Australia’s Alien Environment Fuels Firestorms

This is simple, intelligent, very workable and is in conformity with nature. Therefore it has virtually zero chance of being adopted by a government. There is no power or profit potential.

Unintended consequences. It is the bane of all good intentions. GK

Well, it’s just like the alien environment of Kalifornia. Wet years grow the vegetation and dry years burn it off. Houses are not located in the clear lands, rather more likely where the vegetation is thickest. The entire USA is about like that.
Trees should be along to 100 ft off the highways to block the wind and act as a natural snow fence also. Not to mention sopping up pollutants. Then we’ll have less tragic traffic accidents and pileups. But everyone wants to see the scenery. No common sense.

Another excellent article on Quadrant with a great film about these damn destructive environmentalists actions: http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2013/01/the-fires-the-greens-make-us-have

Jo Nova: In Australia If You Try to Clear a Firebreak On Your Land You Could Go to Jail

Sorry, The Greens Know far better the Aborigines. The Greens are so Clever? Sarc off

Worth noting that Australian Aboriginal people, in the main, detest Envrionmentalists and Greeens because of their urge to prohibit traditional activities such as hunting and fishing.
Also worth noting that the only reason there’s anything burning at all in some parts is that we’ve had a couple of wet seasons…it’s true, you just can’t please a Greenie!

It’s happening in North America too. Read this book.
http://www.amazon.com/Eco-Fascists-Radical-Conservationists-Destroying-Heritage/dp/0062080032/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1358714542&sr=8-1&keywords=eco+fascists

We are here to help you, we are from your government.
The voluntarily nonproductive, know better than the producers, how production shall proceed.
From the actions of the greenies and UN-IPCC inspired acts of economic suicide on the part of our bureaucracies, I suspect these groups cost us more than they are worth.
What value are the trappings of civilization, if they defy common sense and cost you your life and property?
On the bright side, one should remind the nature lovers of history, last time the weather turned cold, the witches got to be the scapegoats. Human nature seems to cycle too.

Eucalyptus oil is highly flammable. Eucalyptus trees emit so much in hot weather that the vapour can clearly be seen in the atmosphere and creates the famous “blue hills” that once everyone in Australia knew about – the vapour causes diffraction in the air.
In the right conditions of heat and low humidity eucalypt tree forests literally explode into uncontrollable firestorms with the fire “topping” through the tree canopy and the undergrowth burning behind a raging fire front.
People who live in that environment might as well throw accelerant around their homes – the effect is the same.
The economic disaster of these fires is the result of living in inappropriate dangerous areas and nothing to do with “manmade climate change”.
We have had hot weather and raging fires long before there was any thought of “manmade climate change”.

Carbon madness is a good way to put it. The article is good; it was needed to throw some light on the faulty policies that spawn these catastrophic fires. We see how the government is in the business of sowing firestorms and then blaming CO2. What a racket.

I’m glad this has been mentioned. I read a very informative article on the subject after the deadly Australian fires a few years ago. It made perfect sense. So this time around, I was wondering why they haven’t managed the ‘fuel’ problem in the intervening years.

@A.D.Everard: We currently have the worst government Australia has ever seen and I can’t wait for November when we can vote the B**** out!
Please don’t make the mistake we did in the USA. The idiocies perpetuated by our government are too numerous to remember. So they get lost in the political debate. The government’s own mistakes become a smoke screen hiding the size and number of problems.
Where did we get the idea that candidates cannot use notes in debates, speeches or interviews and must rely on memory? Romney should have carried around a scuffed, worn corner, dog-eared red 1″ 3-ring binder over-filled with pages cataloging of US government idiocies, corruptive influences, and failed promises. He wouldn’t even have to open it in public, it’s presence would be intimidating. It might be unconventional, but that red note-book could have become iconic of the state of the nation.
In any event, A.D., don’t rely upon memory. Take inventory. Take names. Don’t let most of it be lost in the fog of political war.

I think it is about time for Australia to move government headquarters and ALL their bureaucracies into those locked-up wilderness areas and toss away the key. Then let nature take it’s course. Oh, and don’t forget to move all the lobbyists and greenies too.

Same here in the US. We went from no burn rules with forest management to just no burn rules, then we get let it burn rules.. and get…. massive forest fires in Idaho, Utah, Oregon, Washington, New Mexico, Montana.. ect.. The forests were healthier when we had a healthy lumber industry but we were told that plastic bags will have less environmental effect then our old sturdy paper bags and that (my fav) trees were not a renewable resource. Meanwhile the wildlife this was supposed to save is still dying off to the point where the gov feels the necessity to help some more. At some point maybe they could figure out that it was their ‘help’ that got us to this point in the first place… just sayin.

Philip Bradley said:
Here in Western Australia, we have the largest bushfires in Australia and they generally don’t make the Perth newspapers, for the simple reason they burn through areas where no one lives, and there is no property to burn except for a few minesites, and the miners, not being there for the scenery, make sure all brush around buildings is cleared.
That’s because WA is huge and empty of people except in the south west, and Perth has also had its share of bad bushfires with lives and property destroyed in the recent past. Your ideas would not work in the south east in Victoria, NSW or for that matter south west WA, because of the population densities and the preference of people to live in leafy suburbs at the interface with the bush.
Philip Bradley also said:
It may sound harsh, but the best solution is to prohibit anyone from getting bushfire insurance or government help after a fire. If you want to live in a bushfire risk area, don’t expect tax-payers to subsidize your lifestyle.
I find this comment particularly offensive and misleading. I live in a bushfire area and was burned out in the 2009 bushfires. I did not expect any support from Taxpayers (and did not get any) and for the record, the biggest contribution to the welfare of those affected came from the ordinary people of Australia who dug deep and donated to the bushfire fund. I was fully insured and am close to finishing rebuilding (this time a much more fire resistant house). You cannot impose such controls on insurance in a free market, unless you want a communist state as well.
Ken Mival – Hazeldene Victoria

over 50 years fighting fires I have never seen a greenie joining a fire brigade in Australia . they spend all there time trying to stop us carrying out hazard reductions right across Australia

“Aborigines lit fires continually, so their small patchwork fires caused no permanent damage to the environment and created and maintained the healthy grasslands on which many animals and Aborigines depended.”
Actually there is debate on this subject about the effect on Australian fauna before and after Aborigines arrival. “The role of the Aboriginal people in causing the extinction of fauna before European settlement has been much debated”. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/43654/Australia/45008/Animal-life

Common sense as usual from Viv Forbes but I must agree with Olaf ( Olaf Koenders says:
January 20, 2013 at 1:11 pm)
Aboriginals didn’t ‘manage’ the bush, in fact they pretty much didn’t manage anything.
What they did was use fire to catch ready cooked food (lizards etc) and have smouldering logs ever present so that they can easily light new fires every morning. Who the heck wants to rub two sticks together every time one needs to build a fire?
This action changed the Australian landscape for ever and not for the better. Only fire hardy vegetation survived this onslaught and the continent dried out just that bit more.
Far too much romanticizing of a people who pretty much still lived in the stone age as late as the 19th century.

I might also point out that some (not all) of the bush fires in Australia are man made as yet another person was arrested over the weekend for deliberately lighting a fire. As someone who lives on the west coast it is also a regular observation that when the summer school holidays finish, the number of bush fires reduces and that’s not because of rain.
The last three property destroying fires in Western Australia all had a man made cause, though they were not deliberately lit.

