Will Australia's Wildfires Change the Country Forever? (nbcnews.com) 167
Australia's wildfires have already burned at least 12 million acres, reports NBC News, with more than 100 blazes still active. "And the season has yet to reach its peak."
The ability of animals to recover from Australia's wildfires is also a concern. Scientists are estimating that more than half a billion animals have already died in the fires, a figure that Stuart Blanch, a forest and woodland conservation policy manager at the World Wildlife Fund-Australia, called conservative... Blanch said animals generally recover over the subsequent years and decades, but he added that Australia has not dealt with fires of this size and intensity before, and there are concerns that entire species or subspecies will be wiped out. "Ecologists have much lower confidence that wildlife populations -- particularly the 1,000 threatened species across the continent -- will recover from such widespread and utter forest devastation," he told NBC News in an email...
The impact of these fires is also providing a stark warning about the kinds of natural disasters that can be exacerbated by climate change, which is lengthening wildfire seasons in Australia, according to Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climate scientist at the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. "It's really shocking and really horrible and as much as I hate to say 'I told you so,' climate scientists have been warning about this for a very long time -- especially in Australia," she said. "We knew that if we have drought and a heat wave, the whole country is a tinderbox. We knew it was going to happen."
She said the biggest wildfires of the season typically break out in January or February, rather than in the spring. These earlier-than-usual blazes could portend a worrisome trend that is echoed around the world. "If you look at places like Portugal and Spain, they are seeing fires during the year when they didn't historically see them," Stevens-Rumann said. "In California, it's hard to find a month where there isn't a bad fire. This is one of those big concerns with climate change, that these fires are going to continue to be an issue."
The impact of these fires is also providing a stark warning about the kinds of natural disasters that can be exacerbated by climate change, which is lengthening wildfire seasons in Australia, according to Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climate scientist at the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. "It's really shocking and really horrible and as much as I hate to say 'I told you so,' climate scientists have been warning about this for a very long time -- especially in Australia," she said. "We knew that if we have drought and a heat wave, the whole country is a tinderbox. We knew it was going to happen."
She said the biggest wildfires of the season typically break out in January or February, rather than in the spring. These earlier-than-usual blazes could portend a worrisome trend that is echoed around the world. "If you look at places like Portugal and Spain, they are seeing fires during the year when they didn't historically see them," Stevens-Rumann said. "In California, it's hard to find a month where there isn't a bad fire. This is one of those big concerns with climate change, that these fires are going to continue to be an issue."
Maybe voters will be a bit less stupid for a while (Score:2)
I mean, the current guy is about the worst they could have elected and, faced with a real crisis, it shows to an extreme degree. I do not have any high hopes though, people will continue to vote against their own interests because they are stupid.
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The real problem is how many people in this country have been brainwashed by the current mob in charge and by their mates in the mainstream media (Rupert Murdoch in particular but others as well).
They are lead to believe (though all sorts of lies and FUD and BS) that the opposition party, if allowed to form government, will send the Australian economy into the 10th level of hell and as a result we have the current people in charge instead of someone who will actually FIX what's wrong with this country (ener
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Indeed. The problem with democracy is that too many voters are too easy to manipulate. If the current nice demonstration that these people do not work for the population does not help, nothing will.
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You are aware that this is about Australia, right?
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No (Score:1)
Australia has always been prone to these sorts of fires.
Re: No (Score:2)
Not on this scale in the forests in human memory. Grasslands yes, not forests.
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Re: No (Score:4, Insightful)
"YES on this scale, actually we have had much much bigger. Hell in the mid 70's it was around 120--150 million acres all up."
Yes, _after_ the fire season, this season has just begun.
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In the mid 70's the huge fires were due to unusually wet years causing a lot of new growth of shrubs and grass. This meant that there was a lot of fuel available. The fires mostly did not take out old-growth trees.
The fires this year are completely different. A long drought has left little fuel available for the fires. Fires earlier in the season have limited fuel supply even more. Yet the fires are near record-breaking in extent and certainly record-breaking in intensity.
