As a long term Australian, this is categorically the worst fire season Australia has experienced.
Summer in Australia always comes with one or two big fires in at-risk rural areas over the months from December to February.
Queensland and New South Wales were burning heavily by early December. And now Victoria and South Australia have joined in as well and we're still only just into the second month of three. It's unprecedented.
The one thing that may provide back handed comfort is that so much has burnt that it will be a few years before enough 'fuel' is regrown for fires of this scale to be possible again.
I'm wondering the unknowable tipping point at which the cost of rebuilding from bushfires outweighs the costs of de-carbonising the economy. Part of the problem with that is who / where the costs are borne / spread amongst.
Comparing the costs of decarbonising vs rebuilding isn't quite the right comparison though (though it'll be psychologically important).
It's not as if climate change would be reverted or even stop if we stopped burning fossil fuel now. There is a lag on the effect, and the situation would still be getting worse for a century or so.
The comparison is between all the extra future damage of burning even more than we already have vs the economic gains today.
Could you say that the dipole effect is giving an advanced preview of what the shifting baseline of global warming will deliver every year in a decade or two?
If we could magically put a negative in front of Australia's CO2 emissions it would change nothing [0]. Even if we stopped selling coal and absorbed that amount of CO2 instead - and assume that nobody else mines coal to meet the market's demand - we would still easily see 90% of the worlds emissions at play.
Australia is a moderate player in global terms, but decarbonising is literally a symbolic gesture with real negative consequences. The only response that makes any sense is to focus on better bushfire prevention methods.
Australia is also actively not supporting local research and development into renewable energy technologies. Even if I bought the whole "we're only a small contributor to the problem, so it's not really our problem" argument (which I obviously don't), it'd be nice if we at least supported research and development that could actually make money as opposed to holding to the hard line that "anthropogenic climate change is a myth and therefore any effort to reduce it deserves no support".
We do support research and development in renewable technologies. It gets farmed out to China because they are better at building things cost effectively than we are [0, 1]. And again, while Australia is quite strong per-capita, renewable energy is a very hot focus in any number of research universities with billions of dollars being spent globally with results that are nothing short of miraculous. It isn't obvious that more investment is needed, solar and wind are improving at an amazing pace led by major players.
Germany showed enormous leadership with their Energiewende. It was expensive, convinced nobody and has had what appears to be a marginal effect on their actual emissions emitted. Hoping that Australia charging into the breach would help in any meaningful way is wishful thinking. Business as usual until economic forces cause the US and China to switch away from fossil fuels is what is going to happen, we can't make their decisions for them. Fight that diplomatically, sure. But tank our standard of living for a symbolic gesture and there is going to be very stiff resistance.
A close friend worked at a cutting edge solar farm organisation in Victoria and from everything he's told me, these opinions are way off base.
There is legitimate, marginally viable technology honed and perfected in Australia that always remains on the cusp because of endemic favourable treatment for fossil fuel and lack of strong support and willingness to invest.
To argue that the quality of life would be hit by changing govt funding priorities is like arguing against the construction of roads before automobiles were mainstream.
Also the suggestion that Australian research cannot make a difference I find unfathomable. Leave it to the "major players", so China and USA will just give away the technology for free? Why do any research at all, ever, there will always be someone better...
Funnily enough I argue against the construction of roads too and I don't own a car. So I suppose at least I am consistent, eh?
Cars are unsafe, expensive and make cities unwalkable. I would rather Australia beefed up its train network & river freight rather than this mania for cars.
> There is legitimate, marginally viable technology honed and perfected in Australia that always remains on the cusp because of endemic favourable treatment for fossil fuel and lack of strong support and willingness to invest.
Sounds pretty marginal, he might not be factoring in the consequences for grid stability in his calculations. It isn't just a raw numbers game.
> Also the suggestion that Australian research cannot make a difference I find unfathomable.
We are doing research, it probably is making a difference. If you go to UNSW the first building you run in to is the great big energy research facility. It wouldn't be too hard to get support for more research into better energy if anyone cared. And for all people blame the Australian right for coal they are the ones who push for dropping the effective ban on nuclear power in Australia and maybe doing some R & D on that front. It was much more promising technology than solar for most of the lest 50 years.
We won't know until the bushfire season ends. There are people who've lost their homes, are in dire straits and need support.
But the raw numbers are not doing the same sort of damage as a 10% increase in general energy costs. So far it has been 1,516 homes. Australia will have something like 5,000,000 homes. That is bad, but entirely tolerable averaged over the continent - we build about that many homes in a month or two. The damage is a small % of GDP contained to one year.
We need to improve our bushfire management & crisis response, but there is no need to do anything rash.
How many peoples health has deteriorated due to inhaling particulates from the fires - what was the cost? How many man-hours have been spent fighting the fires? How many cancelled film shoots, or other outdoor events? How much tourism revenue was lost? The list is endless. Looking just at the number of homes seems very narrow - there's a myriad of costs (direct and indirect)
> The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW 2016, Begg 2007) has estimated that about 3000 deaths (equivalent to about 28,000 years of life lost) are attributable to urban air pollution in Australia each year (Figure ATM29). [0]
Ouch. That is bad. It does require a response. However it is close enough to normal that it wouldn't change any rational decisions about our energy mix. This crisis is small enough that we only need to respond to the threats directly, without winding in a decarbonisation scheme that doesn't actually do anything.
> ...without winding in a decarbonisation scheme that doesn't actually do anything
I take issue with this. Australia's contribution to GHG emissions does contribute to warming. Even if it's only 1.3% (greater if you take exports into account [0]) it has an effect.
Also, more than 20% of global emissions are emitted by countries with lower overall emissions than us [1]. If they all used our excuse [2], do you think that would be acceptable?
We also have among the highest per capita emissions in the world [3].
And I haven't even talked about historic cumulative emissions, which have to be taken into account for an equitable solution.
Australia is already suffering from the effects of a climate emergency, with conditions predicted to get orders of magnitude worse this century. We should be taking a lead in the decarbonisation effort so we can urge the rest of the world to do the same, for our sakes, as well as theirs.
Instead, our government sabotaged negotiations at COP25 [4], and is acting for the short-term benefit of a few fossil fuel miners, even to the point of wanting to make secondary boycotts illegal [5]. They are criminally negligent at best, and an absolute disgrace.
> Also, more than 20% of global emissions are emitted by countries with lower overall emissions than us [1]. If they all used our excuse [2], do you think that would be acceptable?
The compliment of 20% is 80%. Those countries could all drop their emissions to 0 and any problem from emissions would still be 80% there and so still be about as bad as it ever was. So yes everyone smaller than us can use the same excuse. What matters policy-wise is the leadership in China & the United States.
> We also have among the highest per capita emissions in the world [3].
Yeah. We don't have any nuclear plants. Puts us a bit behind the 8 ball. We should fix that up too and build some. Labor needs to be more vocal about supporting nuclear energy.
There is a link between counties that make heavy use of nuclear energy and countries that have low emissions and air free of coal dust.
> Australia is already suffering from the effects of a climate emergency, with conditions predicted to get orders of magnitude worse this century. We should be taking a lead in the decarbonisation effort so we can urge the rest of the world to do the same, for our sakes, as well as theirs.
