A recent report from friends who suffered terrible losses of buildings, fences, pasture and cattle in the Coonabarabran fire commenced with the ominous and oft-repeated message: “a raging fire came out of the National Park straight for us”.
There is only one way to limit fire damage – reduce the fuel available.
Fuel load can be reduced in three ways – by grazing animals, by planned small “cool” fires, or by mechanical reduction with slashers, mulchers or dozers.
Australia’s grassland landscape was created and managed by generations of Aborigines who were masters at using man’s most useful tool – fire. Every explorer from Abel Tasman (1642) and Captain Cook (1770) onwards noted the smoke in the sky and the burnt trees whenever they landed. This burning created the open grassland landscapes that dominated pre-European 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.
Misguided tree lovers and green politicians have locked the gates on ever-increasing areas of land for trees, parks, heritage, wilderness, habitat, weekend retreats, carbon sequestration etc. Never before on this ancient continent has anyone tried to ban land use or limit bush fires on certain land. The short-sighted policy of surrounding their massive land-banks with fences, locked gates and fire bans has created a new alien environment in Australia. They have created tinder boxes where the growth of woody weeds and the accumulation of dead vegetation in eucalypt re-growth create the perfect environment for fierce fires. Once ignited by lightning, carelessness or arson, the inevitable fire-storms incinerate the park trees and wildlife, and then invade the unfortunate neighbouring properties.
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?
The green bureaucracies and politicians are clearly mis-managing their huge land-bank. Aborigines and graziers did a far better job. There should be a moratorium on locking up any more land and a return to sustainable management for existing land holdings.
Viv Forbes,
Rosewood Qld Australia
I am happy for my email address to be published.
Related articles
- Bushfires rage on in Australia ‘helped’ by climate change (updatednews.ca)
- Bushfires rage on in Australia (bbc.co.uk)
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 7:21 p
We have the technology to stop all bushfire deaths now.
==========================
The first step is cure warming on the brain.
Let me point out to Ace that BAU [“Business As Usual”] defines the catastrophic AGW narrative. Society seems intent on following that particular business as usual — instead of asking why there is no empirical evidence supporting AGW.
Let me be clear to Ace: there is no testable, falsifiable scientific evidence measuring AGW. None. To be sure, AGW [but not CAGW] may exist. But if so, it is so minuscule that it should be completely disregarded.
Where does that lack of scientific evidence leave Ace? His arguments are pointless if the rise in CO2 is not a problem. And in fact, CO2 is not a problem. That is what Planet Earth is clearly telling us. Anything claimed to the contrary is simply an evidence-free scare tactic.
Time to jettison the alarmists’ BAU, and accept the obvious fact that more CO2 is beneficial. It causes no global harm, therefore it is “harmless” — QED. More CO2 is better. That is factual, based upon the scientific method. So forget the old and busted BAU that “carbon” is a problem. That was never the truth.
Finally, regarding those endangered species lists, they are all highly questionable. Remember the Snail Darter? Remember the Spotted Owl? Remember the “endangered” Polar bears? Those lists are all constructed by folks with an agenda. Only a fool would trust any of them.
markx, I cannot fathom how you believe that the Concern Troll’s posts are factual.
He claims that recent bushfires in Australia have something to do with CAGW.
He claims that gullies in the Great Dividing range are both artificially created and a boon to firefighters.
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.’
He deprecates the notion that inner-city vote-seeking politicians created national parks willy-nilly, with negative environmental consequences.
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.
I could go on, but he has already bored the pants off people in this discussion with his thread-bombing, deceptive rhetoric.
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.
Correlation does not imply causation, Ace.
But you know that.
Ace, I wasn’t implying that burning coal would directly affect vermin or extinction of species, one way or another. I was talking about generating the money and wealth which enable one to do stuff. Good stuff or bad stuff. I vote for good stuff, like conservation, and pensioners running the heating all through winter. Subtle, eh? But not too subtle, I think.
Up here we’d settle for enough funds to slash the road verges. Maintenance of our forest and adjoining Bob Carr NP are just a dream. It’s not so much the fires in these last five years of cooler and moister weather, it’s koalas, above all, and little marsupials, reptiles and birds we’re not aware of. Kookas and goannas swarm, swamp wallabies can get away; but other species don’t make it. The killing never stops. The dog and cat thing is going to be a huge undertaking. Of course, when the fires come back, there’ll be that problem. We need seriously big money for conservation. Giving money to GIM and Goldman Sachs is only going to drive up the price of Chateau Petrus.