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Which part of grasslands not forest are you having a problem comprehending?
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, we do have these sort of fires, however, they used to be mainly towards the end of summer, and were called the February dragon in a seminal novel on the subject. They now start in October. Fuel reduction burns are often not possible as they cannot be controlled well enough to be safe, all of this is a direct impact of climate change.
In April this year, 20 former chiefs of firefighting services asked to meet with the govt to talk about the coming danger due to the conditions, and our retarded right wing govt ignored them. The right has blood on its hands over this, and many of us will not forget their hubris.
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The right has blood on its hands over this
I was about to say it's not a right vs left thing as Labor (who can't spell) despite a brief carbon tax has been incredibly lax on environmental regulations as well, but then I remember that Liberals, Labor (who can't spell) and the Nationals are all on the right of the politician compass. We have no major left party, so you are very right. The "right" are a bunch of morons.
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And you don't consider any fuel reduction burns are necessary, as I understand this is not been happened due to "green concerns" which could easily have made the problem much much worse. But no, it has to be "the right's" fault.
And the 200 people (IIRC) arrested or investigated over claims of deliberately starting fires. I understand Aus gov is forming a strike force to find out if there has been a widespread campaign of deliberate fire starting, in order for the green lobby to say "I told you so" over clim
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Tell that to the species pushed to extinction [theguardian.com].
Like with our coral reefs, some things aren't ever going to be the same, at least not within human timescales.
Re:Blame "Climate Change" (Score:4, Informative)
Nobody is claiming droughts are new to Australia, but this one is the worst we've ever seen [unimelb.edu.au], and our scientists are telling us climate change is making this worse [csiro.au].
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Show me a scientist who doesn't qualify all their claims with "may" and "could" and "probably". Their data always has error bounds, thus they cannot indicate absolute certainty. This is hardly unique to any field (except maybe pure math), let alone this one claim.
As every scientific institution in the planet accepts climate science as a "real" science, your claims that it isn't aren't credible. This is just the excuse you tell yourself so you can ignore its conclusions (which are also endorsed by every scie
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Oh, and the "talks" requested by fire chiefs were to ask northern-hemisphere countries for loans of their fire-fighting equipment [abc.net.au], which we really could've used about now.
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It's irrelevant what you think. Climate catastrophe is here, it will be relentless and get worse from this point forward unless we do something all over the world and denialism will just look more and more pathetic.
Eventually the truth catches up with us. That is where we are. You are wrong, I fear because of the likes of you, you will have to be proved utterly and fundamentally wrong. At which point it will be to late.
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Five million hectares are going on fire. An you're a fucking idiot.
Re: No (Score:1)
Hopefully yes. (Score:1, Interesting)
I'd hope this was a wake-up call to reduce the fuel load by resuming controlled burns, which will also mean increasing the number of park rangers.
Earlier this year protests by the population of Nowa Nowa in Victoria successfully prevented some controlled burns, they are now surrounded by bushfires.
Thus far, depending on how you measure the effects, this is a bad season but not unprecedented in terms of results. BUT, so far we haven't seen any significant problems in the west of Victoria, which is just now d
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Earlier this year protests by the population of Nowa Nowa in Victoria successfully prevented some controlled burns, they are now surrounded by bushfires.
It was three people with signs. I don't dispute it happened or that it stopped the scale of the controlled burn at Nowa Nowa but you seem to be implying that this example is representative of why controlled burns aren't done. Controlled burns were never 'stopped', we just haven't been able to do enough of them. The lack of park rangers and lack of resources to dedicate to controlled burns at scale is a government budget issue.
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these days, all it takes is a few tweets to get companies and governments to change or at least delay policies.
Re:Hopefully yes. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd hope this was a wake-up call to reduce the fuel load by resuming controlled burns
I was hoping it would be a wake-up call for people to understand the issues. Australia does do controlled burns and never stopped. The program has very much been in place and unchanged for many years. But you can only do it when it is safe to do so. Hell we've started a few major bushfires due to controlled burns going wrong.
