Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; According to The Guardian, a few months of Aussie bushfires, as has happened many times before, is somehow politically equivalent to nuclear waste spewing out of a ruptured Soviet reactor core.
Australia’s politicians face a crisis of legitimacy as fire and smoke chokes the country
David Ritter
Fri 13 Dec 2019 16.19 AEDTA government’s primary duty is to keep its citizens safe but the bushfire crisis shows past and present leaders have not lived up to that duty
Is the fire and smoke enveloping our country Australia’s Chernobyl moment?
On the 20-year anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, Mikhail Gorbachev reflected that the meltdown was a “historic turning point” after which “the system as we knew it became untenable”. The catastrophe laid bare the rottenness at the core of the Soviet Union through overwhelming human and economic loss and terrifying spectacle. It was a crisis of legitimacy from which the regime did not recover.
Today Australia’s regime potentially faces its own historic turning point. The scale of the fires is colossal, with appalling loss of human life and property and the destruction of world heritage. The smoke haze is vast and toxic and Sydney is smothered in a poisonous plume 11 times worse than hazardous levels.
…
Through their words and deeds, in denying the urgency and extent of the climate emergency and in failing to act, Morrison and his predecessors have preferred ideology to reality. They contributed to enabling the conditions that are now generative of disaster.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/13/australias-politicians-face-a-crisis-of-legitimacy-as-fire-and-smoke-chokes-the-country
One of the main reasons greens are losing is they exaggerate. Nobody believes their wild claims of imminent extinction because we keep catching them making other ridiculous claims.
Chernobyl really was a catastrophe. A badly designed badly sited reactor constructed by big government split open, and started spewing deadly fallout across a large region, threatening to poison water systems, threatening the lives of 10s, likely hundreds of millions of people, threatening to make much of Europe an uninhabitable wasteland.
Australia’s bushfires – not so much. At least not on the same scale as Chernobyl.
People personally affected by the bushfires, I’m sorry for your losses. I can’t imagine the pain of losing loved ones or the homes you love in such circumstances.
But for most Australians, including asthmatic Australians like myself, Australia’s bushfires amount to a few unpleasant smoky days when it is safer to stay indoors.
I’m sure the smoke isn’t really good for people who breath it, but breathing a bit of smoke simply isn’t a disaster on the scale of breathing highly radioactive waste products from a major nuclear catastrophe.
Why do greens so readily burn their credibility with such wild exaggerations?
The answer of course is they truly believe what they are saying. In their minds, all that CO2 and smoke really is a disaster on the same scale as a ruptured nuclear reactor.
Which is why we shouldn’t take what they say seriously.
Maybe if we got our Prime Minister to show real commitment to combating bushfires by joining the CFS?
That would please the Greens and the MSM, right?
Only if he became the union delegate first, Craig.
Ask Tony Abbot if it helped him…
Meanwhile ‘at least 56 people have already been charged or cautioned with 71 bushfire-related offences since August, with 16 ongoing investigations into suspicious fires’ (The Australian Dec. 18).
Add it to the list, climate change causes pyromania.
Here in a retirement village in the town of Gawler, South Australia, some distance from the sea, 45 C is common during our normal summer.
So what do us oldies do, why we go to our units and turn on the air conditioners, hoping that the 44 % of renewables, plus the extra backup from a bank of diesals bought by the government recently will hold out.
Such is life in the Green State of S.A.
MJE VK5ELL
Hi all, hi Nick Stokes …
Here’s an old CSIRO report: https://publications.csiro.au/rpr/download?pid=procite:96d88e42-6798-4f25-9e9a-b3b306fe4736&dsid=DS1 (limited study area, but gives perspective of how extensive the fires have been in the past).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Australian_history/Bushfire_disasters (Let me know if you spot any trends).
Special Xmas assignment for you Nick – devise a plot / timeline showing fires and which political party is in power at the time. Will be fun to see.
He could also include an estimate of the atmospheric CO2 concentration at the time in each case.
” but gives perspective of how extensive the fires have been in the past”
Yes. He says
“Bushfires burning in excess of 10 000 ha and originating from within or travelling into the study area since 1938 are described below and shown in Figs. 3-10. “
The study area is large – most of the forested area south of the Shoalhaven, which covers about a third of the NSW coast. And, as we know, there have been many fires. The worst year he has is 1968-69, when he says:
“During the declared emergency period of 16 days about 47 500 ha were burnt by these fires. “
The current NSW fires have burnt 2.7 million ha. See the difference?
Nick, the CSIRO report that FB Brown links above cites a 1948-49 NSW fire that spread to some 8 million hectares.
But what the hell, we’re nitpicking & arguing semantics in the overall scheme of things.
Facts are – Australia (OI! OI! OI!) has had humongous bushfires most years since time immemorial. Mostly in summer ( say Nov – Apr), but still not unusual in cooler seasons.
FFS, the continent became a virtual fire-dependent eucalyptus monoculture over millions of years of constant bushfires. It’s what the place is, and always (since h. sapiens at least) has been.
Let’s not even pretend that these last 70 years or so of bushfire prevalence have been down to modern living standards.
Also quoting from the report:
‘… The 1951-52 Fire Season (January 1952} The season could possibly be one of the worst on record for eastern Australia when more than 8 million ha were burnt …’.
In 1951 the atmospheric CO2 concentration was ~ 310 ppm.