Germany already did that, it didn't impress very many people; it looked expensive and didn't actually help their emissions much. We should restrict ourselves to trying things that are likely to work and actually address the issues we are facing, which decarbonisation does not. There isn't anyone here who can seriously argue that Australia decarbonising would have had any impact on these bushfires. If Australia were completely decarbonised and had stopped exporting coal they would still have happened.
A positive actions in anyone's book happens to be just waiting another decade until it becomes economic to build photovoltaic solar; according to the Finkel report.
The tourism industry in Victoria alone is directly worth $26B/year[1]. The main tourist areas outside of Melbourne are being evacuated today, in the middle of the prime summer holiday season.
In NSW tourism is worth $40B[2]. The situation is similar there.
Say this costs between 10 and 20% of that. That is roughlt $10B in direct costs this year alone.
Additionally your 10% additional cost of energy is nonsense. Australia hasn't had a functioning energy policy is 10 years, which is the primary reason costs are so high. Any kind of policy which both sides of politics agree on (at least roughly!) will provide investment certainty and cut that cost.
> Additionally your 10% additional cost of energy is nonsense. Australia hasn't had a functioning energy policy is 10 years, which is the primary reason costs are so high. Any kind of policy which both sides of politics agree on (at least roughly!) will provide investment certainty and cut that cost.
Finkel review [0], page 201, Levelised Cost of Electricity in 2020 estimates solar at ~91 $/MWh vs ~76 $/MWh supercritical coal.
So you were right that I was using an unsourced number. Now I've sourced it and am revising it to 20%. And I have a source that says if we just twiddle our thumbs for 10 years we should get a much better deal, with no extra cost given we produce somewhere between 1 and 5% of the worlds emissions depending on how we account for exports.
You don't set policies for what is happening now, you set them for the future.
A future where (according to exactly the same reference!) solar will be cheaper than coal by 2030 (~61 $/MWh vs ~76 $/MWh supercritical coal).
I'd also note that this report was done in 2017, and the LCOE for solar has decreased more rapidly than expected. This Lazard report done only a year later puts large scale solar at US$36-43/MWh (= A$51-63/MWh).
But in solar basically the entire cost is paid up-front. The cost in 2030 only applies if the infrastructure is built in 2030.
> I'd also note that this report was done in 2017, and the LCOE for solar has decreased more rapidly than expected. This Lazard report done only a year later puts large scale solar at US$36-43/MWh (= A$51-63/MWh).
If it started to make commercial sense to build solar in 2017 then it really doesn't make sense to change anything we're doing after these bushfires since any problem will will resolve itself. The underlining point is that this crisis isn't a catalyst to rethink our energy policy. The two things just aren't realistically linked. We don't emit enough carbon for it to be relevant for global pollution.
But in solar basically the entire cost is paid up-front. The cost in 2030 only applies if the infrastructure is built in 2030.
Which is why you start transitioning now, so we get a resilient energy system.
it really doesn't make sense to change anything we're doing after these bushfires since any problem will will resolve itself
No, because the current government actually wants to build new coal fired power stations and open new coal mines.
The underlining point is that this crisis isn't a catalyst to rethink our energy policy.
Yes you keep parroting this line. But I noticed you ignored the tourism industry costs above as well as the arguments about how successful the German transition had been.
The same is true for everyone else too. Yet still everyone must decarbonize or eventually face even worse consequences then bushfires, tragedy of the commons or not.
Doing so on your own? No, doesn't make much of a difference. But in this case the symbolic gesture is actually important for the sake of pressuring other countries. Otherwise you get "Why should we in China decarbonise when Australia won't?"
Global warming is important, but only one environmental problem, so important to consider here, but not the only environmental issue.
Contributing to every environmental issue, including this one, is overpopulation. Humans have altered every continent, reducing biodiversity, introducing species that don't handle local climates as well, or too well and displace existing ones, making extinct species, and so on. I'm no expert, but the situation in Australia looks related to huge cities and lots of farms supporting a much larger human population than had ever lived there reducing biodiversity and resilience to fire, exacerbated by global warming.
People fear discussing overpopulation because they only know of China's policy and eugenics, as did I until I learned of the successful, non-coercive policies of Thailand, Iran, Mexico, etc that increased peace, prosperity, and stability.
Those examples show that we can peacefully and stably lower birth rate to increase peace and prosperity and ease all other environmental problems. Steady-state following de-growth works more successfully on a full finite planet than pushing economic and population growth forever, which exacerbates problems like these and increases their impact on humans and other wildlife.
I completely agree. It’s taboo to even discuss it, and we have a developed a “technology will come save us” cult around solving these problems that I don’t think is healthy. The infrastructure we have doesn’t scale well to this many people.
I get sad when I’m in a parking lot and I see a flock of Geese walking around the empty parking lot trying to dodge traffic. To me it really encapsulates the overall issue. Nobody thinks twice about it.
> the situation in Australia looks related to huge cities and lots of farms supporting a much larger human population than had ever lived there reducing biodiversity and resilience to fire,
Australia is one of the most sparsely populated countries on the planet. And the land that is burning is (relatively undisturbed) native forest, not farmland or ‘huge’ (?) cities.
With zero net overseas migration, the population would stabilise at 27 million then fall slightly. This is the most important change that could be made to assist the Australian environment, but sadly discussing immigration is completely disallowed in mainstream Australian media.
There is no need to limit birthrates - they are already sub-replacement in Australia. Just cut immigration.
I think the thing that you’re not addressing though is that this isn’t a national problem, it’s global. Australia isn’t on fire just because there are too many people within the borders of Australia, it’s on fire because of global changes caused by growing populations that don’t care about being sustainable.
Immigration puts a greater demand on land for that purpose. Plus, a greater population in Australia means a net increase in global emissions - since the vast majority of migrants are from three poorer countries: India, China, Nepal.
> Contributing to every environmental issue, including this one, is overpopulation.
Citation needed. Why is 7.7 billion people a problem? IMHO earth as it is today can accommodate 9 or 10 billion people without problems. (And like you, I have no citation as well.)
We currently utilise 50% -- the best, most fertile, productive 50% -- of the earth's landmass. What remains is marginal land, scrub, forests, permafrost, mountains, savannah, deserts etc, or is simply too hot or too cold for us to live comfortably. We're mistreating land with over fertilisation and suffering steady soil loss everywhere that's adopted post-war industrial agriculture. Many of those bits of rubbish land, forests and wildlife preserves we're not using are chopped up by pipelines, roads, rail affecting viability of the species broken up and interfering with natural migration and regrowth. Wildlife and wilderness has no chance.
We're clear cutting forest to make monoculture grazing land, or to plant thousands of acres of uninterrupted soya, palm oil and other major crops. As environmental awareness grows we're doing that at accelerated rate. Europe was clearcut in liveable areas in the Middle Ages, yet we've shown little to no sign of most noticing our colossal destructive impact. We just started importing big trees and colonising.
Borneo has gone from essentially untouched in the 1980s to 50% cleared now. Earth overshoot day puts us as needing 1.7 earths to sustain the current rate of regrowable use (it only considers replaceable resources, not mining and minerals). 10bn would push that up to over 2.