A few mouth breathers in Nowa Nowa preventing a 300ha burn has had no impact at all the bushfires nor the controlled burning program in Australia which none the less burnt more this year than the last year despite a large number of burns being called off due to safety reasons.
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Well, that's forests for you. You get to benefit from the work done 150 years ago, someone else over a century from now will benefit from the work being done at the moment.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/p... [atlasobscura.com]
Change forever? (Score:2)
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why? (Score:5, Informative)
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Yeah, we've seen big fires in the Top End that in terms of area make these look tiny - but those were mostly in semi-arid unpopulated areas, where a lot of it was just left to burn out. In 74/75 a total of 117 million hectares burned [aidr.org.au], 15% of the country, yet the total damage was only $5M.
These fires are unprecedented in terms of the scale of their impact - 25 lives lost so far, 1300 houses, so early in the season - and we've never seen anything like this in NSW or Victoria. Fire chiefs were calling it "unpr
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Given Australia's population has almost doubled since '74 and those people had to live somewhere, along with other development that's taken place, it's not so surprising that greater damage has occurred.
1300 homes isn't that many. That's a single village, it's not like you've lost Melbourne.
Yes, losing none would be better. Avoiding loss of life is greatly preferable. Not having roast kangaroo across vast swathes of NSW would be an interesting discussion. But it's not doomsday, and there are definitely peop
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But it's not doomsday, and there are definitely people trying to score political mileage from this shit that should shut the fuck up, pull on a flame retardant jacket and go pick up a bucket.
You don't know what the fuck you're talking about Cederic.
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Thank you for actually providing information from a local, sorely laking in almost any hot take about remote affairs these days.
Except... I don't actually see any information in there. Bloodhawk needs to provide references. I mean, let's just analyse this for a bit.
According to this article [theguardian.com], so far the 19/20 fires have burnt 8.4m hectares (and we're not even halfway through the bushfire season). So let's take bloodhawk at his word and assume that in the 70's, the fires really were 10 times larger. So he's asserting that 84m hectares burnt in a single season.
The official figures say that Australia has 134m hectares of forests [agriculture.gov.au]
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Re: MOD UP (Score:4, Insightful)
I know it’s hard for you to understand, but there are vast areas here in SA that haven’t burnt yet, and the same in other states. How about you get some clue before demonstrating your ignorance yet again.
I would quote the expert (Score:2)
Betteridge's Law of Headlines applies here.
No. (Score:2)
Climate change is real! (Score:2)
Whatever the causes of climate change (anthropogenic CO2, sunspot activity, whatever), it is real and it has been getting warmer and dryer for decades. People like me who used to equivocate and down play the role of humanity are finally starting to realise that there is something in it. The scientists are right and there is no left-wing/greenie conspiracy to tax the air and control everybody's lives. I live in Australia and this bushfire season is the final nail in the coffin for the continued survival of s
Europeans at fault (Score:2)
These aren't even the largest wildfires in Australia's history, the largest occurred in 1975, they are all the result of European's clear-cutting old growth forests and replanting with grases that more easily burn in the Summer. Similar problem with Calfiornia using legislation to prevent forestry practices from being carried out that would reduce the risk to homes from naturally occurring fires.
Re: Greens should be had up for murder (Score:5, Insightful)
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What a load of utter bullshit. This has been refuted a million times.
The Liberals cut [crikey.com.au] the funding to Rural Firefighting Services [independentaustralia.net] around the country progressively for years. Now we are reaping the consequences whist the government refuses to declare a state of emergency and involve the military to fix up their reckless budget cuts.
Re:FYI: Arson is to blame, not climate change... (Score:5, Informative)
This is not new [aic.gov.au]. Most bushfires in Australia have long been caused by humans, often deliberately, and this season is no different.
What is different this year is the unusually long drought combined with record heatwaves - both influenced by climate change - that have made conditions so bad that the hundreds of fires are flaring up faster and with more ferocity than we've ever seen before. The number of fires isn't that unusual but the sheer scale of them absolutely is.
