A thread for those who are watching the fire crisis.
NSW Fires today Map Click to enlarge
Victorian fires, click to enlarge.
Fires flared again today in Australia, though have calmed in the last few hours. Outback NSW was wildly hot (Bourke and Ivanhoe reached 47C and 48C), but the fires are mostly in Alpine and SE coastal areas of Australia where temperatures ranged on Friday only up to maximums of 21C – 35C.
Fire conditions are bad tonight in NSW and Victoria. Cooler, but windier. Some gusts are up to 100km/hr. Rain has begun to fall in East Gippsland. Map details and links to updates are listed below. It’s obvious in the maps that massive areas of forest have already burned. The black areas on these maps are burnt, but not all to the same degree. The red areas on the NSW map look terrible but these are “potential spread areas”.
It’s not about the heat.
The fires are where the fuel loads are (and the arsonists and accidents).
Temperatures for the record: Maximums were 34C in Melbourne and 24 – 40C in Sydney. These are typical summer temperatures in Australia. The major emergencies are for the most part, in cooler areas. The maximum today in Albury was 42C but up in the mountains at Perisher Valley the maximum was 25C. The South Coast of NSW peaked at 24C – 35C. East Gippsland temperatures are only 21 -23C. Omeo (33C). Mt Hotham (22C) Wangaratta (40C). Winds were forecast to be between 35 – 50km/hr in the day time.
The key maps:
- NSW: Predicted Fire Spread and The live map of current “Fires Near Me” in NSW with alerts.
- Victoria: the CFA live map with alerts. In Victoria the !! double exclamation alerts are the highest level of emergency. It’s too late to leave. These are described as survival situations and there were five zones at this level on Friday, though only one overnight.
- ABC News updates
- ABC Fire blog.
NSW Temperatures today. Victorian Temperatures.
Best wishes for everyone and everything in the line of fire…
The public has been falsely indoctrinated about the causes of climate change. A deeper penetration into the science confirms that CO2 is a follower of climate change, not a cause. The irony is that reducing the use of fossil fuels, which is the agenda of many, will have no effect on climate. https://watervaporandwarming.blogspot.com
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Seriously? Time for a lecture: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2018/04/the-alsup-aftermath/
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The 2009 inquiry into the Victorian bushfires found ‘blocking’ was responsible.
‘Hot northerly or north-westerly winds are an indicator of the potential for critical fire weather. These winds originate from high pressure systems that enter the east of the Australian continent and travel across Australia, through the Central Australian desert. Here they dry out and eventually lead to a south-westerly wind change.’
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A holistic view of water management, forestry management, land management, the regional economies, etc. are required for definitive solutions. California politics are the worst example of embracing innovation.
Here’s an example springboard to mitigation:
https://news.stanford.edu/2019/09/30/new-treatment-prevents-wildfires/
September 20, 2019
Stanford researchers have developed a gel-like fluid to prevent wildfires
Scientists and engineers worked with state and local agencies to develop and test a long-lasting, environmentally benign fire-retarding material. If used on high-risk areas, the simple, affordable treatment could dramatically cut the number of fires that occur each year.
If this can be regionally manufactured in Australia, it will employ hundreds of people and help to prevent forest fires.
Also, water is useful to fight fires. Has anyone looked into the idea of using desalination plants to help load the various Australian aquifers / basins prior to and during the dry seasons? I realize one of the basins is nearly 23% of the size of Australia yet managing these water storage resources is a must regardless of wet or dry conditions.
Mitigation requires innovative and holistic solutions not carbon taxation nonsense.
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This needs to be understood:
1. Australia pre-1788 was a Fire Based Society
[a] Fire was used to drive prey animals out of cover, and to deny them refuge.
[b] Fire was used as a weapon in the ceaseless warfare that characterised pre-1788 society.
2. Post 1788 Colonists were from a Cow Based Society.
[a] The Cow provides the only healthy diet of Fat and Meat, it fertilises and builds up
the fertility of any soil, and
[b] Pastoralism is Labour Intensive and necessitates permanent settlement.
Just my opinion: Settlement post-1788 interrupted a continuing process that must have
resulted in the Continent being burnt to the Coasts and rendered total desert.
Conclusion:
[a] Longing for the days of the forest giants, and trying to recreate them by
Government decree is pathological, and no less Insane than wanting to recreate the Woolly
Mammoth in a Test Tube in order to mitigate fire risks in the Northern Hemisphere forests.
[b] The Cow is the basis of Western Civilisation, starting with
the Ancient Greeks and the Romans.
[c]Refusing to acknowledge that basis in Australia is leading to National Suicide.
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“[b] The Cow is the basis of Western Civilisation, starting with the Ancient Greeks and the Romans.”
FWIW: Archaeologists and biologists are agreed that there is strong evidence for two distinct domestication events from aurochs: B. taurus in the near east about 10,500 years ago, and B. indicus in the Indus valley of the Indian subcontinent about 7,000 years ago.
There may have been a third auroch domesticate in Africa (tentatively called B. africanus), about 8,500 years ago.
Yaks were domesticated in central Asia about 7,000-10,000 years ago.
History of the Domestication of Cows and Yaks
https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-the-domestication-of-cows-170652
Çatalhöyük: 9,000 years ago, a community with modern urban problems
“Stable nitrogen isotope ratios were used to document protein in their diets, which came from sheep, goats and non-domesticated animals.
Domesticated cattle were introduced in the Late period, but sheep were always the most important domesticated animal in their diets.”
https://m.phys.org/news/2019-06-atalhyk-years-modern-urban-problems.html
[c]Refusing to acknowledge that basis in Australia is leading to National Suicide.
If only the people who believe in a CO2 induced saw their doctor for an assisted suicide note, Australia would be free of bushfires and the planet would be saved.
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Archaeologists talk guff and bunk.
Western Civilisation started in Ancient Greece and flowered in Rome.
Organised farming of cattle was the basis of Rome’s success, once the Farmers gave up
and abandoned their farms, Rome was finished.
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I love history but what’s done is done so I agree with you hatband.
If memory serves, some idiot introduced rabbits to Australia.
The point is, apply the best solutions in a holistic way to achieve State goals for the community, environment, employment, and the future.
Regarding domesticated animals, very few originated in Australia.
I love beef (to eat). A herd requires a range of grassland or a feeder lot and a lot of water. Chickens are easier as are farm raised fish.
None of this relates to mitigating fire hazards in dry seasons.
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John McClure says, inter alia:
1. Plenty of Grassland, and it’s not hard to create more,
Continental Australia encompasses more than 2,000,000 Sq. Miles
2. Feedlots require grain. that means grassland has to be converted to
grain production, which is energy intensive, Capital intensive, soil depleting, and
creates habitats for small birds and animals that die agonising deaths
during harvesting.
Cattle in pasture don’t require a lot of water. Most of their water requirements are
met by eating grass.
However, cattle in feedlots will require a lot of water because of
the dry food diet, plus huge amounts of water are needed for hygiene
reasons.That water must then be treated, more wasted energy, and eventually released
into the environment, causing further problems.
Chickens and fish have only a half to a third the Nutritional quality of Beef.
Bottom line:
You’ve got to eat 2 to 3 times the amount of these meats to get a
similar nutritional result. That’s impractical in Human eating terms, as well as
being a waste of scarce resources.
A reminder. Arson has been established as the cause of the fires.
It’s too late, and a waste of time and resources, to be arguing about
”mitigating fire hazards” during the greatest disaster to ever befall Australia.
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All well and good but the rubbish will keep building up and then what? At some stage that rubbish will have to be burnt or removed otherwise the environment will be forever changed and maybe for the worse. Better to let nature burn the rubbish and save the retardant for property protection.
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‘Gel like fluid to stop wildfires’
Unfortunately this did not stop the wildfire recently jumping the Shoalhaven River in NSW.
Water bombers full of fire retardant bombed the gorge for four days and the fire swept through.
It seems usefull in spot fires or arson lit fires such as that in the North Turramurra, Lane Cove National park edge.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/police-investigating-if-turramurra-fire-was-deliberately-lit/ar-BBWDmeV
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An Arson lit fire?
What, pray tell, is the difference between an arson lit fire and a non arson lit fire.
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Well, generally arson lit fires are ones that occur along main roads and reserves in built up areas. For example the one at North Turramurra. Here the fire area is small and the fire, as in that case, can be snuffed quickly. Two fires of suspicious origin on the road from Marulan to Goulburn are a case in point. These single suspicious fires can be dealt with quickly and are cleared by bombing and RFS trucks.The one that started just west of Penrith two days ago is a case in point.
The problem comes when any fire, including those of the 50% that are probably not arson,burn out huge areas and water bombers are useless against them. These burn out over long periods of time.A vast fire field moves in the prevailing wind direction which resists bombing and prevents overflying.
These can start in the middle of our huge national parks with locked gates and overgrown fire trails.No arsonist need be there, but the problem is, the RFS can’t be there either.
The fire I refer to that jumped the water bombed/ retardant barrier at the Shoalhaven resisted retardants.
The villages or Widellama and Bungonia were threatened and have been ring fenced, including retardants.
Retardants have a role.
The problem for us Aussies is that we have to relearn the wisdom of the past.
It has not escaped notice that all those little villages of corrugated iron, fibro and weatherboard missed out on all the past South Coast fires.
These were the huts of the timber getters and foresters that maintained and cleared the forest reserves.
Once the forest was left to become climactic and mature and the forest clearing stopped, all was ready to build the fuel to burn them down.
The native wildlife had no where to go but die.
No forest clearings, no open savannas.
The Aborigines managed these forests for at least 20,000 years during the present climatic epoch.
We need a new paradigm based on the science of fires, otherwise we repeat the observed mistakes of the past.
One of my acquaintances had his architect planned house in a wonderful bushland setting razed inland from Mollymook.
It was solitary.
The mistakes of the past are with us still.
We need to free ourselves.
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Locked gates and overgrown fire trails deter Arsonists, eh?
Because Arsonist always refuse to walk around the Locked Gates, right?
The pre-1788 indigenes used fire for hunting and as
a weapon in constant warfare.Please provide a Link for any evidence you may have
to support the 20,000 years assertion.
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Hi Lewis,
the object of the gel is to spray areas where people frequent to prevent / inhibit inadvertent fires.
Areas like forest camp sites, walking trails, road sides etc.
Fire retardant is used to allow time to cut a fire break etc. it doesn’t have a lasting effect.
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It is a waste of time to fight runaway fire fronts in high temp/wind conditions with water. My bush fire brigade used water in the cooler months, and drip torches in summer emergencies. The only option to break the fire triangle in bad fire conditions is the fuel side – that’s why we established and maintained our fire trails, not to stop bad fires, that’s impossible (or at least too expensive and dangerous) by direct attack, but to give us an initial burn back point as we starved advancing fronts of fuel. We had many fires, but none ever got away on us.
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Bemused
The headline (yours?), is contradicted by the text.
Firstly, there’s only a single expert and he sees CC contributing up to 25 percent.
The climatologists may be dodgy, but equally poor science won’t convince anyone.
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“but equally poor science won’t convince anyone.”
And that’s why you now have all those red ticks.
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KK
I got thumbed for pointing out the obvious flaws , only here in topsy turvy land
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Sorry if I misinterpreted what was being said.
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Accidental touch, reading one-eyed!
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The politicians, bureaucrats, teachers, sheeple, students and school kids are the target of pervasive and relentless propaganda that in many instances has literally worn some down into disturbed neuroticism. Most though are merely habituated and while immune, appear quite conditioned.
But for all that, the UN/UNEP/UNFCCC neo-Marxist socialist 2030 Agenda relies on a fragile and brittle veneer of theatrical nonsense that inevitably fails the bullschitt meter and invariably all predictions. Saul Alinsky paraphrasing George Orwell stated, ‘Control the language, you control the people’ and they’ve done that with a focus and intent never seen before, afforded by the deluge of verbiage provided by the enormous range of media and social media.
In spite of this, they cannot conceal the false dichotomy of choice by hiding it under an almost impenetrable cloud of noble cause corruption. Actually, the choice could neither be starker nor clearer and as we all know, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the nonsense of ‘carbon’ and ‘climate’.
Either, fight for liberty, prosperity, culture, customs, traditions, and happiness or be force-fed de-industrialisation, division, destitution, and despair.
“Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” — Winston Churchill.
PS. Dan, interesting article Water Vapor vs CO2 for Planet Warming. Thank you.
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I notice this morning the MSM under orders from their masters, are furiously trying to play down the very obvious fuel load problem.
However, what appears to be a direct exposure to the reality of fuel load driving the fire intensity, has bitten the climate lie hard in the rear end :
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/residents-in-nsw-towns-angry-and-afraid-of-giant-tinderbox-on-their-doorstep-20200109-p53q7a.html
“Residents in NSW towns ‘angry and afraid’ of giant tinderbox on their doorstep
“Residents are warning NSW government logging operations on the South Coast have left behind large piles of combustible debris threatening to ignite “like a giant bonfire” and devastate coastal towns near Batemans Bay.
