the moment.
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This is how the Left and their helpers get ready for Royal Commissions…first destroy the evidence …or get it carted away in horse trailers by union thugs.
ABC must have heard the report today that the Greens are calling for a RC into the bush fires.
Can’t have all that evidence of Green culpability hanging around when Greens are trying to flog their case that Tony Abbott is to blame.
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I would believe the media when someone sticks a microphone and a camera in “Mary’s” face and ask her how she feels now about her “protest”.
Surely, someone is joining the dots.
271
The story broke on Facebook a couple of days ago and I did a google search to confirm the claim which I did but wanted to see the ABC Facebook page to see exactly what was written about it but unfortunately it had been removed .
Chris Smith from Sky news said he will push to find out who removed it and why .
210
So to rewrite Simon’s question. Where did the ABC misreport?Why did the rest of the media miss out on this scoop? Were they scared or too tied up by their media owners? Seems that the ABC was free to be on the ball nd a good thing given recent events.
232
Telling half a story or withholding crucial information on a story to make it more sensational is deceptive gutter journalism but it’s what the ABC do every single day on many occasions.
330
They may have reported exactly as presented to them.
Then they could have gone to the kitchen and seen a big black ant crawl across the benchtop and then along the skirting board until reaching the exit point.
Filming the ant may have been just as relevant as the other issue.
In the end reporters need to have a sense of serving the community with the most relevant news at the moment.
Most reports come under the heading of,
Camouflage or
Misrepresentation.
Both are scurrilous and indicative of an organization that has passed its use by date.
KK
120
Jo I’ve been looking for more detailed information
about how much the forests around Nowa & Nowa & Mossiface
Have burned in the past 2 days.
but not much can I find yet.
No maps of the burned area yet
However from knowing this region well
I think that the Culquoon Forest around Nowa Nowa has burned.
Mossiface on the Western edge of the Tambo river flood plain may also have been burned But I do not know for sure.
Oddly the Guardian has some informative articles here : https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/01/australia-bushfire-towns-supplies-power-houses-the-lot
It’s written from Bairnsdale on the ground.
meanwhile the Greenist idiots are still spouting their rubbish even after the fires burned East Gippsland & the South Coast of NSW.
https://themountainjournal.wordpress.com/2019/12/27/a-new-year-time-for-new-campaign-issues/
When will they ever learn this utter stupid dumbnuts ?
102
This link from Emergency Victoria has . map of the area burned in east Gippsland.
I suspect that friends in Sarsfield & Buchan have lost homes
While others at W Tree have not
I typed in Mossiface and it shows that a large area has indeed been burned.
Even more so at Nowa Nowa.
https://emergency.vic.gov.au/respond/
70
Did they say who owns that land around Nelsons road ?
I don’t think its national park.
https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Lake+Tyers,+Victoria/@-37.7394862,148.1090983,15.09z/data=!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x6b2544615b3afaa7:0x28238041d57171ae!2sNelsons+Rd,+Nowa+Nowa+VIC+3887!3b1!8m2!3d-37.7454157!4d148.1160167!3m4!1s0x6b2544b0284220bd:0x12522fbe66106047!8m2!3d-37.7861143!4d148.0811119
30
Stae Forest George
60
15.1 in moderation ?
Wondering why ?
20
This site shows 72 hours of fire data
https://hotspots.dea.ga.gov.au/
20
USELESS unless you know the latitude & longitude of the place you are looking for..
12
The ABC are not embarrassed. Tonight (1 Jan 20) on 7.30, they led a report on the fires with an extensive interview with a Climate Coalition green left spokesman (yes, a CIS-gendered man) with a long bleat about how it was all the fault of a 1 degree temperature rise since 1910.
211
Di Natalie called a press conference today in Geelong but zero presstitutes turned up so he had to resort to twitter calling for a royal commission.
201
A Royal Commission would be a good thing, if it really was free to investigate why the fires were so uncontrollable. IE, the enormous fuel load. How were toxic greens allowed to control (prevent) backburning & other fuel reduction measures? Is it true that fire roads were blocked & allowed to become overgrown with shrubbery? These were lessons we thought were learned after every major fire (which happen roughly every 10 years), but everybody forgets them as soon as the news cycle turns over.
151
Speaking on behalf of the Denialati, we welcome a Royal Commission.
The people have weather amnesia and become focussed on global warming caused by humans, so David Speers (the new Sunday anchor at our ABC) will educate the masses by humiliating ignorant politicians.
He has taken a big drop in pay to do this gig, nevertheless, bringing the old girl back to the centre is a worthy task.
61
So would it have been better if ABC didn’t report the burn protest and none of us heard about it ?
Maybe Mary was scared of retribution and requested the takedown because I can’t see how ABC would be embarrassed about exposing what happened and it seemed a reasonably balanced report.
And there is no actual evidence that Mary’s views were formed by the ABC.
But good work to notice the post was taken down.
1112
Really??
60
Evening all,
The ABC’s 7:30 report tonight had a “Bushfire Special”, available already on ABC Iview. First 23 mins is reasonably factual, but then it goes into the question of why this year is so bad. Their reference guy is Mark Howden of the Climate Change Institute, first appearing at 25 mins.
Neither fuel build up nor role of National Parks is mentioned.
Greg Mullins and Laura Tingle add to the celebrity caste.
33 mins in total.
Cheers
Dave B
80
What disgraceful fools they are.
61
Looking forward to the deluge. The chookless heads running about screaming that the end is nigh. Really folks,what can you say about the greenies and the ABC.
11
This letter is from 2017 but still uploaded, nothing about climate change.
OPEN LETTER: NOWA NOWA- NELSONS RD BURN 2BNN0029 – REQUEST PAUSE AND REVIEW
MARCH 8, 2017 GEG
Dear Ms Eagleson,
Gippsland Environment Group is very concerned about a scheduled burn due to be ignited in East Gippsland along the Ramsar listed Lake Tyers downstream of the township of Nowa Nowa ( Nowa Nowa –Nelsons Rd – 2BNN0029).
This planned burn (260ha) is located in Lake Tyers State Park and borders the Nowa Nowa arm of Lake Tyers, a part of the Ramsar listed Gippsland Lakes. It has not been burnt for more than 60 years. Previous DELWP burns in the Lake Tyers State Park have incinerated a Sooty owl nest and burnt vegetation right down to the lake shore.
Another burn adjacent to the township destroyed a number of large habitat trees and the amenity of the Nowa Nowa Mountain Bike trail.
We wish to respectfully request an immediate pause on any plans to ignite the burn and that DELWP undertake on-ground surveys to ensure the protection of the site’s ecological values:
Current conditions are very dry and reliance on the moisture differential to protect the Warm Temperate Rainforest stands and Riparian Forest, combined with use of aerial incendiaries risks incinerating the whole area;
The burn plan has not excluded a section of the Limestone Box woodland in the southeast corner and the dozed boundary has crossed through the EVC;
There are a number of Yellow-bellied Glider feed trees in the south-east gully bordering the dozed fire break-line at S37° 45.8’ E148°7.8 and Yellow bellied gliders were heard immediately west of here on night of 15.2.17;
Yellow-bellied gliders were also seen and heard on western side of Nelsons Rd (across from the cleared land-forest boundary on east side road) on night of 15.2.17. Locals have frequently heard and seen yellow-bellied gliders point crossing Nelsons Rd at this point entering to and from the burn area;
There is an eagles nest on the spur running east from the mouth of Ironstone Creek at S37°44.30 E148°.6.24. There also other Yellow-bellied glider feed trees in this area;
An extensive stand of Silver Banksia is located in the gully that runs east on the southern side of the eagle’s nest;
Many large old Saw Banksias occur throughout the burn area but there are many of varying age as well, burning this site will eliminate this age differentiation and destroy a key food source for nectar-feeding mammals;
There are many old habitat trees throughout the whole burn area but DELWP have only raked or dozed around those hollow trees immediately adjacent to the road;
Long unburnt forest in East Gippsland is preferred habitat of potoroos and bandicoots but no DELWP mammal surveys have been conducted;
Long unburnt forest is now a rarity in Gippsland and must be protected.
It is unfortunate that our request to walk through the burn area with DELWP burn staff was refused, this area is of very high ecological significance.
We urge the Department to intervene to ensure that this burn is re-assessed and the biodiversity at the site is completely protected.
Yours sincerely
Louise Crisp
http://geg.org.au/?p=903
80
60 years with no burning is a firestorm waiting to happen .
261
Can you show me any fuel that has being lying on the forest floor for 60 years?
127
I don’t live there, but I do live where the annual average precipitation is slightly below 25 cm. Winter temp can get to -25°C , and summer temp to 38°C.
If you want to travel two days and a night, I’ll show you fuel that old. Usually that isn’t the stuff that catches fire first. Smaller and dry stuff, just 2 to 5 years old, takes the spark and heats larger material to the ignition point.
Fire behavior is well understood and, at least in some places, fuel loads and terrain are well mapped.
Every year I clear some of our “fuel”. I pile small pieces and will get it chipped for mulch. Larger pieces get cut to wood-stove size and placed out by the county road, for anyone in need of winter fuel.
But I digress. Cold winters and hot summers with not too much moisture will produce “old” fuel.
190
Look who is back ! Fitz the whole point that you seem to be incapable of understanding is dangerously high fuel loads and 60 years without a burn in this case is no way to manage the forest .
As for your challenge there is still parts of the old Head Race visible at Buckland Valley in Victoriastan, unsure of exact age but possibly in excess of 100 years .
91
Roberta, you do not understand decay. Since you can not show me 60 year old fuel, my point stands
324
Sorry Peter, but you seem to be of the impression that the Australian bush works in an amazing circle of life where once things die they happily break down, rotting away to nothing within a few seasons to form a lovely organic compost that is absorbed back into the ground so that the next generation of plants can grow anew.
Then you take the new growth, harvest the straw, and make a man out of it.
Seriously, if you believe that anyone here actually thinks you have a valid point to add to this discussion and that you are not in fact just arguing for the sake of trying to impress GetUp! then clearly your imagination is wasted. Get out of blogs and start working that fantasy novel instead. Good imaginative fiction is so hard to find these days.
Honestly, Peter, are you in some ways trying to argue that 60 years of fuel cannot be proven, therefore 59 or less years of fuel are somehow a low fire risk? Honestly? We have Royal Commissions and generations of experience and BASIC RULES OF FIRE MAKING that tell us constantly that without fuel there is no fire (which in practical terms in context means the more you pre-burn under controlled conditions, the less there is to burn in uncontrolled situations) and you somehow what to redirect the argument towards the exact literal wording of ’60 years’?
You act like the judging panel awards marks for each individual comment ‘won’ and hence if you only win enough individual comments you can somehow gain a pass grade.
181
From https://www.publish.csiro.au/BT/BT02014 (page 32)
Seems 60 year old fuel is entirely plausible….likely even
40
Peter
I quoted you the National Carbon Accounting System figures for WA Karri forest a few weeks back, but it obviously went over your head.
Actual figures for Karri forest (just decay times for small branches — not trunks) range from 17 to 136 years, for Jarrah – 45 years.
http://www.fullcam.com/FullCAMServer/Help/reps/TR6%20The%20Decay%20of%20Coarse%20Woody%20Debris.pdf
As usual, your point doesn’t stand.
12
Peter two or three Christmas Days ago I was in Gippsland Victoria staying with a family that are members of the Cattlemen’s Association, they and friends ride Horses in the Snowy Mountains regularly, some are volunteer bushfire fighters and have ancestors who were pioneer early white settlers who used the grasslands in the high country to graze cattle.
Discussion was held about a planned riding weekend and that led to discussion about bushfire risk and how the bans on grazing, lifted for a short period but reimposed, have resulted in grasslands being taken over by undergrowth including tangles of blackberry bushes. Their concern was that conditions were perfect for the fire storms now being experienced.
I rate my friends as expert bushmen and women and capable of assessing the deteriorating conditions.
One, by the way, was a rider in the movie Man From Snowy River, one of several who plunged down a steep hillside on Horses.
181
Peter you might consider the question about how those high country grasslands existed when the pioneer families discovered them and took advantage of them for cattle grazing, and then why they are now disappearing since bans on cattle grazing were imposed, and land management was no longer a priority for UN Agenda 30 Sustainability National Parkland.
81
Got a link? As according to NPWS – it’s not changed
17
And you believe NPWS?
That tells us all just how gullible you really are.
I suppose you believe the ABC too?
Oh well. There’s one born every minute.
50
“Previous DELWP burns in the Lake Tyers State Park have incinerated a Sooty owl nest.” Horror! In California, spotted owl must be protected at any price …
41
Thanks George. And perhaps we could afford a few pockets of differently managed land if there wasn’t a million ha of fuel lying around it? That’s a conversation we need to have as a nation. how much fire risk are we willing to have?
Perhaps the Fire manager burnt a different 370ha zone in lieu? But the ABC didn’t ask that. Nor do we know if the fire manager would like to have but couldn’t do the paper work in time.
241
This is a news story with a more critical view of the protestors action.
https://www.trfm.com.au/articles/planned-burns-halted/
192
1 Jan: NorthernDailyLeader: AAP: Cops hunt Tas arsonist amid emergency fire
A deliberately-lit bushfire in northeast Tasmania is sparking an emergency warning as winds increase.
The blaze is part of a network of suspicious fires near Fingal which have burned across more than 6600 hectares.
“The Mangana Road fire is believed to have been deliberately lit and is currently being investigated by police,” Tasmania Fire Service regional controller Ian Bounds said in a statement on Wednesday.
“It is disappointing for the community to see this type of behaviour occurring where lives and communities are put at risk”.