A sustainable population would probably be 1 or 2bn, if we want to allow a little room for the unforeseen.
Most of these billions of people have a much lower material quality of life than you or I, which is demonstrably unsustainable re: global warming etc. Nobody wants their quality of life to decline-- Austerity is always proposed as a solution for Other People. And technological solutions are a matter of faith at this point. So it seems reasonable to consider overpopulation a problem.
Not quite, there will be less fuel, but not less trees. The bushland of Australia has had regular fires baked into it's ecosystem, so the plant species all have coping mechanisms to deal with fire. A good example is are the Banksia varieties that rely on a bushfire to germinate.
These are typically areas where eucalypts have died off after centuries, allowing other species to fill the gap. Now that the fires have come through, the eucalypts will come back to fill the gaps and will quickly out-compete any other plants with superior height and canopy. They will get their next chance, a few centuries hence.
This isn’t true of the areas of greatest concern, where Gondwanan rainforest is burning. Eucalyptus is the newcomer, and it is fire-adapted and hot weather adapted, it out-competes the ancient forests where there are fires, and the nothofagus does not grow back.
This process happens too in Tasmania where most of that beautiful nothofagus grows. But you are right, these populations could be wiped out completely if fires increase and there's no chance for recovery - or the entire population is burnt. I wasn't suggesting that everything is okay, because it clearly isn't.
In addition to that, some fires are burning so hot and so regularly that the trees and seeds completely die. They haven't got the breathing time to recover.
“No good evidence” sounds suspiciously like “no true scotsman.”
Alice: “There’s no evidence that humans have contributed to climate change.”
Bob: “Well, actually, X, Y, and Z.”
Alice: “I don’t accept those. There’s no GOOD evidence...”
And here we have a throwaway account using emotional rhetoric like “climate alarmist monster.”
This kind of comment is not anywhere close to the standard we have come to demand on HN. Doubly so for a topic where vast sums of money are to be made by oiligarchs if we delay doing anything about fossil fuels.
That does not, in and of itself, invalidate any particular criticism. But it could explain why a throwaway account uses questionable rhetoric.
I was not, and am not, engaging you on the subject of whether humans contribute to climate change.
My point was entirely around a particular fallacy in your argument, and the tone. My goal was not to suggest you are wrong, but to suggest that both you and HN would benefit from a different style of discussion.
If you would like some solace, here’s something: A fallacious argument does not prove its point, but equally, a fallacious argument does not disprove its point either. So when someone points out a fallacy in your argument, do not take it as saying you are wrong. They are only saying that the particular argument you are using is not logically persuasive.
Having made my points, I do not need another turn. Carry on as you will.
I would like to see your break down your belief structure a bit more, so I can understand it.
Which of you do you believe?
1. That CO2 isn't a greenhouse gas?
2. That increasing the concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere doesn't influence global temperatures?
3. That human activity hasn't increased CO2 concentrations significantly.
If you answer those, we'll be able to know where your head is a bit better.
FWIW, no-one has ever argued that CO2 levels is the only factor effecting climate.
> The big evidence that higher concentrations of CO2 cause global warming was just the graph in Gore's movie.
I don't know what graph you are talking about, but the IPCC reports are not based on a random graph from a movie, and the arguments and evidence they present are vastly more credible than your comment.
Of COURSE you do. It's THE GRAPH of the Antarctic ice core record going back ~1 million years in Gore's movie. Likely Gore drew the graph accurately enough. An Obama science adviser also drew essentially the same graph. Also the graph is in the movie I referenced, the Swindle.
It's just a graph of CO2 and temperature from the ice core record -- there is likely only one such set of data.
Gore just misread the graph. His misreading was deliberate deception, incompetence, ignorance, or some such -- your choice -- but in any case wildly WRONG.
Going back ~1 million years, that's about all the data there is. The IPCC can do this and that, but still for the history it's nearly all just that graph.
For more data, there are basically just three more:
First there is the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age.
Second there is the cooling from about 1944 to about 1970, cooling while CO2 from WWII, pulling out of the Great Depression, and the economic boom of the 1950s was increasing.
Third there is the warming of maybe 0.9 F from about 1900 to the present which MIT Prof R. Lindzen, in the Swindle movie, claims for good theoretical reasons, just canNOT be CO2 warming.
That's the data. That data has to do with both CO2 and temperature.
We measure temperature with thermometers and related instruments in degrees F, C, or K.
We do NOT measure temperature with hurricanes, cyclones, tornadoes, droughts, floods, ice bergs, glaciers, penguins, polar bears, fur seals, coral reefs, fish catches, etc.
Bluntly and plainly, the CO2 and temperature record provide no meaningful, serious, credible, or significant support that CO2 from human activities will significantly warm the planet.
So, we can try to proceed on theory from physics, chemistry, etc. So, CO2 is a greenhouse gas. I gave its infrared spectrum. So, CO2 absorbs in three narrow bands out in the infrared. CO2 does NOT absorb in the visible, i.e., does NOT absorb visible light.
Far and way, H2O is a much more important greenhouse gas than CO2.
It is a long logical, rational path from the CO2 spectrum to claims of global warming.
To follow this path, basically we need to do some computations from basic physics and chemistry, the radiation from the sun, the surface of the earth, the oceans, etc. In that way we test the theory.
Well, the computations were done by some dozens of teams. I gave the graph of the results: Nearly all the teams predicted rapid increases in temperature which have not happened. So, the tests of the theory failed. In science, when such a test of the theory so generally fails, we junk the theory.
So, net, we are left with no successful test of the theory that
CO2 from human activities will cause significant global warming.
Net, we are left with no evidence, from history or theory, that CO2 from human activities will cause significant global warming.
The IRCC has nothing better, neither history nor theory. Pictures of ice bergs and polar bears do not count.
So, good news: We get to f'get about CO2 from human activities causing any trouble at all. We get to go ahead and burn fossil fuels, drive gasoline powered cars. We get to save money trying to stop warming the earth from CO2 from human activities. So, no need for subsidies or regulations in favor of solar panels or wind turbines.
Good news.
If you have any serious questions, then ask away.
Take the good news. E.g., save the $90+ T E. Warren and AOC want to spend to keep the earth from warming.
You have a new account, and complain about “anonymous viewers.” Hello, irony. Suggestion: if you are new here, read the posting guidelines and learn community norms.
One of which is, don’t complain about downvotes. Everyone gets to choose how to vote, and neither you nor I are allowed to tell them that they shouldn’t downvote our comments.
I’ve been here for a decade or so, I get downvoted into the negatives sometimes. It’s how HN works.
The IPCC reports are solid science not made by anonymous people on an Internet forum and claim the opposite of what you say. As I'm not an expert myself, I tend to trust the majority of the climate scientists.
As an Australian resident and now citizen for 20 years, I've been pretty angry since that last federal election. So many people here are still denying man-made global warming, and that includes our own government, which stood in the way of progress at COP25 [1].
Even now, in the midst of unprecedented heat, drought and fire that has gripped this continent for months, if not years, "friends" of mine regularly post the most ignorant climate denialist BS on FB.