“The Herald has seen photographs of tree branches, logs, bark and wilted leaves piled metres high in the Benandarah State Forest, immediately north west of Batemans Bay.
“Furious residents want an explanation as to why the debris – also known as “slash” – was left behind after recent logging by the state-owned Forestry Corporation of NSW, which produces 14 per cent of the state’s timber.
“The revelations come amid a charged national debate over whether mismanagement of fuel loads has contributed to this summer’s disastrous bushfire season.
“”We’re angry and afraid and with good reason. All it takes is a stray spark and the hillside will explode into flames,” said John Perkins, the convener of local community group Friends of Durras.
“”The big question mark is why Forestry Corp has done this in the lead-up to a predicted horror bushfire season.”
“Consultants enlisted by the community organisation have estimated the fuel loads in the Benandarah State Forest are as high as 100 tonnes per hectare in parts. A level of 10 tonnes per hectare is considered to be high.
“Mr Perkins said the tinderbox conditions were only kilometres away from the coastal communities of Surfside, Longbeach, Maloneys Beach and South Durras.
“”These are some of the last unburnt towns between Batemans Bay and Ulladulla,” Mr Perkins said. “We’re literally in the firing line.”
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Latus Dextro quotes W.S. Churchill:
“Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” — Winston Churchill.
If Churchill believed that, then why did his unelected Wartime Government commission the
Beveridge Report, which is the basis of the British Welfare State?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Beveridge
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hatband: There is almost no reference to Churchill ‘s involvement in the Wikipedia page on the Beveridge report.
To quote the Wikipedia page:
‘Churchill’s commitment to creating a welfare state was limited: he and the Conservative Party opposed much of the implementation of the Beveridge Report, including voting against the founding of the NHS.
Legislation creating the welfare state in the UK was drafted and passed by the Labour Party only after Churchill’s defeat in 1945.
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Churchill’s Wartime Government commissioned the Beceridge Report.
Beveridge was a known quantity, elsewhere in that link you will see that he reported
directly to WSC when the latter was President of the Board of Trade during and after WW1.
Re your point about the Conservative Opposition led by Churchill opposing the NHS
Legislation in 1948, Churchill himself was noted for insisting
”When in Opposition, oppose!”
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The wartime conditions were one of state-controlled rationing and provisioning those left materially destitute or without income due to the conflict.
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Britain was self sufficient in food for all of WW2.
In fact, the Ration Book ensured that they eat better than at
any time before or since.
Now, it is true that Churchill as P.M. requisitioned by force
the entire West Bengal Wheat Harvest in 1943, 3-4 million people dying in the
resulting famine, but it is also true that there weren’t food shortages in
Britain at that time.
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Food shortages and rationing continued in the UK at least till 1953 when my parents and our family emigrated.
I know, I was there.
The UK finally paid off its war debt on 31 Dec 2006.
Britain lost control of the Indian and Atlantic oceans during 1942,43 and lost a major ship every second day in the Indian Ocean.
Its simplistic to say Churchill’s War Cabinet caused all this.
However it should be clear that without ships, trade and food stop.
Its also not on thread.
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HB.
Socialism is not merely welfare.
By definition, Socialism is “Government control of all forms of Production, Distribution and Exchange”.
Churchill was no socialist.
You also lie about the Bengal famine.
It was not due to the confiscation “by force” or the entire wheat crop of the area.
It was a natural famine exacerbated by the destruction of the transport system of that region (primarily water-based) which was undertaken to deny it to the invading Japanese army.
Churchill did not have the power to unilaterally do what you accuse him of.
The British army did not have the manpower.
When the British Cabinet became aware of the magnitude of the famine, they took measures to alleviate it.
The problem was this little thing called WORLD WAR TWO, which meant scarcity of food (do not lie by claiming that rationing equaled plenty) scarcity of shipping (enormous quantities had been sunk) and scarcity of the fuel, fertiliser, machinery and labour that normally went into producing food.
My grandfather farmed right through that period. Only a complete ignoramus would argue that there was plenty.
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I said: Britain was self sufficient in Food during WW2. I stand by that.
I also said that the British Public ate better under the Ration Book system than
before or since. I stand by that.
A ”Natural Famine”, eh?
Caused by the destruction of the Transport network by the British, you say?
Fact: Churchill hated Indians, ”a beastly Race”, were his exact words.
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Hatband, don’t say stupid things. My mother lived under ration books for years during and following the war. A lot of food was imported from Canada. Mum vividly remembers the dirst tine she saw a piece of fresh fruit after the war. It certainly was not better than before the war.
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He left out a few traits, perpetual excuse-making, blame-foisting, imaginary-victims, restitution demands paid for by work, profits and taxes of others. Literal degenerates – the opposite of generating constructive, creative, contributions that actually help everyone as opposed to hollow claims of virtue with nothing to show for it but an empty assertion of equality and a demand to be respected, for no reason at all.
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Dan Pangburn said:
Coal is only a minor part of The Agenda.
Decimating Road Transport is a bigger deal, but the Major Issue is the complete removal of Man’s
natural Food, Ruminant Herbivores, to be replaced by plant based agriculture.
That will lead to Desertification, environmental catastrophe, and
misery for 99% of Australians.
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That’s because CO2 comes from the slightly warming oceans. Which is exactly as predicted by Henry’s Law and there is 50x more CO2 in the oceans than in the air, so it doesn’t take much warming. The people who decided to reverse this commonly understood logic, even to say CO2 was going into the oceans are culpable or wilfully ignorant.
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I’m going to be radically subversive !
I say get the bloody academic & researchers
OUT of the bush !
OUT OUT OUT !
They are there for a few days and nread stuff
And make their pronouncements
That affetc the fate of all of us who
Live in the Bush
Our fate is taken from out of our hands
Fuel reduction burns are what we learned to do
To save ourselves for generations.
We need to go back to that.
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There was lots of fuel at Johnsonville
In East Gipsland this past week
And so a very dumbnut arsonist tried to light a fire
Local caught him at it & called the police & CFA.He faces charge sof arson
But the local media have supressed
Any menton of the story,
So local were at the court house and took photos of him
And went on Facebook ass well with the story.
And now the UK Daily Mail has run the story
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7867265/Firebug-accused-starting-bushfire-fire-ravaged-region-Victoria-faces-lynch-mob.html?fbclid=IwAR0xy3HQeH1MUalI1Ot58bcTtZ-n2LAw0nkDUN9jxuZU21g6YZzxkffu3n0
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Good morning Jo,
Absolutely amazing … the way you have kept us all informed over the Summer.
Please keep up the stunning good work.
I honestly don’t know how some of these “Professional Chicken Littles” sleep at night.
BTW., There are many of these that come to mind, here are just a few (& in no particular order) …
Adam Bandt, Richard de Natale, ‘Albo’, Jim Chalmers, Mark Butler, Daniel Andrews, Annastacia Palazczuk, Nate Byrne, Greta Thunberg, The Pope … and of course most of the editorial staff of the BBC., ABC., and the Guardian.
Whenever something terrible happens, and something that at first blush adds to the “Warmist/Change-Cult” agenda, they all over it like a rash!!
However when something just the slightest bit dis-crediting occurs, It’s like … “Move on; nothing to see here”!!
There are many of these that come to mind, again here are just a few …
The recent cold snap in India, the recent floods in Africa, and the recent non-advancement of their cause at both the recent COP-25 meeting in Spain (where’s the poor people’s $100 bil./year they were supposed to start getting from the start of this month?), and the recent non-advancement at the last EU. meeting (where a full
250 out of 750 politicians voted against the “Motherhood” Re-iteration of a “Climate Emergency”!
Surely this farce has got to end in the next two or three years.
In 10/20/50 years time people will surely look back and laugh at this gigantic farce.
As always, warmest of regards,
“Reformed Warmist of Logan”.
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PS. Not to mention the recent article in Nature magazine (8/1/20), where a paper by Clark et. al. disputes and dis-credits every finding of the morally bankrupt James Cook University re. The fragility of the Great Barrier Reed due to climate change. !! #Prof. Peter Ridd for Aust of The Year in 2021 !!—
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(Great Barrier Reef for all the Green-ish pedants out there!)
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Reformed warmist of Logan, I’m glad you made the correction. I’ve been called many things, but never a “Great Barrier”–although it contains some truth.
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Hi ref.. do you have a link to that article, it would an interesting read.
Thanks 🙂
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For the abstract see here.
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Jo has just started a whole new topic on it 🙂
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I call it the Global-Infinity-Crisis™, for if it were not 0.041% CO2 that they were spreading tales of certain planetary doom about, it would be something equally silly that required all of our money, political distraction and confected ‘virtue’ to divide between believers and heretics.
It’s been 270 years since the Industrial Revolution kicked-off, and that was curiously right at the end of the Little Ice age and the temperature rose ~1.4 C.
But the extremist-misanthropes would have us believe Human’s working to create a greener, happier world of plenty, have raised the temperature rather than prosaic natural-variability doing it after reverting from a 300 year long colder phase.
The Infinity-Crisis™ will swap-out the old gawd for the new gawd once all credibility is lost, taxes still must be plundered, guilt and fear still must be imposed, and a history doesn’t re-write itself.
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Charles Mackay published “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” in 1841, so the general phenomenon is not new.
What is new is mass media pushing the hysteria and the indoctrination of children in schools.
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I’ve said previously that fire requires three things: oxygen, heat and fuel. We can control only one of those elements when it comes to bushfire mitigation. Removing CO2 from the atmosphere certainly won’t work, unless we want to kill all plants (and all life).
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Excellent and succinct absolute truth. Now how come our politicians won’t admit to that truth? Lying? Fools? Ignorant? I suggest a mixture of all three.
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bemused , I would replace heat with ignition in your list of 3 requirements.
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My statement comes from the ‘Fire Triangle’. It’s the common terminology used in all fire training courses. The term heat is used because without heat, the fire is extinguished.
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bemused
It is much less likely to burn if the fuel is wet.
Which suggests that the opponents of fuel reduction have rainfall expectations well ahead of the most rainfall-optimistic farmer
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Yes, fuel elimination is the obvious solution to extinguishing or preventing fire.
Why is it illegal to store beyond certain qualities of inflammable substances in buildings? Because excess quantities can create uncontrollable fires, as we’ve recently seen in several toxic waste site fires. Were these fires due to climate change?
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Rather like the various fires in Visy’s “recycling” sites.
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ABC Alert: News Radio trumpeting that the RFS says only 1 per cent of fires were caused by arson or other human cause. The remainder were caused by lightning. O.K., so be it. It’s still about fuel loads, though.
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Strange – that they didn’t give us figures of those breaching fire bans.
One would think that they are promulgating fake news to combat alternative narratives to their own over the top climate change hysteria – but that can’t be right, can it?
From the National emergency broadcaster?
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Someone breaching a Total Fire Ban may be stupid, compulsive,uncaring, or a permutation thereof,
but
They’re not Arsonists.
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Surely a responsible journalist at a credible news organisation would go beyond the presented figures and attempt to report such news?
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To paraphrase Basil Fawlty, ‘A responsible journalist? We should have him stuffed.’
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Either way, it’s illegal, only the punishment varies.
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That was a political statement by administrators. Typical. It’s always the people at the top. Friends of Flannery.
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You get the same thing at the top of many organizations including the Royal Society and the American Physical Society. There is no money and fame in denying man made Global Warming. And the Australian Universities with their million dollar a year Vice Chancellors. It’s all about the money with Climate Change. You get nothing for stating the obvious. It’s not true and not happening. Surely after 31 years of this the failure of the predictions is obvious.
In fact of the thousands of predictions of man made Global Warming, has there ever been a correct prediction?
Even forest fires. Increased CO2 does increase fuel load, but that’s nothing to do with Climate Change. CO2 is plant food.
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You’d think from statistical probability or luck alone they’d have got something right by now, even a stopped clock gets it right momentarily twice a day.
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Every organisation has a risk management and mitigation plan, and one element of that is always ‘reputation’. In today’s world, maintaining an organisation’s reputation means going along with whatever is the current accepted meme. Why do you think SJWs/Twitter has so much influence on organisations? The maintenance of ‘reputation’ for nearly every organisation means being woke.
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Au-contraire, in no particular order.
Gillette
Apple
Qantas
ALP
Catholic Church
Greens
JCU
ABC
BOM
United Nations
European Commission
Ad-infinitude …
They can say what they like on twitter as I’ll never know about it.
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Unfortunately, if you were to conduct a broad-based survey, I suspect that the majority of those surveyed would consider most of the listed names ‘reputable’.
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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. 😉
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The ABS said:
Black Friday Commissioner Stretton noted that most Bureaucrats lied in their Evidence, probably
out of fear for their prospects of advancement if they’d told the truth.
So, no change and no surprises there.
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We had the same with professional bureaucrat Police Commissioner Christine Nixon in Victoria who went to a North Melbourne pub for a long dinner on Black Saturday. Unlike our PM Morrison, Christine was in total and direct control of the crisis operation on its worst night but said she was hungry. Total dereliction of duty. And no punishment.
She also said as police commissioner that Somali migrant were ‘not over represented’ in the crime statistics. When she retired in disgrace the actual records showed that they were 10x more likely to offend.