“Police have reason to believe the main fire, as well as other fires in the area have been deliberately lit,” Northern District Commander Brett Smith said…
The fire has been burning since Monday and investigators are looking for the arsonist…
https://www.northerndailyleader.com.au/story/6562468/cops-hunt-tas-arsonist-amid-emergency-fire/?cs=9397
80
Is it not curious that Tim Flannery and his Climate Council mounted a warning campaign, apparently seeking a meeting in April 2019 with the PM by the gang of five former Fire Commissioners members of Climate Council to warn about a possible seriously bad bushfire season?
After all, Fire Commissioners know that Rural Fire Service and fire management generally is a state government responsibility, federal does assist when asked with funding and military assets etc.
In NSW the State Government was planning for this bushfire season from 2018/19 Budget, above inflation funding increase for suburban brigades and a substantial increase for the RFS, including purchase of a new Boeing 737 tanker-fire bomber and chartering a larger capacity DC10 for the 2019/20 bushfire season, and others including Sky Crane Helicopters.
Obviously the NSW Fire Commissioner and colleagues had briefed their Minister long before the retirees commenced the Climate Council propaganda mission.
Now please consider the arson reports.
All to a plan maybe, the time is right, perfect conditions in drought for a political campaign that backfired?
81
behind paywall – only excerpts I have found so far. don’t know whether this concerns bushfires:
‘People are scared to sleep’: Fears over Aldinga
Adelaide Advertiser – 1 Jan 2020
Residents in Adelaide’s southern suburbs are living in fear of an arsonist they believe has been lighting fires for months. But police say they are closing in…
Police are closing in on a suspected arsonist in the southern suburbs that residents say has been terrorising the Aldinga, Sellicks, and Willunga…
Canada Free Press has picked up Viv Forbes’s piece.
https://canadafreepress.com/article/reduce-fires-reduce-fuel
70
Here’s the extended version of the ABC deletion story complete with un-pixelated faces of the guilty.
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2020/01/greenies-on-hazard-reduction-burns.html
Wonder if THEIR homes are still standing?
120
how reassuring!
31 Dec: Deutsche Welle: Ben Knight: Angela Merkel: ‘Dedicating all my strength’ to fighting climate crisis
The German chancellor struck an encouraging tone in what is likely to be one of her last New Year’s addresses. Merkel addressed the challenges of the climate crisis, digitalization and migration.
The 65-year-old chancellor added that while she would not live long enough to witness all of its consequences, global warming was real, man-made, and dangerous. “So we must do all that is humanly possible to combat this challenge to humanity,” she said. “There is still time.”
“It’s our children and grandchildren who will have to live with the consequences of what we do now, or fail to do,” she added. “That’s why I’m dedicating all my strength to making sure Germany does its part — ecologically, economically, socially — to come to grips with climate change.”…
https://www.dw.com/en/angela-merkel-dedicating-all-my-strength-to-fighting-climate-crisis/a-51843517
60
New Years mirth.
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2020/01/2020-resolution.html
40
Very funny! Sent the link around the family.
20
Di Natale steps in his own trap.
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2020/01/richard-di-natale-demands-royal-commission-into-bushfires-richard-have-you-read-victorias-1939-bushf.html
We should all demand a royal commission. It is the only way we will get some sanity back into land/forest management. All of the disingenuous Green crap needs to be exposed in the full glare of public view.
141
The Greens have routinely campaigned against implementation of the recommendations of inquiries and commissions held subsequent to catastrophic bush fires.
The measures recommended by commissions and inquiries that remain are then diluted by the “Greenery” at all levels of maladministration.
70
Be careful of the terms of reference. If one is to proceed I woulds strongly recommend that those terms include the close examination of the evidence which ( supposedly ) supports claimed causes, and of any assumptions made.
Cheers
Dave B
60
am about to go offline, and am not sure what has and hasn’t been posted already, but will post this anyway:
4 Sept: TR FM: Protesters Have Halted Planned Burns In Two Locations Today
Protestors at two planned burns in the east of the region have put themselves and the broader community at risk as they tried to disrupt planned burning operations.
Gippsland’s Deputy Chief Fire Officer, Beth Roberts said: “Forest Fire Management Victoria crews were planning to ignite burns at Baines Road Mossiface and Nelsons Road Nowa Nowa on Wednesday September 4.
“These burns are strategic asset protection burns, intended to protect human life, property and community assets from summer bushfires,” Dr Roberts said.
“Our crews ignited the burn near Mossiface and then had to call 000 to activate Victoria Police when, contrary to Authorised Officers’ advice members of the public entered the burn zone and refused to leave.
“This is reckless and irresponsible behaviour that puts their own lives and the lives of our firefighters and the community at risk in addition to tying up valuable police resources.
“Crews were unable to ignite the planned burn near Nowa Nowa due to protest activity and again had to call for assistance from Victoria Police.
“We have CFA volunteers attending many of our planned burns to assist us with operations and as training exercises.
“These are the people our communities rely on to protect them from bushfires, yet their lives too could be at risk from this sort of protest activity.
“The majority of planned burn areas are declared as Public Safety Zones under the Safety on Public Land Act 2004. This is to ensure the safety of the public and firefighters as burns are undertaken. No unauthorised personnel can enter a Public Safety Zone.
“These protestors were behaving irresponsibly, endangering their own and other people’s lives through their actions.
“Everyone has the right to protest but we cannot condone actions that obstruct Forest Fire Management Victoria from carrying out planned burning operations to protect our communities.
“Victoria Police is investigating the matter with assistance from our Authorised Officers.”
https://www.trfm.com.au/articles/planned-burns-halted/
also here:
4 Sept: Gippsland Gold FM: Protesters Have Halted Planned Burns In Two Locations Today
https://gippslandsgold.com.au/articles/planned-burns-halted/
100
The anti-burning off protestors pictured holding placards claiming that “Spring burns kill baby birds alive”. Are they more comfortable with far more wildlife being barbecued alive in the current fires?
220
seems reasonable to me. A winter or later autumn burn would have been better. But since no one here cares about anything environmental, preferring sterile monoculture and car parks, I expect nothing better.
635
“ no one here cares about anything environmental ”
If you were able to write in a manner more courteous, funny, or both, comments such as this could be shrugged off. Many of us do more for “the environment” every week than you likely do all year. I’m guessing you, Peter, do nothing.
– – winking smiley face – – Poe’s Law
231
Well, if you did care bout the environment you would understand that the spring burns would have negative impacts on newborns.
As to your assertion – my little fingers does more for the environment in one day than Yu have ever done. Stop being so precious, use facts instead
524
A winter burn would have been prudent.
Apparently half a billon creatures have been killed by this catastrophic bushfire, as mentioned by the ABC weatherman, and some species may have gone extinct.
120
I just felt an Earth tremor.
Did you just stamp your foot?
Get an education.
40
Yes Fitz educate your self !
Most Australian native species are genetically programmed to the Australian climate
No rain in Spring= low food availability = reduced breeding !
Or is that too complex for your head to take in ?
61
Peter, spring burns may harm some babies, but summer burns destroy a whole generation. Oh the dilemma! What to do?
People who struggle with numbers can’t assess the risk reward ratio’s here. They seem to look for simplistic yes-no solutions to everything. Yes, spring burns will have some costs. But as we are finding out summer apocalypses are so expensive we might prevent 97% of the damage if we wear the autumn-winter-spring burn costs.
161
Burn everything at 20% of the land each year. Transform the country tp grasslands, and then burn them. Remove all trees, by removing all seedlings – that is what you are proposing. I can not support such a simplistic solution
312
Youre argument is prima facea simplistic.
“Burn everything at 20% of the land each year.” No – it would be staggered
“Transform the country tp grasslands, and then burn them.” – green stuff doesnt burn. Are you sure youre an ecologist?
“Remove all trees, by removing all seedlings – that is what you are proposing.” – No, its a staggered burn. It could take multiple years to rotate through, by which time the sedlings are now trees.
“I can not support such a simplistic solution” – fine by me, however the experts who actually know this stuff would disagree with you. Boo hoo.
Now please go and do something productive.
131
A simple solution would be to eliminate combustable trees in the vicinity of habitation, also reduce the size of national parks and begin logging the remainder.
‘Australia aims to plant a billion trees by 2050 as part of a new forestry plan the government says will help the country meet its Paris Agreement climate targets.’ Bloomberg
60
That’s actually a hell of a good idea, one I mistakenly thought that you were proposing
Sadly, we should already be there, but 200,000 of our best blokes were killed or maimed in the 5
years preceding 1919, and the whole Country has been asleeo for the 100 years since.
41
Oh wait …
‘Scott Morrison has flagged a major rewrite to rules covering hazard reduction, land clearing and where homes can be built following the devastating fires that have ravaged Australia since September.’ The Daily Terror
21
You might do more for that particular environment by pulling your finger out.
11
OMG Peter has a Green Messiah Complex, I’ve said it before if this guys not a fake troll he’s the perfect cliche Greenie twerp.
42
Peter – I care about the environment which is why I worry when I see pointless ‘environmental’ policies because they only serve to give the cause of environmentalism a bad name. Campaigning against burn-offs on the basis that it will kill a far lower number of wildlife than the resulting fires if they don’t, is an example of this lunacy.
21
But since no one here cares about anything environmental, preferring sterile monoculture and car parks, I expect nothing better.
As an environmentally aware non-driver, I am hurt!
(The Missus and our somewhat elderly kids are also non-drivers, also environmentally aware.)
But, of course, my claims to environmental sanctity are merely words in a blog comment.
11
Archive.org/waybackmachine usually caches webpages in a searchable format. It’s great for finding forgotten websites and old information.
50
So they don’t get lost I wayback machined the Google cache of the 4 September story some days ago: Link.
I’ve also saved the 23 Oct followup story here: Link.
For some reason part of the second webpage’s text turned into German, but the story itself is still in English.
10
UPDATE: This is not about the protestors (or about a tiny 370 ha, which wouldn’t have changed anything yesterday). Accountability lies with decision-makers. Everyone has the right to protest and after twenty years of one sided and well funded propaganda it’s no wonder people are confused. The ABC cheered for “climate change”, and asked no hard questions. They mentioned fuel loads but didn’t put those experts on high rotation. They did repeated interviews with people who know nothing about climate change like Greg Mullins. He was free to repeat the mantra. The ABC decide what message goes out and how often it gets repeated.
Update added to the post.
282
Jo
Seems to fit about here
”
I think people misunderstand the purpose of these type of “experts” and their research. It is not to provide realistic scenarios or rational solutions.
The purpose is to give zealot politicians, zealot journalists and zealot activists “expert” support. Then other researchers use the zealots research to do their own, even more unrealistic scenarios and irrational solutions. Which then form the basis for sillier political policies, scarier media stories, more militant activism and more bad research/reports.
It’s a viscous circle of bad research, bad politics, alarmist media stories and increasingly militant activists that amplifies with each cycle.
”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/01/01/those-who-can-do-those-who-cant-and-are-crazed-with-hate-develop-green-new-deal-economic-models/#comment-1271909
51
Lots more
“Intellectual Phase Locking ”
Bugger !
20
Viscous? Slow moving ‘research’, or rapid?!
30
A sticky situation all round.
30
There is going to be a lot of blame thrown around once the smoke has cleared.
Some of it will be aimed at those who protested against control burns.
Some of it will be at politicians for providing insufficient resources.
Some of it will be against those who deny the role that climate change has played in the intensity of these fires.
518
Most of it should be aimed at the eco-loons and the UN that required the creation of ‘nature parks’ rather than real forest management with logging and replanting and clearing of ground fuel load.
The fact that the politicians and local councils followed their loony plans is what has lead to this – the ‘climate change’ myth has nothing to do with it.
181
Simon can you explain how man is affecting the climate ?
151
robert:
some men listen to Greenies and look how that improves the local climate.
71
* Protesters against controlled burns and other measures should be condemned for being the fools that they are.
* The NSW Government, contrary to Climate Council and other greenism extremists claims, was substantially increased for 2018/19 and 2019/20.
* Please explain in detail the role that natural climate change played in the intensity of the fires.
101
I’ll take a shot at it.
Increased CO2 causes increased tree growth rates in Eucalypt forests, which means more fuel on the ground, which means more inyense fires?
Sounds plausible.
65
Given the drought =No water !
Absolutely NOT PLAUSIBLE
try againHatband !
With more info first !
44
For a start, Eucalypts are deep rooted, they’re pulling up water from deep in the ground.
Second, is the drought as severe in the National Parks, or has there been more rain there than elsewhere?
Perhaps I’m wrong, but I would’ve thought that a controlled burn would be pretty dangerous without the
prospect of imminent ran.
Third, it’s a trope of those on this side of the argument, that CO2 is a plant food.
If that’s true, then one would expect increased rates of growth, and therefore increased litter.
And that’s exactly what i’ve been noticing over the last 3 or 4 years.
64
The eucalyptus forrest is a carbon sink until a bushfire renders it useless, but the good news is that new growth has an insatiable appetite for CO2. Old growth forrest not so much.
‘… is the drought as severe in the National Parks, or has there been more rain there than elsewhere?’
This past year has been droughty across the whole continent, even worse than 1902, so this is a universal problem.
20
‘Some of it will be against those who deny the role that climate change has played in the intensity of these fires.’
That would be me, sir.
From my understanding, when the sun goes quiet the earth’s atmosphere shrinks and jet streams meander causing blocking highs, and severe weather disruption.
If you would like more detail, please don’t be afraid to ask.
101
Of course it easier for Greenies to blame global warming than their own bureaucratic nonsense.
A volunteer firefighter was fined $100,000 & treated as criminal for creating a firebreak on his property.