So many people here are still denying man-made global warming
That isn't really true beyond the margins. Polls show that a large majority of Australians have accepted the science on climate collapse for two decades.
Australians know what's happening, but they believe their wealth can insulate them personally from the consequences while they watch dusky foreigners die. The last federal election contained an implied declaration of environmental war on the Pacific island nations, with the tradeoffs very clearly spelled out in the campaign.
Australia is a rogue nation of self-comforting nihilists, for whom Scott Morrison is a very natural leader.
Yes absolutely, of course. No-one can deny the outsized political significance of those margins along many dimensions (marginal rural constituencies, the Liberal/Nat/LNP right-wing factions, Alan Jones' grumpy gossiping old men, perpetually outraged about anything done by anyone under 60, the Murdoch press, etc).
I guess my point is that these extreme margins gain their power only because of the nihilism of the skittish 'moderate' Australian majority, which knows enough, and cares little about anything of significance.
I've recently been reading The Australian online, and any time there's a climate related article, there are literally 100s of comments almost all of which are rabid climate deniers. It's stomach churning to read.
No idea how representative of general population, but my gut-feeling is that it's a significant minority, e.g. 10-20%.
Yeah it's depressing, but have you not noticed a change or shift in tone at least in the media ? I'm hopeful this swings the focus back onto science and mitigation, and away from the economy. Every time our PM says "we must balance the environment with a healthy economy for all" I want to explode: what does that even MEAN. Economic activity is a function of human activity and humans need to like... breath?
I've been encouraged by some of the interviews and coverage with local government officials, they seem to be really shocked into a truth: I wish we could do better than a temporary 'concern' over the earth.
I asked a firefighter when is the fire considered safe once it appears to have stopped burning? The answer surprised me a bit. You need to have a 100m strip around the fire where someone has raked or inspected inside every tree, under every cow pat, bit of grass to make sure nothing is smouldering in that area. This is a huge job as for the fire I enquired about (Cudlee Creek SA), the perimeter is 180km and a fair bit of this is in rugged terrain. So a ton of work.
Honestly I'm surprised that's sufficient. To my knowledge you can even have root fires burning underground for months. And I expect embers can travel in the wind far longer distances than 100m. It's pretty impressive to me they can do it with 100m of inspection, let alone how difficult that already is.
> And I expect embers can travel in the wind far longer distances than 100m.
Far, far more. Embers have been known to travel 10s of km. However, if that happens after a fire has been reduced to smouldering, if it lights something, that gets considered as a new fire.
It's been nice in Brisbane the past few weeks. I'm starting to feel "survivor guilt". For the people saying we need less trees, please watch this: https://youtu.be/SIHIsSJ2Txk
Excuse my ignorance, can anyone explain to me what makes it so difficult to extinguish the fire? (This question is not meant to be an ass) I tried to google it, but couldn't find a proper answer. I'm just really curious.
Some other issues that I don't think have been mentioned:
- A lot of the trees are eucalypts which are super oily and incredibly flammable. Some have been known to explode when they get too hot.
- It's been getting incredibly windy, which is taking burning embers far ahead of the main firefront and starting advance fires. Recently, a firey was crushed to death after the fire engine was blown over on top of him the winds are that strong.
It's not like a barbecue fire that can be controlled with a garden hose. As someone else in this thread has mentioned, one of the fire fronts is 180km wide.
Edit: 180km perimeter
I think the article says that one of the fires has burnt an area the size of the state of Rhode Island.
> Are they just trying to prevent the spread and wait till the fire kills itself?
Basically this whenever possible, often if it's not near a populated area they won't even try to limit the spread, they put themselves out eventually with the right conditions (wind, rain, geography). Near populated areas they do what they can, mostly controlled burns and having fire breaks that allow them to effectively concentrate resources (firetrucks, water bombers) where they can actually be useful, a firetruck can be effective where there's a firebreak but without one it would be suicide to be there.
I can help answer this, one of my parents is a volunteer firefighter who was helping within the last few days. The current mandate for the CFA is asset protection, ie; protecting houses, farms and other properties where they can. It's understood that the fires can't be put out in the current conditions, so resources are focused on protecting buildings for now.
We're hoping for rain, but that's probably not going to appear in any significant quantities for a couple of months.
The scale. They don't have enough equiptment to extinguish it. Someone might make an exact calcuation, but my guess is they would need hundreds of fire fighting air tanker planes by now.
They say the only thing that can help now is rainfall. And it's not gonna come. All that the fire fighters can do now is saving lifes, helping people to evacuate, trying to keep important roads safe, etc.
If you live in Australia, what is this doing in terms of changing what people think and do about climate change? Is it motivating personal changes in diet, traveling and election voting choices?
If this nightmare scenario isn't enough to push people into taking action, what will?
Here in Canberra, it feels like I'm living in a space station on a toxic planet; I haven't seen blue skies in a month. See this chart (https://air-quality.com/place/australia/australian-capital-t...) which has air pollution literally OFF their chart ranges.
Hearing the drivel spewing from our PM and other politicians; It's always the same pandering responses with no real strategic change. It's beyond frustrating. We will have to be destroyed (are being?) before anyone admits there is are real problems requiring real actions. I have noticed that at a more local level of government, the messaging has changed and is more serious now.
Here are some thought bubbles;
* more aggressive back-burning and fuel load management: managed at a federal level by law.
* stop all new coal, keep replacing with ?whatever?, including a reappraisal of nuclear.
* start retreating populations back towards cities: reverse the sprawl into protected urban bubbles.
* start requiring building to have ventilation and filtering systems that can handle smoke better, and are more efficient at sealing air: I've heard many people complain about smokey insides: happens to me too !
* stricter criminal penalties for any arson related crimes.
* restrictions on tourism to risky areas during the fire season.
Either that or we finally DO become a giant desert from coast to coast: should be safe enough then!
One of the issues is that the 'window' for fuel load management/back burning is shrinking because the bush fire season is starting earlier. We had out of control fires from September, which is unheard of, and concerns that they were started by back burning operations.
Can only speak from my personal circles but the current bushfires aren't having a direct impact on personal responsibility (those who were interested were already interested; those that weren't still aren't).
We just had a political cycle where the Labor party lost on (among many reasons) a more climate-change focused agenda in the federal election, so we won't know for another three years if there is any any voter backlash. Additionally, parliament is not in session and the major parties are currently focused on crisis response (instead of attacking each other), so the political football has yet to truly begin.
Aside from the considerable pain and hardship for these local communities and the potential increase in politicization of environmental issues, the tourism sector is being obviously effected as you simply can't drive to many parts of New South Wales right now, tourists are being asked to leave many areas, and Sydney has been smog filled for the last month.
Unfortunately, I don't believe voting one way or another will make much difference. One party might be slightly better than another, but ultimately none will dare to implement sufficient measures. Climate problem will have to be solved outside of party politics. We need something akin to civil rights movement. On the global scale.
>Unfortunately, I don't believe voting one way or another will make much difference. One party might be slightly better than another, but ultimately none will dare to implement sufficient measures.