What gives people the right to lie, avoid doing their jobs and these are often people on ridiculous salaries, like the Vice Chancellor of James Cook University who is persecuting Dr. Ridd for telling the truth? Now the assault on Ridd and the truth is continuing, at public expense.
People who lie in public office should be prosecuted but I guess they will be protected by politicians who act as if telling lies is mandatory.
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This goes in the face of what we should rightfully expect.
People in positions of leadership in the community should be above reproach where truth and diligence are concerned.
Those in high office should be held to higher standards than the average person, but now in 2020 they seem to be untouchable.
How can this be?
KK
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Tdef said:
Police Commissioners serve at the whim of Cabinet, Nixon was no fool, so isn’t it plausible to assume that her political masters had no issue with her being uncontactable that night?
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If you are of the Left, you’re pretty much immune to any wrong doing. As the media says, ‘Nothing to see here, move along’.
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Somali? I thought it was Sudanese. I’ve been wrong before though.
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that also rules out man made ‘climate change’
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I like your thinking!
80
The zealot submission to the Royal Commission will site climate change, Michael Mann maybe called up to testify, do we have anyone to counter?
In preparing our brief we have to show conclusively that CO2 has no part to play in this robust bushfire season. Natural variables rule, we just have to prove it scientifically.
70
I believe increase CO2 does play a part in increasing fuel load. However an increase in average world temperature of an alleged +1.2C over 120 year plays no part.
I am amazed that anyone thinks it credible such a tiny change could have any effect at all let alone a sudden world changing, climate changing one. There is also no evidence I have seen that this tiny change even applies to the Southern Hemisphere where we live. This is mostly water (counting Antarctica) and therefore not subject to CO2 warming as I suspect the water surface never gets hot enough to radiate much in the tiny part of infrared spectrum blocked by CO2.
As one infrared astronomer who blogged here years ago had noted, he never saw reflected infrared, even in Antarctica, so it was nonsense anyway.
So why should our ‘Climate’ change, let alone suddenly?
111
but they don’t just claim that, they claim that co2 (that satanic gas) is behind all ‘extreme’ weather events. eg. Australian Climate Council in February 2017: “Climate change is now influencing all extreme weather events”)
Indian Ocean dipole: made ‘worse’ by co2.
Drought: made ‘worse’ by co2
Floods: made ‘worse’ by co2
Fires: made ‘worse’ by co2.
etc.
That is, co2 (trace gas) is literally the control knob of the world’s climate: turn it down and you get a green arcadia; turn it up and environmental catastrophe follows.
111
Infrared is the lowest of the low in terms of “virtue” or energy intensity or energy density: however you want to express it.
This coupled with the fact that CO2 Must remain in constant and immediate equilibrium with all other gases in the immediate atmosphere, means that it doesn’t act on its own.
I suspect that what energy might be absorbed by CO2 immediately above ground is miniscule in the overall picture. Conduction of other gases with the hot ground and is almost certainly going to be quantitatively huge source of energy to the atmosphere than anything CO2 could do.
CO2 is essentially irrelevant from a quantitative point of view in the atmospheric thermal balance.
It’s a wimp.
KK
81
On top of that, total energy flux in the atmosphere, or anywhere else for that matter,
.. is controlled by temperature, pressure and density gradients.
NONE of which are affected in any way by tiny changes in trace levels of atmospheric CO2
50
An excellent opportunity to show (inter alia):
(1) null hypothesis is that ‘climate change’ is natural
(2) attempts by alarmists to reverse the onus of proof (ie assume it is cagw instead of proving it)
(3) that climate change science is unfalsifiable (which would actually make it inadmissible under the evidentiary reliability standard set down in the US case of Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals).
70
Kevin Trenberth reckons the null hypothesis should be the other way round, forcing us to prove that natural variables rule over dominant CO2 forcing. We are up to the task of rebutting whatever they say on these recent bushfires being related to global warming.
50
They’ll call upon Professor Karoly to give us his opinion and he’ll say I warned you after the earlier Victorian fires that it would happen again, because of climate change.
Greenpeace want this battle, they visualise a decisive moment in this war of words, with political and financial benefit to their kind. If they win it wouldl be a disaster of unmitigated proportions.
90
(1) make prediction
(2) do not control for other variables
(3) your prediction is unfalsifiable.
60
Anyone could make a prediction that next time we have
a) high fuel loads
b) a drought
c) strong blustery winds
d) a spark in the wrong place.
We will again have dangerous bushfires.
This is a prediction even a 5 year old could make.
Karoly is in his element.
30
I wonder if he’d venture an opinion on 1851s Black Thursday or 1898s Red Tuesday, not to mention Black Friday in 1939? I suspect not, as they don’t fit the narrative.
100
I have never understood the difference between “Man made Global Warming” and “Climate Change”.
No one has ever bothered to explain what Climate Change is and how it is driven by Global Warming of 1.2C and whether the resultant change is going to be good or bad. However it is going to lead to extinction of life on earth? That does not even begin to make sense.
Why is it a given conclusion that all changes must be detrimental. After all, most climates could do with improvement. More rain, less rain. More sunshine, less sunshine. More wind, less wind. Hotter, cooler. All have their attractions but what is predicted? Nothing. Just ‘Climate Change’. The total lack of science, logic or explanation is almost as bad as the lack of evidence of ‘Climate Change’. What is it?
So why are we Australians paying $6Billion a year for windmills to be owned by others when there is not even expected to be any problem fixed or benefit to us? And where are ‘The Problem Solvers’, the CSIRO in all this, 6,000 scientists who are paid to advise us. They have gone to ground. Total silence. Fire the lot of them.
111
At the Royal Commission we’ll have to prove that rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical. No need for alarm, CO2 is not implicated.
20
You might have to blame my paraphrase for that one!
30
G’day Salome,
This article only mentions “arson”:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-11/australias-fires-reveal-arson-not-a-major-cause/11855022
…
And I suspect they include, as their divisor, literally all fires, including ones which are extinguished before they exceed 1 ha. Nor have I seen a count of ALL the fires attended to by RFS et al over their reference period. The closest number I’ve seen is the number of fires still running at the time of reporting, together with the number still out of control or at a high alert level.
Also, the above report doesn’t even mention the 37%, shown in Jo’s post yesterday, of “suspicious” fires. At least some of those are likely to have been started by as yet unidentified nasties.
Cheers,
Dave B
40
Thanks. What they say and what I think I hear when I’m resisting the attempt of my cat to get me out of bed (a claw to the lip, if you please!) don’t necessarily correlate.
10
Around this area
Take the quiz
“Friday Funny: Don’t get Mann-handled. Choose the right answer!”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/01/10/friday-funny-dont-get-mann-handled-choose-the-right-answer/
30
Cause is immaterial.
The fact is that there will always be fires. The important issue is how well we manage them.
103
Also how to keep people safe in cases where fires are impossible to manage.
61
Cause is immaterial?
Are you serious?
When Arson is the cause of a fire, as it is with these fires, the first order of business must be
to ask ”Who, and Why?”
Remember, Humans have Agency, while only the Polar Regions are non-flammable.
41
The most glaring illustration comes from the “Fires Near Me” app, put out by the NSWRFS.
Drawing a line through NSW, from Moree, through Dubbo and Wagga to Albury, shows the eastern half of the State awash with icons. During the last week,the average was in excess of 150 fires. In the Western half, commonly around 2.
98% of the fires – and ALL of the large ones – were in the cooler half of the State.
The relevant factor is not heat or wind , but fuel and access….. and as soon as a warmist tries to argue that there is “nothing to burn out there” they are admitting that fuel is primary.
The other issue is access. In the flat country we can get equipment and people tongue fire quickly. We can create fire breaks quickly. We can get fires under control early, rather than letting them burn for days and weeks until the next blow-up day.
It’s the nature of the beast that they come out on the days that we least want them to, and on a front so wide that we cannot get enough resources to defend everyone. A network of well-maintained fire trails is imperative.
151
Some fires albeit not often are impossible to manage no matter how much resources we plough into the situation. In those situations evacuation is the only option.
32
2009 is a glaring example of the impossibility of managing some fires. When a fire can “crown” up to ten miles in one jump there is nothing to be done but pray for rain.
30
S….
Please READ.
If we get fired out while they are small and relatively benign, they DON’T BECOME unmanageable.
How often do I have to repeat this.?
Extreme fire weather does not continue for weeks at a time. The worst days are typically the result of fronts moving across the State… and they usually occur at intervals of 4-8 days. In between, the weather and fire behaviour is often more moderate
But when – as is the case now – the fire perimeter is measured in hundreds of kilometres, it is almost impossible to get enough tankers and dozers to consolidate those lines before the next front arrives.
Hence the emphasis on having more-existing control lines, good access and getting the fires out before they get too big to handle.
81
Where were you on Feb 7 2009? Melbourne had a temp of 46.4 and winds ( from the Northeast ) up to 100 kmh. The Kilmore East fire was uncontrollable before it was even reported. No human agency stood a chance in the face of that inferno, which occurred when the already high wind speeds reached 125 kmh. This fire front arrived at Flowerdale five hours later. This fire was only one of about 15 that burned out of control for some weeks, and was only contained around three weeks later, coincidentally on Friday the 27th, the same day my own house caught fire. It merged with the Murrindindi Mill fire and devastated the Kinglake, Whittlesea and Marysville areas, where most of the fatalities occurred, the front arriving so quickly that people were trapped before they knew the fire was coming.
On Black Saturday I listened on my CFA scanner to VicFire being hours behind events. I am not condemning them, they did the best they could in impossible circumstances, as did all the CFA personnel. But they had no hope. The Nazis coined the term “blitzkrieg”. I can think of no better term to describe that day, except the fires moved faster than the Wehrmacht did.
I threw out my CFA scanner. I never want to listen to that again. The “Mayday. Mayday. Mayday.” call from the CFA truck trapped on the St Andrews/Kinglake road still sticks with me to this day.
There was nothing ” small and relatively benign” about any thing that happened that day, or the weeks that followed. It was a nightmare.
71
Once again I refer you to Feb 2009. Extreme bushfire conditions prevailed in Victoria from January 28 until March 3. Rather more than “4-8 days”.
61
Yes we certainly can control and prevent fires far better with more resources and better land management but my point is there will always be big fires that will be impossible to stop once they take hold, either expectantly or because the environmental conditions at the time are such that there is simply nothing we can do. That is reality.
21
Why a red thumb for this? Only those who haven’t been through it could disagree. Bushfires, real ones, are beyond our comprehension, let alone our control.Rather like climate, as it happens.
10
Don’t forget that all the grazed areas are now stripped of dry matter as starving cattle and sheep eat everything.
Also the Western division has a fire season not in Spring but Summer.
AS the drought continues in high Summer, look forward to fast moving dry grass fires in the West of NSW. If the dry continues the fires will surely continue in the West.
Look for them in the wildlife reserves.
Years ago I jackarooed on Moolbong and Bundarra in Hillston on the Trida Road,a 110,000 acre property. During my time we mopped up a large fire in the area. The fires were mainly grass, controlled by backburns.
It will be interesting to see how the now wildlife area is managed in the face of this fire season.
The area was a mecca for birds, snakes rabbits and feral pigs.
10
Trying hard to find your point. I’m not that smart… However, a grass fire in pasture is most certainly NOT a bushfire in a eucalypt forest. Nothing is.
00
With reference to Jo’s NSW map, RHS (right hand side).
Here’s a satellite photo showing just the top right fire burn area between Norooma to Nowra. You can see the two fire fronts colliding together.
https://scitechdaily.com/images/Smoke-and-Flames-in-Australia.jpg
20
And two years of VERY dry conditions.
After a generally increasing rainfall trend, these areas have been hit by 2 years of very dry conditions.
This has created what is basically bonfire type conditions.
A cycle of wet dry is not climate change, it is climate normal for Australia.
I have asked the resident AGW operatives how human released CO2 can cause a generally increasing rainfall then 2 years of very dry,
… but, as is always the case, have received ZERO evidence that human released CO2 has anything to do with it.
141
Since Australia has not experienced an above 50 degree temperature for 20 odd years adds another kick in the rear end for propagators of lies.
51
Oh we have been copping a bit of rain lately(storms) with over 50 mm during the last week. Not general soaking rain but the medium term forecast for further falls in coming weeks. Hopefully we have entered into better times after this most horrid of droughts.
40
Raining here in Newcastle. 🙂
Hopefully we get a good “soaking-in” pattern for a couple of weeks.
70
I honestly think you could take a CO2 fire extinguisher to a fire, put it out and Greta would be astounded that the fire didn’t get bigger as you hosed it with CO2.
10
In the face of great adversity, Australia once again proves it is a great country:
Australian Navy Delivers 800 Gallons of Emergency Beer to Bushfire-Hit Town
https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2020/01/10/australian-navy-delivers-800-gallons-of-emergency-beer-to-bushfire-hit-town/
70
That would keep me happy for a few days .
20
Depending on the quality. Could be low alcohol stuff.