His house was only one not burnt down in his area.
‘Illegally’ clearing his property cost him $100k in fines.
But when the Black Saturday fires killed 173, his family and home survived while his neighbours died – so LIAM SHEAHAN asks, why can’t we control our own homes?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7678955/Black-Saturday-survivor-fined-cutting-trees-supports-hazard-reduction.html
170
All concerned must obtain advice from their solicitor and ask for a letter to be written and sent to the council that refuses to issue permits for firebreaks demanding assurance that should bushfire damage occur council will compensate the ratepayer property owner.
I understand that at least one person did this and a permit was issued immediately.
110
The logical starting point.
40
Most of the Agenda 30 Sustainability implementation is carried out by stealth by councils and state governments.
And when they want to publicise what they are doing it is never explained to the people that Sustainability agenda is to UN control and manage our nation including denying us our natural assets and related economic prosperity.
61
Have a look at the Commercial Radio Code of Practice
commercialradio.com.au/CR/media/CommercialRadio/Commercial-Radio-Code-of-Practice.pdf
What about that of the ABC?
20
Getting ready for the Royal Commission – examples of green evidence from another field.
Willis E on
“Subsidizing The Epocalypse”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/01/01/subsidizing-the-epocalypse/
50
Check out this one from the Goongerah Environment Centre: https://www.geco.org.au/massive_year_for_east_gippsland_forests
For the time-poor, it is headed ‘Massive Year for East Gippsland’s Forests’, and begins:
‘We want to say a huge THANK YOU to all the people who wrote to politicians, made submissions, donated, signed petitions, and shared our posts. Thanks to you we’ve had some important wins, and we’re gearing up for another year of campaigning for permanent protection of East Gippsland’s forests.’
Oh, and the date is 23 December 2019.
180
Oh this is recommended reading good find Salome !
60
Although mainly about stopping logging .
40
They’re probably the ones who stayed to defend their properties and are now citing this as a “Coal induced Climate Catastrophe”
40
Tragically, they could be citing the coal induced climate catastrophe to St Peter.
20
No they’d be the ones who squawk loudest when there isn’t a fire truck standing at their doorstep with volunteers to protect their property, while they wait elsewhere painting protest signs.
10
“GECO has secured important protections for hundreds of hectares of high-quality Greater Glider habitat by holding VicForests accountable to these protections.”
They are gone now. Decimated.
90
Obliterated, actually. Decimated is only reduced by a tenth. Sorry to be a pedant.
100
Thank goodness those forests weren’t hazard-reduced or selectively logged. Now PF will be happy that their species and structural diversities have been maintained forever. Future generations will thank us for our astute forest management. Cough cough.
GECO will be patting themselves on the back for a job well done. Their scenic walk just got a lot more scenic. Black ash from horizon to horizon. And the ghosts of all those endangered gliders will be cheering too.
Those of us who “prefer a sterile monoculture” in the bush have been foiled yet again. We have also had it demonstrated to us that pristine old growth forest doesn’t burn, which I didn’t believe before, but now I’m a convert . . . obviously.
80
When the fires started in New South Wales, they were attributed to the drought (a sign of climate change, you know). Has there been a drought in East Gippsland? Here in Melbourne there has been no such thing. We had very good spring rains, enough to get things growing, before the usual summer dry-off.
110
Yes Salome. There has been a 3 and a 1/2 year drought there; everything is crackling dry around where our son lives. The people there were preparing for this dreadful outcome for weeks, as they could see what was coming. He and a neighbour had hoped to defend their places but the fires came too near for them to stay. In fact, one fire was right by their entrance, if the Vic Emergency map was accurate, so they expected the worst. Happily, they returned to an unburned home on Tuesday morning; they had prepared it as best they could.
I doubt they are relaxing much for the time being.
130
So how do the Green worriers feel today with the knowledge that their anti fuel reductions protests may have prevented or at least minimised this catastrophic outcome? hundreds of homes lost numerous deaths and thousands of hectares of bush destroyed.
81
Fossil fuels to the rescue from bushfires NOT caused by fossil fuels:
Photo: There are people sheltering in boats in Mallacoota lake.
https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/ehvutd/there_are_people_sheltering_in_boats_in/
Ships, choppers on the way as ADF joins the bushfire fight
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/army-and-navy-to-join-the-bushfire-fight-as-victoria-counts-the-cost-20191231-p53nyi.html
No food, no fuel, no power: 24hrs to flee humanitarian crisis
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/24hrs-to-flee-humanitarian-crisis-and-new-inferno/news-story/b13905b34dd8bd82e7b7d7f14f29dc4f
60
December 11, 2019: There will be no relief for drought-ravaged regions over the summer, with Bureau of Meteorology officials telling a meeting of state and federal ministers there would be no significant rain until at least April.
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2019/12/no-end-for-drought-as-sydney-disappears-into-smoke/
Jan 1, 2020: The downpour has been postponed officially until late January. Things are looking up: it was April.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/01/australia-is-becoming-a-nation-of-dread-and-the-world-looks-on-with-pity-and-scorn
50
A couple days ago Seven’s reporter at Mallacoota described how it was black as night at 9am, due to the smoke. That was interesting because of this excerpt about the Federation Drought in 1898:
– Garden, 2010, “The Federation Drought of 1895-1903, El Niño and Society in Australia”, p274.
The current conditions are very similar to the Federation Drought, which had 3 back-to-back el Ninos leading up to and during it. We’ve recently had el Ninos in 2015-6, 2017-8 and a weak Modoki el Nino in 2019. We’re also in the same phase of the ~60 year thermohaline cycle, two full cycles along from 1898. And so we’re getting a repeat of the bushfires they had back then. No wonder BoM always starts their official records in 1910, well after the late 19thC hot period had gone.
180
1910 was also the time tree growth suddenly reduced about 70%, and didn’t return to normal for another 80 years.
So, not a bad time to start, if you’ve got something to prove abut bushfire intensity.
51
Bruce I think its time for La Nina to make a grand entrance and I forecast that this time next year the drought will be broken.
30
It’s interesting that it appears that NZ endured massive flooding on several occasions around the period 1895-1905.
How did the federation drought end -with a bang?
40
From the encycl. of NZ :-
“The largest recorded floods occurred in 1880, 1897, 1902, and 1953, with peak discharges of about 160,000 cu. ft. per second. Flooding to depths of between 4 and 24 ft resulted and there were river rises of up to 60 ft at the upper Manawatu Gorge bridge. Floods of over 100,000 cusecs occurred in 1906 and 1941, . . . .”
30
Yep.
It rained. A lot.
Overall for eastern states 1903 came out as the wettest year since 1894, even if its rainfalls were distinctly short of the high marks of the early 1890s except over western Victoria and parts of South Australia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_Drought
Yes, Iknow. I know. Wiki.
Prove it wrong, if you doubt it.
00
This past year has been extremely droughty.
‘The national average rainfall total for the year was 277.63 millimetres, well below the previous record of 314.46mm in 1902 during the federation drought.’ Weatherzone
10
More on the Federation drought and a direct solar influence.
https://www.armidaleexpress.com.au/story/6133295/climate-change-and-how-long-this-drought-will-last/
00
A 250 kilometre stretch of the NSW South Coast has been declared a disaster zone and authorities are ordering people to leave as more fires approach the coast today Thursday.
Note how much National Park area is there, many areas former State Forests for sustainable logging and land maintenance.
70
Hi Jo
Is the green infighting beginning?
Interestingly the issue is a humanitarian one, but it seems animals get as much air time…
If you look at Agenda 21 and Rewilding, the ultimate aim is to drive humans out of 90% of all land, and then lock them out. Watch for attempts to stop people living in these areas again….
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/australia-fires-create-plume-of-smoke-wider-than-europe-as-humanitarian-crisis-looms/ar-BBYwG5s?li=AAgfYrC&ocid=mailsignout
“Up to 500 million mammals, birds and reptiles – including 8,000 koalas – have been killed, say ecologists from Sydney University, prompting fears entire species of animals and plant life may be lost for ever.
“More than 300 baby flying foxes have been abandoned by their mothers trying to survive, experts said.
“Jenny Packwood, a wildlife rescuer, told the Herald: “Mothers are abandoning babies at two weeks after birth because there is no food for them. Last week we had 300 come in, and we’ve been flat out feeding since then.
““I’ve never seen anything like this before – we’re calling it a starvation event.”
“Other experts told how the wildfires had obliterated all the small creatures that keep forests alive, leaving species such as bats vulnerable to local extinction.
“Koala Crisis wrote on Facebook: “Not one carer KC has spoken to has seen bees, insects, grubs, worms, snails, beetles, millipedes, for months. Nothing struggles through the dustbowls which are now covering millions of hectares in all states.
““There’s no grass for the ’roos, no insects for the birds, the leaves on eucalypts are brittle, ensuring starvation for koalas, gliders, possums, birds, insects.”
“And government policies were blamed. “It’s very apparent we’re witnessing a deliberate calculated effort by governments to ensure the genocide of our unique, irreplaceable defenceless wildlife.
““There’s simply zero attention on the holocaust of bushfire, drought and climate change impacts.
““No moratoriums on logging, or the commercial slaughter of kangaroos, no halting of massive urban projects wiping out more habitat. No emergency upgrading of legal protection for koalas and other wildlife struggling to survive.”
20
The romantics advocate “re-wilding”, without the slightest idea of the need for actual management.
50
Nothing ”Romantic” about these reptiles.
They’ve got us marked for absolute destruction.
31
I’m waiting for the ABC to declare war on China for causing catastrophic climate change and to go over there to fight them. Well what are they waiting for? Send them all over there.
100
Maybe send a delegation to China consisting of Tom Foolery and his retired Fire Commissioner Climate Council people to explain to the Communist China Government why China must declare a climate emergency and stop mining, importing and burning coal?
They could say please.
90
They might get a brief meeting with the temporary acting deputy sewerage works operator about 250 km. from Peking.
40
Shouldn’t a ‘climate scientist’ be able to understand and tell the difference between weather and climate?
By Nerilie Abram on December 31, 2019, Australia’s Angry Summer: This Is What [Global Warming] Looks Like
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/australias-angry-summer-this-is-what-climate-change-looks-like/
via @tan123, where the good perfesser responds ( because, for a perfesser she is) …
“The problem here is with looking at Australia as a whole.
It’s a big continent!
Very clear trends that southern Australia which receives mostly winter rain is drying.
Northern Australia that receives summer rain is getting wetter.
Details here: http://www.bom.gov.au/state-of-the-climate/
>> Lol. “It’s a big continent.”
It’s a big planet. That’s why climate scientists called it global warming.
53
Anyone have any idea about what part of the loss of communications in the firezone is a result of a failure of the NBN It seems to me that a vital communication and data distribution system that fails when the power is disrupted is a great leap backwards from the time when the top strand of the fence provided a reliable telephone service.
140
We had that experience in the 2012 floods. Lost land line (HRCS here) and mobile services, including internet for those on the mobile side. Made do with the local uhf network.
I had been relaying creek heights downstream – fortunately they were on the down when that happened
50
In the classic 1959 movie On the Beach Fred Astaire gives a drunken speech at a party about the rising level of background radiation in Australia in 1964 after the rest of the world has been killed by radiation. Anthony Perkins cannot console his wife in the scene.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc7y8xs6QXw
Change radiation for carbon (sic) and nothing has changed.
71
”Change radiation for carbon (sic) and nothing has changed.”
The Northern Hemisphere is polluted by Nuclear byproducts, while Nuclear Power has missed the Southern Hemisphere.
So, the premise of On The Beach is correct, Australia was the only healthy place left then, and it’s still the only Nuclear Free place left now.
23
Umm…
Australia != Southern Hemisphere.
32
Go on, Robert, is it really?
20
You said:
So, were you too dim to click the link, too dim to know Argentina is in the Southern Hemisphere, or too dim to realise what you’d said was wrong?
Or maybe you’re just another troll. Could be that you’re both.
21
Pots and Kettles, Robert?
11
Heh, I’d have to be one of the least productive trolls around!
I’m a pretty regular reader here, but have only noticed your comments in the last couple of days. In that time you have made more comments than I have in the last couple of years. Your commenting style suggests a pretty seasoned web warrior, and I also wonder if your moniker is some sort of reference to having been banned in the past.
Anyhow, troll or not, welcome. Do feel free to chip in for some of Jo’s extremely low calorie chocolates.
00
RFS in NSW admits they had to conduct a lot of back burning to reduce the fuel loads. So who is to blame for not allowing the back burning to be conducted in previous years? I’m hoping if and when a Royal Commission is conducted they find the answer to that question so those responsible can be called to account.
81
According to a RFS volunteer I spoke to during 2018 the local council is the roadblock point.
70
So why doesn’t the state and federal governments overturn the council? Who actually has the authority to reduce the risk of national disasters, such as the fires we are experiencing now as much as possible? A Greens controlled council or the state and federal governments? These are the sorts of questions a Royal Commission needs to ask and answer.
71
Apologies if this is slightly off topic but it’s worth noting.
Excellent quote on supposed “consensus science” which exists only in the minds of Leftist propagandists. It was posted by someone elsewhere:
My favorite response to claims of consensus.
“Scientists are human, so they are prone to bias due to political and economic interests. Research funded by public sources is also subject to special interests and therefore prone to bias. Such bias can even lead to consensus not based on evidence. Claims for scientific consensus-based spending and regulation should be subject to special scrutiny.