Then you are simply giving up on the whole thing? Because there is no other way to make much difference. If the current party platforms aren't sufficient, then those who care must first work to change those too. Become party members, work to select delegates that will then change it, etc. Same as any other democracy, regardless of details (in the US "party" (coalition) platforms and choices are determined by primaries before the country decides which one will assume government).
>Climate problem will have to be solved outside of party politics. We need something akin to civil rights movement. On the global scale.
It can't emphasized enough how completely, utterly wrong this is. Solving collective action problems requires coordinated use of power, which by definition is politics. Regardless of how the politics gets changed, it still will ultimately depend on politics. It's not some dirty word or concept, it's a descriptive/truism, when you work to get groups of humans to do something you're doing politics. It is our great good fortune, built on a mountain of blood a treasure, that so many of us live in democracies where it is so easy relative to history to work for radical political change through parties and government structures.
You mention the civil rights movement, but that ONLY WORKED THROUGH POLITICS. There seems to have been a huge forgetting in modern times that protest movements and the like are only means to a political end, not constructive in and of themselves. The civil rights movement had organized leadership that used the protests to mobilize voters, to gain public interest and recognition, etc., all with the ultimate aim of changing politicians/parties and actually getting actual for real legislation passed. They worked to the extent they translated into votes and in turn into actual power.
Conversely, consider all sorts of modern disorganized protests, no matter the size. It's perfectly possible to spend enormous amounts of time, effort, and resources and accomplish absolutely nothing whatsoever. It's a very dangerous and corrosive form of virtue signaling, and can actively harm progress because it burns people's limited capital to no useful end. And that in turn helps further breed disengagement, because people feel "they did something" "yet nothing happened". But "doing something" doesn't mean it's actually useful.
> The civil rights movement had organized leadership that used the protests to mobilize voters, to gain public interest and recognition, etc., all with the ultimate aim of changing politicians/parties
I was trying to say more or less the same, but maybe a bit too terse. [edit: with the qualification that I believe that protests and civil disobedience are essential means in "changing politicians/parties"]
What I was trying to say is that passive voting for the currently available options is not enough. People need to get off their couches and get actively involved in a climate movement and shift the overton window.
> Conversely, consider all sorts of modern disorganized protests, no matter the size.
It's almost easier to ask the inverse, what modern "crowd movement" has had lasting effects at all? I'm thinking of big ones like Occupy, or Remain, or the Women's Marches, or Extinction Rebellion for really recent. What actual, tangible change did they directly effect? What concrete legislation? The US civil rights movement actually ultimately resulted in the enormous Civil Rights Act of 1964. Various movements created a full umbrella group, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, to coordinate lobbying efforts and help translate public will into Congressional action. And it was needed, because passage was fought vigorously all the way to the end, with heavy filibustering, rule maneuvering, etc. It passed not through some grand awakening but through sustained, multi-faceted application of power, including skillful use of grubby politics by supporters. And of course even it's passing was still only part of a process, there was resistance to implementation, lawsuits, and on and on. Yet none of that diminished the accomplishment or the lasting effect it's had on society.
I'm definitely worried there is an increasing movement towards flashy, feel-good and "exciting" efforts without the necessary accompanying political party effort needed to actually do the work of translating popular will into concrete power. And as there isn't an unlimited budget of political capital or popular attention there really is something of a zero-sum aspect to all this, if people are spending their time and resources on ineffective measures that's quite harmful. We need full carbon cost internalization for example, which will not just dramatically aid in finding the most efficient ways to go carbon neutral but also be helpful in the critical next step of going carbon negative. Protests are likely a necessary component of getting carbon cost internalization laws passed, but we do in fact need those laws passed so while necessary they're not sufficient.
One might say Extinction Rebellion is still too young to be judged on lasting effects, isn't it? Also, getting arrested and going to prison is not something I would call a feel-good effort.
It is a bit early, but getting arrested is absolutely ""feel good"" activism - unless it actually achieves change. Nelson Mandela wasn't just getting himself arrested, he was trying hard not to be arrested for his campaign of sabotage.
> We need something akin to civil rights movement. On the global scale.
We also need someone other than Greta as the face of it. While she does a great job, she's often dismissed due to her age and the US president has even publicly called her retarded in the literal sense.
There's a difference between smeared and dismissed. I've even heard from people that think we need to make a change say "what does she know she's only a kid".
Greta is 16. A 16 year old brain is literally not fully developed.
A global movement should be able to muster a better spokesperson than a child. No matter how earnest and scared a child may be, it is still a mistake to make major policy decisions on their say-so.
Yours is a standard attack line, because it allows you to pretend that it's only her saying this, and ignore all the thousands of others who've been saying similar things, from the IPCC to the Green Parties of the world.
Then they should find a spokeswoman among all those thousands who is both charismatic and also competent.
A line of attack being standard doesn't make it bad. Putting forward a child to speak to world leaders and get worked up on behalf of other children isn't going to do the movement any favours. Greta is a puppet chosen because someone cynically thinks that putting a child on stage is going to tug on people's heartstrings. They might be right, but she doesn't have anything going for her that should command respect.
It doesn't matter who they pick, deniers are great diverting attention to smearing the person to take focus away from the issue, just take a look at how many still "herp derp al gore".
It goes without saying that someone proposing we roll back our living standards and give up on the material comforts of the late modern era is going to have their character examined. It is reminiscent of the hazing process for candidates in major democratic roles.
That does not make the flaws are irrelevant. She is being suggested as a leader but she is in no position to actually provide leadership.
Al Gore also had a long list of problems, but he was much more respectable than Greta.
The elections have already happened in May, and people have rejected the Labor party who was pushing for climate change reforms.
I suspect if the elections were to happen now, things might be different. Lots of people have directly or indirectly (thanks to heavy smog) suffered from the wildfires, moreso than previous summers.
LNP were also pushing hard that taxes will increase under labour with their big push on the 'Labor will introduce death tax' which was highly unethical and misleading.
If you live in in the US you might be familiar with the line that some conservative politicians are taking - that this is a time of crisis, tragedy and grieving and should not be politicised.
Australia has been in a drought for the past decade which is caused by the changing climate.
Yes, if you isolate this fire season then the fires themselves will look as no evidence of climate change. But the fact the everything is as dry as fuck when its not supposed to be dry as fuck...
In northern Queensland we have rain forests. The fringes of those rain forests are burning, because they're dry as fuck.
It is rarely possible to rule out that "something else" is the cause of a phenomenum. But the connection between rising temperatures and an exceptional dryness is quite obvious. So absent a very strong different explanation for the current dryness, climate change sounds like an important contributor if not the single cause.
Well hurricanes are also made stronger by the fact that CO2 traps more heat in lower layers and thus makes the upper atmosphere colder, leading to a higher differential with lower layers. So there you go, please inform your activism accordingly.
Large areas have burned in the Queensland fires which are rainforests and usually too wet to burn. A combination of unprecedented drought and record high temperatures over the past few years have dried these areas out sufficiently to sustain huge fires.
But that’s just local observation and means nothing in terms of climate change, right?
In God We Trust, All Others Must Have Data - W. Edwards Deming (Statistician)
I dislike it when people make statement without data which leads to politic. You have provided an article which contain data that support climate change may cause this fire.