Look, I know it’s supposed to be about fire, and Our Green Betters have excelled themselves in this field. They have once again evolved policies to maximise waste, expense and destruction. It’s what they do.
But if we are looking for their masterpiece, I’d like to vote for those low-flush toilets, especially the really feeble ones you’re likely to encounter in new million dollar homes in the city. Firstly, you pay more for your new Green cistern, and, of course, you’re paying more for water. (Among other things, there’s a rusting de-sal plant somewhere on the coast that needs some costly care.) Secondly, you have to flush many, many times, wasting water to make that last pea go through. Lastly, because that last pea insists on floating, you have to fish it out.
Now what could be better, from a Green point of view, than the cost, waste and humiliation of such a toilet? You even get some medieval sanitation to go with your medieval wind power.
Perhaps Our Green Betters could link their fire and water policies by restricting fire-fighting techniques to hand passing of buckets. You know, for all my flippancy, i wouldn’t be surprised if a few of them haven’t thought of that.
And no cheating with big buckets!

mosomoso says:
January 20, 2013 at 3:00 pm
…Perhaps Our Green Betters could link their fire and water policies by restricting fire-fighting techniques to hand passing of buckets. You know, for all my flippancy, i wouldn’t be surprised if a few of them haven’t thought of that….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
ERRrrrr, if I recall correctly they did exactly that in the USA by grounding the firefighting (water carrying) planes in the USA.

Western wildfires – horrific, devastating … and unnecessary
New fire-fighting technology could help put them out. Why isn’t it being used?
…Duly impressed, I called the company to ask what role it was playing in fighting the Colorado blazes and why its technology apparently was not working. The answer shocked me. It had not been asked to help!
Despite all the news stories about FireIce, its certification by the USFS, and frequent communications between GelTech and federal, state and local officials – no one had contacted the company….
[and a comment]
daveburton says:
July 24, 2012 at 5:17 am
Old firefighting technology would help, too — if it was still available. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration effectively decommissioned much of it last summer, by abruptly cancelling the contract for use of the planes which were the core of the U.S. Forrest Service’s aerial firefighting capabilities, and thereby putting out of business the company that both operated those planes and produced and maintained the key firefighting subsystem used in the best of the remaining firefighting planes:
http://monkeywrenchingamerica.com/?p=1412
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2012/07/08/new-parts-support-for-wildfire-system/ukvgabDt0PlgwsyUW17u2N/story.html

I think the Malethusians Greens really do want to kill us….

There is no doubt that the mindless expansion of national parks, without a thought (let alone a dollar) given to maintenance has been responsible for severe environmental problems. As well as raging bushfires, the parks are havens for weeds and feral animals (pigs, dogs, cats, foxes etc) which invade neighbouring properties.
Once again, ‘green’ is a synonym for (a) stupid beyond belief and (b) perverse outcomes.
I am a bit sceptical of the romantic view of Aboriginal burning as well. There weren’t that many of them – vast regions of this vast continent were uninhabited, so the effects were localised in fairly small areas. As others have pointed it, it made sense from the point of view of finding a cooked dinner in the ashes and clearing a bit of grazing land for kangaroos and such. But it is absurd to believe that these fires never got out of control, or that they were motivated by concern for Gaia.
Anyhow, ‘tree-changers’ are learning the hard way that nature is not cuddly, and that if you cuddle up too close you may well get savaged.

Its important to recognise the multifactorial nature of the problem, rather than jumping to a single solution.
Though, I note that somehow mining is listed as one of the causes. I honestly can’t think of a single fire that was traced back to a mine.
In WA all miners are required to have a bushfire management and response plan. This includes the training of a team for bushfire response and the presence of a dedicated fire response vehicle. Plus all the obvious things like properly observing fire bans and not undertaking hot works on high fire risk days.
It’s very easy to pick on miners, because they are “the enemy”, however my experience indicates that almost all fire impacts affecting residential areas arise for multiple factors that might include; poor fuel control, carelessness in the face of evident upcoming fire weather, inadequate fire protection by residents and authorities, arson, poor communication by agencies and residential sprawl.
In all of that, it must be realised that once one of these beasts take hold, even the best fire protection and contingency planning may not be enough. I’m thinking of a fire that occurred at a place called Pingelly in WA. The fire arose from a local tip, but once it took hold, the high winds meant that the fire was jumping ahead up to 300m, so no amount of fire breaks is gonna stop that and for the most part that fire crossed cropped land where there was only stubble. The only thing that could have been done with that was to stop it at source.
In summary, it’s very easy to jump to a single solution and land the blame on a single group, but in reality, they are multifactorial and require management from a range of sources.
My heart goes out to those who have lost property and lives in this fire season and I really don’t think that now is the time to be saying it’s all their fault.

I think the Malethusians Greens really do want to kill us….
<<<<<<<<<
You don't have to.
You can know it.
Go to any website where they advertize the destruction of civilization: people being in the world are the main problem the world has, and less people is less problems. Period.

Philip Bradley I live in Fremantle WA and cannot agree with your comments. Don’t you recall the Roleystone/Kelmscott fires about two years ago when upwards of 35 homes were lost? Forgetting the Brigadoon fires at the same time when hundreds were evacuated? To those who don’t know WA these places are on the outskirts of the Perth metropolitan area.
But to refer to your post which seems to lack any logical rationale at all
You start by referring to the comment by the author of this particular topic that “There is only one way to limit fire damage – reduce the fuel available.
You then say “No it isn’t. The other and best way is too keep people and property away from combustible material (and visa versa)”. But you then directly contradict that statement by saying “I recall from the Victorian fires a couple of years ago. In one town, only one house didn’t burn. The owner had cut back all the brush and trees around his house, and had been fined by the council for doing so”.
This is exactly, repeat exactly, in agreement with the statement you so vehemently disagreed with.There seems to be no rationality in what you write.
You then say “It may sound harsh, but the best solution is to prohibit anyone from getting bushfire insurance or government help after a fire.” But you also said the best way is to keep people away etc. As you can’t have two bests which one is the real best?

Time to BURN the lame-brained tree huggers, the “green” politicians AND that Kyoto agreement!

I dont have much time to comment because we just got 90% burnt out in the fires on the 8th Jan. This is the first afternoon I have stopped since from shooting burnt stock and caring for live ones to be taken away and putting out on-going fire up to last Friday.
So much for “chosing to live where there is a fire risk” – The national park land the fire escaped from is about 5 km or more as the crow flies. There has been NO fires in this valley, let alone this farm, since probably 1935 or earlier. There is 5 km of open grazing land between me and where we were burnt out from.
The fire started about a week before and was small but the local council and Rural fire service did not bother putting it out when it was small, arguing about who paid costs, despite catastrophic weather conditions being predicted. So it got away. Now those staff got overtime for fighting the fire. A complete beauracrats bunfight at our expense on every level.
Someone here on the night of the fire said the wind was so strong that it was blowing his truck about on the road 200 km+ winds and that it was impossible to see from the smoke and heat, BEFORE the fire hit. This was just the spot fire area ahead of the main fire – spot fires hit about 4pm, main fire a number of hours later.
So does that mean people should only live 10 km from trees? – yet the NSW native Vegetation Act 2003 that makes Australia meet its Kyoto protocol carbon quota makes mowing or slashing NATIVE GRASS pasture illegal (as well as trees, few realise this) – so should we only live on ploughed ground 10 km from trees and grass? Or do they just hate humans as the root of all evil? A fascists paradise.
Our fences are over 90% burnt also and 1/3 of livestock lost.
Government “help” is a joke and in practice inaccessible.
I am beyond exhaustion
Some before and after pics
http://s968.beta.photobucket.com/user/runninghorse-2008/library/Bushfire%202013
http://s968.beta.photobucket.com/user/runninghorse-2008/library/Bringing%20in%20the%20Sheep

I remember visiting a friend who lived in the forests surrounding Grafton. After driving through the forest it suddenly opened up to a clearing the size of of the Sydney cricket ground. In the middle was their house. That’s how everyone should live who wants to live in the Australian bush.