10
If it was that famous queensland beer, you could use it to put out the fire….. 🙂
60
What has the fire done to you to deserve such punishment.
30
You mean the one that Queenslanders cannot spell?
20
>> Where is the main Key Performance Indicator?
If they close all the coal fired power stations, what is the expected % reduction in bushfires and bushfire severity next year, and by when can we see evidence it is working?
It is obvious in 2020 no amount of closed coal/renewable energy has prevented any bushfires. Anywhere …
“Victoria’s state Labor government will sign off on deep new emission cut targets by the end of Australia’s horror bushfire summer, with potential reductions of up to 40 per cent likely to put pressure on the state’s ageing coal-fired power plants.
Greg Combet, says the severity and the extent of the bushfires has sharpened the national focus on [global warming] and called on some politicians to “stop denying the science”.
The former union leader told The Age that the “empirical data is undeniable” that the extent of the bushfires were linked to the warmer and drier conditions caused by [global warming].
Victoria set to lead the way as Andrews eyes deepest carbon cuts yet
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/climate-andrews-eyes-deepest-carbon-cuts-yet-20200109-p53q4f.html
There is no KPI because carbon (sic) induced fires are not where the heat is, they’re where the fuel is.
80
warmer and drier condition.. ???
No warming above Australia this century
Annual Rainfall has been increasing up until the last 2-3 years.
CO2 cannot have caused this NORMAL pattern of Australian WEATHER
101
Correct. There is NO correlation between Australia’s dry years and the minor steady warming.
61
Jo, thanks for keeping on plugging the common sense about this fire season.
We have an additional issue in some areas caused by RFS Fire Control. For those who don’t know, NSW is broken into many regions that have their own Fire Control who direct trucks and other resources like aircraft, food, bull-dozers etc. Unfortunately, it is not possible for the “white-shirts” in air conditioned offices to be up to date with ground conditions. Typically in the Blue Mtn we received instructions from Wilberforce Fire Control long after they became critical and the public were texted warnings about an impending fire front arriving AFTER the fire front had arrived.
In my brigade we have nick-names for some of the white-shirts. One is “Cock-head 2.0” and another is a real problem and known as “Cock-head 3.0”. We’d function so much better if our 3 local brigade captains teamed up to run the fire ground. This particular season the fires have been fast and unpredictable so the fire brigades’ delayed response-times have guaranteed disasters.
160
CH 2.0 & CH 3.0 are no better than Arsonists, then.
In Stalin’s day, they would have been shot.
That’s the problem with Democracy, it doesn’t work for the Man In The Street.
The only systems that have been proven to work are Monarchy or a Republic with Limited Suffrage.
21
Even the politicians should understand this very simple observation and the alarmists will find it hard to spin out of it.
40
Since you posted this and it was off topic for this post…but I cannot find a thing on this..any links/paper name etc would be appreciated..
10
I’m assuming this is it:
Nature
Published: 08 January 2020
Ocean acidification does not impair the behaviour of coral reef fishes
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1903-y
30
“Ocean acidification ????”
What lowering of ocean pH are they talking about ????
Graph of ALL ocean surface pH reading since 1900
71
As soon as I read “ocean acidification ” or my favourite “becoming more acidic” I usually stop reading knowing the author or warmists alamist is talking rubbish .
111
And there was more at link posted by mem at #25:
“The paper by Timothy Clark, Graham Raby, Dominique Roche, Sandra Binning, Ben Speers-Roesch, Frederik Jutfelt and Josefin Sundin (Clark et al., 2020) is a magnificent example of a comprehensive and very brave scientific replication study. The 7 scientists repeated experiments documented in eight previous studies on the effect of climate change on coral reef fish to see if they were correct.
Clark et al. (2020) found 100% replication failure. None of the findings of the original eight studies were found to be correct.
All the erroneous studies were done by scientists from James Cook Universities highly prestigious Coral Reef Centre. They were published in high profile journals, and attracted considerable media attention.”
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2020/01/10/peter-ridd-scientific-misconduct-at-james-cook-university-confirms-my-worst-fears/#more-42995
60
Australian Wildfires Caused by Humans Not Climate Change
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/australian-wildfires-were-caused-by-humans-not-climate-change
41
‘Further, any systematic climate change signal in Australian (and Californian) precipitation will be very hard to detect thanks to huge year-to-year variation.’ Cool!!! Wait to you hear the warmists saying ‘but it’s a trend’.
30
There has been a lot of fuss about the number of arsonists and whether they are material to the number and spread of forestry last month or two
I tried to delve back before the current hysteria and came across a report authorised by the Australian govt and compiled by the bushfire cooperative research centre over a 5 year period.
The report was issued in July 2011 under “fire notes issue63”
The report claims there were up to 18000 bushfires identified as suspicious each year which was around a third of all recorded bushfires.
I find this number to be astonishing and if true puts into context the numbers of likely arsonists in the current bout of bushfires.
presumably this 18000 figure must be wrong?
110
The arsonists in the fire at Mt Tomah/Berambing/Bilpin were the Katoomba RSF Fire Control. Costs are over 20 million so far.
60
tonyb said:
Dunno.
I find it hard to believe that any major bushfire anywhere at any time was ever caused by a
lightning strike, though.
And the Bush doesn’t go setting itself on fire, Genesis apart.
So, apart from instances of carelessness, the rest must be Arsonists.
32
HB.
You wouldn’t find it hard to believe that lightning could start fires if you’d spent as much time chasing fires from this cause as I have.
I have both seen it happen and experienced the results when an active dry front came through.
As for claiming that “the bush doesn’t set itself on fire”…. why ever would it not? The bush is not a person with moral views or an objective measurement of costs and benefits. Nature does what nature does.
64
Peter W:
1. Are you claiming to have ”chased” a Major Bushfire that was caused by a lightning strike?
2. Are you claiming that the Bush can det itself on fire?
It appears that way.
02
??
01
The extent of the fires this year have caused a drain on resources and city fire crews have been seconded to rural areas but they do not have bush-fire experience. We’d allocate a truck to an orchard property and they’d only defend the actual house while the orchard, sheds and machinery burned to the ground. Then they’d leave without radioing-in to report on the situation. The general drift of bush-fire work is to stop the spread of fire to the next property and report back but most city crews drove away leaving the situation worse than they found it without letting us know. Some turned up and refused to get out of their vehicles. In my case they physically restrained me from protecting my builder’s shed and tools. I’d just got off the Bilpin truck and was in full yellows and had a comprehensive sprinkler and hose system with enough water to refill a Cat 1 tanker 10X. Had they not showed up I’d still have my shed and my means of earning a living. They’ve set me back 20 years which at 60 is a major problem.
We have down-to-earth plumbers, builders, orchardists, irrigation people as crew-leaders and they all report similar stories and are baffled by the behaviour of city crews.
170
Way back in BC I was listening to some local volunteers recounting tales of city brigades sent out to a just contained remote rural fire.
That included the question of “Where is the nearest hydrant we can fill at”?
90
John PAK, I’m so sorry to hear that. That sort of ineptitude is appalling.
110
That is terrible.
I would be fuming.
Its bad enough to be battling the fire but to have that fight as well must have been mind blowing.
80
Yes, Annie and George, it’s hard to comprehend.
I had a rock hammer for a Kubota excavator lying on a pile of planks. A spot fire started which a child with a watering can could have dealt with but they just stood there cuddling their hoses doing nothing. Twice I told them to “Put it out” but the hydraulic hoses burned beyond repair the second time.
What is the point of being a fire crew if you sit around watching a fire? It feels like I’m having a bad dream.
I guess some people really are stupid.
100
No good these city firefighters being reactive in those situations. Sorry about your predicament mate. This whole bushfire thing needs proactive and preventative action. Unfortunately a royal commission will miss the mark well wide when it comes to common sense.
60
Are you in Victoria, John? I am, and I most certainly don’t want the MFB coming here into CFA territory.
10
I live in Berambing, Blue Mtns.
Part of the problem is the law during a Section 44 Emergency. The fire crews have legal right to tell property owners what to do, -even if the crews are clueless idiots.
00
Jon Pak
Which “City fire crews” are you making an allegation, that “they do not have bush-fire experience”?
11
It is a very broad brush you use John PAk.
12
In Moderation again. Please don’t close me down.
I would like to be able to respond to JPAK.
I am a professional firefighter that has 27 years experience. I have attended bushfires all through my career trying to save lives, property flora and fauna. I am based in outer Sydney.
I have attended hundreds of scrub or bush fires.
Some of the major bushfire incidents I attended:
I was hospitalised in 1994 with another firefighter SW, after saving 12 houses in Sutherland due to a bushfire.
I was at Como Jannali 1994. 104 houses lost. A suburb saved. A life Lost. Due to a bushfire
Maininbar 1993, 3 houses lost, due to a bushfire.
Royal National Park destroyed 1994, due to a bushfire.
Menai/Engadine 1996, Bushfire
2001 Bushfires,
2003 Canberra bushfires. etc.
and so on to today
I have written reports to the NSW State Coroner re bushfires attended due to my service.
It is very surprising to some, that I and others, may have decades of experience in fighting bushfires even though we are part of a professional fire service.. or as some call us a “city fire crew.”
John PAK has made a sweeping statement that infers that I have no bush fire experience because I am a “city fire crew” member.
I disagree with him.
I just want people to be informed before statements are made that may disrespect the professional integrity of every “city fire crew” member.
Fire knows no boundaries.. City, Town or Rural we stand side by side.
and if a “city fire crew” pumper when full has 1500 litres of water, in its tank. And no town supply or sws.. guess what happens. Triage. They will try to protect the most valuable assets.
You may have neighbours nearby that have their lives and a home at risk. Is your chicken coop, orchard or shed more important than their home or lives?
The “city fire crew” will be on the fire ground for hours with a very limited amount of water. They do not carry a swimming pool in the back of their pumper to extinguish everything, They have a very limited chance of water re-supply.
Quote from John PAK, “We’d allocate a truck to an orchard property and they’d only defend the actual house while the orchard, sheds and machinery burned to the ground”.
In reply I state.
To extinguish an orchard fire with 1500 litres of water is ludicrous, cannot be done. With 1500 litres you may be able to subsequently save lives and 3 homes.
What is it you want saved? an orchard, a shed, chicken coop… or life and homes?
The truth needs to be told
21
I have no wish to denigrate you, and I applaud your service. I also have no working knowledge of the structure of NSW’s fire services. Here in Victoria it is very clear. We have a “professional” service known as the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, which, as the name suggests, responds to fires, and other things such as MVAs in the metro area. This brigade is highly unionised, and works to clear rules ( I make no comment as to whether this is either good or bad ). Then we have the mostly volunteer service known as the Country Fire Authority, which responds everywhere else in Victoria. Even major satellite cities such as Geelong and Bendigo rely on the CFA ( i imagine that you know all this ). There is a clear line, which can be easily found in the Melway street directory. where the demarcation is. The MFB will , on occasion, have to deal with grass fires, but there is very little “bush” inside their boundary. The CFA, on the other hand, has to deal with urban, industrial, office, pastoral, grassland and wild bush, not to mention timber plantations including massive pine forests, one of which was responsible for the massive increase in the conflagration seen in the Kilmore East fire in 2009.
The above is why I asked John if he was in Victoria. The two fire services here are chalk and cheese, which is why most thinking Victorians ( are there any left? Well, apart from those here. ) resist Red Dan’s attempts to force the CFA into the UFU. To CFA members, what they do they do because they care. Not because they get paid to do it, because they don’t. In fact they usually lose money fighting fires. They fight them anyway. And they, like you, fight them well.
30
In Victoria the MFB has little training and basically zero experience with bushfire, just as the CFA has equally limited knowledge of 50 storey buildings.
40
I’ve just done an all-nighter nursing a fire along my completely neglected boundary (with forestry). The cavalry have arrived and I’m going to bed. But before I go…
This fire was caused by arsonists who are firebugs or firebugs who are arsonists. Take pick.
The temps were average, wind was nor’east, brisk, but typical for summer. Drought, obviously.
The other problem was fuel loads, apparent after the wind dropped. Huge fuel loads.
Fireys (brilliant, exhausted) informed me that fuel loads are through the roof all over the shop. The old winter burn-off is made fiendishly difficult, with requirements for excavation clearing so unrealistic it’s not worth trying to negotiate them. So burn.
It’s Agenda 21 for sure. They tell us, they show us. Do they need to draw pictures as well?
I’m off to bed. Stop globalism, duh.
250
Sady, Moso, we now need to physically remove fuel from the 100m around the edges of the bush. Winter burns are hazardous due to years of neglect and the bicentennial drought.
160
Mosomoso
Hope you keep safe from the fires.
See my comment at 15. Startled at the apparent number of suspicious fires. Are there really large numbers of people deliberately starting fires?
80
Further out I’d say it’s negligence or dry lightning strikes. In close to town it’s certain kids. You can tell from where they start.
120
Sounds like you need something like this guy in Queensland got.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKCPhCc2z44&t=0s
Firebreak and controlled burn.
He was happy.
40
Oh Moso, that’s horrible.