Consensus is not an argument in scientific discussion; only experimental evidence matters. There are examples of decades-long scientific consensus on erroneous hypotheses. For policy advice purposes, any scientific statement or model should be considered as the subject of proper scientific consensus only if it is shared by those who would directly benefit from proving it wrong. Otherwise, specialists from adjacent fields of science and technology should be consulted.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6557026/
60
Consensus = “Intelectual Phase Locking ”
IE : People who can’t think for themselves
Bugger !
50
Two items off topic but I’m not seeing another way to get in a question.
(1) I can buy locally with a VISA gift card that is as private as cash. However, I can’t use such a card for a donation without providing a good deal of personal information. It isn’t about hiding from this blogger, it is about being tracked and cataloged overall, in general. Is there some way to get around that hurdle?
(2) This unlikely sounding story is published.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/world/climate-environment/climate-change-tasmania/
Is there anything at all truthful about it?
Check your email Andy. – Jo
41
AndyHce –
can’t access your link, but some response to the article here:
TWEET: Washington Post
On land, Australia’s rising heat is “apocalyptic.” In the ocean, it’s worse.
LINK WaPo
27 Dec 2019
https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1210598912450539520
21
AndyHce:
I believe that they spelt Washington Post correctly.
Apart from that they seem to think that Tasmania and Queensland are the same place. The stories of bats, birds dropping dead from the heat were noted back before 1850, so it is hard to see how man-made warming was the cause then (or now).
80
I know little about kelp, except that on occasions the beach has been littered with kelp at times.
Most likely ripped out by rough seas.
As to the article, it sounds histrionic which makes it an unlikely source of level headed analysis.
“Since pre-industrial times” is a giveaway phrase for “we want to manipulate you”.
Coming out of a record cold period and returning to roughly the normal pattern for the previous six thousand years is Not man made Climate Change but restoration to normal by Nature.
That’s a very hyper article.
KK
60
Article by Darryl Fears.
according to his bio at the WaPo
Darryl appears to be an Affirmative Action hire for the WaPo, and likely couldn’t find Tasmania on a map.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/darryl-fears/
20
World Wildlife Federation Paid $70,000 to Activists who Set Fire to Amazon Forest
“They started a blaze then took pictures which they sold to the World Wildlife Federation for large sums of cash.”
https://granitegrok.com/blog/2019/11/world-wildlife-federation-paid-70000-to-activists-who-set-fire-to-amazon-forest
20
We need an Australia wide “Dob in a firefighter plan” with hefty rewards for information leading to the conviction of firebugs.
We might then discover some firebugs are politically motivated.
52
Firelighter?
70
I took it as meaning fire lighter. Typos are a nuisance.
40
I wouldn’t be surprised if many of these FireLighters are Government Contractors or Employees.
As a matter of fact, i’d be surprised if any of them weren’t.
11
Sorry about the mistyped word.
I’m wondering just how bad the bushfire situation would be if the arsonists weren’t out there doing their foul work.
10
Up here in CQ, a few months back, 7 fires mysteriously started in roadside grass – one of which was supposedly extinguished but decided to jump the road and head toward an old weatherboard rural house (luckily, it was saved).
Having been a volunteer for many years, one thing I noticed was the number of ‘firies’ that have an absolute fascination with fire.
I’ve also learned it pays to keep a bit of an eye on some – the firebug is strong in them.
Then there are those who will start a fire every year at around the same time – I suspect they have a diary.
Changing tack: Does anyone have any idea if dozers/graders/earthmoving machinery have been used to put in breaks to allow back burning, well ahead of the current fire fronts? I haven’t seen such footage (not that the idiot box gets much use).
00
a sad story:
2 Jan: SouthChinaMorningPost: DPA: New Year’s Chinese lanterns may have sparked Germany’s Krefeld Zoo fire that killed 30 animals
•The blaze burned down the zoo’s Great Ape House, killing chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas and flying foxes
•Police urged those who had lit the lanterns, which have been banned in Germany, to come forward
“It is the worst day in the history of Krefeld Zoo,” the zoo’s director Wolfgang Dressen told reporters on Wednesday.
The incident was an “inconceivable tragedy,” the zoo wrote on Facebook. “Our worst fears have come true.”
The zoo, some 15km (9 miles) outside Dusseldorf, was closed to visitors on New Year’s Day and would remain closed on Thursday.
The police suspected that the fire may have been caused by a Chinese lantern released into the air during New Year’s Eve celebrations. Several lanterns like this had been found in the area.
Investigator Gerd Hoppmann said that the lanterns were “highly dangerous” and could fly more than 1km (0.6 miles). They have been banned in Germany since 2009.
He urged those who had lit lanterns in the area to come forward.
https://www.scmp.com/print/news/world/europe/article/3044239/new-years-chinese-lanterns-may-have-sparked-germanys-krefeld-zoo
2 Jan: ABC: German zoo fire that killed 30 animals, including monkeys and gorillas, likely caused by illegal sky lanterns
Several witnesses saw cylindrical paper lanterns with little fires inside flying in the night sky shortly after midnight on Wednesday near the Krefeld Zoo, Gerd Hoppmann, the city’s head of criminal police, told reporters.
“People reported seeing those sky lanterns flying at low altitude near the zoo and then it started burning,” Mr Hoppmann said.
He said investigators also found used lanterns on the ground that hadn’t burned entirely.
They were 34 centimetres long and made out of white paper, with an opening at the bottom where a small fire would be suspended. The fire heats the air inside, making them fly and shine at night…
Sky lanterns, however, are both illegal and uncommon in Krefeld and most of Germany. The mini hot-air balloons made of paper have been used in Asia for centuries.
After requests by police for witnesses to come forward, Krefeld police said several people had come in and were being interrogated. Police said they would not release details on them.
Mr Hoppmann said some of the partially burned lanterns had handwritten notes on them…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-02/fire-apes-monkeys-among-30-animals-killed-in-german-zoo-blaze/11836856
80
Look, I know this looks like me harping on as usual about coal fired power, but has anyone seen any final recommendations of any of these former Bushfire Royal Commissions that recommended the closure of all coal fired power plants, umm, seeing as how they ‘know’ conclusively that they were caused by Climate change which in turn is caused by CO2 emissions.
Why don’t they just shut them down if they know what the problem is?
Tony.
150
But Tony, shutting down all coal fired plants would force the ABC to stop broadcasting waffle about climate change.
110
No work and still a pay cheque! They’d love that. (/s)
80
ABC wouldn’t have the electricity to waffle on about anything if the coal fired plants closed.
80
Tony, don’t you see – it’s a vicious circle.
Burning the forests generates more CO2 that causes more warming that results in more forest growth and causes even more uncontrollable fires.
But preventative burning is bad because it’s not catastrophic enough.
20
There is no way on Earth that these fires can be dealt with at any level ….. without constant access to large amounts of fossil fuels.
Without fossil fuels, all the firefighters could do would be to walk to the fire with canvas beaters on the end of sticks, and that’s something I have done a few times mind you, not an easy task for hours on end. One of those times was one of only two times where at the end of the day, I walked into the shower in everything I was wearing, boots and all, and just stripped off under the water. The other time was after spending five hours up to my waist in a swamp, looking for the left downlock micro switch on a wrecked Mirage.
Tony.
60
Tony
Around one of those I heard the description of the glide ratio of a Mirage with the fire out as
“About the same as a brick dunny with the door open”
10
Well, they could certainly rest on their laurels as far as CFPS is concerned, but there’s still the destruction of
Road Transport and the Pastoral Industry left before Our ABC can declare
10
What CO2 driven climate change?
“Interesting chart –
The general long term trend for atmospheric CO2 over the last 200 million years has actually been downward if you average out the noise.
In fact we are only slightly higher now than the low excursion spikes that happened during a 25 million year low point between 75 and 50 million years ago.”
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ENN4fKmVUAA4Cl1.jpg
Via
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2019/12/31/w-o-o-d-31-december-2019-the-end-of-the-year-as-we-know-it/#comment-121958
71
Greenie policies -> caused massive loss of habitat and animal life, massive damage, over 1200 homes destroyed, 17 people killed -> that show’s how much they actually care.
112
Yes…the extreme greens consider humans lower than animals in importance….
41
“Big Oil’s Monster Decade Reveals Why Energy Experts Are Not Very Good At Making Predictions”
https://dailycaller.com/2019/12/31/oil-prices-climate-change-fracking/
Via SDA
Yet another example of
“It’s hard to make predictions – particularly about the future”
30
Somewhat O/S but TDS fuel!
“Here’s How Trump’s Environmental Legacy Stacks Up With Obama’s Record”
https://dailycaller.com/2019/09/27/trump-obama-environment-legacies/
60
open access…for now at least…so save. heard this and another article by Peter Ridd on community radio this morning. presuming the link at the bottom of this is to the Ridd article, which is behind paywall:
2 Jan: Australian: Great Barrier Reef coral testing ‘flawed, needs fix’, says Peter Ridd
Exclusive by Graham Lloyd
Rebel marine scientist Peter Ridd has thrown down a challenge to reef scientists to test whether or not human actions have caused a collapse in the growth rate of corals on the Great Barrier Reef.
Dr Ridd said despite published claims of a collapse in coral growth rates between 1990 and 2005 due to stress from human pollution, there was no data for the past 15 years. “We don’t know how the Great Barrier Reef has fared since 2005,” he said…READ ALL
(BOTTOM) Related stories •Reef truth may be inconvenient but it is out there
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/science/great-barrier-reef-coral-testing-flawed-needs-fix-says-peter-kidd/news-story/8c8432a1c8ee5ea13174356789cab310
60
22 Mar 2011: ABC: ‘Cows’ stage protest over Alpine grazing
by Alison Savage (ex-ABC Gippsland reporter, now 9News Perth producer)
Protesters dressed as cows have staged a rally on the steps of State Parliament, calling for an end to cattle grazing in the ***Alpine National Park.
The State Government allowed 400 cattle back into the park, as part of a six-year study into fuel reduction.
On Friday, the Federal Environment Minister, Tony Burke, ordered the State Government to end the trial next month…
Matt Ruchel, from the National Parks Association, says the door could still be open for cattle to return to the park next summer, unless the trial is abandoned.
“Tony Burke’s essentially triggered the process under the national laws. The clock is now ticking,” he said.
“But we still need to make sure that the whole trial is abandoned and Alpine grazing is not allowed to happen in our precious and important national parks.”
Mr Ruchel says the State Government should recognise the trial was a mistake.
“I think the key thing to keep in mind is that it is a six year trial,” he said.
“We’re calling on the Victorian Government to ensure that the whole trial is abandoned and that cattle that shouldn’t have been there in the first place are moved once and for all.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-03-22/cows-stage-protest-over-alpine-grazing/2647016
26 Nov: ABC: Dry conditions hampering efforts to fight bushfires in eastern Victoria
ABC Gippsland By Laura Poole and Ashlee Aldridge
Fires burning along the Great Dividing Range in eastern Victoria are behaving in ways expected in January and February as fuel loads are so dry…
Emergency Management Victoria incident controller Peter Brick, in Bairnsdale: “We’re experiencing really dry conditions out in the forest. All the fuels are available to burn. So it’s creating some real difficulty for firefighters on the ground,” he said on Monday morning.”…
Roads were closed in the ***Alpine National Park, including around 100 kilometres of the Omeo Highway between Omeo and Mitta Mitta.
Mr Brick said it was “quite a stretch” of road to be closed, but emergency services “just didn’t want anyone in that vicinity”…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-25/victoria-fire-danger-as-dozens-fires-burn-great-dividing-range/11733876
2 Jan: Age: Naval ship arrives at Mallacoota to begin evacuations
By Tate Papworth and Paul Sakkal
While milder conditions have slowed the fire movement in East Gippsland, watch and act alerts remain in place for a number of areas, including the ***Alpine National Park ETC…
On Wednesday, (Premier Daniel Andrews) warned the crisis could go on for weeks.
Mr Andrews said the blazes were “not like other bushfires”, where communities could begin the process of rebuilding once they had passed through and the fire was out.
“This is very different to that,” he warned…
1 Jan: Border Mail: Upper Murray fire: Community meetings planned, warning downgraded
12.26pm Wednesday: There is a large bushfire within the ***Alpine National Park north of Tom Groggin that is not yet under control.
The bushfire is travelling in a south-easterly direction on a large front…
8.59am Wednesday: There is a bushfire at ***Alpine National Park near the junction of Bluff Link Road and 16 Mile Jeep Track that is not yet under control.
The bushfire is in a remote area, emergency services are responding…
80
Got relations up in the Alpine National park right now and just received a message about another fire at Cobbler that’s started , resources are thin on the ground this side of the hills it seems.
50
It’s important what Jo is doing here. There should be no apologies.
Big Green has every reason to like fires. The disasters resulting from high fuel loads suit the agenda. Am I being fair? Actually, I’m being gentle.
Human involvement in the bush, management of the bush and the economic exploitation of bush are critical if we are to have conservation of the bush.
The south coast with its lower rainfall and its frequent summer-dry conditions is a patsy for Big Green’s sick agenda.
Bega’s mean rain is only 857 mm and its driest year was 1885, ahead of 1941. I know the GeeUppers have just hidden their eyes to these simple facts, but the facts are still there.
Reduce fuel loads. Involve humans in bush. There is no wilderness without humans, just feralness.
Stop globalism. Do tradition, family, privacy, property. And do coal.
151
Precisely.
“Big Green has every reason to like fires.”
How many insane arsonists would be motivated by that reality?
20
What sixty years of neglect can do.
The local government authorities are Hypocrites.
They pose green but ignore the natural environment to the point that when it “goes off” the local wildlife has nowhere to escape to.
The only positive is that the rabits/hares probably took a beating too.