Plain Jane, thank you for taking time to relate all this. Rest up, if and when you can, then let people know more, if you feel so disposed. We’ve been pretty safe from fire for some years in my part of NSW, but I well remember how bad it was in 1994 and at other times. Fire just has a will and way of its own once it gets the conditions it loves, and gathers the critical mass it needs. It can then make its own wind, jump over lakes, travel on next to nothing.
To think the authorities knew about it when it was small and in a National Park! I suppose it’s more important to learn than blame, and what you’ve just written and photographed will give some people a chance to learn. Those with green goo all over their brains will refuse to learn or care, but others will profit from your efforts.

janama says:
January 20, 2013 at 9:06 pm
I remember visiting a friend who lived in the forests surrounding Grafton. After driving through the forest it suddenly opened up to a clearing the size of of the Sydney cricket ground. In the middle was their house. That’s how everyone should live who wants to live in the Australian bush.
Sure. You have to clear the bush to live in the bush.

Robert A. Taylor says:
January 20, 2013 at 9:06 pm
Gail Combs says:
January 20, 2013 at 2:08 pm
The second link works – to a close-up of California and Nevada.
You can then backspace to the end of the home site, or this
http://stewardsofthesequoia.org/
But I didn’t find a map there either; and didn’t spend much time looking.

Allen B. Eltor says:
January 20, 2013 at 4:38 pm
I think the Malethusians Greens really do want to kill us….
<<<<<<<<<
You don't have to.
You can know it.
Go to any website where they advertize the destruction of civilization: people being in the world are the main problem the world has, and less people is less problems. Period.
I am with the BAU boosters on this one and not that dreadful Malthus. Economic growth is infinite, we can take whatever we want from the environment, pump whatever rubbish we want into the environment, render extinct whatever we want, and the more people the better.
Come one, come all.
I confidently predict that two or three billion more people in the world will be good for everyone and everything.

What puzzles me is how with fires on that scale they can state the temperatures to within ten degrees let alone to a fraction of one.

Ric Werme says:
January 20, 2013 at 10:01 pm
Plain Jane says:
January 20, 2013 at 8:38 pm
The fire started about a week before and was small but the local council and Rural fire service did not bother putting it out when it was small, arguing about who paid costs, despite catastrophic weather conditions being predicted.
How can you ever have a civil dicussion with these people again?
The question I would like answered is this, ‘Did the Coonabarabran fire start on private property, public property other than a national park, or in a national park?’
Statistically, despite all the bs we have been hearing on WUWT, national parks form a much smaller part of the landscape in Australian than farmland, production forests and other forms of public land, despite all the language here about things being ‘locked up’.
Since lightning starts most fires, and most land is not national parks, more fires are going to burn into national parks than out of them.
A couple of years ago there were some ill-informed calls by farming organisations to sue governments for fires starting in national parks and then burning into farmland.
This has gone very, very quiet recently because the penny has dropped.
Farmers now stand to lose their farms by being sued for negligence for allowing fires to escape their properties.

Mosomoso
To think the authorities knew about it when it was small and in a National Park!
Thus are myths born. Do you know for a fact where the fire started?

Please explain the dichotomy of your statement – in one case you refer to miners who clear land, in the other case you refer to a farmer who did the same thing but you seem to suggest his family should have fled the advancing green wave. Do you propose people should do that and move back after the trees burn down? Can you afford that cycle or do you live in an underground house?
Miners clear brush because they have health and safety legal obligations to do so. Plus it’s good business. They are not there for the view.
Cutting down trees and burning or otherwise clearing brush in the cool season aint rocket science.
I didn’t realize how foolish people are until I drove my daughter and her friends to a house they had rented 200Ks south of Perth. There were tall trees and dense brush 2 meters from the house in the middle of a forest. I decided to check on other nearby houses and walked along the road. There was a house every 20 meters or so and every one had tall trees around. Some people had cleared low level brush but most hadn’t.
A bushfire will go through there and most if not all of those houses will burn. Which is neither here nor there to me, except the imposition on me as a taxpayer to control or fight bushfires, which is effectively a subsidy by me going towards a wealthy segment of society to support a lifestyle they have chosen.
FYI, 20 years ago I had a house that backed onto bushland and a bushfire did go through. Spectacular and somewhat scary, but my house was 30+ meters from the trees and at no risk.

Sadly, green idiocy still holds sway – just 10 years ago, almost to the day, Canberra lost over 500 homes – nice suburban Canberra, now who’d have thought it? Fortunately for Canberra, the year before another bushfire had cleared what amounted to a good firebreak when it burned out a good swathe of pine plantations leading up to the city, without that firebreak I hate to think what the final death and destruction toll would be – but have the loopy Greens permitted changes? Nope, they continue to be destructive dopes on a power trip.

I’m a member of the Rural Fire Service in NSW and live and work near natural fire-prone (duh) national parks on the New England plateau. Climate Ace is part of the cultural cancer our society suffers.
The people(s) who walked most of the way to Australia during the glacial phases from Asia, perhaps as much as 100,000 years ago, came with fire-stick technology. Burning the rain forest and bush they found as a complete lifestyle for tens and tens of thousands of years through all sort of climate regimes supplied a constant natural selection forcing which carved the Holocene biota of modern Australia from the original Gondwanaland pre-human eco-system, much of which was fire-intolerant.
There is nothing shameful or unnatural about ancient Australians shaping their environment. Contrary to Green mythology, humanity is part of nature…Modern Australia is one of the more diverse, beautiful and utterly incredible environments on this blue planet. The unusually long human occupation of Australia is simply inseparable from the environment.
Viv Forbes’ wise observation is that should modern western civilisation wish to achieve harmony with the Australian bush it would be wise to manage the environment in roughly the same pattern as it has been managed by the ancients since The Dreamtime…with fire stick in hand during the cooler months in a rational patchwork pattern. The science is settled and the debate over.
The problem is in the last decade it has become increasingly difficult to do controlled burns because of the decaying legal situation. RFS volunteers are increasingly in danger of lawsuits against them and their local branches if a burn-off gets away, thus each year we decline more and more applications for burning off because the bar is being raised higher and higher. Cutting fire breaks, clearing bush and developing fire mitigation plans encounter more and more bureaucratic, “green” hurtles to jump each year. RFS volunteers work with no compensation. CYA rules. For each individual at some point the obstacles become too hard…the shyt too thick and they just give up and go home to defend their own patch of bush best they can.
The damage that the urbane willful ignorance of people like Climate Ace are doing to Australia’s ecology has never been calculated, but I reckon it ranks up there with the greatest crimes against the environment ever perpetuated upon this continent.

The big 2008/9 fires in NSW had their roots in councils refusing permission for labs owners to clear fell areas of land to reduce the risk of fire. Refusals from the councils directly lead to the scale of destruction we saw from those fires.
Sadly this was a pattern repeated during the great Gold Coast floods because the local government refused to allow fan levels to be lowered until it was too late.
Mailman

Robert A. Taylor says:
January 20, 2013 at 9:06 pm
Gail Combs says:
January 20, 2013 at 2:08 pm
“And that is the EXACT PLAN. SEE MAP”
The link doesn’t go to a map, nor is one available from there. I only point this out because your links have ALWAYS been good and on subject….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Sorry the link should have been: http://www.propertyrightsresearch.org/images/wildlands_map.jpg
(I thought I copied it direct but I have a lot of tabs up.)

Climate Ace says:
January 21, 2013 at 1:18 am
Got some informal legal advice over dinner.
No probs about suing farmers for negligence if they let fires escape from their farms onto other farms or into national parks: ‘provided they or their insurers have money’.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
So if Plain Jane is correct, and she was there, can she and everyone else sue the crap out of the dunderheads who did not put out the fire while it was in the National forest and small or is this only a one way street where Greenies and their lawyers can go after individuals but individuals can not get the SOB’s who burnt them out fired and put in jail?