It's also unheard-of for major fires so early in the season. Normally they're worst in Jan/Feb, so we're only seeing the beginning of this disaster.
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This seriously needs a citation.
If you also hold a conversation without the swearing, people may take you seriously.
It's difficult to find the motivation for many of the arson attacks, but this media report [canberratimes.com.au] implies that of the 183 people charged so far with arson this season, 53 people charged for simply ignoring a total fire ban (cooking on an open barbie, etc) and 47 people charged for allegedly discarding a lit cigarette or match. Doesn't seem like "fuckwit environment anarchists" to me.
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Re:Greens should be had up for murder (Score:5, Informative)
Greens have been putting the kybosh on these burns resulting in excess fuel load...
Provide some citation for this assertion please.
"Greens" are the reason controlled burning exists. Environmentalist are the ones that help develop the techniques.
Also please provide some evidence that controlled burns are no longer in practice.
"Exact fire prescriptions are developed by fire managers before burning is allowed. These fire prescriptions are based on weather, moisture content of the fuels, and how the fire can be lighted (ignition patterns). There may only be 50 days in an entire year when an area meets the prescription."
https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail... [usda.gov]
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Right here is President George W. Bush being mocked [nbclearn.com] for suggesting we cut the forest in order to save it.
He was not advocating "controlled burning" — which is dangerous and expensive — he wanted to simply allow loggers to cut some trees to make the rest the of the forest less likely to die in a fire...
In addition to condescending mockery, there are also mentions of "angry protests" from environmentalists on the same page.
Re:Greens should be had up for murder (Score:5, Informative)
Right here is President George W. Bush being mocked [nbclearn.com] for suggesting we cut the forest in order to save it.
That's because it IS stupid to cut forests to save them. Normal healthy forests resist fires pretty well, but clear-cut forests within a few years are replaced with extremely flammable bushes and young trees. This drastically increases the fire danger.
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There you go — next time you ask for citations on this, look in the mirror.
That may be true, but is irrelevant, because Bush was not suggesting any "clear cutting". What Bush's government wanted was thinning. From the already linked-to article, emphasis mine:
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Did you accidentally link the wrong thing? I'm not seeing anywhere in your link where President Bush was mocked. Can you please point out the specific phrasing where the mockery was happening?
Re:Greens should be had up for murder (Score:4, Insightful)
Greens have been putting the kybosh on these burns resulting in excess fuel load...
Provide some citation for this assertion please.
"Greens" are the reason controlled burning exists. Environmentalist are the ones that help develop the techniques.
Also please provide some evidence that controlled burns are no longer in practice.
"Exact fire prescriptions are developed by fire managers before burning is allowed. These fire prescriptions are based on weather, moisture content of the fuels, and how the fire can be lighted (ignition patterns). There may only be 50 days in an entire year when an area meets the prescription."
https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail... [usda.gov]
Hey don't muddy the waters with facts. We are posting anti green rhetoric here and will only accept posts that include words like dems, libs, green weenies and the like. The fact that climate change is having the effects that are predicted and that the US forest service as well as the forest services of both Canada and Australia do prescribed burns where possible is an inconvenient fact that gets in the way of the anti green rhetoric. The desertification of vast areas of the planet by global warming and the resultant climate change is a very inconvenient fact that we must fight with anti green rhetoric. Interestingly not more than 2000 km away from the continent of Australia, New Zealand is experiencing unseasonable high levels of rain. As is the west coast of North America.
As predicted the immoderate swings in weather are occurring. Another wild swing could happen this year and wipe out the farming season on a large portion of the prairies of North America. I am sure that the greens are to blame along with the dems and libs.
Re: Greens should be had up for murder (Score:4, Interesting)
Ive seen them, out on the road in Australia, you wouldn’t have a clue.
The Riverland in South Australia is getting more bare of growth every year, the airfield I fly it is now mostly sand now, whereas 20 years ago, it held grass all summer.
You are embarrasing yourself with your ignorance, as usual.
