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News The Australian Fires and Climate Change

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anthony

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Now, please do not repeat the mistakes made here: News - It really isn't and hasn't been the hottest anything, climate alarmism propaganda stoops to new lows, blaming Au fires on "Global warming" NOT TRUE

I get people want to discuss the Aussie fires in combination with global warming discussion.

We here in Australia are actually seeing a lot of propaganda spread about the fires. Our media shows it to us. It ranges from actual fire heat maps to the scope, size and damage done. There is a lot of misinformation Internationally.

Let me just say, there is damage done affecting hundreds, maybe thousands of rural Australians. What you say needs to take into account those people and their loss.

All nonsense will get deleted and action taken against those posting nonsense.

Is global warming responsible for the AU fires? Well... I don't think so. There is no evidence to support that. There are weather patterns going back hundreds of years. We have Nino and El Nino patterns. Yes, the earths temperatures have increased by around 1% I believe, no argument we humans have caused issues. I live in Melbourne, Victoria, and our temperatures are actually getting colder each year, with small bursts of hot days, a handful of chaotic heat days. We just had jumpers on yesterday, for the past two days, and Summer is half way through here.

We have a problem here with political correctness in our political camps, towards regular fuel reduction burning. The aboriginals have been doing this on their land for thousands of years, no issue. Even they have reached a point where they're now demanding their lands back because atleast they look after them by doing things like burning them regularly. Political correctness stopped much of it, thus causing years, decade or more, of vegetation / foliage building up as undergrowth. Combine this with a handful of bad days where its hot + windy, recipe for disaster. These fires continue to burn even though the temperatures cooled after the fact, even with rain, because the original conditions created were nightmarish.

Lightning has caused many fires, let alone some random ember / spark. There is no single cause for these fires. It is not one thing or the other. It is a combination, that the experts say is the issue.

There is a lot of misinformation about the fires here. Trolls are spreading it, celebs globally are reading some troll posted content and then perpetuating it as though truth.

Now - all those who jump on the climate change political bandwagon, making statements that Australia needs to change its climate footprint to reduce such fires in the future - you are so far off-base it isn't funny. Australia contributes approximately 1.3% of greenhouse gas emissions. Our countries population is smaller than the second largest state in America, Texas, yet both Australia and America as a whole, are nearly the same in land size.

China, America, Europe, India, and so on down the list to reach Australia, it is those countries that need to lower their footprints to make a global impact. Australia does not have the population size to implement radical change, as it would cause economic disaster. They're done it here in the past, and it caused a lot of economical issues, which is why some aspects got ripped out / cut back to be much more moderate.

Maybe if that occurs, maybe global rising temperature slows or declines. Lots of maybes'. Attempting to change a small population on a land mass similar to other entire continents, is just silly. This is some of the nonsense perpetuated globally by climate activists, celebs, media and so forth.

Fire experts here can not say whether hazard reduction burns would do much to curb such fires in the future, as the fire cause is usually done on one single hot day combined with wind. Everything after that is dealing with the issue after the cause. Commonsense says reduction burns should reduce intensity after the initial bad day or two of causation. There are lots of guesses, hypothesis, little fact. Fire is a beast.

Embers tend to perpetuate large scale fires. They travel long distances, land in something dry, and away goes another fire. You pull people from outskirt areas to fight a fire, embers are travelling over their head to those outlying areas, suddenly new fronts form and nobody is there to fight the new fire. Lots of problems.

Just remember -- don't post propaganda, and remember you are talking about things where people have lost lives and livelihoods, so emotions can be raw at present.
 
I totally agree with that opinion. I for my part do believe that there is most likely a global warming and that it might cause problems for humanity one day. I am following some people on twitter who post about it but I was shocked how some people on Twitter just exploit this catastrophe to push their political agenda. They actually seem to be happy that this happened as if they had been waiting for it... and post the most shocking and respecters photos... and... well... I am sort of shocked by their behaviour.
 