I live in Victoria Australia 70Km from Melbourne our major capital city over the last week we have had two or three fires in the district every day. Today one was threatening coming my way . It has been established that we have a local idiot lighting fires. This area was the start of fires that killed many people and destroyed entire towns only three years ago. I can only say I hope the police find this person first others may not be so gentle. The green problem in my area is not so severe and our local authorities tend to turn a blind eye to the death of the odd tree that may be a cause of concern. Others unfortunately have the 2 metre rule whereby a 30 metre eucalypt more than 2 metres from your house can not be cut down. Then they can not explain why people die, and for what reason a tree, a eucalypt that by all definitions is a noxious weed. I have been under fire balls of roaring and burning gas that travels miles at huge speeds that landed on houses and they just exploded. In these fires people have no chance unless they can clear the trees from a reasonable distance from their homes. It is the greens that are killing people in this nasty fire I lived in a clearing on the edge of a state forest. The house was old and clap board and was shaded by three very old and large ponderosa pines so the fire balls ignored them and went over my head. Mine was the only house to survive. The greens have many dead souls on their hands off innocent people forced to live in peril by their stupidity.

In my part of the world, we don’t have so many bureaucratic crazies. National Parks and other institutions would like to do lots more vermin control and fire maintenance, but money and resources are never near enough. The real problem is money and wealth.
Wealth. If Abbott can roll his main opposition,John McTernan, in the next election, there needs to be a urgent shift toward wealth generation based on cheap, abundant, reliable energy for all. This needs to be based on coal and the renovation of our coal power generation. It will be expensive and controversial, and I would be happy to see Abbott hire the likes of McTernan to spin this energy revolution so that climate and enviro monies are diverted toward it, as happened in Germany with Merkel, who talked green while she dug brown.
As we achieve more wealth, it must be re-invested in real infrastructure and the dismantling of green fetishism. No money must go to the the likes of GIM or Goldman Sachs, who are delighted at the prospect of trading in a fraction of thin air – even if it is not a weightless fraction. Above all, we will be able to get serious about Conservation. No more gesturing, playing and Bob Carrism.
Whatever we decide to do about fire, weeds, vermin, dunes, watersheds etc, a good job on these things will cost massively. We need to be rich. Liz Macarthur, with some help, established a million pound industry within a few years of the Second Fleet’s arrival. She was a genius, but others have been able to follow because, in spite of our humble origins, nobody has been able to sell us on poverty.
Poor people don’t conserve. They don’t have a high carbon footprint because they can’t afford it but also because hucksters aren’t interested in calculating the carbon from burning twigs and dung. The poor don’t conserve, but they sure do breed. The poor need to get rich and the rich need to get richer.
Mr. Forbes’ propositions are the purest commonsense. But to act on such commonsense takes real wealth. My heart goes out to those suffering in the Australian heat and fires, and in the Indian cold wave and in Russia’s current “snowcalypse”. Let’s generate some real energy and use the hard wealth to meet real demands.

Apologies for rewriting a post, but I thought it had gone missing.

Bib says
Many of today’s locked-up areas were created to sequester carbon to fulfil Kyoto obligations. Who pays the carbon tax on the carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere by wild fires?
———–
Utter bullshit. Today’s national parks preceded Kyoto by decades.
C’mon Viv cough up with the area of land set aside for Kyoto.

Than statistically most fires should be extinguished before they hit national parks . Oh wait they are because we all know that once in a a park they go out easy .
By the way I also drove 800 km just to burn fuel and add my own little co2 extinguisher .

Climate Ace assures us that Australians are allowed to clear brush. Others say, NOT TRUE.
I have several online friends in Australia who tell me Climate Ace doesn’t know what he/she is talking about. I see links here and at other places that indicate that Climate Ace is clueless in this.
What to believe?
I will say this: I feel horrible and helpless watching real people fight real fires, while simultaneously fighting governments at several levels who appear to be against their safety. In almost ever other country on this planet it is the priority of the government to look out for the PEOPLE… not the wildlife, not the planet, not some imagined future climate catastrophe, and not vague possibilities. Yes, governments manage wildlife and land, but those are secondary considerations compared to people. Voters, too, I might add.
Here in Alberta we occasionally have grass fires that consume thousands of acres in minutes, leaping across highways and in some cases causing smoke severe enough to cause secondary fatalities for people trying to drive. We recently had almost an entire town burn to the ground because of the exact same kind of narrow mindedness and refusal to mandate proper firebreaks in a forest area. And we’re not even remotely a warm climate or covered in volatile oil producing trees.
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/canada/archives/2011/05/20110516-123301.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Slave_Lake_fire
Personal opinion: to those decrying the “noble savage” image of the Aboriginals, consider the reality. It doesn’t MATTER what their motivations were, and it is MEANINGLESS to “blame” them for what the continent is. All that counts is that a management system was in place, and that it is no longer in place. LAW of unintended consequences now comes into play. The management system that replaced what the Aboriginals were doing is clearly not working, the logical step is to either come up with a workable management system or return to the method that was in place before.

My understanding is that eucalyptus forests require fire for propagation. Which would explain what could be seen during the TV interview of that family photographed sheltering under a wooden jetty. In the background, there did not appear to be the devastation one would have expected after such a fire. I suspect that might be why only a glimpse could be seen – had there been blackened stumps, I have little doubt the cameras would have lingered over the sight.

Autralia’s government is run by a bunch of politically correct loonies. Ot but looks like solar 24 did really reach max
http://www.solarham.net/

In the southern US foresters plant pine in plantations of thousands of acres. Not one is without firebreaks, for example every quarter mile or less. Standard practice. The greenies are impractical, with impractical visions. The result: firestorms.

Philip Shehan says:
January 21, 2013 at 6:21 am
The article from which the above quotes were taken is by Tim Flannery, who also edited and wrote the forward to my copy of Watkin Tench’s journals. Flannery is no politically correct bleeding heart.
Phil, the Flannery who wrote that forward is also the one described below. The one you may perhaps be thinking of (non political etc) must be a different Flannery, I believe:
From Wikipedia:

In February 2011 it was announced that Flannery had been appointed to head the Climate Change Commission established by Prime Minister Julia Gillard to explain climate change and the need for a carbon price to the public. This legislation is now passing through Parliament….
……Timothy Fridtjof Flannery (born 28 January 1956) is an Australian mammalogist, palaeontologist, environmentalist and global warming activist. He is the Chief Commissioner of the Australian Climate Commission, an independent body providing information on climate change to the Australian public.
Flannery was named Australian of the Year in 2007[2] and is currently a professor and holds the Chair in Environmental Sustainability at Macquarie University. He is also the chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council, an international climate change awareness group. His sometimes controversial views on shutting down conventional coal fired power stations for electricity generation in the medium term are frequently cited in the media.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Flannery

richardscourtney says:
January 21, 2013 at 8:26 am
“..You “believe” Philip Shehan was “thinking” of “a different Flannery”?
Surely, you jest….”
🙂 Indeed I do Richard … but unfortunately I posted this on the wrong thread, so the joke is on me!

CodeTech says:
January 21, 2013 at 5:21 am
…. I feel horrible and helpless watching real people fight real fires, while simultaneously fighting governments at several levels who appear to be against their safety. In almost ever other country on this planet it is the priority of the government to look out for the PEOPLE… not the wildlife, not the planet, not some imagined future climate catastrophe, and not vague possibilities. Yes, governments manage wildlife and land, but those are secondary considerations compared to people. Voters, too, I might add…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That used to be the case. Now the governments only look at people as cash cows and take their actual orders from the wealthy econuts like Ted Turner, George Soros and the malthusians running the UN and WWF.
Top Senate Democrat [says] bankers “own” the U.S. Congress and we already know where the World Bank stands on Global Warming.