That's as true as it is misleading. The changing climate definitely has an effect on the scale and intensity, but not the existence. Rating the scale is an essentially impossible task because the factors go back years (length and scale of drought, climate effects on that).
Agreed - a single fire doesn't mean squat. Fires breaking out all over like an alien invasion mean the climate has already changed: https://myfirewatch.landgate.wa.gov.au
Absolutely. Anthony Albanese (opposition leader for Labor here in Aus) said exactly this today on ABC. Whilst there is negligible correlation between the fires and our action (or inaction) to climate change as a country, the rhetoric of “well, we output so little compared of other developed nations” should not apply.
Oh, and our elected Prime Minister brought a lump of coal into parliament, which says as much.
Also important to recognize that Australia's carbon contribution is not solely limited to domestic output but also our coal industry. Australia is the largest exporter of coal in the world and this is not properly accounted for in our emissions accounting. On a per-person basis, our output is among the highest in the world and the inaction of others does not absolve us from having a moral responsibility to clean up our own mess at the very least.
Counting exports would lead to double counting: once for the exporter, once for the user.
All that matters is countries having fair targets, and meeting those targets.
Countries are free to meet their emissions reductions targets how they like, including buying cheap coal from Australia, planes from US, and cars from Germany.
It would double count emissions but it does mean that Australia could do more than just eliminate their own emissions, they could limit other countries' as well by stopping export.
Let's walk before we can run. It's difficulty enough to get countries to reduce their own emissions. Asking them to compromise their exports to reduce others' emissions is simply not viable at the moment.
Why shouldn't a citizenry decide to limit exports of certain goods when it is in their own interest to do so? We certainly do this with uranium already. Likewise with weapons technology and all manner of harmful trade vectors.
Australia's coal industry provides few jobs, is heavily government subsidized (either explicitly or through direct infrastructure funding), pays little to no tax, and creates environmental harm that the majority of the electorate disagree with.
[Sorry HN: I know I should be supporting this with annotations but am time pressed today.]
Australia produced 19.6 tonnes of coal _per person_ in 2018. That's the highest in the world. I don't think it's in any position to be pointing fingers.
It's a bit strange to use the population density of Australia to make a point, as the population density of Australia is one of the lowest in the world (3).
You're basically saying we should tackle Australia's 481 before China's 3523 or India's 716 or US' 702. Maybe we should tackle China first, as it is producing 45% of the world's coal, compared to 6% of Australia.
Now if you were to say that Australia is the 5th biggest producer of coal in the world, that'd be a more convincing argument.
I'm also surprised by Indonesia (6th). And the fact that Germany and Poland contribute 60% of the EU's (4th) coal production.
Germany is a literal "black spot" in that the coal industry still has political muscle there, despite Germany's otherwise relatively strong (but still very much minority) green movement.
They [Germany] got rid of their environmentally friendly nuclear reactors in favour of burning more coal after Fukishima. They're doing a bit of solar but are burning ever more and more coal.
It would still be more now than if the reactors had not been shut down right?
I guess I should not throw stones since both countries I live in are worse than this. Specifically they dig out more and more coal every year without stopping.
Yeah, this was in my opinion an overreaction. The calculus for building a new reactor (expensive, time consuming) versus keeping an existing one going is very different.
On the other hand, Germany had already experienced the Chernobyl cloud.
Australia did not fight with the Allies against the Axis powers in WWII because our contribution would make a difference either way. We fought because it was the right thing to do. And in the cause of this global emergency we chose to contribute our fair share and to back our principled beliefs with principled actions.
> The entire CO2 output of Australia could drop to zero with negligible effect on climate change
That's not quite true. You're not including Australia's extraction economy in that equation, only their local emissions. A similar miscalculation happens when people pretend Norway is a low CO2 output & impact nation by ignoring its extreme fossil fuel extraction per capita.
The obvious answer is to stop feeding China's emissions engine, which is dramatically larger than anybody else when it comes to CO2 emissions (and they're building a very large number of new coal plants). Unfortunately that probably wouldn't help much for very long, as China is de facto occupying Africa for resource extraction purposes.
Export less to the bigger emitters. Campaign to the world using the bushfires as an example of how normal historic occurrences (bushfires) are intensified - which will probably strike a chord, although unnecessarily, in California. Use Australia's phenomenal natural gifts of empty expenses of land and abundant sunshine to generate electricity, to use directly or create portable hydrogen, or any other such pursuit requiring large amounts of electricity.
There has been a lack of leadership in Australia for at least a generation. Since Rudd took office, politicians have been driven by polls and the media.
The current government is no exception. We need to do more to protect Australia's environment, including from climate change. We are letting the Great Barrier Reef wither away, and our land is burning.
The lack of leadership is particularly frustrating. Instead of developing and growing new sustainable industries that will be around when the world has de-carbonised the government is doubling down on coal. It is utter madness. We have lacked a cohesive energy policy for over a decade due to climate change being a political issue where sides have been divided. Its hard to believe, but in 2007 the collation under John Howard took a carbon emissions policy to the election. We have regressed in policy from that point.
Ultimately, a lot of the blame for all of this sits with the Greens. If they had been so blinded by purity and supported Rudd's carbon pollution reduction scheme. It would have been in place, and like the GST been settled. Instead they allowed it to become a political football. That plus Gillard's ineptness with the carbon tax has made this a toxic debate.
Talk is cheap, and the only thing that will change it is writing to your representative and letting them know. I strongly urge you to respectfully write to your MP and let them know they need to do better.
I'm curious how all the permaculture farms and homesteads are faring. Are these alternative landscapes surviving or maybe thriving dispite the droughts and fires?
Could the country promote or even mandate permaculture style landworks?
“Alternative landscapes” here really means exotic species that aren’t fire-propagated. There’s some evidence that exotics are protective of property in a low-intensity fire, but they’re also far more dependent on water, which is a desperately scarce resource, and many are deciduous, which adds to fuel loads.
The wide-scale promotion of non-native flora should be obvious enough as a non-starter.
It won't do much, I suspect, because the reasoning will be "yeah, climate change is real and is a significant danger...but look at how small Australia's contribution is compared to China". Which is effectively where it is at in Canada -- every discussion circles back to relative contribution, which is a classic tragedy of the commons (in this case being the air).
If we had rational worldwide leadership we could conceivably work greenhouse gases into the WTO and other trade agreements. If China needs to be tamed for everyone else to take part, factor it in.
Our wholesale power prices are actually quite low. Residential power is expensive because rooftop solar is putting the economics of maintaining the grid into a death spiral.
Rooftop solar became popular because residential electricity prices were so high.
Look up gold-plating poles and wires.
The grid death spiral is a long way off. It's also something that could have been mitigated by the networks themselves if they'd had any economists worth their salt.
Please support your claim with some evidence. I worked in the contestable electricity distribution business for 8 years from 2001 to 2009 and I can assure that your claim is complete bollocks.
Exactly. I worked at Powercor and Citipower - two distribution licenses but one parent company that ran a shared-everything operation across the two. We cost a bit more than one company to run but we’re able to recoup as if we were two wholly independent operations. The whole contestable distribution market was/is a huge scam.