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/12/nsw-is-kindling-to-go-accumulated-fuel-is-an-environmental-time-bomb/#comment-2239928
KK
50
Precautionary burn 20% of the country on a 5 year rotation. Burn all the seedlings, a small sacrifice after all. Turn the land from forest to grass, and then burn that.
You all deny that any controlled burns were done, you deny any evidence that soil moisture, temperature, and drought play a role.. You continually mix land use like forest and national park, you do not understand climate, you refuse to admit the most fires start on private land, you refuse to admit that most fires are deliberately lit. You have no understanding of the history of fire on this continent, or their impact on the environment.
But you have all the answers
517
Diddums.That’s just horrible for you , isn’t it?
What difference does it make where or how it starts? It always will. . . .one way or another.
Never mind that the good folk here have the answers. . . . you have all the red herrings.
80
No answer is better than your wrong answers.
80
Wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong. In denial all the way Peter. Don’t try to put words in our mouths that are in direct contradiction to the views of most here.
It is YOUR lot that has been in charge of our national parks/reserves/forests for the last few decades and we can see how well that has worked out. We have been choking on the effects of Green ideological zealotry for weeks now. When zealotry replaces common sense the outcomes are never good.
Now it’s time for the grownups to take a turn at running things again Peter. I guess if they can annihilate less than 500,000ha of bush, millions of bush creatures, 500 homes and 19 people in one fire season, we’ll call it a success.
If the Greens had any honour at all they would slink off in shame before they get tarred and feathered, but they haven’t and they won’t, instead they’ll go down screaming “climate change” — or the latest buzz phrase, “global heating” — with even greater vigour, like trained cockies.
It will take more than one generation to repair the damage of the last 30 years. There are millions more hectares of bush that need to be dealt with, waiting to go up in a flash due to decades of deliberate Green neglect.
120
UN Agenda 30 – Sustainability
Federal Government signed it, State Government and Local Councils implement it.
State Forests and Dam Catchment Areas converted.
Unforeseen consequences now taking place.
50
Somebody broke Fitz , he’s rambling on and on about something he knows nothing about and making wild accusations!
Oh sorry situation normal.
Degree in Biology, and a coordinator of Landcare but totally and absolutely clueless about the bush .
We are saying not enough fuel reduction burning Poiter .
As for your turning forests into grass land I think maybe some more study is needed .
61
I agree with everything you say, apart from: Turn the land from forest to grass, and then burn that.
Grassland then can be turned into pasture for Man’s natural foods,Beef Cattle and Sheep.
11
How about spaced trees and grassland as settlers discovered from 1788?
60
No, there’s nothing sacred about pre-1788.
That’s the contention of our adversaries, but the facts are that our forefathers were gifted the land to create
a New Country, not recreate Feudal England Amongst the Gum Trees, which is where we are today.
10
you deny any evidence that soil moisture, temperature, and drought play a role..
Who is “you”? Can anybody locate this mystery denier of soil moisture, temperature, and drought playing a role in fires? Who could think let alone say such bizarre things? And should we give any cred to someone who invents opponents and hurls accusations at thin air?
Conservation must be taken out of the hands of irresponsible zealots. If the present mob do decide to burn more they will handle that as disastrously as they have handled the present regime. Most burns will not be cool enough until there is regularity in maintenance. There is too much fuel and it needs to be reduced steadily and with great care. People in love with programs and numbers will bungle a new regime as badly as they have bungled the old one.
110
This from South oz is an example of what should have happened did happen and let em whinge , without the back burning they may have been burned out instead of one years lost crop .
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-30/hunter-wines-at-risk-from-backburn-smoke/11832058
20
All those politicians and bureaucrats that prohibited or restricted fuel reduction burns must be held responsible.
120
Strategically strip-logging some areas wouldn’t go astray either. But instead, Victoria is phasing out all native forest logging. Fire management will suffer accordingly, as all trees are now sacred. All people who live near bush, as I do, should be suitably scared of what that sacred status means for them as green policies pile fuel loads higher and higher until the inevitable happens.
60
In the Climate Science Circus, being wrong for 30 years makes one an expert!
110
Yes, expert at being wrong all the time and fudging the data to align with their cult of catastrophic global warming.
40
2 Jan: 3AW: Alleged arsonist arrested over fire in East Gippsland
Police have arrested and charged a man following reports he allegedly started a fire in East Gippsland last night.
The 36-year-old man, of no fixed address, is accused of starting a fire in Johnsonville, east of Bairnsdale.
He was arrested on Punt Road, Johnsonville, at about 6.45pm.
The man was charged with recklessly causing a bushfire, as well as drug related offences.
He will appear at the Bairnsdale Magistrates’ Court today…
https://www.3aw.com.au/alleged-arsonist-arrested-over-johnsonville-fire/
50
Good !
There is somewhere off the coast
A small island where he can be parachuted onto
For a few years.
Let him work out how ro survive by himself there
20
And on top of all that, this entire website needs to be on DVD or USB, including comments so that we can still access in case of internet outage, and of course as an additional income to keep the site alive and financially well.
My two bobs worth. Some sites are too important to only remain in only one digital form.
….20/20 vision at work 🙂
Cheers
60
An entire website in digital form would make a great gift too!
20
My octogenarian father was threatened with million dollar fines by the blue mountains city council after burning back a small part of his land last winter. Perfectly controlled and executed, just not allowed by the brilliant intellects running the council.
Many repeated threatening letters, which strangely ceased just a month or so ago… In all fairness I suspect they’re very busy covering their asses and developing narratives at the moment.
And here we are about to relearn the lessons of 1994 all over again. How quickly the stupidity seeps back in.
130
I know it is a cheap hit, but “Kill Baby Birds Alive” does provide mirth.
I think the message she really wanted was ‘Burns Baby Birds Alive’, but unfortunately that wasn’t what she painted.
Maybe it was a literal translation from Greta and meant something different in Swedish?
51
More homogenised crap
From the Bureau of Misinformation
Published by the Australian Brainwashing Corporation
Using my money
Bugger !
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-02/2019-was-australias-hottest-and-driest-year-on-record/11837312
50
I suspect that the few staff at ABC Gippsland ( based in Sale )
Are by now fully aware of the need for fuel reduction burning
In the Bush.
But the dopey ideological ABC idiots
of the Metropolitan cities of Melbourne & Sydney
Are still lost in their Climate Change ideology.
So a targeted sacking of the ABC at Southbank & Ultimo
Would be greatly beneficial
80
Excellent idea.
60
Its official…if you dont include offical 1896 temperatures…..
More ABC derived fluff….
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-02/2019-was-australias-hottest-and-driest-year-on-record/11837312
“The data is in and 2019 has topped the Bureau of Meteorology’s (BOM) charts for average and maximum temperatures as well as the lowest annual rainfall across the country.
“It will come as no surprise to those suffering through this horror fire and heatwave season that the conditions leading up to it were the worst on record.
“The new figures arrived as large parts of the country brace for more dangerous fire conditions over the next few days.
“BOM will comment when its official report comes out next week, but the numbers speak for themselves.
“Australia’s annual mean temperature was 1.52 degrees Celsius above the 1961-90 average of 21.8C — well above the previous hottest year (2013) at 1.33C.
…………..
“Why so hot?
“The record-breaking year was especially noteworthy because it occurred without an El Nino event, the climate driver most commonly associated with hot dry conditions in Australia.
“While the Pacific Ocean remained neutral, the main climate driver was the incredibly strong positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD).
“The IOD has been working to generate rising air and rain over eastern Africa but hot descending air over Australia.
“It is associated with drought and hot conditions over eastern Australia as well as with a delayed monsoon, all of which have been the case this summer.
“Late last year, an unusual sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) event also added to the hot dry conditions by shifting the westerly winds, which usually lurk over the Southern Ocean, up onto the continent.
30
I read today of a site on the Victorian coast that could push back the earliest point of human habitation of this continent by thousands of years. Typically, the ‘human’ element that is yet to be verified fully seemed to be defined as ‘Aboriginal’, or pertaining to the Indigenous people of the modern era. No question of any other possible presence at 120,000 years ago seemed to be considered, despite our near northern neighbour, Indonesia, being populated by multiple human species about that time.
Whatever is determined there, human activity in Australia has a long history and the effect on the ecology of Australia has been profound (although probably nowhere near as disastrously as portrayed by Professor Tim Flannery in ‘The Future Eaters’). Aboriginal burning managed the landscape effectively. Yet, preventative burning is now often rejected in favour of ‘wilderness’. I, for the life of me, cannot see much difference between the doctrines of ‘wilderness’ and ‘terra nullius’. Both are bogus and insulting.
Higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels simply make preventative burning more necessary as the higher carbon dioxide levels lead directly to more growth.
There is too much emphasis on ‘the science’ and nowhere near enough on actual science.
70
BoM claims 2019 was the hottest and driest on record ….
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-02/2019-was-australias-hottest-and-driest-year-on-record/11837312
40
Question:
Is not the real problem with politicians and bureaucrats succumbing to these protestors fantasies instead of acting on the facts?
80
The argumnent between technical and “corporates” will be forever.
techies and proper sceintists are technical in nature and derive enjoyment from knowing how stuff works and accuarcy.
“Corporates” ( those who put a key in a car and turn it, and that’s all they want to know about technology ) , the glad handlers, pollies and bulldust artists – these unfortunately think they can make tech decisions but cant.
Unfortunately, we really need a democracy with heavy slice of technocracy in it, to navigate the next 100 years.
Pollies are tech weenies, and utterly ignorant in areas like CAGW….
20
The science of forestry has accrued an undeservedly bad reputation. When one talks of ‘strip logging’ native forest, that is not a call for environmental destruction, rather the consideration of a range of strategies in minimising the potential for catastrophic fires and the environmental destruction caused by same.
90
Logging crews got too big, and they couldn’t afford to be selective, bad Press ensued re Clearfelling, and here
we are.
Not a logger, but from listening to a couple of blokes who worked by themselves and operated their own bush mills
between c.1960-1990, after 20 years the only person that would know all the big trees had been removed was the
bloke who had done the work.
And that was in the period 1910-1990, when growth rates were only 30% of the periods before and after.
30
That’s a real mash.
🙂
20
What I very much hope is that the Federal government establish a Royal Commission into the Fires. That way all the facts can be got out, hopefully.
60
The Rev. Scotty is onto it as we speak, according to an earlier comment.
The upshot will be that all fire permits come from the Feds, so don’t bother applying, and the Feds will now tell
you where you can and can’t live.
The clearances will start shortly
21
The PM sees the bushfires as an opportunity and will strike while the iron is hot.
Telling people where they can’t live will be an interesting debate, because the Greens are whispering that Morrison has finally come to his senses on climate change.
The big challenge will be reducing the size of national parks, the Greens won’t be amused.
10
Government Policy since Copenhagen declares that bushfires will increase, so Morrison would
have to defy his own Government to do what you hope for.
Can’t see that happening.
The Rev.’s spin will be:
Bushfires are baked in the cake, and Federal Resources are too scarce to be bailing out
people stupid enough to live next door to a National Park.
Women will nod their heads in agreement, most of the blokes will be busy watching Porn and
Sportsball anyway, and …Voila! There’s your consensus.
10
On a drive today I discovered more formerly tangled undergrowth areas with tall trees now burnt out and the landholders have had bulldozers in and cleared the ground ready for grass. The landscape is a huge improvement visually. And obviously much safer if maintained.
No doubt the clean up was done quickly to avoid excuses from council later.
60
Congratulations, Jo.
This made it to WUWT
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/01/01/jonova-aussie-abc-hiding-evidence-they-helped-climate-activists-campaign-against-controlled-burns/
60
Seems the sharks have moved in to the south coast with photos of a slab of mount franklin mineral water at one servo $48 , bit like the ABC profiting of the misery of others .
40
Point to Note:
Q: Why is there hot (mid 40°C) air hitting the Eastern States?
A: Because the land to the west is one giant piece of granite and ironstone. IR from the Sun hits it and is converted to heat. That heat then blows east. The only things that will prevent it are clouds and winds.
90
Good.
30
Once you look at the temps above 10 thousand feet in the recent heat-waves there’s little to indicate hot air below 10,000 ft. It’s a shallow lower-tropospheric heated layer close to the ground only. So it isn’t going to stop until we get a fleet of crop dusters to continuously spray-paint the outback white … including Koalas.
30
Hi Jo,
How do you reconcile this? Vineyards in the Adelaide Hills have been decimated.
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/12/another-skeptical-mind-revered-wine-science-expert-writes-skeptical-book-to-rave-reviews/
07
Decimated by what? Fire? Drought? El nino? None of which are caused by our car exhaust and coal mines.
140
Posted further up are you talking about the smoke taint from back burning that likely saved the properties so they didn’t burn to ground Brian ?
Big decision lose some grapes or lose the entire property , hmmmmm .
100
In the last two weeks 30% of the Vineyards & wineries
Of the Adelaide Hills have been burned to a crisp.
We had a pretty good Spring
And there was a good vintage coming along
( And a good hay crop as well incidentally )
But now there is blackened ground
Here in the Hills
And I suspect that many of the vineyards which escaped the fires so far
Will be harvesting smoke tainted grapes.
50
So…is there some claim made in one of Gladestones’ books or speeches that vineyards can’t burn? Did he say there can be no droughts or high heat periods in wine regions?
What’s to “reconcile”? I don’t get it.
Or is this just another GeeUp gotcha? I get that.
40
Mosomomo
There has been a major change in vineyard irrigation practices over the past 30 years.
Once it was all done by over head irrigation or even by flood irrigation.
Now in the interests of water efficiency it is all done with drippers.
But that means that vineyards are using less water.