: johanna says:
January 20, 2013 at 3:48 pm
…
I am a bit sceptical of the romantic view of Aboriginal burning as well. There weren’t that many of them – vast regions of this vast continent were uninhabited, so the effects were localised in fairly small areas. As others have pointed it, it made sense from the point of view of finding a cooked dinner in the ashes and clearing a bit of grazing land for kangaroos and such. …
There’s nothing “romantic” about the use of fire by hunter-gatherers. The sole limits on the size of a fire that is not being actively fought are weather and fuel loads. Grasslands will burn from horizon to horizon. In forested areas fire extent and severity is determined by fuel on the ground, and biological structure and age structure of the forest. Frequent fires reduce the scope of a new fire while greater spans between fires correlate with larger, hotter fires.
When you look at agricultural land use, you want to remember several things. For one thing we are a species that exploits marginal environments and natural catastrophes like landslides and fires. Immediately after a fire or slide an entirely different crop of plants appears than what grew prior to the event. These plants are often uncommonly useful, but they require things like lowered competition from other plants, increased ground water, and increased sunlight that a “destructive” event like a fire creates. The direct result of this is that our crops are generally biased toward species that started out on marginal lands in early biological succession stages. So, as slightly smarter than normal apes, our ancestors had the brilliant idea of creating controlled “catastrophes” – areas deliberately burned by fires, and ploughed fields, both of which are “events” that delay biological succession. The same burning practices were employed in North America, and in fact anywhere that “swidden agriculture” (also called ‘slash and burn’) was employed.
In Australia, while there weren’t “many” when you consider population per square mile, that is not relevant since they moved around a lot. They could very well live in an area for while, decide the foraging returns were falling below desirable levels, light a fire and then head off to another area. Small H-G bands can use huge areas in more marginal landscapes.

mpainter says:
January 21, 2013 at 7:25 am
In the southern US foresters plant pine in plantations of thousands of acres. Not one is without firebreaks, for example every quarter mile or less. Standard practice. The greenies are impractical, with impractical visions. The result: firestorms.
This an unusual statement from you (ie has something of substance to it), but are you suggesting the US foresters are greenies with ‘impractical visions’?

For the reasons Viv cites the current forest area of Australia is probably greater than it was before colonization, yet misguided environmentalism has vastly restricted our native forestry industry. As a result most wood used in housing construction is now pine from plantations. It is greatly inferior in both strength and durability. Much of the extravagantly expensive housing built in recent decades will become irreparable junk in a few decades and the eco-tards call this sustainability..

Gail Combs says:
January 21, 2013 at 2:22 am
Climate Ace says:
January 21, 2013 at 1:18 am
Got some informal legal advice over dinner.
No probs about suing farmers for negligence if they let fires escape from their farms onto other farms or into national parks: ‘provided they or their insurers have money’.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
So if Plain Jane is correct, and she was there, can she and everyone else sue the crap out of the dunderheads who did not put out the fire while it was in the National forest and small or is this only a one way street where Greenies and their lawyers can go after individuals but individuals can not get the SOB’s who burnt them out fired and put in jail?
I notice that you have made the usual angry genuflection at the altar of greenie hate. I suggest you get a life and get rid of your anger because it will stress your immune system and increase the chances of your getting immuno-deficiency related diseases. (Faced with the rampant destruction of our wildlife and our careless extinction of many animals and plants, I used to have the same sort of anger at the careless of people who were content to destroy the results of millions of years of evolution in the space of few short years.).
The litigation following the 2003 Canberra fire is ongoing. Wildfires have become lawyers’ picnics, so it is just as well that someone does well out of them.
1. Plain Jane’s post is the first time I have ever heard of an RFS unit refusing to attend a fire call up. I am not calling Plain Jane a fibber. It may be true. It may not. (I noticed in Darwin after Tracey that some very, very wild and weird stories did the rounds). We have to bear in mind a couple of things: in the heat of the disaster moment ordinary humans are still ordinary humans. They make errors of judgement. I would make the observation that some of the volunteer fire crew captains I have known were fairly ordinary. I imagine that if the management of the fire crew was inadequate, if procedures were not in place or were not followed, if the equipment was not maintained to expectations, or if there was personal misbehaviour (in the sense of being under the influence, for example) then there appear to be good grounds for commencing action.
2. People keep saying that the Coonarbarabran fire started in the Warrumbungles NP. I can find no evidence for this. If it is true, it is true. I would appreciate some confirmation. I accept it came out of the NP, crossed 10 km and entered Plain Jane’s property. This does not mean that the fire started in the NP, however.
3. Plain Jane should consult litigation funders who are undoubtedly looking to move into the wildfire space. Since her property was 10km from the national park, she should ask the litigation funders to consider whether the 10 km of neighbours who allowed the fires through their properties onto her property were negligent, particularly if the owners did not carry out control burns, slashing of vegetation, the installation of firebreaks and other fire suppression measures as recommended by Forbes. My advice would be to ensure that those being sued have money or are ensured, for obvious reasons.
4. While she is at it, Plain Jane might consider that, if she did not stop the fire going through to her neighbours, she may well be subject to litigation as well on the basis of negligence particularly if the owners did not carry out control burns, slashing of vegetation, the installation of firebreaks and other fire suppression measures.
5. The national park authorities should also consult their legal advisers if the fire started outside the national park – particularly if the owners did not carry out control burns, slashing of vegetation, the installation of firebreaks and other fire suppression measures as recommended by Forbes.
6. The insurers of Siding Springs will, no doubt, be checking the fire management arrangements of the folk who run Siding Springs Observatory. I understand these same folk may have lost majr telescopes in the Stromlo Observatory in 2003. You would have thought that they might have learned a thing or two. In any case, I imagine that insurerers of observatories are going to insist on some pretty stringint passive and active fire measures as part of any insurance package.
6. Plain Jane mentioned that they had not had a fire in her valley since 1935. It is a pattern of comments in recent fires where locals say their patch will not burn because it has not burned in living memory. I know of at least one man who died in the Marysville Fire because he adopted this view and stuck to it. He was last seen alive sitting on his verandah as the fires approached. Put simply, as it gets hotter, the old bushfire ‘rules’ no longer apply.
7. Based on our personal experience in our shire as a result of bushfires, Plain Jane will find that her rates will go up, her fire insurance will go up, and her power costs will go up as shires and infrastructure providers pay for the fire damage.
8. Again based on personal experience in our Shire, which was heavily ravaged by fire, Plain Jane will find that the dreaded authorities will enact new housing regulations to prevent building amongst the gum trees and also a suite of new building standards. They will refrain from regulating the retro-fitting of same because homeowners do not like being told to make their houses fire-proof. In such cases the insurance industry might take an active hand.
The Coonabarabran fire burned in the general context of record national temperatures.
Welcome to AGW and its consequences.

Someone mentioned pine plantations as exemplars of fire management.
The recent major fire in south-eastern Victoria burned through extensive areas of pine plantations (and some farmland) into the Lower Glenelg National Park.
I have spent time in some of those plantations and, amongst other things, took the opportunity to observer the way in which fire management was integrated into the planting designs.
They were pretty good, I thought, at the time. I recall, amongst other thing, a massive firebreak cut north/south through the park to protect the pine plantations from fires that might come out of the national park.
Looks like someone forgot to tell the fire.