Ace, why would we waste coal burning it in old clunkers? We need to make like Major Renault in Casablanca, and be shocked, absolutely shocked, that coal is being wasted in this fashion. We must insist that new facilities which are up to 30% more efficient begin construction at once. We must use the billions earmarked for emissions reduction – at once! We are shocked, absolutely shocked…but you probably know how the spin goes, Ace.
Now, Ace, I prefer the cool myself, but the rise in temps and sea levels (especially) which began in the 19th century went through a blip in the 1970s after some radical Arctic cooling in the 1960s – and people just complained. You can’t win. Lamb and the CRU saw some bad cooling coming, till the worst heatwave anyone could remember hit England in 1976. After that, they changed their minds, er, I mean they adjusted…well, you know what I mean.
Coal power to the people! Martin Ferguson to the UN! John McTernan for Australia’s coal ambassador! Quote me!
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.
Geee, I wonder what actual Greens policy is:
http://nsw.greens.org.au/policies/bushfires
The Greens believe that living with bushfire threat requires a coordinated approach that includes:
planning of housing sites to avoid development in risk prone areas;
strategically planned hazard reduction, including controlled burning, where and when climatic conditions allow it to be done safely and where it is consistent with maintaining the ecosystem;
education and community awareness programs to reduce the incidence of arson; and
a well funded and managed fire fighting service which can protect human life and homes and contain the spread of fires.
Why are we blaming the Greens for things that they’re actively campaigning against? I’m pretty sure the Greens are all about increasing funding to services, including to fire brigades dealing with the bushfires (HINT: Conservative governments are currently cutting the fire brigade & related services of funding http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/01/19/bush-j19.html).
Plus the Greens aren’t even in power, how can they be blamed for all the above stuff. Seriously, some of you are nuts.
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.
Ah Climate Ace I see you (from what you don’t choose to say) ARE a “sucker on the taxpayers teat”, a spin doctor paid to disrupt, spread climate propaganda and no sense of humour in working with ordinary Australian people, a “supperior” (note the spelling!) for the long suppers, classic red or chardonnay set? Sit in front of a mirror while you spout grub, paid parasite! and thread bomber!! it kind of suits you, don’t you think?.
Centerlink! where did you pull that from, the left wing grab book of petty insults, your kind are too clever and smart toline up at Centerlink with the ordinary folk, as we can see from your prattle.
I guess you are earning your spin money, and it doesn’t matter who is in political power you will adapt and follow the gravy train. Good luck, but our country deserves better.
“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]
mosomos
They were so happy! They had a chance to brew traditional brews, rug up, get the kids out on the ice and have traditional fun.
Good on them, IMHO.
The downside was that that Australian netball team had difficulty getting somewhere in England because of all the snow and the buses stopped running in Paris altogether.
Winners and losers; life never changes.
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!
Geoff says: January 21, 2013 at 9:09 pm
Geee, I wonder what actual Greens policy is:
====================================
Excellent question.
from your first link:
“Global warming will inevitably increase both the severity and frequency of bushfires in NSW.”
Actual Greens policy? To propagandize.
Your second link is even more interesting- and telling: The World Socialist Website, published by the International Committee of the Fourth International.
What are those lights and buzzers? — From Wikipedia:
The Fourth International (FI) (founded in 1938) is the communist international organisation consisting of followers of Leon Trotsky (Trotskyists), with the declared dedicated goal of helping the working class bring about socialism
The question bears repeating: Geee, I wonder what actual Greens policy is
On topic.
KenB says:
January 21, 2013 at 9:45 pm
Ah Climate Ace I see you (from what you don’t choose to say) ARE a “sucker on the taxpayers teat”, a spin doctor paid to disrupt, spread climate propaganda and no sense of humour in working with ordinary Australian people, a “supperior” (note the spelling!) for the long suppers, classic red or chardonnay set? Sit in front of a mirror while you spout grub, paid parasite! and thread bomber!! it kind of suits you, don’t you think?.
Centerlink! where did you pull that from, the left wing grab book of petty insults, your kind are too clever and smart toline up at Centerlink with the ordinary folk, as we can see from your prattle.
I guess you are earning your spin money, and it doesn’t matter who is in political power you will adapt and follow the gravy train. Good luck, but our country deserves better.