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Also please provide some evidence that controlled burns are no longer in practice.
No I want to know the reverse. I want to see some evidence that Australia control burns 20% of its forests every 5 years. That should be visible from the bloody moon not to mention keep the entire Australian population gainfully employed full-time.
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"Greens" are the reason controlled burning exists. Environmentalist are the ones that help develop the techniques.
It's more complicated than that, at least on the West Coast. I think part of the problem is greens are generally opposed to logging, which is another common method of fuel abatement. Both approaches have pros and cons and they should likely both be part of a sensible fire prevention plan. With logging you actually use the biomass for something beneficial (paper straws are popular again now that plastic is evil for instance), rather than just converting it to smoke, which is undesirable around populated a
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"Greens" are the reason controlled burning exists. Environmentalist are the ones that help develop the techniques.
It's more complicated than that, at least on the West Coast. I think part of the problem is greens are generally opposed to logging, which is another common method of fuel abatement. Both approaches have pros and cons and they should likely both be part of a sensible fire prevention plan. With logging you actually use the biomass for something beneficial (paper straws are popular again now that plastic is evil for instance), rather than just converting it to smoke, which is undesirable around populated areas. Also it poses far less risk to life (human or animal), and it can be done mostly year round. OTOH, fire and ash have positive biological effects on forest regeneration and in some places that will tilt the benefit in that direction.
https://www.opb.org/news/artic... [opb.org]
In the end though, for various reasons, there is just not enough fuel abatement going on by any of the methods available.
Many people hear "were going to set fire to the forest" "but it'll be "controlled" no big deal" and they worry. They might think "why? smokey the bear says we should "prevent" forest fires".
The truth is they are incredibly effective, and when done properly there is little to no risk of jumping to the canopy. In fact I am not aware of any noteable cases of "controlled" burn going awry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
I've seen them done.
Liberals should be had up for murder (Score:3)
The truth is they are incredibly effective, and when done properly there is little to no risk of jumping to the canopy. In fact I am not aware of any noteable cases of "controlled" burn going awry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
I've seen them done.
Indeed, they are incredibly effective and I've seen them done as well, with one other things specific to Eucalyptus trees, they evolved to burn. They exude a blue oil that is flammable, seed pods of the tree are thick and only activate after fire, the leaves and bark create layers of fuel that burn all other trees that compete for sunlight. It's volatility is measured by using a standard square frame and measuring the depth of fuel in the frame. Generally you want to keep it under 15-20cms however now
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Traditional management of Australian bushland has fuel reduction burns (aka. hazard reduction burns) in 20% of forests each year, rotating through the entire landscape every five years
Are you confusing Australia with a little tiny island? 20% of Australian forests each yeah would be a global scale ecological disaster.
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Nope.
https://www.theguardian.com/au... [theguardian.com]
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I cannot find a single reference to "the greens" blocking or reducing burns, especially as they have never been in power, nor held the balance of power. If you have information to the contrary, I'd actually like to see it (genuinely! I'd like to be informed on the debate).
What I *can* find is that there have been large funding cuts ($121 million) for the body who is designated with conducting these burns [abc.net.au]. These cuts have been made by the state Liberal government.
Re: Greens should be had up for murder (Score:1, Informative)
Re: Greens should be had up for murder (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear Slashdot devs/admins,
This site has a lameness filter for posts that abuse all-caps. It is time to include one for posts like those above, that abuse HTML tags. And while you're at it, please do something about filtering obnoxious ASCII art.
Thank you.
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...That's what the preview URL feature of any modern browser is for.
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Has whoever marked the above post as "Troll" even bothered to take a look at the linked article?
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Yes, because it make so much more sense to torch a few hundred dollars of drone rather than to just go out with some lit charcoal or a lighter and some paper or something. ...I mean, really?
Re:SubjectIsSubject (Score:5, Informative)
You are the one with the garbage narrative. Due to the conditions, reduction burns were not possible, they couldn’t be controlled. You can’t do reduction burns anywhere near the size 5.8 million hectares, needed to prevent these fires. Stop parroting right wing bullshit.