Ken B
My high hope is that at some time the ordinary taxpayers, and those that built this country here in Australia get some say above that comfortable shrill minority who have held us to ransom for too long.
We have a democracy. It is not perfect. Each person gets just the one vote, including the mad, the bad and the sad.
That we get to say how our tax dollars are spent and that our pockets are not continually raided…
I don’t mind paying taxes. I appreciate it that our hospital system is superior to that of the US and that there is a good chance that when I get crook someone will know what is wrong with me and the system will deliver the medical fix. I appreciate it that our roads are in such good nick. It is good that we have reliable power systems. It is great that our communications systems generally work. I like being able to walk through my city without constant fear. I like it that the folk who manage air traffic keep planes from flying into each other. I think the public education system is one of the best in the world with our kids consistently in the top 20 in world education achievements. I am pleased that our army, navy and airforce have good stuff and well trained service people.
Do I feel sorry for the self-pitying whingers who whine about being ‘raided’? Well, I might. If they got off the roads our taxes pay for, if they stay out of the education system our taxes pay for and if they stay away from hospitals. But they whinge about all that stuff and sneakily use it all anyway.
… to support drones who swan about the country in their 800 km drives and blame everyone else while ensuring their lifestyle and long lunches are protected.
Well, if I am a Marxist and a Nazi, I suppose it is just as well that I am a drone?
Just to be clear, you snivelling, whinging, rude, insulting, self-pitying grub, I have never been in a Centrelink Office in my life.
yeah, I’m mightely P…d off with those supperior trolls….as you can see!!
‘supperior’? Really? You might want to seek a preliminary consultation for what appears to be an inferiority complex.

johanna says:
January 21, 2013 at 8:00 am
Jimbo says:
January 21, 2013 at 5:47 am
johanna says:
January 20, 2013 at 3:48 pm
………………………..
I am a bit sceptical of the romantic view of Aboriginal burning as well. There weren’t that many of them – vast regions of this vast continent were uninhabited, so the effects were localised in fairly small areas…….
The tribal boundaries drawn by Tindale, each with it languages and each with its clan groups demonstrate pretty well that all areas of Australia were inhabited by Indigenous people at the time of first contact.
There is some archaeological evidence that in previous hotter, drier climates, some areas of the central deserts were abandoned.
Following contact with its pattern of dispersal, massacres and concentration in missions and the like, vast areas of Australia were depopulated and much of these remain depopulated to this very day. The massive wildfires that are now common in much of the driest third of the continent and moving into the pastoral areas are almost certainly a direct result of the absence of the people who moved through the landscape igniting dozens of little fires on a daily basis.
Concern Troll, as I have renamed Climate Deuce, has bombarded us with misinformation interspersed with fact. He has calibrated his latest thread-bombings thanks to feedback from people like me, who regard his gloating over ‘proof’ of CAGW while people’s homes are still smoking as loathsome. So, he has taken a different tack. Since I don’t want to bore readers as he has, I’ll take one example.
Who are people like you?
Just for fun, apparently, he has thrown in some spurious assertions about ‘artificially created’ gullies in the Great Dividing Range, and how they are useful for fighting fires. What rubbish.
Overseas readers need to understand that the GDR is a string of mountains that runs 50 to 100 miles inside the east cost of Australia for over 2,000 miles. It is largely populated with eucalypts, and is one of the most potent sources for bushfires thanks to lightning strikes. Aborigines certainly spent time there, but they would have been suicidal to light fires there. The gullies that CT claims (a) are ‘unnatural’ and (b) are a great help to firefighters are in fact a feature of the mountains. They are why it took European explorers – who didn’t bother to consult the natives – years to find a way over them. Every time you think you are getting ahead, you hit a gully, and have to go back. That is the topography of these mountains.
As for being a help to firefighters, if CT can explain how a deep gully in rugged terrain during a bushfire is helpful, next thing is, he’ll be selling us sh*t sandwiches and saying that they are good for us.
Johanna naughty: an erosion gully is not the same as a natural gully in forested country. I would certainly not count the latter as useful for fire fighting. Quite the opposite, actually.
No, the gullies I specified were erosion gullies. There are around 45,000 or so. They exist because the forests and woodlands on their slopes were cleared of forest. This resulted in speeded run-off and the rest, as they say, is history.
You can fit an average house into some of these gullies, so they do form an unnatural firebreak. If they are at right angles to an approaching firefront, they can be used for backburning purposes.
With regard to the lunatic policies around national parks, CT diverted with some dispute about where the fire started. It doesn’t matter…
It does matter when the litigation starts.
Like all concern trolls, you continue to deliberately miss the point while weeping crocodile tears.
What point am I missing? I support suitable control burns. I support national parks and farmers working together so that farmers can have firebreaks, fuel mitigation measures and the like on their farms to stop fires getting into national parks. I support control burns in national parks. Nor am I an tree fetishist and can claim to have knocked a few down with chainsaws in my time, which is probably more than most of the posters on this string can claim to have done.
My family has suffered farms burning, stock killed and houses burnt to the ground. Some of us have had extremely narrow escapes from being killed in fires themselves. Many of us have been involved in volunteer fire fighting. I do feel sorry for people who have been burnt out.
But, in an important sense, personal experience this is neither here nor there. We all have our values and what we regard as important. Those values need to be worked out through the political system. Each of us is as entitled as the next person is to our values. I value animals and plants not becoming extinct. You don’t care about extinctions. Fair enough, we are different.
It might be time for the blame game to cool down a bit and for some work on sorting out some compromise measures.

I have difficulty understanding this. I have been reading about the science of controlled burns for 25 years. I can’t find ( searching the web ) any creditable science that argues against controlled burns. I eventually found some “green” material saying that controlled burns harm bio diversity. But no evidence. Just claims. Can someone please explain to me why they refute the science. Why are they anti controlled burns. I really don’t get it!
/ikh

mosomoso says:
January 21, 2013 at 5:18 pm
It seems Plain Jane has joined Watkin Tench and William Dawes on the list of people not to be credited. Not that these people are making stuff up. They’ve just been McTernanised. Their accounts are not confirmed by long motor car rides. It is necessary to take such stern action in a warming world (wherever that is).
What? You don’t do skepticism?
I have queried one of Plain Jane’s statements. It is that the local RFS refused to put a fire out when it was very, very hot, windy and extremely dry. If that claim turns out to be correct, I will accept the claim.
Who ‘discredited’ Tench and Dawes?
These silly strawmen of yours are on a par with your penchant for factoids when the facts are staring you in the face.

ikh says:
January 21, 2013 at 5:25 pm
I have difficulty understanding this. I have been reading about the science of controlled burns for 25 years. I can’t find ( searching the web ) any creditable science that argues against controlled burns. I eventually found some “green” material saying that controlled burns harm bio diversity. But no evidence. Just claims. Can someone please explain to me why they refute the science. Why are they anti controlled burns. I really don’t get it!
/ikh
If you Google search terms something like ‘impact of fire regimes on Australian biota’ you will get scads of research material on this topic.

CodeTech says:
January 21, 2013 at 5:21 am
Climate Ace assures us that Australians are allowed to clear brush. Others say, NOT TRUE.
I have several online friends in Australia who tell me Climate Ace doesn’t know what he/she is talking about. I see links here and at other places that indicate that Climate Ace is clueless in this.
What to believe/
The answer is not straightforward. It is incorrect to state that farmers can never create firebreaks on their properties, can never do control burns on their property or can never reduce vegetation on their property by grazing or slashing as Forbes implied.
For example, the farmers in the recent Tarcutta, Bookham and Booroowa fires live in areas that are up to 97% cleared. They have largely introduced pastures or broad acre crops across thousands of hectares.
My point was intended to demontrate that even where they can do so legally, farmers very often do not undertake fire suppression actions; further, that this renders them vulnerable to litigation on the grounds of negligence, should fires leave their properties and enter other properties.
It is also true that there is state and territory legislation in place which prevents clearing activities in most, if not all states, where there is remnant native vegetation. Given that most farmland has been cleared or ploughed already, the proportion of land directly subject to these controls is a very small proportion of the overall land.
So, you see, it is more about a noisy minority making as much noise as possible than it is about taking a balanced look at competing values.
In relation to the Kyoto protocol that someone upstring mentioned, the conservative coalition government of Howard and Costello worked a series of federal/state agreements to control clearing of forests as part of reaching Australia’s commitments under Kyoto. The current government has maintained this stance and the Opposition conservative government has not included relaxation of these clearing controls in its plan to spend $10 billion of taxpayers’ funds to reduce Australia’s CO2 emissions by 5% by 2020 or indeed, its plans to increase its RET by a considerable percentage.