If all you can do to WUWT is to bring ill-informed, stupid, incorrect, vicious, vacuous, whinging, victimish, whining, criticism, I suggest you go to a blog where they appreciate that sort of stuff, not WUWT, where we discuss the substance of important issues.
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
mosomoso says:
January 21, 2013 at 11:18 pm
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!
I notice that you are maintaining your consistent and complete silence on the ratio of record hots to record colds.
On the other hand, this from the Ace:
“‘He claims that recent bushfires in Australia have something to do with CAGW.’
Um, that was someone else who has a fetish about CAGW, whatever that is. I was quite specific, and I do hope I have been quite specific consistently. I have said that we have had record hot temperatures and that there is a direct relationship between fire behaviour and temperatures. That is not, I believe, rocket science.
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!
The factoid about Canberra experiencing its hottest start to January every came from Fox news and the Fox Weather Channel. They may have been checking the gauges in their cars. Who knows how they figured that one out? Still, they must have had their reasons. Maybe the bats fell out of the Canberra sky or something.
I try to avoid the use of the terms ‘weather’ and ‘climate’ because, like using the term ‘acidification’, it tends to throw the locals into apoplectic, apocalyptic and thoroughly useless frenzies.
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.)
Thanks JIm for a sensible comment.
It is not just national parks that have increased our fire risk. It is the changed fire regime since Europeans came. That has been made worse in recent decades by increased public reserves, more hobby farms and more “Green” laws banning tree clearing on private land, but it has occurred on both public and private land.
Aborigines did not do a risk assessment to carefully decide when, what and if to burn – they burned continuously, and the load of flammable vegetation was generally removed before it became dangerous..
In 1851, Europeans had been settling Victoria for 20 years and NSW for 70 years. I am not sure when widespread aboriginal burning stopped in Victoria, but as the main reason for it was to keep their fire sticks alight (particularly in winter when the grass is often dry), that practice would stop as soon as they got European matches.
Early settlers would also have discouraged aboriginal burning. Unlike Aborigines, they had crops, haystacks, permanent flammable huts and domestic animals to worry about.
So a big fire in 1851 does not disprove the main thesis on the cause of the increased risk of fierce fires. That long dry droughted grass of February 1851 would probably have been burnt safely by Aborigines way back in July-September 1850 before temperatures and hot winds became extreme.
Of course there will be years when a very wet summer, follow by a very dry winter and spring and then a hot dry summer will set up conditions for extreme fire risk which can occur anywhere. But “Aboriginal” fire practices would always have reduced them.
I agree that man-made carbon dioxide is a bit player in all this. It will encourage plant growth and allow plants to better withstand drought. That’s all. Temperature and rainfall are controlled by the sun, not by man.
Viv Forbes
markyx
Thanks for that update on Orbost. For those who might not know, in Victoria ‘state forest’ usually means ‘production forest’ and not ‘national park’.
In practical terms the same government organisation in Victoria manages both production forests and national parks.
I hope they get the fires out asap and wish the firies well.
Hey, Ace, once again I point out that I believe in global warming (not blaming Napoleon or Jane Austen here!) and I’m not at all surprised if there are more heat records than cold records being set. Just in case you missed me saying it previously. But maybe my failure to repeat it daily constitutes “consistent and complete silence”. Oh well, at least it wasn’t “misogyny”.
Who’s challenging whether January had its hottest start on record somewhere or other? Argue with Fox? Moi? Hard to miss all that heat this summer, though no records up this way. Still, they’ll come. Last summer was freakishly cool, so we’re due, I guess.
By the way, I hope your rellies – if they’re in Britain – stayed nice and toasty during the December and January of 2009-2010. We sometimes forget that one. I’m told it was the coldest Dec-Jan on record (logging started in 1910), and the coldest winter all up for Northern Scotland. What’s happening in that melty hemisphere? The rest of Europe also sucked in the first two months of that winter. Really, what’s with these northern winters since ’09?
I do hope you’re rellies were spinning the old 75s of White Christmas while staying by the fire and sipping trad brews in that December. They’d be so happy.
Ace, if you don’t like my comments, you can always shred them into quotes with lots of your own stuff between. Any old stuffing will do.
Be cool, Ace.