Re: SubjectIsSubject (Score:1)
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You can absolute do reduction burns, we do it in Canada every year and we have 350m hectares of forest to watch out for. Stop peddling environmentalist and left wing bullshit. The worst forest fires we've had in Canada are in areas where environmentalists actively blocked or tried to hold up burns. The slave lake fires, fort mac, grande prarie and cache, fort frances, N1, north mountain were all made worse because reduction, pre-burning, and breaks were blocked by environmentalists and bad government pol
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You can’t do reduction burns over 5.8 million hectares, we just don’t have the resources, and the fire season starts so early, reduction blazes are too dangerous. When you are getting regular temps up to 45C in Canada, you might know what you’re talking about. Right now, you’re pulling bullshit out as your arse.
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Right now, youâ(TM)re pulling bullshit out as your arse.
Person who's actually worked in forestry, is pulling bullshit out of their ass. Yeah, might want to look in the mirror, you've had retards blocking burns for a decade, you've had repeated governments not doing burns, and blocking them. Enjoy the mess you made for yourselves by not dealing with your retards.
Re: SubjectIsSubject (Score:4, Informative)
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We're in the midst of a years long draught ...
Wow, the stories about legendary Australian drinking are true!
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Don't be a retard. In Canada you don't have weeks of 35+ degrees Celsius.
We don't? Holy fuck you're a retard. [weather.gc.ca] You can start looking at the historical data from there. Hell 5 years ago here in Southern Ontario we had 4 weeks of 34C+ weather. Two years ago we had 37-42C tempratures...in the middle of temperate forests, in the middle of nowhere. You however live in a country where 55% of it is desert. I live in an area of the country where when the temperature gets above 32C, we start having to slow the trains down in the summer because the tracks expand so much that going o
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Fire breaks are usually amazingly effective, just like you say.
Just not this time.
"We had a bushfire two months ago that burned most of our property. It didn’t matter. It burned again." https://www.theguardian.com/co... [theguardian.com]
Reduce Fuel (Score:2)
Controlled burns are not controlled by magic. They are controlled by putting sufficient fire fighters around the perimeter of the burn and making sure they do not go out of control. The government lie about people's concerns, they simply do not want to pay the cost of doing controlled burns, bit by bit, over the whole summer every weekend, to reduce fuel load.
Only modern new really bad journalism can rabbit on about, 'This early in the fire season', well, after a big fire like this, the fire season is pret
Re:SubjectIsSubject (Score:5, Informative)
Rainfall in Australia has been slowing increasing [csiro.au].
That is a link to a 25 year old paper. And "slowly increasing" is at least misleading - the slow increase (from 1910 to 1995) is only in the linear trend line, and that is dominated by the La Nina excursions in the 1970s. If you look at the discussion section, you will see that only very small parts of that increase are described as statistically significant.
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Your link also provides data that shows temperature has been increasing for the past 120 years. Even if rainfall has been trending upwards, that doesn't mean you won't still have drought conditions.
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Re:SubjectIsSubject (Score:5, Informative)
Climate change isn't "causing" the fires, but it's absolutely making them worse. Australia isn't uniformly getting wetter, it's actually drying out in parts of the south east (where most of the fires are today), as your own link shows. The recent droughts are worse than we've ever seen [unimelb.edu.au], the heatwaves have smashed records only to get even worse the very next day [news.com.au], and 2019 was the hottest and driest [abc.net.au] year on record. THIS is why the fires are unprecedented, and these increasing extremes are exactly what our climate scientists have been predicting [csiro.au].
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It's been increasing for the last 120 years [bom.gov.au], but don't let facts scare you off of a good emergency!
Indeed rainfall has been increasing during wet seasons. Incidentally Australia doesn't have bushfire problems then. No amount of water in the world can keep a country where it doesn't rain at all for 2 seasons every year dry.
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It's been increasing for the last 120 years [bom.gov.au],
How is that an excuse to provide a source that is 25 years out of date?
but don't let facts scare you off of a good emergency!