Many are furiously debating Climate Ace in here, when he is in fact in general agreement with Viv Forbes and seems to have a fairly practical approach to the matter. His knowledge and research are good.
In short, it is probably simply his ‘everyone except me is an idiot’ approach here that has everyone busy debating him. For instance, while it is technically correct to state that reducing fuel load is NOT the only way to reduce fire risk (though I think it is a critically important one) the quote below uses (IMHO) unnecessarily inflammatory language to make a point.

Climate Ace says: January 20, 2013 at 9:36 pm
“…The statement by Forbes that reducing fuel is the only way to reduce fire damage is gross stupidity. I do hope that individual home owners don’t listen to it, because it is bad advice that could cost them their homes. I assume that, legally, it is OK for WUWT to publish this sort of rubbish in the public interest…..”

What he detailed in his first post was quite logical once you go past the opening paragraph. He makes a good point debating where fires may have started, and whether or not national parks are really to blame for all. Note he does encourage fuel reduction burns in the parks.
I believe the problem is that where once farmers would fairly routinely burn back from firebreaks, under conditions of modern bureaucracy and litigation that has become more and more difficult to do. Mind you some of that back burning by farmers was into parks and forestry, and that is clearly a matter which should be strictly controlled (but NOT made impossible!). And we should note that fires have always occurred, and WILL still occur, all we are talking about is containing their spread.

Climate Ace says: January 20, 2013 at 9:36 pm
“….National parks are, quite simply, about our values: do we value Australian plants and animal species enough to protect them? Or are we relaxed about more extinctions?
There are many, many things that can be done to protect both the animals and plants in national parks and the neighbours of national parks.
Rather than simply blame national parks and governments for what is often personal negligence we should take a much more systematic approach:
(1) we should ban people from building homes among eucalyptus gas bombs – for their safety and for our insurance premiums.
(2) we should encourage fuel reduction burns consistent with maintaining the suite of plants and animals in national parks – bearing in mind that many plants and animals have quite specific fire regime requirements.
(3) where farmers abut parks, the government should assist farmers with active and passive fire measures. This is in the interests of farmers and of national parks – I imagine that more fires start on private property than in national parks and it is the latter which need to be protected from farmers more often than the other way around
(4) the introduction of mandatory active and passive fire proofing of new houses…..”

In his last post he re-iterates logical points on firefighting, and furthermore rebuts Lazy’s throwaway (as usual) comment on Kyoto.

LazyTeenager says: January 21, 2013 at 3:08 am
C’mon Viv cough up with the area of land set aside for Kyoto.

Climate Ace says: January 21, 2013 at 6:02 pm
In relation to the Kyoto protocol that someone upstring mentioned, the conservative coalition government of Howard and Costello worked a series of federal/state agreements to control clearing of forests as part of reaching Australia’s commitments under Kyoto. The current government has maintained this stance and the Opposition conservative government has not included relaxation of these clearing controls in its plan to spend $10 billion of taxpayers’ funds to reduce Australia’s CO2 emissions by 5% by 2020 or indeed, its plans to increase its RET by a considerable percentage.
…. The answer is not straightforward. It is incorrect to state that farmers can never create firebreaks on their properties, can never do control burns on their property or can never reduce vegetation on their property by grazing or slashing as Forbes implied….

D. B. Stealey says:
January 21, 2013 at 7:19 pm
Speaking of false factoids, Ace says:
“The more the world economy has grown on the back of cheap energy, the more species have gone extinct and the more are added to the endangered lists.”
Now you’re just being ridiculous.
Really? All the lists I know about are growing. Perhaps you have access to some that show endangered species are declining in numbers?

Climate Ace says: January 21, 2013 at 7:26 pm The more the world economy has grown on the back of cheap energy, the more species have gone extinct and the more are added to the endangered lists.
…….
All the lists I know about are growing. Perhaps you have access to some that show endangered species are declining in numbers?

Correlation does not imply causation, Ace.
But you know that.

DBStealey
mosomoso’s proposition was that cheap energy leads to the possibility to spend money on conservation and, hence, the prevention of extinctions.
My proposition was that never has the world burned more cheap energy and never have there been more extinctions and endangered species.
Your response was to mention three species out of the thousands of species on various lists around the world. Here is a list from Australia for starters.
Let’s see if you can resurrect the following using cheap energy: King Island Emu, Kangaroo Island Emu, Big-eared Hopping Mouse, Darling Downs Hopping Mouse, White-footed Rabbit-rat, Broad-faced Potoroo, Eastern Hare-wallaby, Short-tailed Hopping Mouse, Long-tailed Hopping Mouse, Christmas Island Rat, Rattus macleari, Christmas Island Rat, Rattus nativitatusi, Crescent Nailtail Wallaby, Tasman Starling, Paradise Parrot, Robust White-eye, Lesser Bilby, Toolache Wallaby, Thylacine, Lesser Stick-nest Rat, Central Hare-wallaby, Desert Rat-kangaroo, Pig-footed Bandicoot.

johanna says:
He claims that recent bushfires in Australia have something to do with CAGW.
You have just experienced Canberra’s hottest start to January on record.
He claims that gullies in the Great Dividing range are both artificially created and a boon to firefighters.
Do try and keep up. I noted that natural gullies in the forested parts of the Range are bad for fire fighting. I also noted that erosion gullies in deforested parts of the range are handy for firefighting because they are de facto fire breaks. Some of them are much wider in places than artificial fire breaks graded or bulldozed by fire services for the purposes of back burning.
He refuses to admit that the real issue about the near-destruction of the telescope at Siding Spring is the ideology that ‘every tree is sacred.’
The real issues are these: there was a lack of point active and passive fire defence systems at Siding Springs. In fact, I have just had a look at the Google Earth sat version of Siding Springs. Anyone who sited a valuable observatory on top of a steep hillside completely covered with eucalypt trees up to the very edge of telescopes was perhaps, IMHO, a tad negligent.
If horrendous fire risk was an issue, which, obviously it was from the get-go, they should have sited the Observatory elsewhere, not in the middle of a eucalypt forest gas bomb.
He deprecates the notion that inner-city vote-seeking politicians created national parks willy-nilly, with negative environmental consequences.
Governments of all stripes, including notably the last eleven years of Howard/Costello governments (which included the National Party which purports to represents rural folk) have actively created national parks as part of an effort to stop Australia’s hideous rate of animal and plant extinctions.
In other threads, he gloatingly enumerated the number of homes burned, while telling us that it was due to CAGW, while people’s houses were still smouldering.
If you want to ignore the link between record temperatures and wildfire behaviour, go ahead and keep your head in the sand. If you want to pull the wool over people’s eyes about the increasing risks they face with increases in record temperatures, go ahead. If you want to divert attention away from record temperatures and bushfires by talking about so-called ‘sacred trees’ go ahead. But don’t expect me to go along with your attempts at red herrings.
The fact is that lives, houses, farms, stocks, sheds, fences, crops, machinery, business, public utilities, and production forests have been destroyed. This will affect our insurance premiums, rates and utility costs. It will feed through the costs of risk capital, including the costs to farmers, and through them to the costs of your food and clothing.
You wanted to hear only one side of the conversation – the one which started this thread – even while the smoke was still rising, the fires were still going. It was OK to talk about your issues while the smoke was still in the air and the embers were still glowing. So you tried for a spot of self-righteous, censorious, censorship.
As a taxpayer, if I ever find out that he is doing it on my dime, I’ll pursue this smarmy dissembler to the ends of the earth.
You appear to remain completely unaware of the complete and utter hypocrisy of your smarmy, dissembling, position.
How about I keep paying my taxes while you keep paying your’s? Fair is only fair.