Came across this while browsing my research literature online:
A study, published online on March 4, 2020, that "reveals the complexity of the 2019/20 bushfire event, with some, but not all drivers showing an imprint of anthropogenic climate change"

You can download the full study via this link
Or a possibly easier-to-digest summary of the study, via sciencenews.org
 
Read the points on that, and concluded its total garbage. They looked at weather patterns, heat and drought, rain, from 1900. Nowhere did the points highlight the stupidity of politicians no longer allowing what has happened since 1900, being regular annual reduction burning due to the silly Green party and all their bullshit "save the earth" nonsense they hype.

Yes, there are problems. No disagreement here. What I don't like is that these parties take a problem, create a story and focus much larger or skewed than the issue, then market it for maximum impact. Once done, they attribute anything they can upon that impacted outcome to further their agenda.

The study above showed a change of 1 degree, of which could not conclude specifically to the variation in weather change. Atleast they didn't discard that point, they just buried it hoping it wouldn't be focused upon.

Reduce the lands impact to rage, and suddenly, it cannot rage - regardless of what nature itself does.

Fire requires three things - fuel, oxygen and ignition source. You can't change two of those for bush fires, you can only change the fuel capacity. So for bush, that is what you do with annual / bi-annual reduction burning. No fuel, no fire. Reduction burns also regenerate the bush itself. Reduction burns, due to their low intensity, do not harm the sheer numbers of wildlife like chaos fires do, thus giving animals plenty of time to relocate themselves, or even move into water or through the fire itself, back to safety. These are all points they just keep skipping over to blame climate change (their impact outcome).
 
There's a very articulate young woman, kind of a "counter Greta" who calls herself a "Climate Realist", by the name of Naomi Seibt.
I relate to that. I'm going to say that that's what I am.
It's soooo important to have scientific, critical, conversations, about these vital issues.

In regards to the latest, catastrophic fire season we just had, there was also an ordinate number of arsonists at play, here, as well as the "fuel loading" badly managed bush situation.

So yes, a human-created disaster, but not what the leftist green political movement claimed. Other than, perhaps, that carbon dioxide is a key plant food, so plants are growing more vigorously, due to the readily available levels of CO2, in the atmosphere.

Australia has cycles of drought and flooding, if you look at historical records, this has been going on longer than our current rise in CO2.

We have had peaking temps in the early 20th century, actually hotter than this last summer. Which led to worse fires. But don't take my word for it, historic newspaper records are more reliable than the so-called "scientifically consensus" academia team (which, isn't really a science concept, that of "consensus"~ it's a political concept) , at this point.

So when you look at the evidence, there is no way that these fires are caused by rising CO2, other than the way I mentioned, because, the earlier bad fire seasons were before CO2 was at current levels.

Commisions were done, the last times, I'd have to check the years for you, and they concluded that reducing fuel loading was recommended.

Which wasn't implemented.

Mind you, a university course could be run, just to educate people how to fire- safe and species-protect our diverse bush lands, as some areas thrive with fire-safe burn-offs, while other areas, rainforests, for instance, will lose endangered species of flora if burnt, in wrong ways.

Different management is needed for different plant/tree species, in different types of bushland. But mangement is, absolutely, needed.
 
not what the leftist green political movement claimed.
I don't personally think politicising the bushfires is helpful. It shouldn't be a political issue.

there is no way that these fires are caused by rising CO2,
Fires are caused by a number of things - none of which are greenhouse gas emissions. I'd be surprised to read anyone suggest that carbon emissions caused the bushfires.

But contributed to the extent of them? For sure. Hottest 2 years on record, followed by up to a third of Australia's forests burning - there's some kind of link there. These weren't the kind of bushfires Australia experiences on a cyclical basis - there is some concern that they may have been an extinction event for some animals in some areas (such as Kangaroo Island).

reducing fuel loading was recommended.
This is one (of many) recommendations that the Royal Commission into Victoria's Black Saturday bushfires. There's lot of recommendations in that report. They noted in particular that in Victoria, back burning to control fuel amounts weren't reaching anywhere near targets.

Back burning is complicated. Up to a third of Victoria's forests could be back burned annually to control the size of bushfires (can't stop them starting - the Commission also looked at ignition sources and strategies to reduce those). But, that's a theoretical target. And in practice, some years only around 5% was being achieved.