Very interested to see the 'colour maps' for the next Federal election.
Most rural areas were blue for the last election.
(Blue represents the conservative Liberal Government, whilst Red is the opposition, Labor party. The Liberals are quite 'denialist', or at least obstructionist, when it comes to progress on alternative energy. Neither party are particularly inspiring to the Australia populace at the moment though).
I heard that earlier efforts in the year to do controlled burns were protested against by activists and thus paused and could’ve contributed to the extent of the fires now.
This is misinformation happily spread by the Australian media, who are hand in hand with the fossil fuel and forestry lobbiests. The Australian green party has supported hazard reduction burning for many years. The activists you mention have had pretty much zero influence on what hazard reduction has been done. The current government cut the budget for the fire service so drastically that they lost about 60% of the qualified staff who were in charge of planning hazard reduction burns. We have areas the size of Tasmania that are the responsibility of 1 hazard reduction expert. The areas that are burning are not areas that the activists you mentioned were active. Some of the fires in September and October were likely caused by hazard reduction burning.
Basically, hazard reduction burning is a viable technique when the fire season lasts 3 or 4 months. This fire season is looking like it will last for 6 to 7 months, which leaves very little time to plan and execute hazard reduction.
You are probably not taking into account the size of the areas that require hazard reduction management, and the low (now even lower) number of people who are responsible for it.
In short, environmental activists (and, mostly, arsonists) are a bogeyman created by people trying to divert attention away from the real problems.
The main real problems are:
Due to forestry the water cycle on the western side of the great dividing range (and other mountains in Australia) has been disrupted and areas that usually receive rain have had declining rain or no rain in the past decade.
Global patterns such as El Nino have been disrupted leading to less precipitation and one of the worst droughts in Australian history.
Average temperatures across the continent have been setting new records for the past decade, with 2019 being the hottest year on record, and about 3 weeks ago we had the hottest day on record Australia wide.
Serious budget cuts to the organisations who are responsible for hazard reduction in fire prone areas.
It's basically the perfect storm of climate change and government ineptitude.
But, according to our glorious leader, we should not worry, stay calm and watch the cricket.
Seriously, you couldn't make this shit up if you tried.
Yup, and the malfeasance that is Fire Rescue Victoria, with so many problems in its implementation that acts of parliament were required, and then the politicians pushed through an amended version that had had no consultation with either the Country Fire Authority or Metro Fire Brigade.
> But, according to our glorious leader, we should not worry, stay calm and watch the cricket.
Ironic, in that last I heard, several big matches were being canceled due to the weather...
In summary, you are saying that controlled burns were reduced and they would have helped, it's just that the protests against them weren't significant?
Also seems like the Australian media supported the protestors:
That’s a claim you should not read uncritically, given where it is published — the site is a “climate skeptic” page, and the claim it is trying to advance is that the national broadcaster is being manipulated, or at the centre of a vast left-wing conspiracy, that has inexplicably ruined the country, despite having apparently not convinced its audience to vote for a left-wing party.
Here’s the thing: the reportage of the protest was on a local-news Facebook page maintained by the national broadcaster and was not reported more widely at the time (September 2019). You can find the post cached, it doesn’t read as being in favour or opposition to the protest. But it did contain the names and faces of the (two) protesters.
The planned burn zone is in the one of the current fire-affected areas - although probably not the massive ones you’ve been reading about, 500 miles away.
The article posted asks whether the area of the planned burn “has now been completed by Mother Nature” alongside screen grabs of the cached article, and you can see the tenor of the comments section what sorts of feelings that provokes.
It’s pretty reasonable to assume that the post was deleted to protect two protesters from harassment.
Protecting the protesters could certainly be one of the reasons to take it down. But that shows they are sympathetic to their cause, when really they did a horrible thing.
I don’t think that makes the article less on point.
Controlled burns were reduced because controlled burns weren't viable in many areas. This had nothing to do with any activists, but everything to do with the fact that there wasn't a viable time to do these burns in many areas.
EDIT: I just read the link you provided. Do you honestly not see how unreliable that source is? They are basically an anti ABC hate farm. Do some independent fact checks and get back to me.
"Throw another shrimp on the barbie", he said. "No worries, mate. It'll be fine", he said...
FYI - I'm an Aussie born and bred, and part of our culture is to laugh at ourselves, even during the hard times. That's how Australians stay so resilient through hardship.
Technically yes but not practically because the temperature differential is what is needed and well as considerable logistical and engineering issues of making something which uses it large enough to deal with a moving and raging fire - let alone not interfering with fightint efforts or being accused of arson to not pay for fuel.
Nobody has used Centralia, PA as a generator despite the long burning underground coal fire - it has also been moving underground in a regular pattern.
"1/ The looming climate crisis will be to
this century what the two world wars were
to the previous one. It will require
countries and institutions to re-allocate
capital from other endeavors to fight
against a warming planet. This is the
decade we will begin to see this
re-allocation of capital. We will see
carbon taxed like the vice that it is in
most countries around the world this
decade, including in the US. We will see
real estate values collapse in some of the
most affected regions and we will see real
estate values increase in regions that
benefit from the warming climate. We will
see massive capital investments made in
protecting critical regions and
infrastructure. We will see nuclear power
make a resurgence around the world,
particularly smaller reactors that are
easier to build and safer to operate. We
will see installed solar power worldwide
go from ~650GW currently to over 20,000GW
by the end of this decade. All of these
things and many more will cause the
capital markets to focus on and fund the
climate issue to the detriment of many
other sectors."
there is an accurate one word summary --
nonsense. With two or more words, even
worse than nonsense.
It's time to drive a stake through the
heart of this climate change alarmism. We
can do a good job just in this little
post.
In simple terms, there is no serious
evidence that CO2 from human activities at
anything like probable concentrations will
have any significant effect on the
temperature or climate of the earth.
Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but it is
a long logical path from there to any
claims of a significant effect.
We need just two steps:
(1) History.
There is NOTHING in the climate history
from the present back to about 1 million
years ago that supports the idea that
anything like realistic concentrations of
CO2 from human activities will have any
significant effect on temperatures.
(i) For the ice core records going back ~1
million years, yes, both temperatures and
CO2 concentrations went both up and down.
BUT, if we just look carefully at the big
graph in Al Gore's movie, with high irony,
that graph totally destroys his claims
from that graph: He misread the graph.
The main point is that there is an 800
year delay; CO2 concentrations changed 800
years AFTER the temperature changes, from
whatever cause.
Specifically: (a) When temperatures
started increasing, from whatever cause,
CO2 concentrations were LOW, not high.
(b) About 800 years later CO2
concentrations were HIGH, from increased
biological activity from the higher
temperatures. (c) When temperatures
started to fall, from whatever cause, CO2
concentrations were still HIGH, not low.
(d) The high CO2 concentrations did not
keep the temperatures from falling. (e)
Once the temperatures fell, about 800
years later so did CO2 concentrations.
Net, CO2 did not cause the higher
temperatures or keep the higher
temperatures from falling.
(ii) In the last 2000 years we had the
Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice
Age, and there is no suggestion that CO2
concentration changes caused either.