50
Mosomoso said:
A firebug is an arsonist, but an Arsonist isn’t necessarily a Firebug.
Case in point: Winston Churchill formed the Soecial Operations Executive during WW2
and gave the leaders specific instructions, to wit, Set Europe Ablaze.
Now, these people were certainly Arsonists but extremely unlikely to also be Firebugs.
Agenda 21, eh?
But absolutely definitely no Arsonists involved, at all? Unless they’re Firebugs.
Got it.
03
I’m breaking cover, no longer having a job or clients, or even an opera to protect. I’m now on public record (The Australian letters, last two months)deploring the use of “climate change” to deflect from actual culpability for our forest and more general land mismanagement. Such deflection has been going on for much longer than most realise. I have family interest (and lives, and livelihoods) bound up in the alpine tourism industry, currently suffering a mortal blow, and the Zali Steggall climate push I find particularly galling.
Not everything I write gets published, including the following, but, for the record:
___________________
It’s ironic that a former Olympic alpine skier should be the one offering a private bill on climate change (“Independent MP Zali Steggall pushes forward with private bill on climate change” The Australian, 9/1), when climate change has long been cited as a reason for removal of alpine skiing, at least in Victoria.
On Mt Buffalo, the small family-based Cresta ski area, formerly Tatra Inn, was burnt in December 2006. Eminently defensible, the resort was intact when the then Department of Sustainability and Environment (now Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning–DELWP) ordered its crew to abandon it for a crew change an hour away in the valley.
On return of the next crew, the buildings were alight, and became a total loss (the crews were “untrained in structure fires” and there were gas bottles, so it was let burn).
Subsequently, the Victorian Government, without public consultation, removed all the (unburnt) ski lifts and wholly shut down alpine skiing, despite there being economically rational private proposals for its re-establishment. The only reason given was “climate change”.
Currently, major Victorian bushfires threaten both Mt Hotham and Falls Creek resorts. They are not under control, and while the current gentle weather means they’re not moving much, that will not last with the resumption of normal summer weather.
Despite near-misses in 2006, there has been no attempt of any significance to reduce fuel hazards in and about the resorts. Protection of these assets appear not to have even made it to the “not to be protected” lists (“Bushfires: Victoria wide of mark on target burn-offs in 2019” 9/1). Indeed the opposite has happened, for example a requirement to provide brush shelter for Leadbeater’s Possum, among others, rather than grassed ski runs, even though the resorts are not on National Park land.
In theory, resort management is vested in the Alpine Resorts Commission. In practice, the Alpine Resorts commission is under the direction of DELWP and the resorts subjected to strictures resulting from being completely surrounded by the Alpine National Park.
One cannot help but wonder if influential segments of the DELWP, not to mention their supposed political masters, are hoping for a repeat of the “Act of God” that removed alpine skiing from Mt Buffalo.
150
Anything the members of the occult climate change religion can do to remove human activity from wilderness areas via UN Agenda 21 and Rewilding, they will do.
The plan as i undesrand it, is to remove human activity from 90% of all land area afross the planet.
The plan appears to be to let fuel build up, cause huge fires. Then its possible they will say the land needs to be locked up “temporarily” to heal, but if course its never reopened…..job done.
These people work through incremental creeping activity, frog in a pot of water style. They cannot be trusted.
101
Yep. The bad news is that our aspiring masters, the cathedral burners, despite their enormous resources, energy and persistence, are just creepy people staving off boredom and inadequacy.
The worse news it that they bungle as they go. Their goals of control, centralisation and surveillance may be achieved…but none of it will work properly. Examples are their arranged shooting and terror events, which are totally botched and ridiculous, requiring all sorts of contortions by the refuse media to cover the howlers and blunders.
Stop ’em now. Stop globalism. Do tradition, family, privacy, property. And do coal.
51
Tim Fatchen:
It looks like The Australian used you while your commenting supported The Narrative,
but now that you’ve gone slightly off the reservation, the Murdoch Press have banished your
comments to Siberia.
Don’t take this personally, but you’d need a heart of stone not to laugh.
30
Uh oh….WA load shedding….
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/major-power-outage-across-perth-kalgoorlie-and-geraldton-from-load-shedding-event/ar-BBYP6ij?li=AAgfYrC&ocid=mailsignout
“About 100,000 homes and businesses lost power across Perth, Kalgoorlie and Geraldton tonight after a generator failed and Western Power began “load shedding” — otherwise known as a rolling blackout — to prevent further damage to the network.
“Suburbs across inner and greater metropolitan Perth have been affected.
“Western Power said the event was triggered by a loss of generation from a generator based in Kwinana, which “triggered safety measures within the network to activate and match available load to the demand of our customers”.
“”There is no physical damage to the network which means that restoration will be quick once we have worked with AEMO (the Australian Energy Market Operator) to formulate a dispatch plan for the generation to restore frequency balance through the grid,” a statement from Western Power said.
30
Unusual and fairly major – 320 MW of gas combined cycle tripped out. Apparently frequency was restored in 8 mins, so don’t know why the rolling blackouts were required. Perhaps the gas peaking units weren’t brought online fast enough.
30
A good little clip giving another reason for the fires
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_tn8f0uaB4&feature=youtu.be
20
Connecting increased bushfires with climate change is ludicrous.
Any drop in the annual rainfall and dangerous fuel levels quickly drop off, like most of inland Australia.
So they would have to show that there is just as much annual rain, but that the droughts are more extreme, and it is ridiculous for them to say that their modelling can demonstrate this.
60
The LNP in NSW has had 9 years in which to reduce fuel loads, but thanks to denialism, they have done less than nothing. This is not to say that any amount of reduction would have an impact on the current fires, but at least it would have shown a commitment.
Then LNP in Canberra has had 7 years in which to address problems/set guidelines/provide funding. Again they, in the depths of their denial, have done nothing.
As one commentator said, when John Howard intervened after the Port Arthur massacre, he did so over states rights. The same commentator also said that there will be an avalanche of legal challanges which will make the payouts after the last major Victorian fire look like pocket change.
This is all a result of not listening to experts.
415
you’ve got the cart before the horse here.
they haven’t reduced fuel loads because (1) they don’t want to clean out their precious carbon sinks and so release the evil co2; (2) they think reducing fuel loads will negatively impact on native flora and fauna (never mind what a high fuel fire will do).
au contraire: “Fires are not where the heat is, they’re where the fuel is”.
151
Accidental green thumb there Peter…it’s all been going on for years and the bad situation here in Victoria has taken place under Labour. Give yourself another red and discount the green.
71
I don’t really give a flying about thumbs
215
…or about facts!
152
Too right
82
Mee Too.
63
Just as well, eh?
91
Do we have an award for comment of the week? Wether yea or nay, I nominate this one. Priceless, Annie.
00
LOCAL COUNCILS are mostly run by Greenies
They even brag about that fact.
172
State and Federal have the responsibility not the local councils
Can you supply a list of “green” councils in the regions? I accept that the inner city LGA’s have a higher green component – and they are not having any fires.
413
Wrong on both accounts, wh doesn’t that surprise me
Local councils are responsible for regulating fuel reduction burns in their region
Greens and the green agenda have a stranglehold over many councils.
But you know that, don’t you. 😉
142
There is a ‘given definition’ for know, Andy. There’s the one in the dictionary, and then there’s the one in the manifesto.
00
Here’s one where the Greens guy apparently did the right thing.
https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/i-m-a-greens-minister-and-ordered-hazard-reduction-burning-20200109-p53q3h.html
So next unanswered questions are whether that reduction area was enough and how many other councils do sufficient reductions.
00
Lismore council .. declares climate emergency
mid-coast council .. declares climate emergency
port macquarie.. nearly, lots of lobbying by greenie movement
Newcastle council.. declares climate emergency
Eurobodalla council… declare climate emergency
Bega council.. declares climate emergency
So basically the whole eastern coast** of NSW has been captured by the greenie “climate change” scam.
So you can bet they have been deploying anti-burn-off regulations with vigor.
**There could be others because I couldn’t be bothered doing a wider search, haven’t checked Victoria.
141
interesting comments on one of sites I visited
At least some people see the pointless “virtue signalling” in this sort of declaration.
111
Good extracts.
60
None of them have green members as councillors – tripe again
211
Proven WRONG
..you double down as always.
Stop being so childish.
52
Fitz are you saying no greens are councillors in areas where fire has been worse from lack of fuel reduction or started .
And no bureaucrats from state agencies responsible for fuel management are greens either ?
Quite the claim !
71
Well 2 years later there is a lot of “community engagement”.
60
That kind of sweeping statement is very risky, since it only takes one counterexample to disprove it.
I promise I only checked one of the councils in that list, I picked at random the one in the middle of the list, Newcastle, and decided to check that.
Go to their web site, click the Councillors list, then bam!, right there on the first page for Ward 1 is Councillor John Mackenzie (Greens). (Also perhaps unsurprisingly, the ALP outnumbers Liberal councillors 6 to 1 in Newcastle.)
I swear this is the first and only one I checked.
Did I just get really lucky? Or might we find more Green organisms if we keep digging?
In fairness he is the only Green in that council and they were picked by the inner city Ward 1, not the bushland Ward 4. Not clear what power that gives the Green over bushland management issues, if any. So AndyG55 should be more specific about the number of Greens across Local Government Areas who can control decisions about majority bushland wards, not just the concrete jungle where they can be elected purely on social issues.
41
Plenty of councils do, including the Mayor of the burnt-out Glen Innes district, an avowed Green.
“Our 5 mayors and 56 councillors are working for communities across NSW.”
“Right now in NSW, we have 56 Greens councillors from Tweed to Albury leading action on climate change in their communities. They’re currently doing more to combat climate change than both the state and federal governments put together.
That’s why we need your help to get our message to the people ahead of the 2020 local government elections. Together, we will get more Greens on councils across the State. More Greens = more action on climate.”
https://greensoncouncil.org.au/
50
Lak Mac.
Just drive through Tomaree peninsula during a bush fire, as occurred about a year ago and see how many roads are blocked because of council “greenery”.
Especially those running N _ S across the pen.
So that’s Port Steven and NovoCastria has beautiful avenues with trees reaching in from each side and kissing directly over the centre line.
Enough endangerment there to start a lot of court cases after the next Big fires.
KK
60
Those Councils,eh, Keith.
Given the choice between Sensible Street and Danger Avenue, they
take the wrong turn every time.
It’s almost like [gasp] there’s a pattern happening, but no one’s noticing.
10
KK, in Kinglake 2009 it was found that not only had the council placed locked gates on a number of what used to be roads, they had dumped massive boulders to catch the pesky people who might take umbrage and cut the locks. They discovered that this practice works, sadly at the cost of a number of lives. The practice ( can we still call it that? I doubt they are still practising, they have perfected what is tantamount to murder. ) continues today. Various RCs have denounced the practice, but who cares? Gotta stop those 4WD people having fun.
00
All councils are green, all government departments are green, the Coalition is green, Labor is green, the Greens are green. Corporations – when you can tell them apart from the state – are green. And is the media ever green! Something none of them are is conservationist. Remember conservation? We had that before Agenda 21 and rule by greenoid creepies. Just so people know…
Hot burns are Agenda 21, winter burn-offs are conservation.
Enough tricksiness over whether green = The Greens. It’s a verbal stunt. GeeUp stuff.
101
Enough tricksiness over whether green = The Greens. It’s a verbal stunt.
Its basically just juvenile pettiness to try to self-rationalise the damage done by his beloved greenie style agenda.
The only person he is fooling is himself
61
Slightly anecdotal, but it was reported than one resident in Kinglake was fined something in the order of $100,000 for removing trees and clearing fuel load near his house against the Green policies of the Murrindindi Council prior to Black Saturday. His was one of the few that survived.
50
The Black Saturday fires killed 173 Victorians, while hospital emergency care was delivered to more than 800 others. The fires destroyed 2133 houses and burnt hundreds of thousands of hectares.
The Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission held after Black Saturday, heard that no large-scale fuel reduction burns had been conducted in areas where the two most deadly Black Saturday fires, the Kilmore East and Murrindindi bushfires, gathered force in the first hours after they ignited.
40
Precisely. Just like the previous RCs, which were also ignored.
00
read my comment at 7.1.2.1
Fuel reduction was the only thing. Prevention, in this case, is far better than cure, because there is no cure.
00
“This is all a result of not listening to experts.”
You mean the experts that have continually called for much higher winter burns etc
The things that are blocked by local green-run councils and green tape !!
I agree that RF, NPWS etc should have much higher funding directed particularly at fuel-load suppression.
It could come from cutting the ABC budget to sensible levels.
121
Andy, if all the ABCCCC staff who need to be made redundant were given the task of clearing excess undergrowth from the first mile of bush adjacent to homes, farms and businesses, they could be given choices to make.
Give each RedAbccc a box of matches and a machete and one hectare of land to clear.
Initially they may use the machete, but if soc sec money was dependent on clearing their allocation in a week, how long might it be before the matches became the most important thing in their life?
Lantana can be so scratchy and bitou has too much give to cut easily.