Jim
I would add the note that many areas of south-eastern Australia had very low stocking rates by the end of the drought that preceded the the two la ninas. The result was that grazing pressure in farmland was not enough to keep pastures down and it was a common sight to see stock up to their bellies in very long grass. Hay was practically unsaleable.
In some areas the balance has altered the other way, with the stocking rates now so high that there are forced sales with cattle prices dropping substantially, for example, in the recent Yea sales. This appears to be occuring in areas where they have had very low spring and summer rains.
What is interesting is that at least some of the stock purchased at Yea is being trucked north to the Queanbeyan area – that is to say, there must still be pastures with a capacity for additional stock.
At any rate, in terms of bushfires or grassfires, I have seen situations where it is so hot, dry, windy and so lacking in humidity that almost bare paddocks burn with tremendous speed and heat and it looks like the fire is burning with only air for fuel.
We have a fair way to go before we get our heads around just what we face in terms of bushfires.
Kim Hutchinson, you say: ‘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. ‘
What I don’t understand is how you come to this position, when it is a a fact that it is a greenhouse gas. Have you found a new law of physics? Well congratulations if you have, then a [
nobleNobel . . mod] prize awaits you.Climate Ace says:
January 22, 2013 at 3:03 am (Edit)
———————————————————————-
I am unclear as to what the point of your post is. You make reference to previous hot and dry periods that had bushfires. Are the current bushfires worse than those of the past and if so how would you know? Is a fire in a peak temperature of 46.1 worse than one in a temperature of 46.0?
Are fires that follow a previous good rainy season better or worse than otherwise might be the case? We know that good rains result in thicker bush so would alternating wet and dry rainy seasons result in worse bushfires and if it did would that indicate anthropogenic climate change?
Can bushfires be a metric of climate change and if so how? I have the opinion that bushfires have been folded into the climate change story for purely propaganda purposes what say you?
Climate Ace:
At January 21, 2013 at 7:13 pm you assert
Really? Those are the “numbers that count”? Why: because you say so?
Summer sea ice extent in the Arctic has reduced (n.b. NOT collapsed) recently. Why does that “count” when the increase to sea ice extent in the Antarctic doesn’t?
The ratio of hot temperature records to cold temperature records is positive because we have been recovering from the LIA for centuries and the temperatures have been recorded for about a century. This warming from the LIA (which has stopped for the last 16+ years) means the Earth is warmer than it was for most of the recording period so more hot records than cold records are inevitable. Why is this statistical artifact of the recording period one of the “numbers that count”?
I agree that “gain in heat by the oceans” is important and I note that the ARGO buoys show there is none. Why does that “count” and how?
On average, glaciers have been losing ice since the end of the last glaciation 12 millennia ago. But the loss is not constant so some glaciers are gaining mass and others are losing mass. On balance most are losing mass at present so are retreating. Many (e.g. Alpine) retreating glaciers are exposing evidence of human activities which were not covered by the ice until ~1,000 years ago. So, why is loss of global ice mass balance by glaciers one of the “numbers that count”?
Your assertions that I have quoted above in this post are – as I have explained – meaningless and valueless twaddle. Indeed, as such they are typical of all your posts. For example, your response to my explanation (at January 21, 2013 at 5:39 pm) in reply to a question from ikh.
Your response (at January 21, 2013 at 7:21 pm) says
That response is ‘flaming’ of a most egregious kind.
Firstly, it takes one sentence out of context and attacks that correct, true and accurate statement. But my answer was about the “philosophy” and, Climate Self-Assessment, a refutation of my answer – and/or the sentence you quoted – requires a refutation of my description of the philosophy.
Then it attacks the sentence with misdirection and irrelevance.
I stated the philosophy of ‘greens’. But I said nothing about “conservationists”. And ‘greens’ are often opposed by conservationists; e.g. on the use and siting of windfarms.
I said nothing about historical death tolls from bush fires before modern emergency services and facilities existed. And the development of conservationists and national parks is also not relevant to the question from ikh and my answer to it.
And, Climate Self-Assessment, the only possible reason for your mention of “Kyoto” is to introduce a ‘red herring’.
Worst of all, Climate Self-Assessment, is your specious, hypocritical and egregious post at January 22, 2013 at 1:29 am which says
YES! Climate Self-Assessment, to date and on several WUWT threads your posts have only consisted of ill-informed, stupid, incorrect, vicious, vacuous, whinging, victimish, whining, criticism. Stop it!
Richard