(iii) Starting in the 1940s and through
about 1970, we actually had some
significant cooling, but in those years
CO2 from human activities -- WWII, pulling
of the Great Depression, and the economic
boom after WWII -- increased. So, we got
COOLING, not warming, with the additional
CO2 from human activities.
Net, there is NO data from the historical
record that supports the claim that higher
CO2 will cause higher temperatures.
(2) Yes, CO2 is a <i>greenhouse</i> gas.
The absorption spectrum is at
So, CO2 absorbs in three narrow bands, one
for each of bending, stretching, and
twisting of the molecule, out in the
infrared.
No, Tom Friedman of the NYT: CO2 does not
absorb sunlight, and anyone can confirm
this by looking at a source of CO2, e.g.,
exhaling or the bubbles from soda pop, and
simply observing that the CO2 is not
visible and does not cast a shadow.
So, the theory has been that the CO2 warms
the planet. Then there has been
ALARMIST CLAIM: Extra CO2 from current
human activities will soon cause
significant extra warming and, thus,
"climate change", a "climate crisis", etc.
Since the historical record can't support
the ALARMIST CLAIM, we have to rely on the
theory based on the absorption spectrum of
CO2 and computation.
Well the computations were done by dozens
of teams, and the results are summarized
in
Net, as in this graph, nearly all the
computations predicted rapid, significant
increases in temperatures soon. Well the
time of predicted increases came and went
with no sign of anything like the
predicted increases.
In science, when predictions are made and
found to be false, we junk the science.
No doubt, the failures in that graph are
some of the worst in all the history of
science. GOOD science, e.g., the hunt for
and finding the Higgs boson at the LHC
(Large Hadron Collider), the observations
that confirmed the predictions of black
holes, many other confirmed predictions of
special and general relativity, the
A-bomb, the H-bomb, the design of the
Hubble telescope, to the quantum mechanics
in semi-conductors that are the core of
current digital electronics, the science
was just rock solid.
We are just awash in super solid science,
and the global warming computations in
that graph are just a humiliation of
anything scientific and just sick.
So, for the ALARMIST CLAIM, there is no
scientific support.
For more there is the video documentary
The Great Global Warming Swindle at
there see (A) the remarks of MIT Professor
R. Lindzen on (i) why any warming we might
be getting now cannot be from CO2 and (ii)
the huge pile of money that didn't just
buy off the climate scientists but HIRED
the climate alarmists pretending to be
climate scientists, maybe 10 times more
alarmists than real scientists.
Also that documentary argues that the
Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice
Age were caused by variations in the rates
of sun spots. More sun spots increase the
solar wind which, from more links in a
causal chain, in the end slows cloud
formation and has a net warming effect.
So, since both (1) history from ~1 million
years ago to the present and (2) the
computations based on CO2 being a
greenhouse gas fail to support the
ALARMIST CLAIM, we have no scientific
support or even meaningful evidence for
the ALARMIST CLAIM or the proposed very
expensive reductions in carbon, etc.
In this case and quite generally, if we
are willing to go forward with big,
expensive changes without good evidence,
then we leave ourselves open to some of
the worst mistakes in all of civilization.
One current example of such mistakes is
killing off the rhinoceroses to get their
horns for use in Chinese medicine.
For another such mistake, there is from
page 76 of
Susan Milbrath, Star Gods of the Maya:
Astronomy in Art, Folklore, and Calendars
(The Linda Schele Series in Maya and
Pre-Columbian Studies), ISBN-13
978-0292752269, University of Texas Press,
2000.
with
"Indeed, blood sacrifice is required for
the sun to move, according to Aztec
cosmology (Durian 1971:179; Sahaguin 1950
- 1982, 7:8)."
That is the Mayan charlatans killed people
to pour their blood on a rock to keep the
sun moving across the sky. No doubt the
sun actually did keep moving across the
sky.
If we go forward with the Green New Deal,
the Paris Accords, carbon taxes, etc. we
are making a mistake as irrational as in
the Chinese medicine and the Mayans.
Warning: It appears that now the sun is
entering the part of the 11 year or so
sunspot cycle with fewer sun spots. So,
we are in line for a few years of cooling.
So, don't believe a claim of the global
warming alarmists that their efforts
caused the cooling.
At this point, continuing with
entertaining the ALARMIST CLAIM is just
nonsense, expensive nonsense.
The town of Mallacoota is essentially surrounded by a moat of fire at the moment. The residents are trapped inside this ring, one part of which is the ocean. The Navy, as well as supplying, are evacuating people off the beach as there is no other safe way out of that part of the country at the moment.
You can definitely just send the trucks in. Whether anyone will be actually alive a few minutes later is a very different proposition. I'd advise against it. People underestimate just how hot fire can get and what it actually means to operate next to and within an environment that is essentially a furnace. A furnace that stretches all around you and up into the sky and is moving all the time. The air is hot and thick. Your protective gear is hot. Embers are flying around and if they touch something flammable they become a fresh new fire.
A few "trees across the road" means many minutes to clear that road. Which is surrounded by fire. Or soon will be. That wind could change any minute. Or the logs are still smouldering or on fire. So you clear the road and then a few hundred metres later you reach more fallen trees and massive ditch you can't pass. Now the fire has crossed the road behind you.
Not even close to the noise made here: Macron (and Hollywood artists) lying about "world lung", Europeans threatening us with economic sanctions, fake news everywhere (old pictures, fake pictures (from other places), animals that don't even exist in Amazon...
I don't know. But Europe did that for centuries in Latin America, Africa, India, and got very rich with that. Ok, they didn't know how dangerous it could be.
But now Europe has the 'moral authority' to prevent poor countries from explore their own lands to give a decent life to their citizens, that have been left in misery after decolonization.
BTW, Europe talk so loud about climate changes, sign agreements and so on but do nothing relevant about it. Do you know why?
It's sad to see how these fires are automatically linked to climate change. Until the mid 2000's Australia burned down small patches of forests to prevent large disasters like these we have now. But that changed when burning down forests (mind you to prevent larger forest fires in the future) were deemed too bad for the environment.
So now the policies and fire prevention techniques changed (for the worse) and exactly what many firefighters predicted has happened: mass fires covering the east coast. It doesn't matter how much the climate changed when the whole part about prevention has been screwed up.
Thanks for the link, someone staying with us was saying exactly what this article is debunking. I've sent it to them, but I'm expecting an 'unchanged opinion' type response.
>Bradstock says research “overwhelmingly” demonstrates that creating a 40- to 50-metre fuel break around a house can give it a much greater chance of surviving fires.
The policies have not changed. The fire department has said the weather has been too dry for too long and they are unable to do controlled burns like they used to.
Summer in Australia always comes with one or two big fires in at-risk rural areas over the months from December to February.
Queensland and New South Wales were burning heavily by early December. And now Victoria and South Australia have joined in as well and we're still only just into the second month of three. It's unprecedented.
The one thing that may provide back handed comfort is that so much has burnt that it will be a few years before enough 'fuel' is regrown for fires of this scale to be possible again.
I'm wondering the unknowable tipping point at which the cost of rebuilding from bushfires outweighs the costs of de-carbonising the economy. Part of the problem with that is who / where the costs are borne / spread amongst.