KK
50
You’d have to show them which end of the match to strike . . . then do it for them. They are ABC after all.
20
🙂 🙂
00
“‘Climate change doesn’t cause fires’ ”
Tom Marland
https://www.theland.com.au/story/6496579/climate-change-doesnt-cause-fires/
Tom’s family also run cattle and were burnt out last year.
91
and the Land also says
https://www.theland.com.au/story/6520462/hazard-reduction-debate-simply-frustrating/this/?fbclid=IwAR3oG7xtC_GI3XBCKQgNVst0qMVvtn_Kit3lYaddOUHKa2pjyNqjU3tYHuM
which one should I beleive?
48
O
I do suspect the cost of widespread controlled burning would be large.
Maybe best to concentrate on the bushland interface with buildings.
32
George…
You keep talking about the supposed high cost of fuel management burning.
When are you going to acknowledge the fact that our Western Australian friends do it effectively and ECONOMICALLY on a broad scale?
This has been pointed out so many times that you are starting to look disingenuous.
20
I quite ask myself the same question.
Maybe we need Brian Gilligan and David Packham debate the pros and cons fire hazard reduction on a media station that is balanced.
mmm.. maybe we just have to work it out ourselves.
50
The Land is fair and balanced.
00
That may be, they did publish both sides.
Not the right media for interactive debate.
10
I’m still hopeful Antony Catalano (ACM) will adopt a more Murdoch approach and critique the establishment. Dusting off the Fairfax cobwebs may take some time.
00
The one that suits your narrative, PF. Why change the habit of a lifetime?
30
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2020/01/10/peter-ridd-scientific-misconduct-at-james-cook-university-confirms-my-worst-fears/#more-42995
70
OUCH !!
JCU is looking really bad.
I hope more comes of this.
Maybe a good look at other Universities pushing the AGW scam !
81
The heading;
“Fires are not where the heat is, ”
but could possibly be rewritten as;
Electricity is not where the fire is.
Many regions are without electricity because wiring, supporting plant, transformers, and even generators such as Showy Hydro part 2 are not able to function in the firestorm.
This is despite the presence of the high profile Audrey Zibelman who was so successful in New York.
She was associated with a program that sounded good, in New York where there are 19 trees.
“The REV plan has been internationally recognised for successfully developing and implementing 21st century regulatory reform with a focus on lowering the cost of energy for consumers while building a more resilient and reliable power system.”
Contrary to the hype, we now have:
The second highest electricity costs in the world.
Highly unreliable supply.
A doomsday future power outlook, and
An electricity system that wilts and collapses at the first sign of fire.
It is a known fact that trees, scrub and power distribution systems don’t sit well together.
Why are we in this mess? Somebody should be accountable.
KK
30
woke up to ABC Brisbane actually playing this pro-coal song this morning!
VIDEO: 3m16s: April 2011: Bluegrass Today: The Roys – Coal Minin Man
A video for the debut single from The Roys new album has been released online. It’s for the song, Coal Minin’ Man, the opening track of their Lonesome Whistle album on Rural Rhythm.
Lee and Elaine Roy headed for Kentucky’s coal country for the shoot, and Elaine tells us that it helped capture the spirit they were after in this song.
“Getting to film this video on an actual coal mine and being around real coal miners was incredible. After seeing how hard they work every day I have a new found respect for them. They are the backbone of America.”
https://bluegrasstoday.com/the-roys-coal-minin-man/
then the news bulletin came on. in ABC fashion, it began with Albanese driving the political agenda, rather than the usual bushfire update, which was relegated to second place. too much good news – some rain, NSW-Vic mega fire didn’t eventuate, temps lower, less catastrophic fire situations, etc:
11 Jan: ABC: Labor’s Anthony Albanese suggests day of mourning to mark fires when Federal Parliament returns for 2020
By political reporter Matthew Doran
“As a sign of respect and remembrance, on the first sitting day of the year … I am requesting that you move a Motion of Condolence, seconded by me, for the bushfire victims and their families,” Mr Albanese wrote.
“This motion should also pay tribute to the bravery and extraordinary dedication of our volunteer firefighters, ADF personnel and emergency workers.”…
Under the proposal, MPs would be given the opportunity to add their thoughts on the matter, before Parliament adjourned for the rest of the day…
—
then I turned on Radio National. more to come.
30
This Albanese reptile has no shame.
30
RN’s Saturday Extra/Geraldine Doogue’s last Summer repeat as her long taxpayer-funded holiday soon ends.
great choice – post-climate-election-depression. IF ONLY there’d been public discussion about transition from coal prior to the election, the Coalition wouldn’t have won is the message. especially if JUST TRANSITION had been explained, as in Germany.
Briggs, in first half, says no to nuclear, Australia will be RE all the way. he can’t say if RE can employ all the miners, because there’s no data! Geraldine doesn’t know of any such data either. little problem of Australian miners being younger than in other countries (big paychecks), so early retirement not so simple.
Jotzo, second half, is as confident as ever. Australia is transitioning and manufacturing is not coming back; we will be dominated by service industries (in a region where billions of cheap service industry workers are already available).
ends with Geraldine saying she’ll have Jotzo back. must ramp up the conversation. she reads a couple of comments from listeners on ABC websites, RE must be done, and very quickly & perhaps does need govt intervention on a massive scale, as an example.
Geraldine: we get very thoughtful comments. clearly this is something that has you exercised. we will re-visit it again this year. hopefully, with some good developments. we do live in hope.
AUDIO: 25m28s: 11 Jan: ABC Saturday Extra: Coal transition
By Geraldine Doogue
This interview was first broadcast on the 8th of June, 2019.
If Australia is to move on from coal, how do we do it.
An obvious gap in the Federal Election debates was a comprehensive plan for an industry, and employment, to replace coal in the regions.
We look a what’s at stake for workers, and the broader economic challenges of transition.
Guests:
Chris Briggs, Research principal at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, at the University of Technology, Sydney.
Professor Frank Jotzo, Director of the Centre for Climate Economics and Policy, ANU Crawford School of Public Policy, A director of the Australian-German Energy Transition Hub
(not disclosed: Jotzo: Lead Author of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 6th and 5th Assessment Reports; senior advisor to Australia’s Garnaut Climate Change Review; advisor to Indonesia’s Minister of Finance, and to the World Bank; advised Australian state governments including the Australian Capital Territory, Victoria and South Australia as a member of the South Australian Low Carbon Economy Experts Panel; one of the top 50 global “influencers on renewables and future of energy”; has published more than 50 peer-reviewed journal articles as listed on Scopus, with over 3600 citations of his work listed on Google Scholar – Wikipedia; LinkedIn Education: Humboldt University of Berlin, Dipl Economics – 1993-1997; ANU: Master, Economics of Development, 1997-1998; Research Economist,
ABARE (The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences is a research organisation within the Australian Government Department of Agriculture and Water Resources)
1998 – 2002)
Below: Related: PIC ONLY
German coalminers marching to demand a fair energy transition policy. The needs of their region were being assessed by the visiting ‘coal commission’. Unlike Australia, there is bipartisan support for the commission and its project to move Germany towards a coal-free future.
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/saturdayextra/coal-transition/11784248
at LinkedIn, Jotzo references the following job:
Application deadline: 23 Dec 2019: HM Govt: FCO: View Vacancy – AUS (Canberra)- Climate Change Policy Adviser B3 (L)
The British Government is an inclusive and diversity-friendly employer. We value difference, promote equality and challenge discrimination, enhancing our organisational capability. We welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds. We do not discriminate on the basis of disability, race, colour, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, veteran status or other category protected by law. We promote family-friendly flexible working opportunities, where operational and security needs allow…
Job Description (Roles and Responsibilities): To contribute to British High Commission work to combat Climate Change, including diplomatic action to support delivery of the 26th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26) in December 2020…
To support the Australia Network Climate Change and Clean Growth Working Group and Whitehall colleagues on engagement with Australia, through reporting on developments in Australia and on Working Group activities…
To support the senior policy adviser to liaise with officials in the Australian Department of Environment and Energy and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on policy and operational elements of delivering COP26…
To assist the Australia Network Climate Change and Clean Growth Working Group engagement with non-Government actors, through stakeholder mapping and building working level contacts in sub-national authorities (cities, states), representatives of businesses, and civil society…
Start Date: 1 Feb 2019
Salary is at AU$73, 686 per annum (paid out monthly), plus 11% superannuation…
https://fco.tal.net/vx/mobile-0/appcentre-ext/brand-2/candidate/so/pm/4/pl/1/opp/11047-AUS-Canberra-Climate-Change-Policy-Adviser-B3-L/en-GB
10
more ABC love for Jotzo:
6 Jan: ABC: The bushfire crisis has given the Government a political ‘out’ to its climate change problem
By Frank Jotzo
It could be the turning point for Australia’s climate change politics and policy that is so deeply in the ditch.
It could allow Government politicians to discard their past destructive stance on climate change, and give the opposition an opportunity to look to the future.
So dear Prime Minister and Cabinet, please find it within yourselves to drop the old anti-climate change stance.
You have created the perception of being aloof, uncaring and ineffective on the fires…
And dear Labor, please be a strong and positive voice. You’ll need to get over the idea that the way to electoral salvation is by singing the praises of coal to differentiate from the Greens…
Under climate change, the conditions for catastrophic fires will likely be much more frequent — along with the conditions for drought, flooding and storms…
We should invest to transition Australia’s economy to a zero carbon powerhouse, and to build up renewables-based energy export industries…
The workers and architects of the carbon industries deserve respect. But the future for our economy lies in services, clean industries and smart agriculture.
This is all quite obvious to most of our young people, and that is where things will turn.
The pressure and that will come from the young generation will sweep the climate nay-saying aside…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-06/bushfires-climate-change-opportunity-to-change/11839530
20
Found on the net this morning.https://i.redd.it/rytkbbn1aj941.jpg
00
Total photoshopped garbage of course.
https://realclimatescience.com/2020/01/latest-fraud-from-climate-alarmists/
21
I have replied that the picture in question is a total fabrication.
However, because of the naught f***d word in the link, we will have to wait for a moderator to release it.
41
I’m a member of a few Kimberly face book pages and when that photo surfaced it showed burning where there was monsoonal downpours .
50
Here is what farmers from around Buchan in East Gippsland think of the what has happened:
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/pm/vic-farmers-bushfire-loss-result-lack-land-management-practices/11853240
( Only 15 homes lost there plus sheds & hay & cattle..Small beer in the eyes of the academics ! )
40
That is the image that has proven to be fake ?
20
Oops that was meant to be a reply to George.
00
Spoke to my brother on the phone this morning.
He works on a property in central Victoria, he is GW neutral.
In the conversation, he said, “I stop an arson attempt”.
I said, “What?”
This is what he told me.
While doing rounds of the property, he seen a ute parked on the side of the road.
Two young males, one in the drivers seat, the other in a gully.
Upon seeing my brother, the one in the gully, run from the gully and leaped in the back of the ute and laid down.
A bit strange, so he kept an eye on them.
After about 10 minutes they drove off.
He told the owner of the property, and thought no more of it.
That evening he received a call from the local police.
“Did you witness an arson attempt?”
“No”
“Did you see a vehicle parked on the side of the road …”
“Yes”
He gave them an account of what he saw.
He was told that there had been fires lit strategically in the area to cause maximum damage.
The owner of the property had checked were the ute had been parked and found news paper screwed and placed under dry tufts of grass.
You cannot know their agenda(21 2030?), but they defiantly wanted to create mayhem (to say the least) by setting alight tinder dry bush, with a massive fuel load and in the worst possible conditions (the perfect storm!).
To suggest there is a perverse ideological agenda behind their motivation, would have you accused of being a ‘Conspiracy theory nut’, but…
121
It’s not arson. It’s mass murder and should be prosecuted as such. In 2009 a man was charged with “arson causing death”, which seems lily livered to me. Call it what it is.
30
OT. Energy use in USA dominated by fossil fuel.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/01/10/energy-dominance-us-set-record-for-energy-consumption-in-2018/
Renewables some 12%, mostly biomass and hydro.
51
Who really gives a cold fart
About what Greenists in the UK & Europe
Think of PM Morrison ?
I don’t !
They are ignorant indoctrinated idiots.
But the Australian Brainwashing Corporation
Clearly thinks they are ‘eveh’ so important !
More grist in their propaganda drive !
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-11/scott-morrison-labelled-laughing-stock-europe-climate-protests/11859988
50
At the moment, Australia, UK, and US are thorns in the side of the “Big agenda”.
Instructions to the ‘believers’ – ridicule their leaders.
40
I noticed BoM said it was the driest year since 1902. 1902????!!!! I thought BoM only accepted measurements from 1910 onwards? Hoping to see the correct hottest day temp of 51.7C at Bourke returned to official records then! As if…
70
Only to be quoted if the slant is convenient?
30
Yes, it was the driest year since 1900, only 300 mm. But what the BOM didn’t say that there have been another five very dry years (around 250 mm) in that same time, and one of them was 1939, the year of Black Saturday. 1974 also was a dry year. Also what the BOM didn’t say is that there have been many wet years recently. At least the BOM was careful not to say that there is a correlation between warming and dry years.