I suspect that in future
Vineyards will revert back to a curtain of over head sprinklers
Which can be turned on where ever a fire approaches.
20
Bill, it absolutely amazes me that any orchardist(?) wouldn’t have an emergency sprinkler set up to protect their crop – even tree crops! Yet, I still see under tree drippers and nothing to dampen the dry mulch between trees, on a block not far from me – surrounded by grassland (albeit fairly denuded at this time due to grazing and drought).
00
Currently doing some research on the hills behind us that were burned often by indigenous locals before we came along .
40
Chris Smith from sky news has just outed SBS for pulling a story that the bushfire expert I think Bruce Packham had done .
Mr Packham said no sign of climate change in bushfire activity in previous fires but because the interview was a few years ago they pulled the story because they wanted him to have a change of mind .
No such luck because two weeks ago he was still saying no sign of climate change the fires are because of high and very dry fuel loads .
90
Ah, ya beat me. 😉
30
Chris Smith ripping on Sky, he’s gets it spot-on. Did a great job busting the shameless opportunistic propagandists a SBS as well.
Good luck Fire-fighters! Friday will not be as bad as Saturday, but Friday will be bad in its own right.
Another hot north-Westerly sequence comes through on the 9th and 10th of January, so only another 3-days ‘break’ before the next hot combo comes through the SE states.
60
beowulf – reply #2.2 above – linked to caldronpool re SBS removing the David Packham article.
this is what is on SBS website – almost impossible to understand the timeline:
14 Nov: SBS: AAP: Fires not due to climate change: expert
Linking NSW’s bushfires to climate change is ‘nonsense’, a leading expert says.
UPDATE 14/11/19
Speaking earlier this week, Mr Packham confirmed his position on what is causing the current severe bushfire conditions. Addressing the matter on Sky News, he said fuel loads remain the core issue.
“The most important (factor) is the dryness of the fuel, which comes from the hot dry weather,” he said.
“It’s not behind the lot of it, it’s behind all of it. The theory is as solid as the universal theory of gravitation.”
SBS has attempted to contact Mr Packham on whether he holds the same views he expressed in the original 2013 article refuting links between climate change and bushfires at that time.
This article was originally published on 21/10/13.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/fires-not-due-to-climate-change-expert
the 2GB interview Chris Smith mentioned:
AUDIO:12m51s: 19 Dec: 2GB: Jane Marwick: Scientist David Packham on what’s really causing the bushfires
As former State Fire Chiefs call for a summit on bushfires, expert and scientist David Packham explains that it has nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with fuel-loads.
https://www.2gb.com/podcast/scientist-david-packham-on-whats-really-causing-the-bushfires/
40
Although living in UK the hopelessness of those running the Australian administration (let alone those of Victoria and NSW in particular) in the face of this decade’s picture of Dante’s hell beggars belief. We all seem to live in a land of ‘me now’ and ‘my feelings’, and damn history and proven ways of well-being for the majority, to the piles of wildfire fuel in the forests and its immediate neighbouring communities. The Victoria Royal Commission into Black Saturday was really quite clear on its recommendations, and the reasoning for them: https://web.archive.org/web/20180712000516/http://royalcommission.vic.gov.au/Commission-Reports/Final-Report/Summary/Interactive-Version.html.
I just wonder how much has been actually implemented; perhaps the answer is in the current news headlines. Sadly, even now our Royal Family has been infected by the new UN-initiated religion.
50
Probably upgraded their poles and wires, having adopted the free market model, this from the RC.
‘Victoria’s electricity assets are ageing, and the age of the assets contributed to three of the electricity-caused fires on 7 February 2009—the Kilmore East, Coleraine and Horsham fires. Distribution businesses’ capacity to respond to an ageing network is, however, constrained by the electricity industry’s economic regulatory regime.
‘The regime favours the status quo and makes it difficult to bring about substantial reform. As components of the distribution network age and approach the end of their engineering life, there will probably be an increase in the number of fires resulting from asset failures unless urgent preventive steps are taken.’
10
Just a question. The people protesting were greenies, were the Greens Party supporting them in reducing the back burning from 370 down to 9 hectares?
It would nice to know if one of the usual suspects (Di Natala, Bandt, Hanson-Young) made a public comment congratulating or celebrating the win (ultimately loss) by the protesting greenies.
30
Also one to look out for the young liberals want more action on climate change and fossil fuel emissions, time to vote one nation .
30
On Feburary 6th 1851 the following is recorded from a ship sailing from
Victoria to New Zealand:
The reference to the fire in the ship rigging can be found on page 8:
Order By Fire
50
Hi Jo,
Your having a tough time down their
Here in the UK the cause of the fires are attributed to climate change
The is no mention of hazard control and the difficulties of carrying out controlled burns.
Is there any data to show how much controlled burning has been reduced in recent years?
40
See this post — see graph 4 of WA. As far as I can acertain WA is burning off more now than other states in australia, yet it’s still less than WA was burning off from 1962-1982 when there were almost no wildfires. That graph is gold. Experts still say WA needs to burn more — on a 6 – 8 year rotation, not a 12 year rotation.
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/12/climate-change-and-bushfires-more-rain-the-same-droughts-no-trend-no-science/
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/12/2019-wildfires-burn-20-times-as-much-land-as-managed-fuel-reduction-in-nsw/
All my posts on fires
http://joannenova.com.au/tag/fires/
70
Neil I have done 1 prescribed burn between 2003 and today
Unfortunately we are hamstrung by local and state govts.
The words prescribed burn and hazard reduction makes people uncomfortable. We firefighters are accused of destroying the flora and fauna by conducting those burns. This is not true. A prescribed burn protects the flora and fauna from a catastrophic fire. It protects human lives, property and the environment.
We used to conduct a slow burn to reduce fuel loads. The intensity of the fire was managed to be under control at all times. A subsequent bushfire in that area could be controlled.
Today if a bushfire occurs in bushland with high fuel loads, everything is incinerated and lost. It cannot be controlled and all fauna and most Flora on that fire ground is destroyed and lives are at risk.
Unfortunately truth has been absent from some of our media re this.
This allows the ignorant, part of our media and anyone with an agenda to hijack these bushfires in the name of climate change.
and frankly.. I personally find that disgusting.
130
Don’t forget United Nations Agenda 30: Sustainability
National Parks being preserved for future generations.
sarc.
30
Over Christmas I spoke to friends with some skin in the game; either as firefighters/partners there-of, or as part of the powerline clearance crews (also firebreak creation), and the theme was always the same: lack of adequate fuel reduction and lack of firebreak maintenance is a huge problem. It seems criminal to think that access roads and firebreaks are allowed to grow over, yet that is the claim made by those seeing it first hand.
Meantime, the press spin it differently;
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/12/is-there-really-a-green-conspiracy-to-stop-bushfire-hazard-reduction
40
Thanks Jo,
BTW Australia currently emits 402 Mt of CO2 per year (Wikipedia)
China emits 10877 Mt of CO2 per year = 29.8 Mt/day
If Australia were able to become carbon neutral tomorrow,
China would take just 14 days to put all that CO2 back into the atmosphere.
60
I’m still struggling with how carbon dioxide causes fires.
40
It doesn’t.
🙂
50
If you think of eucalyptus as a carbon sink, until burnt, then releasing all that CO2 back into the atmosphere. This bushfire season would presumably pump out more CO2 than all our coal fired power stations for a year.
20
‘Australia’s bushfires have emitted 250m tonnes of CO2, almost half of country’s annual emissions. … Analysis by Nasa shows the NSW fires have emitted about 195m tonnes of CO2 since 1 August, with Queensland’s fires adding a further 55m tonnes over the same period.’ Dec 13, 2019
10
Seven weeks ago, and the political response to the fires has been evasive with suggestions of bigger water bombers and more agreeing FireChiefs nodding at the TV cameras, before they head off to the KlimateCommission meeting .
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/11/weekend-unthreaded-285/#comment-2218077
CO2 does nothing to create or increase bushfires, why do we have an international body like the U.N. dedicating itself to the eradication of CO2. An impossible task, given the overwhelming effect of the oceans and nature in general.
KK
00
There was a large bushfire in bush near Nowa Nowa on Monday night:
http://www.ewn.com.au/alerts/vic-bushfire-emergency-warning-nowa-nowa-449096.weather
The Nowa Nowa residents were huddled together in the general store and only had one radio yesterday and did not know what was going on:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-02/bushfires-17-people-missing-east-gippsland-victoria/11836444
The fires appear to have been deliberately lit:
https://www.miragenews.com/man-arrested-following-fires-in-nowa-nowa/
The timing of the Facebook deletion is highly suspicious and indicative of Auntie ABC having a bad conscience.
Strangely their efforts to manipulate the truth in the cause of climate change actually do have a moral effect – just not the effect they were anticipating! They have been encouraging irrationality at the expense of good forest management, which saves lives.
This highlights the fact that the job of media is not to report information or views that will manipulate the public in the ‘right direction’ – it is only to report the facts without bias or manipulation.
I wonder if these fires in the East should be called the Bolshevik Fires….
70
The guy arrested was last year not this year sorry – so at this stage there is no evidence the fires were deliberately lit.
21
Ah ! Just realised the guy arrested was LAST YEAR not this year. Sorry! my mistake.
30
Since 1939, there have been at least 18 major bushfire inquiries in Australia, including state and federal parliamentary committee inquiries, COAG reports, coronial inquiries and Royal Commissions.
“The Committee heard a consistent message right around Australia:
– there has been grossly inadequate hazard reduction burning on public lands for far too long;
– local knowledge and experience is being ignored by an increasingly top heavy bureaucracy;
– when accessing the source of fires, volunteers are fed up with having their lives put at risk by fire trails that are blocked and left without maintenance;
– there is a reluctance by state agencies to aggressively attack bushfires when they first start, thus enabling the fires to build in intensity and making them harder to control;”
“The committee is of the view that the consistency of recommended action over a number of years indicates that some states have not adequately addressed deficiencies in bushfire management. The clearest example of this is the apparent lack of political will in some jurisdictions to comprehensively plan, fund and implement fuel hazard reduction strategies on fire prone public land, despite consistent advice from fire fighters and other bushfire experts to do so.”
Says it all really. Can those who have failed to act be charged with treason? Or at least sued for negligence?
30
The courts are supposed to be able to make determinations on reality.
Those who acted counter to the outline above need to be brought before the court which originally made that determination.
KK
20
seeker of truth said…
The other day, the Chief Fire Officer of Forest Fire Management Victoria made a statement about how much controlled burning took place in Victoria
“In 2018–19, more than 130,000 hectares of public land was treated with planned burning and 12,000 hectares by mechanical methods.”
https://www.ffm.vic.gov.au/fuel-management-report-2018-19/statewide-achievements/cfo-interview
However, Victoria has 8 million hectares of public land. The eight million hectares include the following:
National parks and other conservation parks managed by Parks Victoria (4 million hectares)
State forests, managed by the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (3.2 million hectares);
Over 1,200 public land reserves with a broad range of purposes (550,000 hectares)
https://www.forestsandreserves.vic.gov.au/land-management/managing-crown-land
Forest Fire Management is responsible for controlled burns on ALL “public land” in Victoria.
https://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/about/planned-burns
The Chief Fire Officers is talking about his controlled burns/ mechanical clearing (totalling 142,000 hectares) taking place on public lands having a total land mass of 8 million hectares.
That 142,000 burning and clearing is a mere drop in the ocean when you consider that 8 million hectares are under his control. It is much much less than the 5%
recommended by the Royal Commission after the Black Saturday Fires. It is even under the 2% that the Royal Commission found was totally inadequate with this low percentage of controlled burns contributing to the Black Saturday inferno and deaths.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-07/black-saturday-fire-fuel-threat-planned-burns-needed/10787050
The Chief Fire Officer should not be proud of his achievements for the 2018-19 year but extremely embarrassed for putting lives at risk. No doubt we will hear more on this.
Michael Smith News comment
10
Even Dr Karl has joined the idiot brigade https://twitter.com/DoctorKarl/status/1212517528641032192.
20
Dr Karl’s bread and butter is the climate change lobby. He is currently playing to the crowd at Woodford Folk Festival here in Queensland.
10
Point to Note: The PM has been attacked, however it – fire risk minimisation and prevention – is the state’s and shire’s responsibility. The focusing of the situation on the PM is a focusing on climate change, not on prevention.
40
“It’s probably not the protesters’s fault that she thought climate change posed more threat than bushfires. She probably watches Their ABC”.
Well I don’t know how much ‘THEY’ pay you, but please stick to the facts if you are to be judged on credibilty.
Immediate threat; bushfires, which are outside their normal parameters due to CLIMATE CHANGE; a closed question was posed…
So addressing climate change by reducing CO2 emissions from energy, transport, agriculture in the form of fossil fuel burning, ceasing native forest logging, regreening, stopping urban sprawl, better designed buildings, town centres cityscapes, controlling population growth, distributing the wealth/resources/food, just for starters.
as far as the couple, they had avalid point…SPRING, whereas prescribed burn were scheduled for autumn/winter, window of opportunity minimised, as has been quite hot or some other impediment; maybe lack of rain, in these seasons.
10
“They” don’t pay me anything.
My credibility depends on me finding 100 stories where the ABC blames climate change and you finding more of the ABC interviewing expert skeptics or fire specialists that talk about fuel loads and who were so obviously right.
I’m quaking…. 😉
Science = predictions that come true. Climate change = propaganda term used by parasites and fools who predict everything, fail most of the time, and then say “how dare you”?
How is a January bushfire on overgrown forest in Australia “outside” any normal parameters?
As for Spring fires versus summer, why not ask those nestlings which they would have preferred.