“I was talking to some northern hemisphere rellies about it just the other night. They were very happy because they were able to get some excellent skating in.”
Some of those frolicky northern hemispherians. Rellies of the Ace?
http://rt.com/news/winter-snow-russia-weather-275/
http://rt.com/news/snow-isreal-golan-mines-788/
Whew, just as well it’s only weather. It could be climate!
[“Rellies” = relatives ? 8<) Mod]

Oh, Ace, I know the feeling. England has its record cold December in 2010, Russia thinks its tough because its 2012 December was its coldest in at least 75 years. They don’t understand it’s just weather! Why not make traditional brews and have fun? Netball delayed? Time for gluhwein!
On the other hand, this from the Ace:
“‘He claims that recent bushfires in Australia have something to do with CAGW.’
You have just experienced Canberra’s hottest start to January on record.”
Climate, right?
One’s weather, the other’s climate. But they just don’t get it, Ace! They still think this was climate:
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/weatherhistorian/comment.html?entrynum=62
It was weather, just weather! Traditional brew time, guys. The Ace will let you know when it’s climate. Chill! Or don’t chill…or…you know what he means!

On topic.

The Age 7:47PM Tuesday Jan 22, 2013
Lightning sparks nine new fires ahead of temperature spike
Date January 22, 2013 – 9:20AM
Jared Lynch
Firefighters waterbomb the blaze near Seaton last week. Fresh fires are burning after lightning strikes – and the temperature is about to rise sharply.
Firefighters waterbomb the blaze near Seaton last week. Fresh fires are burning after lightning strikes – and the temperature is about to rise sharply. Photo: Michael Clayton-Jones
Lightning strikes have sparked nine fires in Victoria’s east, about 280 kilometres from where the Aberfeldy inferno continues to raze bushland.
The new fires ignited in a state forest, about 13 kilometres east of Orbost on Monday night. A spokeswoman for the State Control Centre said the nine fires were all small and would not hinder the firefighting effort in the Aberfeldy blaze, which has grown to more than 60,000 hectares.

Quite a few posters have written about they think Greens policies might be or must be. Most of the commentary is very, very ill-informed. I have actually spent some time going through the Greens Policy Platform. While not exactly a laugh a minute, some of it is very, very funny.
The reality is far worse, IMHO, than what anyone on WUWT has been able to put together. If you really want a laugh, have a look at the following website:
http://greens.org.au/policies

Regarding: Australia’s Alien Environment Fuels Firestorms
JIM66 says:
The post by Viv Forbes of Rosewood, Queensland repeats information that is regarded as ‘common knowledge’ in farming communities in Eastern Australia. There are some grains of truth in what she says.
But, as with many weather related happenings, the true explanation is much more complex.
The events of Black Thursday, the 6th of February 1851 remind us that horrific bushfires were a feature of Australia well before Greenies and National Parks came along. The geographic spread and inflicted damage of this 4 day fire are succinctly described as follows:
“After five weeks of hot northerly winds, on the 6th of February,1851 known as Black Thursday, probably Victoria’s most extensive bushfires, apparently started in the Plenty Ranges when two bullock drivers left some logs burning which set fire to long, drought-parched grass. 

From an early hour in the morning a hot wind blew from the NNW, accompanied by 47C temperatures in Melbourne. 

There was extensive damage in Victoria’s Port Phillip district. Huge areas of southern and NE Vic were burnt out. 
Fires burnt from Mt Gambier in South Australia to Portland in Victoria as well as the Wimmera in the north and central and southern areas including Semour (sic), the Plenty Ranges and much of Gippsland , Westernport, Geelong, Heidelberg and east to Diamond Creek and Dandenong where a number of settlements were destroyed. 


There were 1.5m ha of forest burnt out plus vast areas of scrub and grasslands (total land burnt – approx 5m ha [DNRE,Vic]). Farmers at Barrabool Hills were burnt out or ruined; three men perished at Mt Macedon and wholesale destruction of the Dandenong districts was accompanied by similar widespread razings from Gippsland to the Murray (River). Other scorched areas included Omeo, Mansfield, Dromana, Yarra Glen, Warburton and Erica.”
[Source: Emergency Management Australia]
We await a detailed post mortem of the fire events which occurred at many locations in Southern Australia during December 2012/January 2013. Amongst the factors which may be found to be significant are:
1. La Nina conditions were evident during 2010, 2011 and early 2012. Thus Australia experienced substantially above average rainfall during 2011 and in early 2012.
2. The resulting soil moisture conditions were ideal for the production of vegetation which when mature became bushfire fuel.
3. Bushfire Authorities did conduct fuel reduction burns, presumably with ‘average’ summer conditions in mind rather than the ‘heat wave conditions’ (MSM term) which actually occurred. In general the state fire authorities conduct controlled burning on private property and property controlled by local authorities. Fuel in National Parks, State forests and State reserves is controlled by those entities. The fuel in those areas was in excess of ‘safe’ levels. It always is.
4. Northern Australia weather is characterised by a wet season and a dry season. The wet occurs when the monsoon rains fall, usually from September to February. In 2013 the monsoon was late and still had not arrived by Mid January.
5. The failed monsoon caused the build up of heated air over a large area of central and northern Australia. During the first two weeks of January 2013, over 70 per cent of the Australian continent recorded temperatures in excess of 42°C (106.7 F). From time to time hot air was funneled south by weather lows causing bushfire conditions. Western and South Western Tasmania were hard hit around Christmas time. Many locations in New South Wales suffered just after Christmas. South Australia was similarly affected. The situation was not helped by slow moving weather systems across the continent.
6. Bureau of Meteorology scientists have summarised the story to date at:
file:///Users/admin/Desktop/13.01.BOM%20Comments%20on%20Warming.webarchive
The Sidings Springs Observatory, mentioned in the posts, is located in the (NSW State) Warrumbungle National Park. No major damage was caused to the two telescopes at the Observatory and once a destroyed power line is replaced the facility will start up again.
Summary: Victoria has been at risk from severe bushfires since at least 1851. The root cause is a build up of hot air in Central Australia which causes the seasonal summer winds blowing into Victoria to be hot and dry.
In 2012/2013 two powerful weather events combined to make this natural mechanism much more dangerous – a powerful La Nina followed by a failed Australian monsoon.
The recognition of this underlying cause and the surrounding weather complexities ought to be built into all government policy/planning at the Federal and State levels. Australian volunteer firefighters are brave men and women but we ought not just rely on them – the last resort – to protect life and property. (Perhaps the small army of Australian climate bureaucrats who are valiantly trying to find some of Trenberth’s missing heat could be directed into some bushfire planning!).
The Global Future: My own perspective for the global future is that the concentration of atmospheric CO2 will continue to have little or nothing to do with the variability of global temperature. It is likely that the current global temperature pause will continue for at least a decade under the influence of various ocean oscillations. What then follows is probably in the lap of the Sun god. If Solar Cycle 24 is a wimp and Solar Cycle 25 is a bigger wimp or does not appear at all, then we in the hot countries will be welcoming many immigrants from the cooling countries.
(I console myself with the thoughts that I won’t be around by then and that the Australian aborigines have been here for about 40,000 years which takes in quite a lot of Northern Hemisphere cold history which they survived. So it seems Australia is a lucky country.)