Well, using your new source: It's been going down for the last 50 years [bom.gov.au]. Which just shows you that comparing two single data points on a noisy line is useless.
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So you've brought no facts of your own to the table, and used my own reference. Good for you! What do we see? A cyclical pattern! Hurray! Guess what - the PDO is about a 60 year cycle, and that's affecting Australia.
This burn is 100% the result of letting fuel accumulate [theage.com.au] and stopping small burns before they could clean out the fuel load. Now you're paying the price for your stupidity. Hopefully, you'll learn. Let nature do what it wants to do, and that is periodic burns of land.
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That's odd: we keep being told that Australia is suffering from year upon year of drought, and that is causing the fires. Yes, do your prescribed burns, even though the First Law of prescribed burns is that the smoke always blows toward the people who write the most letters to the editor.
But just the same, stop exporting all of your uranium and burn some of it for yourselves.
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Your link also provides data that shows temperature has been increasing for the past 120 years. Even if rainfall has been trending upwards, that doesn't mean you won't still have drought conditions.
[You posted the same link earlier in this thread, and I'm posting the same response.]
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Good point, but rainfall may be a red herring introduced by the GP. Other factors can determine whether drought occurs. For example, temperature. And that has been rising steadily. [bom.gov.au]
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Our own BOM is also repeatedly saying that climate change is causing dryer and hotter weather, so given you want to use their info, do you accept that?
Yeh though not.
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Their data does not [abc.net.au] say otherwise.
As for fuel reduction, many people agree we need more, and even the Greens are fine with controlled burns where it makes the most sense. But of course it's not so simple [aph.gov.au]. Apart from the logistics and manpower needed to do controlled burns over so many millions of hectares, the fact we're in a drought has sharply limited the time windows available. The wind has to be right, the forecast has to be right, and as the bushfire season keeps expanding we're left with as few as 50
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Re:Sensationalism much? (Score:5, Funny)
Australia is about 2,969,907 square miles total.
Yes but the world is even bigger, and space is even bigger than that. We should blow up the entire planet. Keep it in perspective if we destroy the planet it would be nothing compared to the rest of the 8.8x10^26m wide universe.
The fires have burned a very tiny fraction of that.
Of course they did. A very tiny fraction of that surface is forest. An even smaller fraction of it is inhabitable. In other news the Sahara also doesn't have bush fires. Amazing right?
Re:Sensationalism much? (Score:5, Informative)
While the articles are sensationalist, I can tell you're yet another not Australian, commenting on Australia.
The vast majority of this country is entirely un-inhabitable. No water, desert. It's nothing like the US and it's a shame people don't get that.
The east coast is where the fires are and it's where most of the trees are.
The % of trees which have burnt is certainly more than a 'very tiny fraction'. We only have so many forests here and some quite large ones are now gone.
It's WHERE that land is that matters (Score:2)
Most of Australia is pretty empty land, it's the nice parts near the water that cause all the human problems. This number is how much has gone up in this early season which has only just begun at astonishing rates; it will obviously go higher.
Sydney is only about 5,000 square miles and if that was involved it we'd hear far more bad news... We're pretty good at protecting large cities... mostly because of the lack of plants and fire codes.
Re: (Score:2)
Here is another sensationalist tag line: one of the biggest peacetime evacuations in our history [abc.net.au]. Seesh. There were only a few thousand people trapped between the bush fires and the cost [abc.net.au]. A few navy ships came and problem fixed.
<scarasm>I mean, why are we wasting all this hot air when nobody got hurt? Lets wait and see if a few thousand really do get burnt to death before complaining about it. That's the approach we've taken to climate change, and it's worked up to now.<
Re: (Score:2)
Any fire this large anywhere in the world should concern us all
Why?
This is normal. Stop these fires and you're explicitly interfering with the natural environment.
highlights the accelerating environmental crisis
How?
What fucking crisis, anyway? The only "crisis" is the overpopulation of the planet. Maybe burning entire countries is the answer, not the problem.