60
Subsidies and grantees
of climate-sci funding,
gravy-train studies
with outcomes determined,
sich brown paper parcels
all tied up with string,
these are a few of my
least favourite things.
Snowflakes on…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wDj4gH10ak
00
Science = predictions that come true.
seriously?
Science is a process. Was that really a serious statement?
Science is not the moon or the stars or cells or DNA or ecosystems or magma. Those are things that are discovered or understood better by scientific methods as applied by people. Science has never been the truth. Science is a method that humans use to seek truth.
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GA trying to tell someone what science is or is not
That’s hilarious. ! 😉
“Science is a method that humans use to seek truth.”
and yet “climate science” exists..
and they are not seeking any truth, they are deliberately avoiding it.
00
Gee Aye.
You claim to be an evolutionary biologist, you have claimed to have achieved your quals in a G8 university. as such you have some scientific credibility. I respect that.
I am impressed though I am baffled, You lose me here with your quote:
“Science has never been the truth”
If you believe that, It implies that as a scientist what you are posting may be lies.
I hope not.
00
obviously not spring as they’d be dead. With summer they have a chance to disperse. Dear
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“which are outside their normal parameters due to CLIMATE CHANGE”
Where is your evidence of that.
Where is your evidence that human released CO2 actually causes warming?
Start with the basics rather than the fake climate mantra.
EDUCATE YOURSELF.
And no, there just happens to be an unfortunate confluence of Drought, caused by COOL warmers above and below Australia and a meandering southern jet stream, bring cycles of hot blustery wind
Because of that we have the locked-up and neglected State Forests and National parks turning into tinderboxes awaiting a spark.
The current drought is certainly not “unprecedented”.
Hot windy days are certainly not unprecedented.
And neither are anything to do with human release of much needed CO2 into the atmosphere.
Bring your science.. if you really have any 😉
00
This is just sickening. And now the ABC is destroying the evidence. The only positive is that Breitbart has picked up this story so now the whole world can read about what has been going on here.
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Oh please..
When will the religious zealot AGW nonsense end and the supposedly advanced human race actually start thinking…
From ZH:
Lessee now – assuming a 1C warming then why oh please SOMEONE explain W-H-Y this is the case !
California fires 2m high ????
C’mon – I’ve had bigger fat fires on my BBQ.
70m – higher than Sydney Opera House here ?
But…. CO2 and warming is global right, so you’d think the effects would be magnified accordingly globally, but it seemeth not…
Conclusion – self appointed do-gooders like the Greens and “save the 27 spotted 3 toed swamp parrot” (which no-one’s ever heard of of course) stop the essential fuel reduction burns (ie reality burns, unless your’re effing stupid) and of course the do-gooders protected target gets toasted like overdone KFC and a 1/2 billion innocent animals beside anyway…
Never mind – tax us all 100% of income and it’ll all go away, right?
Tell ya what – all you lying self-serving pollies – we’ll endorse your CO2/AGW BS B-U-T…
if YOU can’t stop CO2/warming/global cooling/Grand Solar Minimum/global food crop decimation (like through all recorded history..cough…cough…) then we’ll sentence you all to life imprisonment and seizure of all assets.
Still wanna tout your AGW BS to the masses??
Naah..didn’t think so..
Roll on the next election – truthful politicians, no career politicians, no political gravy trains – just truthful honest people if such actually exist…
Perhaps an impartial public oversight committee for EVERY politicaan ??
Oh well… I’m steering towards the end of my time on this speck of dust and shake my head at the world I see and how the next generation (of nullo’s and ilk) will have the capacity to analyse, diagnose or develop solutions to ANYTHING.
RIP human race.
Epoch 2 coming soon.
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This lady is my opposite in most regards. She is LGwhatever, wears feminist purple, is a democrat and liberal. Yet what she has to say matters far more to me than any political or philosophical statements coming from my own side. Her subject is, for lack of a better expression, the macro-danger we all face. It’s already upon us, it’s in every cog and at every pivot where power is exercised…and most don’t even know what to call it.
https://tinyurl.com/wtfrnnp
How is this relevant to the present thread? Re-wilding and forced urbanisation mean un-involving humans in the bush. This one aspiration alone of the globalists can create a state of neglect nuclear in effect. You don’t need to know much more about the planners of the NWO. These are people cut off from every reality except that of power. They are colossal achievers…but still more colossal bunglers.
Reverse every aspect of the agenda, regardless of how appealing or reasonable by seeming. Start with reversing all green policies unrelated to true conservation. Go gently with burn-offs, because the neglect has already been far too great to be fixed in a burst of enthusiasm. Restoring the bush to a safe state will take a lot of time.
Get serious with the agenda-drivers. They are already serious with us, hence these fires.
Stop globalism. Do tradition, family, privacy, property. And do coal.
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Sounds like resistance to the assault on tradition, family, privacy , and property. The assault has got a few decades start on us.
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Would be interesting to know how many Oz Councils are signed up to Agenda 21 and prohibited cool burning prior to the Summer Season?
“ICLEI, ‘SUSTAINABILITY’, & AGENDA 21
national government representatives, who included them into the final text.”
This account, as is clear from ICLEI’s admission below, curiously downplays ICLEI’s role in
promoting Agenda 21 and raises serious questions as to why an AG21 promoting organisation like
ICLEI would seek to distance itself from the very program they are promoting.
The true role of ICLEI in driving and promoting Agenda 21 has been outlined quite clearly in the
Epilog to the ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability Preparing for Tomorrow Strategy 2010-
2015:
“Two years prior to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, ICLEI prepared input to and introduced
the “local authorities” chapter of Agenda 21 into the UN Rio Declaration, thus initiating the Local
Agenda 21 Campaign – with more than 10,000 local governments engaged, the first and largest
global campaign of cities and towns the world has seen. Only eight months after the adoption of the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at 1992 Earth Summit, ICLEI responded
and launched the Cities for Climate Protection Campaign – the first and largest global campaign of
local governments combating greenhouse gas emissions. In 1996, ICLEI launched its Eco-Procurement
Initiative – the first and largest international network for public sustainable procurement. ICLEI
initiated Local Action for Biodiversity – the only global program on urban biodiversity management.
ICLEI pioneered local best-practice case studies, developed tools such as ecoBudget© and piloted
Triple Bottom Line for local authorities.
ICLEI has achieved results that the planet notices.
Over the last 20 years:
We have built a global sustainability network of 1,200 local governments of all sizes in 70 countries.
We have instigated a movement of about 10,000 local governments that have engaged their citizens
in Local Agenda 21;”
So ICLEI claims they “prepared input to and introduced the “local authorities” chapter of Agenda 21”
and initiated “ the Local Agenda 21 Campaign” but yet they also claim “national governments,
including the United States under the Bush Administration, negotiated and wrote Agenda 21.”
In their 2010 – 2015 Strategy, ICLEI further explains the role they will play in promoting UN AG21 in
Local Councils:
ICLEI will “continue connecting cities and local governments to the United Nations and other
international bodies”
ICLEI will “serve as a global entry point for cities and local governments to engage with the United
Nations and international and national policy processes” and will “pursue more radical solutions.”
ICLEI will “Advocate direct access to climate finance and other funds by local governments and an
inversion of climate finance mechanisms to enable the implementation of needs-driven local
development.”
ICLEI will promote “Management of global environmental goods” such as” Climate, Biodiversity,
Water, Food.”
ICLEI will promote “Municipal planning and management” or, in other words, they will help councils
control land use.
Instead of being out there proudly promoting their connection to Agenda 21, in their FAQ article,
entitled “ICLEI, the United Nations, and Agenda 21, Setting the Record Straight About ICLEI”, ICLEI
is clearly downplaying their role to such a degree that the uninformed reader may be completely
mislead. Why would they feel the need to distance themselves from AG21 in this fashion?”
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beththeserf, AG21 has been upgraded to Agenda2030.
This is why the child puppet reGreta Thunderbird is blabbing on about the end of the world in 2030.
People may also like to check the WEATHER reports before 1910 (1910) because it shows many days of OVER 50C (127F) because for the ignorant, we used to use the F temperature system back then.
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Wow this is one of the most shoddily written articles i have read so far. Greg Mullins wasn’t there to spruik climate change, he was asking for help as an ex fire chief for funding and equipment to get on top of the fires earlier. I found the exact same article on several other websites. And I have read and re-read this article and I still don’t understand what your actual point is other than to have a crack at the ABC.
00
Stick around Kristy — you’ll get the hang of how things work. Pretend the ABC was only interested in saving animals and helping Australians — and ask yourself why it would be deleting posts months later? Especially not ones that show how incompetent ABC interviewers are…
And if the ABC were competent rather than being an advertising bureau they would ask a Firefighter about firefighting questions, not about the effect of exhaust emissions on Global Circulation Models.
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All the FireChiefs care about is being part of that climate change committee so they can get travel expenses paid to all the meeting venues, they’re all hanging in for COP26.
KK
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What’s not to understand? A bunch of people stopped a burning off near Malacoota and now there are massive bushfires in the region. The ABC reported glowingly on efforts to stop the burnoff and now are hiding the story because it detracts from the climate change narrative. It’s not hard.
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Please please sell the ABC, use the money to build coal fired power stations across Australia to supply cheap reliable energy to vulnerable poor people who cannot afford this virtue signalling madness of CAGW. Al Gorebull started this nonsense and it has snowballed into the greatest hoax of all time. The people who will suffer the most are those in third world countries deprived of the cheapest most reliable energy condemning them to endless poverty and famine. I grow hydroponically in greenhouses, I increase my yield by %30 by artificially increasing the Co2 and the temperature does Not Rise. More Co2 equals a greener planet. The Suns solar activity dictates the fluctuations in the Earths climate, Not mans miniscule Co2 input. Real science has shown much higher levels of Co2 throughout the ages without corresponding temperature rise.
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Wow Joanne – you managed to find one post to base all of this on.
You are such an insidious, valueless junk scientist that no reputable outlet would touch with a 40 foot pole.
You’re a disgrace. Get a real website!
01
Perhaps you could enlighten us as to your qualifications. BTW are you seriously suggesting that there has not been a reluctance to burnoff and that this has caused the bushfires? Or did you just feel like being abusive?
11
Defund the ABC?
Go talk to the people who escaped the fires in SE Australia and ask them where they got their safety information from; which roads were open, where and how far the fire was, which direction to drive.
And you would take that away from them.
Evil, wicked people…
01
You would find that all radio networks: public, commercial and community were providing information on road closures, which roads were open, where and how far the fire was and which direction to drive. Although other broadcasters would do it without the Morrison-bashing and anthropogenic global warming rubbish that is endemic to the ABC. The sooner the ABC is gone, the better.
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Still waiting for the misinformation in this blog post to be corrected. It takes less than two minutes to check the Vic Emergency website and see that the area of the protests did not burn in the latest fires. Apparently all that dosh the gullibles here send your way is somehow insufficient to “fund the research” required to spend just two minutes on the internet. Despite constantly ranting on about how these fires are because “greenies” have prevented hazard reduction burns, the sole example you have been able to provide of an actual location where a hazard reduction burn was prevented by environmental concerns was from a location that has not actually burned. Did it really not occur to you that all the rabid anti- “greenie” sentiment regarding bushfires that you and your ilk like to stir up could be behind the removal of the post by the ABC? Actually, I’m pretty sure it did occur to you, but distorting the story is the name of the game here, isn’t it?
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Ms Disgusted, (or Mr), thanks for the information. We’re glad to hear it hasn’t burned yet. Perhaps you didn’t realize but when I posted this my crystal ball didn’t tell me what the CFA website would say four days later? And that it didn’t matter regarding the main point in any case. That being the ABC supposedly being unbiased, honest and not using taxpayer funds for their own agenda.
The ABC gets a billion in forced funds — have they done that research? Did they update their story, or is it still dropped in the memory hole?
It occurred to me that people whose houses had burnt down might get angry, but if that’s what the ABC was afraid of, they could just delete the names not the whole story. (Which wouldn’t have led to hundreds of copies of the story all over the web). Looks like inept ass-covering…
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No.
Not really.
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“when I posted this my crystal ball didn’t tell me what the CFA website would say four days later? And that it didn’t matter regarding the main point in any case. That being the ABC supposedly being unbiased, honest and not using taxpayer funds for their own agenda.”
So what you’re saying is, the entire ABC have a biased agenda because a local facebook page removed a post about back-burning protesters, in an area that hasn’t seen fire after four months of the state burning? And not even posts plural, literally a single post is your evidence. How do the actions of one community facebook page constitute a nation wide agenda by a media corporation funded by a liberal government who has filled it with their own staff and cut money from it regularly? I can guarantee most people had no idea an ABC Gippsland page existed until it started getting shared as some kind of conspiracy.
Read more about back burns and hazard reduction. They are not magic solutions to stopping bushfire, embers can travel several Km’s from the source behind fire lines, and neither strategy stops crowning fires. Some officially organised back burns get out of control and damage communities even though that’s what they are meant to prevent.
Quoting this article from NSW NPWS: “Hazard reduction, strategic planning, equipment and training are all important contributors to successful fire management. None, alone is a ‘silver bullet’. Systematic analysis of practical options for adapting to ever worsening weather extremes driven by climate change is still on our collective ‘to do’ list. If such an iconic conservative as Margaret Thatcher could recognise the looming problem and, in 1989 (yes, 30 years ago) urge the United Nations to take action on climate change, why do we still have politicians unwilling to fully and urgently consider the fire management implications of climate change?”
Click for more.
And more.