There's a range of issues that make back burning much harder in practice than it is in theory, particularly the further south you go down Australia's east coast. It's risky, there are small time windows available to back burn (with the weather being only one factor making those windows increasingly small), they are incredibly resource intensive (resources that haven't been adequately provided by successive State governments), and they interfere significantly with nearby communities.

Add to that the overlap with different jurisdictions. For example, the Commission discussed how the Victorian State Government was essentially responsible for fuel reduction. But key roadways are an essential firebreak area that needs to be included in fuel reduction, and that's primarily a local council jurisdiction (with extremely limited funds for activities like that, and access to even fewer resources).

Then, of course, there's National Parks.

It's also been a long time (think a couple hundred years at least) since much of Victoria was back burned on a regular basis. Re-introducing it as a regular process is fraught with all sorts of issues.

And all that? Was just looking at the issues facing Victoria...

I know that many have argued that another Royal Commission isn't necessary. I certainly think there's an argument to be made for a cheaper process, like a Senate Inquiry. But we definitely do need to revisit our bushfire management here. Because we need to not have this start to occur annually.

The issues aren't as simple as the Greens have been blocking back burning, or whether the climate is changing.

The climate is changing - but this is not a left v's right issue. Personally I think it's more about figuring out management techniques that accommodate the very different situations (environmental, community, and governments) around our vast country, which is changing, and then figuring of what needs to happen within the different jurisdictions to make sure those management strategies can be implemented seamlessly, everywhere that is required. And of course the big question - who funds those strategies?

We've come a long way since Black Saturday. One area that we've improved on is keeping people alive - getting accurate, timely warnings out there, and getting people out when we need to. But there's a lot of work still to be done, especially when it comes to having the various jurisdictions working together.
 
I don't personally think politicising the bushfires is helpful. It shouldn't be a political issue.
Agreed, however the reality is, that it is political. Even you mentioned state and local councils (political) jurisdictions are in essence clashing as to who has what responsibilities.

Politicians all get out and stick their mug on the TV when the fires happen, then disappear again. Nothing really changes each time. From local to Federal. They all do it. The media eat the shit up. The people are usually just disgusted with it all, as the same shit is happening, just different year.

People need to suck shit up. Fuel reduction burns need to happen. The windows are not limited at all. Not when you remove all the politically correct nonsense they include within their BS inquiries (again, nothing much changes). Winter time is a prime time to burn. Every single day of winter, even when raining, snowing or the sun is shining.

f*ck people who want to hang their washing out, or move from point A to point B on that given day. People need to prioritise things. Insignificant PC shit in their daily life, OR, chaotic fires that destroy their lives, lives of others. Choices choices!

The difference is the wind. That really just means where you start the fire so it burns against the wind, not with it. And in winter, even if the wind changes, and if done regularly, a wind change will not cause the fire to get out of control because the fuel is limited, and the winter climate is working against the wind to create catastrophic conditions (thus very controlled still).

I have been part of some pretty big fires in North Qld years back, and that place is always hot, even in winter. We collectively kept them under control. The aboriginals love lighting fire and reducing forest fuel. They don't analyse everything... they really don't. They literally just start dropping fire when they move from one place to another, then go deal with it if needed.

People complain about smoke over their houses. Well... the alternative is no more house from a fire. These are the silly reasons reduction burns have become complicated, when in essence, they are simple.
 
We collectively kept them under control. The aboriginals love lighting fire and reducing forest fuel. They don't analyse everything... they really don't.
Definitely the attitude to burning off is polar opposite from one end of the country to the next. I remember being terrified of the first burn off I encountered when we moved to the NT, because I'd come from Victoria where any fire was a potential catastrophe.

That's talking about 2 places that are almost like different countries, though. Victoria simply doesn't have the people living on the land, with continuous responsibility for that land, like they have in the NT.

Fuel reduction in Victoria is crazy. The RFS (State govt) organises with the local council to close roads and notify local landowners (local government) to do a controlled burn, then contracts small business so traffic control (multiple organisations now involved, one of which is staffed primarily by volunteers).

That takes organising months out, notifications go out weeks in advance, money is outlayed for contractors. Then the wind changes, or the weather sets in, or the burn can't be kept under 1 metre high, or...the list is endless for things that interfere.