31
Black Friday, perhaps?
00
wind energy giant, and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe (Wikipedia) bows to Greta and Lisa! hah. who are the puppets and who are the puppet-masters?
11 Jan: Bloomberg: German Greta Forces Siemens to Look at Coal Contracts
By Oliver Sachgau
German industrial icon was targeted over a contract with Adani
Protesters descended on 40 Siemens sites in Germany on Friday
Siemens AG is considering the future of a controversial contract to supply signaling systems to a new Australian coal mine under pressure from environmental activists, who staged German-wide protests against the company on Friday.
Chief Executive Officer Joe Kaeser met with Fridays for Future activist Luisa Neubauer in Munich, and the company plans to announce a decision by Monday…
With large-scale bush fires in Australia gaining worldwide attention, pressure on Siemens intensified in recent weeks, prompting CEO Kaeser to say on Twitter that he is taking the concerns “seriously” and would review the contract…
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-10/siemens-mulls-exit-from-australian-coal-contract-on-greta-effect
20
My understanding is Luisa Neubauer is Greta’s handler. Usually not far away from Greta
40
***and the temperature would have been?
5 Aug 2019: Greenpeace: Massive forest fires in Siberia is a climate emergency
A Greenpeace Russia team is documenting wildfires in the Taiga forest, in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia…
Since the ***beginning of the year a total of 13.1 million hectares has burned…
https://www.greenpeace.org/international/press-release/23660/massive-forest-fires-in-siberia-is-a-climate-emergency/
PICS/VIDEO: 28 Feb 2019: RT: Trans-Siberian train narrowly escapes inferno of raging wildfire
Dramatic footage posted on Youtube shows a train battling through a wall of fire and smoke in Russia’s Far East as wildfires reduced the region to a hellscape.
In the terrifying video captured by passengers, the flames are seen coming close to the train while the railway completely disappears in a cloud of smoke. The inferno is rapidly extending across the region and threatening to paralyze railway traffic, including the legendary Trans-Siberia railway connecting Moscow to Vladivostok…
VIDEO 47s
Emergency authorities announced a special firefighting regime north of the Russian Far East after the wildfires started earlier this year. The historically warm winter and lack of snow turned the region into a tinderbox. A personnel of more than 13,000 has been deployed for fire-fighting operations…
An area the size of Maui, the second-largest of the Hawaiian Islands, has been burned by massive wildfire in the last two months, according to the Federal Forestry Agency…
Meanwhile, strong winds and dry weather are compounding matters by bringing smoke from the neighboring northern regions of China, which are also battling with wildfires.
https://www.rt.com/russia/452645-russia-train-wildfire-inferno/
no sense it was odd for this time of year:
24 Apr 2019: Siberian Times: Tens of thousands of animals burned alive in raging wildfires in TransBaikal region
By The Siberian Times reporter
An outbreak of fires in the parched territory close to the borders of Mongolia and China was devastating.
Wildfires are an annual hazard for Siberia…
The fires were fuelled by strong winds…
The Investigative Committee has opened criminal cases into ‘negligence’ leading to the fires and losses…
Districts hit by the fires were Aginsky, Duldurginsky, Zaibaikalsky, Baleisky, Borzinsky, Alexandrovo-Zavodskoy, Ononsky, Priargunsky, Olovyanninsky, and Akshinsky…
A regional government source was cited by TASS on the cause of the fires.
’In two cases, the wildfires truly came from China and Mongolia,’ said the report.
‘The causes of two more fires were burning landfills.
‘Two fires started because of breaks in power lines and the subsequent short circuits.
‘In one settlement, residents threw smouldering ash from the furnace (igniting a fire).
https://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/tens-of-thousands-of-animals-burned-alive-in-raging-wildfires-in-transbaikal-region/
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of course, cold-climate wildfires are rarely reported by FakeNewsMSM, just as freak cold weather is ignored.
but you have to give it to Bloomberg for this spin. read all for the “experts” quotes:
1 Mar 2019: Bloomberg: Winter Heatwave in Europe Will Extend Into the Middle of March
Freak weather that unsettled energy markets and sparked wildfires adds to evidence of a shift in climate.
By William Wilkes and Jeremy Hodges
Europe’s freakishly warm weather is likely to extend into the middle of March and may be evidence that human activity like burning fossil fuels is shifting the climate.
That’s what scientists are saying after temperatures topped ***20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time during the winter in the U.K…
“Massive wildfires appear to be occurring more frequently as a result of climate change,” said Munich Re board member Torsten Jeworrek. The German reinsurance giant reported global losses from natural catastrophes hit $160 billion last year, some $20 billion above inflation-adjusted averages in the previous three decades. The 117 weather-related events in Europe was the highest since records began in 1980…
In Italy, Canadair firefighting planes on Wednesday morning were dumping water on forest fires raging over Tuscan hillsides after a prolonged dry spell. The fires prompted closure of the a highway linking central Italy to Austria, delaying road transport of goods…
A heatwave in the U.K. contributed to fires on Saddleworth Moor in the Pennine hills between Manchester and Leeds burning out of control Wednesday, with firefighters tackling blazes on crisp-dry moorlands typically covered with snow thirty years ago…
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-01/winter-heatwave-in-europe-will-extend-into-middle-of-march
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14 Mar 2019: Phys.org: Long, cold winter won’t affect fire season, says expert
by Bev Betkowski, University of Alberta
Alberta’s long, cold winter won’t do anything to dampen the 2019 wildfire season, but being extra careful when working and playing in the forests this spring could help, says a University of Alberta expert.
“We aren’t sure what’s coming this year,” said U of A wildland fire expert Mike Flannigan. “With the snow on the ground right now, it’s not going to be a problem for the next while, but we are expecting much warmer weather so the snow could disappear quickly and we might be into fire season quickly.”
Factors like the polar vortex that gripped Alberta this winter and snowfall levels have little impact year to year in uplands—heavily treed areas that make up about 80 per cent of Alberta’s forests.
“Regardless of how much rain you’ve had or how much snow is melted, if you get a week of hot, dry, windy weather you can have a raging inferno,” said Flannigan, who is director of Canada Wildfire…
May, not April, is the cruellest month
May is Alberta’s busiest month for wildfires, said Flannigan…
“No other province has May as its busiest fire season, and typically that’s when many of our most catastrophic fires have occurred, like the Horse River (Fort McMurray) fire in 2016 and the Slave Lake fire in 2011.”
The forests are most vulnerable to fire then thanks to a combination of three factors: plentiful dry vegetation that acts as fuel, human error or lightning strikes to spark a fire, and hot, dry winds to fan the flames…
More than 60 per cent of 2018’s 1,288 wildfires were caused by humans, according to Alberta Agriculture and Forestry, and they were preventable, Flannigan added…
https://phys.org/news/2019-03-cold-winter-wont-affect-season.html
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PICS: 8 Apr 2019: NASA Earth Observatory: A Fire Surrounded by Ice
On April 8, 2019, the Landsat 8 satellite acquired a scene of contrasts: a fire surrounded by ice.
Between chunks of frozen land and lakes in the Magadan Oblast district of Siberia, a fire burned and billowed smoke plumes that were visible from space…
Not much is known about the cause of the fire. Forest fires are common in this heavily forested region, and the season usually starts in April or May. Farmers also burn old crops to clear fields and replenish the soil with nutrients; such fires occasionally burn out of control. Land cover maps, however, show that this fire region is mainly comprised of shrublands, not croplands.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/144803/a-fire-surrounded-by-ice
20
By accident the ABC reports the truth !
The mayor Of KI thinks the fires are due to the fuel load,
NOT Climate Change !
Wow !
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-10/kangaroo-island-mayor-rebukes-barack-obama-bushfire-tweet/11858654
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I see the Twits responded predictably…
20
Yes but, ABC being sooooo balanced they had additional comments in the article.
Well Dr Close you want those that don’t agree with you to “sit these debates out” -Close down debate.
And a name caller, “is ‘foolish’ or ‘pathetic'” – you must have a PhD in politics.
Of course Obama, Aniston (Actress) and UN poster girl Thunberg would know much more about Australian bush fires than
CFS [fire] volunteer and chairman of the South Australian Country Fire Service board from 1995 to 2000.
How much time has Close spent getting her hands dirty fighting fires, probably no more than the typical green activist.
How about foolish and pathetic.
40
Aunty dearly wants a Royal Commission, bloated with ignorant confidence like the staff at the SMH.
‘Australia’s top scientists urge government to do more on global warming. The prestigious Australian Academy of Science said a better response was needed to the unprecedented bushfire crisis.’
20
both worth watching in full:
VIDEO: 10m: 10 Jan: Sky News: Chris Smith: Local council restrictions make prescribed burning ‘almost impossible’
Since the Royal Commission into the Black Saturday fires, only a third of the area earmarked for hazard reduction burns has been cleared and former CSIRO bushfire expert Phil Cheney says there have been “excuses… and Pseudo-science to justify this”.
An expert committee recommended eight percent of the burnable land in Victoria to be cleared, which was then reduced to five per cent and even this figure has been unachievable.
Mr Cheney told Sky News this was the “Inevitable result of the government’s abrogating [of] their responsibility to managing public lands” as he explained local government’s cannot “set a priority on what they want to manage the land for”.
In many of these local government areas the necessary prescribed burning has been “almost impossible” due to the council restrictions including “vegetation restriction orders”.
“We don’t have the roads or trails that are necessary to do prescribed burning in a scientific and proper manner”, Mr Cheney said.
“We’re starting so-far behind the eight-ball”
https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6121349634001
VIDEO: 11m+: 9 Jan: Sky News: Chris Smith: Volunteer firefighter calls for selective logging rights implementation
Volunteer firefighter and head of the Australian Forest Products Association Ross Hampton says it would be a “tragedy” if we don’t use the current bushfire crisis “to seriously rethink the way we manage our whole landscape”.
Mr Hampton is calling for selective logging rights which will ensure fuel loads are cleared from forests and national parks, while creating jobs in the manufacturing sector where the excess timber would be used.
He told Sky News “the world is moving towards using timber or fibre-based products instead of plastics or oils”.
“All around the world they are creating this whole new line of materials, and Australia isn’t doing it yet because we don’t have that material”.
“That’s why we are calling for a royal commission”.
https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6120924545001
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For the record
“Official Australian Disaster Resilience Knowledge Hub data – 1974/5 bushfire season v current situation”
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2020/01/official-australian-disaster-resilience-knowledge-hub-data-19745-bushfire-season-v-current-situation.html
20
Yesterday I was reading in one of this blog’s threads a comment referring to some professors who vaguely referred to “multiple studies” (which they did not specifically cite) showing that thinning forests generates a worse fire risk than leaving the fallen litter in place. Huh? I decided to have a think about why they would claim this, but today I can’t locate the comment in question.
There are two key phases involved in addressing this: ignition and post-ignition. To start a fire either a certain threshold temperature needs to be reached, or more commonly, sparks or embers need to blow in and land in a pile of new, dry fuel. This is equivalent to the traditional tinder box. But just because you have a fuel source does not mean that a fire will necessarily start.
If you gather some conventional tinder materials such as cat-tail, dried thin grass, dandelion heads pine needles or jute and the like, well dried and brittle, and put them in a fan-forced oven on a tray, then put the fan on high speed (roughly equivalent to winds between 5-8 km/h) and set the thermostat to a temperature between 45 (my lowest setting) and 65 C, the tinder does not auto-ignite despite there being plenty of oxygen available. The fire materials will not reach spontaneous ignition temperature; they require a spark, which is the secret that traditional indigenous people and outdoorsmen are aware of and have a mechanism (eg flint, bow-drill) to generate. Even a staple of fire makers, the char cloth, requires over 350 C to auto-ignite.
So then, the critical consideration for preventing a bushfire relates to the post-ignition phase since we cannot control whether sparks will arrive or not, be they generated by careless campers, arson or lightning.
In the post-igniton phase the most critical parameter is the amount of stored chemical bond energy in the dried bark, leaves, wood and other vegetation.
So it should be plain as a pikestaff that thinning the ground layer of accumulated fuel is the best and most effective method to limit the scope and damage of a bushfire.
Less stored energy means a fire may build to a manageable intensity in terms of megawatts per metre of fire front. Typically this would be under 5 megawatts/m. At such a temperature the fire front is able to pass through a zone without creating super-hot temperatures . The relatively cooler earth provides a temperature buffer and after the front has passed, most of the carbon-containing humus is still in place and provides a nutrient layer for regeneration after rain. The more joules of chemical bond energy in the cellulose and lignins, due to piles of years of fallen branches and bark, the longer the fire will remain super-intense at any given locus, possibly exceeding 50 megawatts per metre. This acts like a blast furnace on the ground, destroying the humus that has taken decades to accumulate, killing root-stocks and producing flames which may reach a hundred feet in height, thus igniting crowns, allowing trees to fall and thus add even more long-burning fuel to the ground; a positive feedback loop. Such fires also take a long time to burn out, and can provide embers and hot ash which can remain at very high temperatures for a long time.