Oh and even more. This one might be behind paywall, you can disable 3rd party scripts to see it for yourself but here’s a quote –
“On September 14, after an outbreak of fires across the Northern Tablelands, high winds caused embers to spot more than 10 kilometres onto the the centre of Wytaliba. After an initial emergency the fire weather abated, but over the next week the fire spread across much of the property. In a large operation more than 20 RFS trucks, more than 100 fire fighters, bulldozers and waterbombers were successfully deployed to help defend our homes. All were saved. Much of Wytaliba was blacked out. Carol (Glen Innes mayor with 20 year RFS service medal) and I have a large cleared area around our double brick house. That September fire burned to our perimeter. This was just two months ago. Everything that should be done, was done and lots more. The fire that came last Friday was of another order of magnitude altogether. A crown fire roaring in from the west on a hot afternoon with an 80km per hour wind, it wasn’t on the ground, it was a firestorm in the air, raining fire. There was no fuel on the ground, it was already burned. The heat ahead of the fire front ignited nearly everything in its path. Before he saw any flame my neighbor’s car exploded. They just escaped with their lives. Our house was severely damaged but not destroyed. We weren’t home. Others were not so lucky. “
I’ve seen you being shared around a lot lately, I hope your book is selling well? Pretty perfect opportunity to make some money in the midst of all this heated debate. Careful though, people might start to think you have an agenda or something, and we know how misinformation can get out of hand.
01
You’re new here aren’t you? I’ve done 109 posts on the ABC bias.
Once upon a time I thought the ABC was giving me the whole story too.
Re Backburning – yes, welcome to the hard world of cost benefit analysis. Should we risk fires getting out of control in winter, or risk getting 70Mwm-2 uncontrollable firestorms at the worst possible time of the year? The other thing you should know is that if we let fuel pile up too high then nothing will stop the blaze — not even some reduction in a nearby area. When firestorms rage they send embers for miles. They create their own weather.
It would take several years of a bigger better reduction process to get things back on track, though Mother Nature is doing what we should have done but “Faster” and far more dangerously. Hazard reduction works when the whole area is managed.
PS: My books are not there to make money. I give them away as a free PDF at the top left and always have.
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I never claimed to think the ABC is giving me the whole story (accurately or otherwise), or that they are free of bias, just pointing out that in this case your one source of evidence for bias on this particular matter is pretty weak – A single protest in one area which resulted in reduced hazard reduction burns. Consider that areas which DID have proper burns done have STILL been completely destroyed. You seem focused on this particular one because it was deleted.
That entire Gippsland ABC post is about a dispute between community protesters and the people who perform the burns. It’s really still not clear what you’re trying to say by pointing out ABC bias in this example. Are you saying that the protesters’ views on the environment were specifically inspired by the ABC, or that the ABC impacted the decision of DELWP to not perform the burns? They mentioned Brad Fisher’s disagreement with Mary the protester, so 1:1 for opposing points of view being presented. The writer made no mention either way of which side they thought was more believable. It is the definition of unbiased reporting – just the facts from each side and no opinions from the reporter.
Do you think this is a coverup by the ABC? Honestly this Gippsland image has been shared millions of times, it’s been a pretty shitty cover up if so.
“Hazard reduction works when the whole area is managed.”
Did you read the stuff I linked? Even a well managed area can be completely destroyed – “Everything that should be done, was done and lots more. The fire that came last Friday was of another order of magnitude altogether. A crown fire roaring in from the west on a hot afternoon with an 80km per hour wind, it wasn’t on the ground, it was a firestorm in the air, raining fire. There was no fuel on the ground, it was already burned.“
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Replying to myself since I don’t see an option to edit posts –
Have you considered that ABC Gippsland deleted the opinions of the protester because they think her concern about climate change being ‘worse’ than bushfires is wrong or unhelpful? (since you like to consider possibilities – “It’s probably not the protesters’ fault that she thought climate change posed more threat than bushfires. She probably watches Their ABC.”…probably, maybe.)
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Not Jo asks: Have you considered that ABC Gippsland deleted the opinions of the protester because they think her concern about climate change being ‘worse’ than bushfires is wrong or unhelpful?
Congratulations. That is the whole point
The protesters misguided fear of climate change was “helpful” right up until suddenly it was evidence that green-fears were helping to cause the damage they said they wanted to prevent.
Green hype meets the horrible reality. If the ABC had interviewed these people and also pointed out the risk of their actions and interviewed people talking about the need for hazard reductions, the ABC wouldn’t have wanted to delete an inept one sided interview would they? And just possibly, the protestors would have learnt something, so would the readers. That’s what national debate looks like. Not deleted tweets three months later.
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Read the post again. Read my comment again. You’ve missed everything I said.
ABC bias is not based on one event. I’ve been writing on it for years. Did you know a man in WA was arrested and jailed for 15 months for clearing a fire-break on his own property without permission? That Peter Spencer lost his life’s work because he couldn’t clear trees on his own farm? That another man paid tens of thousands in fines for clearing his own property but his was the only house that survived a fire.
That’s the pernicious power of green bureaucrats in government, destroying livelihoods and now destroying forests. Did the ABC forget to tell you?
It’s only your uninformed naivety that thinks this is about one deleted tweet. Hey, I was a green activist once. I understand. Stick around.
On hazard reduction, read my words again. Doh. 70MW/m fires will jump every containment line bar the ocean. The aim is enough hazard reduction to stop 70MW fires happening in the first place. You’re talking about small patches of low risk area nested among a state full of fuel. Of course the little preburnt areas are useless.
You can focus on 370 tiny irrelevant hectares or get “the big picture”.
PS: Shouldn’t we care if the billion dollar bullies at the ABC are hiding things from the Australians who are forced to pay for them?
10
“If the ABC had interviewed these people and also pointed out the risk of their actions and interviewed people talking about the need for hazard reductions, the ABC wouldn’t have wanted to delete an inept one sided interview would they?” – Sure, but they did delete it, and we’re all better off now that their bad opinions are no longer lingering around. The protesters’ views are unhelpful to the public who might be seeking more accurate information about what is or isn’t true in regards to these bushfires. That was MY point.
“Shouldn’t we care if the billion dollar bullies at the ABC are hiding things from the Australians who are forced to pay for them?” – Honestly I don’t really care, there are plenty of things I enjoy on the ABC not related to their news reporting which have made it worthwhile to me throughout my entire life. It’s sure as hell more tolerable than watching Sky News.
Australians are forced to pay for a lot of dumb [snip]: international holidays and other private expenses for MPs and their families, lifetime pensions for eligible prime ministers, tax subsidies for overseas companies – It’s not going to stop happening any time soon, and in my opinion it’s weird to focus on the ABC of all things since they aren’t even the most influential news source in the country. The only reason I’ve even heard of the ABC Gippsland facebook page is because of your post here being shared around. You have brought it to more people’s attention than it ever would have gotten on its own, and there are a lot more people who trust the ABC over you, so you’ve essentially done free marketing for them AND given them more support.
00
Stop spreading the lies Jo. This myth has been well and truly debunked. The Greens and “Activists” had little to no effect on the amount of hazard reduction burning that was done.
>RFS Commissioner dismisses Barnaby Joyce’s claim that ‘green caveats’ led to bushfire crisis
>Former National party leader Barnaby Joyce blamed “green caveats” for preventing hazard reduction burns, which Joyce says led to >the current bushfire crisis. Fitzsimmons rejected Joyce’s claims, saying the biggest challenge with hazard reduction is the >“weather and the windows available” to do it safely not “environmental clearances.”
https://twitter.com/i/events/1214698808132526080?s=13
Admit it, you just hate the ABC.
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Admit it, you think Fitzsimmons is a god?
I didn’t even mention “The Greens” in this post.
Since you asked though, Barnaby Joyce is probably talking about hazard reduction on private land which has been made very difficult to near impossible but green regulations. The EPA and the ABC are run by green-types — we know that because they believe the climate models “do experiments” and that data from 3000 ocean bouys, 6000 boreholes 40 years of satellites, thousands of land thermometers and 28 million weatherballoons is all wrong and needs adjustment in the same direction.
Check out “the native vegetation act”.
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I have no idea what you are talking about re “debunking”. On the contrary, landowners everywhere around the country have told their stories about how they wanted to clear their land but were not allowed to and how fuel reductions were not carried out, especially in national parks. You can read many of these stories in The Australian comments section. (Perhaps you don’t read it, given your political leanings).
If you are seriously denying that (little g) greens which infest the parks management bureaucracies, have been delaying burning off and other fuel reduction all over the country, then you need to talk to more people or at least read what they are saying.
10
Oh and personally I don’t hate the ABC; I just don’t want to pay for it. I would be happy for the ABC to be owned by The Guardian, Nine, New York Times, or the listeners and viewers who enjoy its political slant. Not a word of its programming would need to change. You could listen and watch as ever.
00
To Jo:
re “Barnaby Joyce is probably talking about hazard reduction on private land”. This is NOT what Barnaby Joyce is talking about. He has repeatedly brought up “green regulations” while talking about bushfires that are almost 100% in national parks and crown lands. Stop moving the goalposts.
re “The EPA and the ABC are run by green-types” The EPA are run and staffed by scientists. If they happen to be “green-types” it’s because they understand that science overwhelmingly supports the views of “green-types”. The ABC have a strict code of conduct that is scrutinised more heavily than any other media group in Australia. Who do you think the people that are effected by the fires are tuning into for emergency information? They’re definitely not listening to Alan Jones to inform them of the movements of local fires. Here’s a study by the Australian Parliament in 2014 about perceived ABC bias. This was during Tony Abbott’s leadership. https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1415/ABCoverview
To John:
The comments section of The Australian is about as useful as the comments section of The Guardian. That is; they’re both absolutely useless in framing an informed opinion. The people who are actually in charge of the response to bushfires, the planning of hazard reduction, the management of national parks etc. have all come out and said that environmental activism has little or nothing to do with the state of the current bushfires. Actual experts (climatologists, meteorologists etc. have been warning that this exact scenario would happen for many years. Read the 2008 Garnaut report if you want to see some scarily prescient predictions.
“I would be happy for the ABC to be owned by The Guardian, Nine, New York Times, or the listeners and viewers who enjoy its political slant. Not a word of its programming would need to change. You could listen and watch as ever”. You obviously haven’t looked into how private control of media causes much higher bias in reporting than anything you could aim at the ABC. As mentioned to Jo above, the ABC are the go-to source of emergency information right now for people under threat of the bushfires. There is no way that any private media organisation would be willing or able to provide that support.
To both of you. The minute you quote anything from an opinion piece by a journalist, you’re losing the argument. You need to provide links to qualified, primary sources. You know, like the RFS commissioner, actual climatologists, actual meteorologists etc.
00
Good evening
In reply:
That does not actually contest the bushfire argument. The issue is that burnoffs are not being done anywhere near as much as they were in previous years. As a consequence, there is more fuel to burn and this keeps fires going for longer. No fuel, no burn. More fuel, more burn.
Many landowners of properties near national parks have also been predicting a bushfire disaster, precisely because of the reluctance of government entities to remove fuel. There was never any doubt that a major fire season was coming; the only disagreement seems to be about the cause.
You are indeed right as I have never heard of such a proposition and frankly, I think the only people who would advance it are those who believe that the ABC is more less biased than commercial media. I could write for pages about this but this blog is about science not the media, so I will be brief. Firstly, a genuine impartial assessment of bias or lack of it, is slightly more difficult than proving the existence or otherwise of God or which code of football is better.
In any event, it no longer matters. The days of a small number of broadcasters trying to reach as many viewers as possible are gone. With YouTube channels, Netflix, Foxtel and all sorts of other things, no-one tries to be all things to all people. The ABC has taken a strategic decision to move to the left of the commercials which are soft left themselves. The ABC acknowledged this, albeit quietly, several years ago when they changed from being a national broadcaster to a public broadcaster.
Public broadcasters are invariably far left and the ABC is no exception. The problem is the anachronistic funding model where all taxpayers contribute to a broadcaster which is consciously targeting a narrow section of the community. No other “public” broadcaster around the world is fully taxpayer funded and most of them would not want to be. As I said, I think it would be a good thing for the ABC to be owned by a left-of-centre media outfit such as the Guardian, Nine newspapers or NYT. I would be happy to discuss this further but I am not sure that a science blog is the place to do it.
There have been mixed reports about the ABC’s coverage. Some listeners have complained that information broadcast is outdated or inaccurate.
It also seems harsh to say that commercial radio won’t do it – I live in the city but I am told that many commercial radio stations are full time covering bushfire relief. Then of course, there is community radio as well.
Also, there is no particular reason for a single broadcaster to do both the Morrison-bashing coverage of ABC metropolitan/news radio & TV and bushfire emergency coverage. The ABC itself appears to have little interest in its regional broadcasting arm other than as a bargaining chip in funding discussions with Government. Given the strategic direction of the ABC, regional radio could be either transferred to the Special Broadcasting Service or better still, provide specialist emergency service programming to community radio for broadcast, during times of emergencies such as now. The ABC would then be left to do what it does best i.e broadcasting anti-Coalition propaganda.
I had expected a commentator to dismiss my references to peoples’ stories as being anecdotal although you haven’t go there (thank you). However, I am at loss that you would suggest that I go to “primary” sources instead of these people. It is hard to get more primary than someone who lives right near a national park and has been jumping up and down about fuel buildup or someone who has been told they can’t clear firebreaks on their own land.
00
I have mirrored one of the posts on archive.today, it is a permanent cache rather than the google one.
http://archive.ph/OKLvo
This is a far more stable manner, it’s of course also possible to cache google cache results with this.
00
As of today’s date,there are bushfires listed for all 3 towns- Nowa Nowa, Mossiface and Lake Tyers.
00