Hence the failure to get even close to the fuel reduction targets. It's a lot more complex than lefties and greenies interfering - the entire process, and attitude, is the polar opposite of the 'burning is business as usual' attitude you get elsewhere.

They don't bother putting out notices, closing roads, or getting in traffic control in the territory. It isn't necessary. The local mob simply decides "this bit of bush is ready for burning" and they walk it through.

But there's a lot of factors at play in that. There's a lot of significant differences between the top end and southern ends of the country.

I don't know what the answer is. Just that it's not simple. And it very definitely isn't cheap.
 
Nowhere did the points highlight the stupidity of politicians no longer allowing what has happened since 1900, being regular annual reduction burning due to the silly Green party and all their bullshit "save the earth" nonsense they hype.
Yep. We had that here, during the Roosevelt administration. Meant well? Certainly. And we have a lot of benefit (national parks, et al). But just one example of many? Removing the wolves, created an explosive deer population, which devastated the ecosystem. The only upshot of that clusterf*ck (spanned decades, and a century on... is still felt) is that we have a solid point to back idiots -who should know better- down. We’ve been doing controlled burns / not suppressing natural fires / clearing undergrowth since... 1980s? I’d have to double check. Aha. 1950’s & 60s but not widespread until the 70s & 80s. Voila. Thankyou NPS (national parks service)

NumberS in Yellowstone Fire - Yellowstone National Park (U.S. National Park Service)
  • In 2018, 1,764 acres burned from 8 known wildfire starts. One human-caused fire (unattended campfire) was suppressed. Two lightning-caused fires were suppressed due to dangerous conditions. Five fires were monitored for public safety, while fulfilling their role in the ecosystem.
  • Since 1988, the number of fires has ranged from 1 to 78 each year.
  • The most active fire year since 1988 was 2016, with 70,285 acres in Yellowstone burned.
  • In an average year, approximately 21 fires are ignited in Yellowstone by lightning.
  • About 75% of fires in Yellowstone never reach more than 0.1 hectares (0.25 acres) in size.
  • About 92% of fires in Yellowstone never burn more than 40 hectares (100 acres).

& Fire Management - Yosemite National Park (U.S. National Park Service)

As simply 2 case in points of hundreds of national parks.
 
Victoria simply doesn't have the people living on the land, with continuous responsibility for that land, like they have in the NT.

^Yes it does. But the graziers and the farmers have been shut down State parks have been closed. Back burning is a dirty word because of the green political persuasion - who believe it or not - live in the city and talk rubbish.

There are heaps of people that want to back burn, have the appropriate skills, know the land & have the will. But the law has shut them down.

Plenty of farmers, locals, graziers etc would happily back burn with the local RFS if they're given the chance. The coordination isn't that complex. They know about wind direction and the principals of fuel reduction that the aboriginals followed. It was done safely for many, many decades.

They don't bother putting out notices, closing roads, or getting in traffic control in the territory. It isn't necessary. The local mob simply decides "this bit of bush is ready for burning" and they walk it through.

^I don't know quite what you mean there Sidway?- you make it sound like a bunch of vocal locals on a Saturday night lol.. getting on and do it without any organisation. I was part of it (VBFB) for over a decade. It's organised.

There are notices in the local papers, loads of paperwork. NT head office in Darwin and Alice Springs administers every aspect of it. I was part of the 'local mob' that did it. We sorted it out. It's highly organised. We have trucks, permits, clothing, fees for land-holders. Safety was paramount always. People were trained in all aspects of back-burning, truck maintenance etc etc...

On my property every six months I had to have my fire breaks inspected. It's legislated and organised. It got done or I got fined and I never got fined because there is a process and I followed it the letter.

We, the VBFB back-burned millions of acres every year and therefore prevented wildfire. They still do.

All the big plantations/stations - from mangos, beef to I can't think what - even the defence force - booked the local RFS months in advance to go out and attend to their properties. Actually many of the local defence force joined the brigade.

Inspectors came along and fine the shit out of anyone who did not take appropriate steps to have their properties backburned. It was a highly organised group of men and women.

This is done by dedicated people and it's the law.

Edited to add: And we the first and only people called out to fight a wildfire when it got too big or was going to burn into somewhere it shouldn't.
 
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