Regarding wind velocity, there is an ideal speed for the lighting of any natural tinder. At the beginning of a fire, say by lightning strike, the wind acts to remove excess heat quickly and can possibly extinguish it. So the argument that thinning forest will make the situation worse because of less impedance to wind is flawed. High winds only worsen a fire front when the fire is well established and a lot of timber is already fiercely burning with an intense heat. Thus the flame-thrower effect. But that can be prevented by forest management. Even if not, when there is minimal forest litter there is a limit to how much heat energy can be produced from that quota of fuel lying about. This becomes the important rate-limiting step and the fire is constrained to be a low intensity fire that cannot produce high flames; it stays more or less at ground level, depending on the exact make-up and height of the flora in that region. It may still move at a fair lick, but won’t damage the ecosystem as much.
60
As I spent all last night stopping a fire from spotting across a track I learned a few things. The light materials, grass, leaf litter etc, burnt with a fierce heat that was capable of sending fire up the spout of a large and live tree. Yet to stop that fierce heat as it came to the track’s edge was simply a matter of spraying the material with a watering can. (Water was scarce last night and required walking back and forth from a house tank for small quantities only.)
Spraying burning timber was a waste of time, it was only worth spraying the light stuff, which actually burns with more ferocity. As soon as you spray it, the air temp plunges in that spot, and what was capable of burning out a big grey gum or fence post stops within seconds. Of course, this is only effective if you are doing it right on the edge of bare track, but the sudden lack of radiative heat really does reduce the chances of a spark getting across, which could happen if you let the fire walk itself out. There’s a lot of energy in a single dead gum leaf. It’s momentary, but some disasters only take a moment.
As to density of living timbers, when the wind is high density might help with some species if the ground rubbish has been controlled. But when the wind drops at night, space between is helpful. Really, it’s a matter of using observation and common sense rather than applying the “findings” of someone’s “study”. And it’s surprising where all such studies tend to lead these days. Or maybe not surprising.
50
Moso….
We’ve known for a long time that fire intensity is affected by type and arrangement of fuel, not just mass.
The fuels that we regard as particularly dangerous are elevated fine fuels
Fine, because they have maximum surface area per unit mass, hence they catch fire easily and combust rapidly. (They also dry rapidly in hot, dry conditions.)
Elevated, because they are pre-heated by any fire below, and air movement through them provides maximum oxygen
40
Most Aus bush sites where I have seen litter debris accumulating over years it has been of the type you describe – somewhat elevated (i.e. not compacted), fine to medium and of open network, yet with a substantial amount of lignin material to generate the fierce heat that Moso refers to above. As stated, grass fires can release a lot of calories very quickly too (high J/s) but it is transient. If there are enough grass or twigs igniting for a critical period of exposure then a weathered, dry fence post may be taken out, but I’d question whether that could be sufficient to set a living grey gum alight. I seem to recall seeing film of Savannah fires in Africa where the flames look pretty awesome, engulfing a tree for a bit, but then passing and leaving the tree perhaps leafless but with minor singes everywhere else.
I guess the point is that forests achieve a natural density that we just have to work with – likewise seasonal wind speeds will vary. Things we cannot control. But near to human settlements the debris can and should be cleared away by seasonal cool season burns, as among the various factors and influences, it is the most dangerous.
40
This site is flooded to the brim by very noisy right wing imbeciliosos. No wonder that half of Australia is burning. You all must be the quiet Australians who did elect this moronique coal lover?
[Max! is this how you behave when attending a dinner party at someone’s house? Where are your manners?]ED
17
I’ve done eleven days on fires so far, and in southern NSW, the major fires started a fortnight ago.
What have you done?
51
Ed, if this is the same Max that sniped in the comments section of the OZ you can forget manners.
21
Only “stupid” here comes from comments from the likes of you.
Half of Australia is NOT burning, and the part that is is mostly overgrown National Parks and State Forests.
As with all left wing whingers, your facts are actually NON-facts.
Ie.. you are STUPID.
12
The Elephant in the room is logging which prevents Crown Fires.
40
In 1939 fires crowned more than ten miles. Same in 2009. Just how much logging do you envisage? I’m not anti managed logging, BTW.
00
Logging does not prevent crown fires.
Fuel management – by whatever means – reduces crown fires.
Crown fires do not occur in the absence of intense fires ….. which in turn are caused by high fuel loads.
Unless you are claiming that every fire service and decades of research by the CSIRO, has got it wrong.
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There is no scientific evidence that humans can change the climate of a planet. Still the madness continues. It is not up to skeptics to prove that it can’t be done. Rather it is up to proponents to prove that it can be done – this hasn’t happened. Billions of dollars are being wasted on climate change for no result – it is absolutely scandalous. Every dollar spent on this nonsense is a dollar that could have gone into providing shelter for the homeless, food for the starving, better health care, better education etc. Governments need to think about this and stop caving in to climate change activists. Common sense must prevail over hysteria.
41
Indeed. But the Left won’t even listen to one of their own. And I’m only talking about the Hollywood dross, who have the knives out for Gervais for confronting them, and he is most certainly not of the right, or should that be Right. What hope do we have when it’s serious? Still, the tide MAY be turning, but they’ll fight like the cornered rats that they are.
00
IF Crown Fires are not prevented in Future all this money will be wasted.
10
Preventing crowning fires is most likely impossible, unless you cut down ALL eucalypts. Now, I’m no greenie, but even I would vehemently oppose such a policy..
Reducing fuel load, which reduces temperature and ferocity of fires ( which will have a major effect on a fires capacity to crown ), ensuring that maintenance of infrastructure, in particular electrical ( the Kilmore East fire was a result of felled power lines ), educating EVERYBODY about what is required on days of TFB ( slashing, chainsaws etc. ) vigilance ( Melbourne can field 100 police for a football game ), and some common sense for heaven’s sake, would be a good beginning. Voting out Greens would help as well..
At the risk of repeating myself, there was nothing anyone, save maybe God, could have done on Feb 7 2009. Unless of course we had cut down all the trees prior.
02
Crown fires are NOT inevitable in timbered country.
The fuel in them is far too dispersed to be self-sustaining in the absence of two things.
1. A fuel load high enough to pre-heat the canopy to the point that it is giving off flammable vapours.
2. What we refer to as “ladder” fuels. Those are fuels which extend high enough to carry flame into the canopy.
Most area burnt is not does not involve crown fire. Medium-intensity Fire May scorch or kill leaves in the canopy, but if they are still there, you have not had a crown fire. They may drop off later, but that doesn’t mean that you have had a crown fire.
Our WA friends burn around 8% of their public Jarrah and Karri forests annually. They do not have tree-killing crown fires. Nor did the aboriginals. Nor did the stockmen who followed their example. Nor do the thousands of grain farmers who burn stubbles under and around eucalyptus paddock trees every autumn.
20
Jarrah and Karri? Are you aware that the Victorian forests of Messmate and Mountain Ash give off vast amounts of highly volatile vapour? You can light this vapour, if the conditions are right, with a match. The explosive qualities of this vapour is feared by anyone who has ever experienced it. I have been into the VHC in winter, under feet of snow, and I can have a fire going in minutes, with soaking wet twigs, because eucalypt oil is one of natures most volatile fuels. Heat it to over 40 for days and you have a bomb that West Australians, and you apparently, cannot comprehend. Two or three hot days, with strong winds, in a Victorian forest and you are in a more dangerous place than you can imagine. Crowning, here, is the explosion of vast quantities of this vapour. It is widely documented, including in ALL RCs into Victorian bushfires, to be able to jump easily ten MILES. Unless you are willing to challenge these finding I don’t think you know what you are talking about when it comes to Victoria.
Stop applying your NSW institutionalised ignorance to something you know nothing about, and come down here and learn. We both stand to gain.
02
What does this have to do with Victoria, which , if not the worst, is amongst the worst bushfire prone places on Earth? You have simply NO idea.
02
I remember driving down from Canberra to Batemans Ray, regularly in summer.
The smell of eucalyptus oil was almost stifling at times.
A bit warmer, and a bit drier, I can only image what that would do in a bushfire situation. !
10
You both appear to be essentially on the same team but the information exchange doesn’t seem to reflect that.
Logically there’s likely to be a difference between the northern NSW fires regime and that of Victoria.
Temperature and, as you have pointed out, different species to deal with.
The real anger should be directed at the politicians, activists and public servants who have let everybody down by failing to plan and protect as would be reasonably expected.
They deserve serious condemnation.
KK
20
I’m not angry with PeterW, KK. As I said elsewhere in this thread, I applaud his service, but comparisons between Emu Plains and the Blue Mountain foothills and a huge forest in Gippsland don’t wash. Even the weather conditions are completely different. ALL major bushfire events here involve crowning, and opinions won’t change that.
I agree completely with your point about who deserves condemnation. I believe there should be a special place in hell for Green Councillors, and possibly those who elect them. The human toll in Victoria in 2009 was immense, and I believe that around 70% of that toll was a direct result of Green policies. Those policies remain largely unchanged today, RC findings notwithstanding, with fuel reduction largely banned ( habitat, doncha know ) and track closures rife.
Today is Jan 15. Victoria hasn’t really even entered its fire season. Where I live we have had mostly cool conditions and a decent amount of rain. Cool for the next week if the BOM can be believed about anything. But this can make things worse. There is growth, but my messmates are shedding leaves. Burning off is illegal now until probably April. Four days of northerlies and the place will be a tinderbox. The forests burned in 2009 have mostly regrown. the Dandenongs largely escaped 2009 so the undergrowth in places like Sherbrooke Forest, and places further afield such as the area between Healseville and Narbethong, and Beenak are at huge rixk if we do indeed get a period of hot northerlies.
In 2009 I stayed. If we get anything this year i’m off. As I’ve said elsewhere, unless you have seen something like Black Saturday first hand you really don’t know.
If I have seemed angry with PeterW I apologise. It was most certainly not my intention.
20
Thanks Greebo,
As to the last line, I’ve been there and done that, a little while back.
Several people on the blog have said that the best way of dealing with each area is to have locals make the decisions about preparation for the inevitable fires that will threaten.
While I have no time for either arm of politics the lab-green dominance of local government environmental action in Newcastle, Port Stephens and Lake Macquarie has left our city exposed.
Getting common sense back to work isn’t going to be easy.
KK
30
Reading a news item from our ABC they are making a big fuss about the fact that most of the fires are rumoured to be the work of arsonists and they refute this by saying that most of the acreage burnt ie the larger and uncontrolled fires were caused by lightning. I am a little perplexed why they think that by claiming that the worse fires were caused by lightning then somehow this means that climate change not arsonists are the cause. Are they arguing now that rising CO2 causes dangerous lightning strikes because I don’t see this spontaneous combustion being more prevalent anywhere else in the world and the only reason that lightning causes an issue is that there is plenty of fuel and the fuel is dry. Lightning has been responsible for igniting fires since before white man arrived in Australia and we’ve had drought conditions in Australia with great regularity . The fact is if the fires are perceived as being more fierce and harder to quell then the availability of fuel is the main cause and the reason for the cause is inadequate forest management. The argument about whether arsonists or lightning started the fires is a red herring and I think that the sensitivity they have shown to these arsonist claims makes me suspicious that even the ABC believes that the policies of local councils and governments in relation to forest and land management has been inadequate and they wish to deflect that obvious conclusion which is damning of their beloved Greens.
20
https://www.weaselzippers.us/441770-climate-experts-suggest-trump-was-right-when-he-blamed-californias-wildfires-on-land-management/
10
A reply to KK at 45.1.1.2.1
This is a great idea in rural and agricultural ares, where the continuity of family means that knowledge is passed down as if by osmosis. The trouble in Victoria is that so many communities within a two hour drive of Greater Melbourne have been overrun by well to do treechangers, most of them coming from places like North Fitzroy and Brunswick. They unfailingly vote Green and they unfailingly run for Council in order to impose their will on those whose life has been spent in the area. And they can unfailingly rely on their fellow lifestyle seekers to vote for them. Victoria is largely unique in this. It is easy to get acreage plots within commuting distance of say Epping or Dandenong or Lillydale ( old school spelling ), so that places like where Annie lives are at risk of this phenomenon. Rather like China usurping Tibet. Sydney, where I lived for some time, is largely spared this because of geography. I don’t say it doesn’t happen, but it is far more difficult to overrun Ku-Ring-Gai or Heathcote. Also, the bush itself is different, and when was the last time Sydney experiences 125 kmh northerly winds and 45+ temperature?
Agreed. Labor/Liberal these days are like the newly split halves of an amoeba. There is potential for difference in the future, but right now they are indistinguishable. Both kowtow to the real evil. The Greens are as evil as the Neo Nazis, except that nobody is going to vote for the NNs.
Here I have to get US political. I can not see any way out of this unless the US goes against the “Framers” and allow Trump a third term. Like him or loathe him, he is a circuit breaker, but his first term has been a norass of lunacy from the far left, and another four years is NOT enough to break the machine. The West largely follows the US, so we need the whole Trump thing to actually change things, and not just become a statistical blip.
10