One common trend I have seen in pictures of the fires of late in the MSM is that they are all taken at night. Makes things look angrier.
Here we go again! Will the BoM make sh!t up, again?
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/hottest-day-ever-berejiklian-warns-nsw-ahead-of-heatwave-20191218-p53l63.html#comments
“The Bureau of Meteorology have said preliminary results suggest Tuesday was Australia’s hottest ever day, with an average of 40.9 degrees across the country. The previous record was set on January 7, 2013, at 40.3 degrees.
This hot air mass is so extensive, that preliminary figures show that yesterday was the hottest day on record in Australia,” BOM meteorologist Diana Eadie said.”
Yup! Averages. All made up from a massive pool of 112 devices!
1959 was my first visit to the Northern Territory of Australia, to the Aboriginal mission at Port Keats. In 1969, colleagues discovered the world class Ranger uranium deposits. After consulting to them for a couple of years, I joined them as Chief Geochemist in 1972. We had a fair bit of friendship and involvement with local aborigines. From 1986 to 1992 I was VP or Pres of the NT Chamber of Mines. Aboriginal Affairs were the main agenda item.
I mention dates because in that overall term, academics started to get interested in a fairly comprehensive invention of a new history of the region. Stories we had been told by the locals were replaced by invented stories particularly from the Australian National Uni in Canberra. If aborigines have incredibly strong ties to the land, replete with tales accurately passed down through many generations, then land is power and power gives control of the land. Too bad about concepts like National Sovereignty.
One matter that suffered – in my limited experience – was this claim that all over Australia, aborigines had evolved profoundly wise and unquestionable knowledge about land management via fire use. What I saw, time and again, was lighting of small fires to clear away a few acres of rubbish dry grass so that game food like goanna and wallaby could be hunted more easily. Not uncommonly, a small fire grows to a large one, more by accident than by design. I saw no evidence at all of a wise and proven plan of management, but then my interest was in passing and not research paid for by a grant that required academic papers.
Believe what you will, but be cautious about veracity. History in the Top End has been comprehensively propagandised. Geoff S
I have a friend in Alice Springs that pretty much confirmed what you said, and she’s a full blood Walpiri woman. Hunting and foraging the way they did wasn’t easy, they were naked and spinifex grasses are lovely to look at but they aren’t kind to bare skin. Fire made it easier to flush out the animals and to clear a way to see and capture them.
Regarding the dreamtime stories, that was a thing but the stories weren’t always pretty, you had to keep the kids in line somehow. Grandma raises the young ones, you know what grandma’s are like.
Sorry, for some reason that post arrived out of order.
I agree that there has been a great deal of romanticism about aboriginal fire use.
It is far better regarded as a practical response to certain needs, of which safety from wildfire is one. If you doubt this, imagine living all summer in a dry grassland with no more firefighting capacity than a green branch… and bore better means of escape that the bare-foot express.
The most obvious response, is to burn as early as any part of the landscape is dr enough to carry fire. Burning early means that other parts of the land are still too green to burn,providing natural refuges and firebreaks. Then wen those same teen areas ave dried enough to burn, previous burns provide a mosaic of further refuge areas.
It is only by excluding fire from the landscape that we have created continuous fuels from horizon to horizon.
Clever people our bush Aboriginals.
Don’t be a fool, Nick Stokes.
Fires and Fire Services are run by the States. They are not the province of the Federal government.
Until the States ask for more help, the only thing that the Federal Government gets to do is ask whether there is anything that they need……. and THAT is a job that is just as easily done by the appropriate Ministers.
Morrison attempting to insert himself into a State matter without invitation would not just be contrary to the Australian Constitution, but resented as arrogant .grandstanding. This is just another piece of Green nonsense.
A country neighbor of mine wasn’t as excited as I thought he could be watching stormclouds roll over. Said he was worried more about the prospect of ‘dry lighting’.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/18/australia-experiences-hottest-day-on-record-and-its-worst-ever-spring-bushfire-danger
‘Australia experiences hottest day on record and its worst ever spring bushfire danger’
Really nothing unusual happening in Australia?
Nope, nothing unusual in Australia, or in the lefty propaganda machine. The Grauniad is doing what it always does, cherry picking dates and fear mongering for a leftists agenda.
It was a national average. How many devices were used to make up that number? BoM magic number making going on again!
There is a reason why the BoM does not used temperature records that date before 1910 and that’s because there were hotter records before then.
The Guardian, eh?
How are things in Islington at the moment, Guardian people?
Not so good, correct?
Give it up and go home.
https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/australia-hit-with-extreme-cold-front-as-snow-hits-and-people-are-warned-of-dangerous-conditions/news-story/61dd84de00f72de94d8f17b8d094bb23
Snow in Australia? Must be due to global warming. Oh, wait!
Your link is dated June 19, 2018, you’re posting a story from the third week of last winter. Why?
The snowfalls in NSW and VIC ended after the first week of Summer, two weeks back. I’ve seen substantial snowfall in Tasmania in January, it happens, it’s weather, it isn’t a climate-change cooling indicator, it is natural variability.
About 90% of Australia’s surface will reach or exceed the temperature of the human body today. That’s an uncomfortable and dangerously high temperature. About 25% of Australia will approach 120 deg F today. It will not be snowing anywhere.
Just because Green idiots post deceitful hysterical incessant BS does not mean it’s OK to do the same.
1959 was my first visit to the Northern Territory of Australia, to the Aboriginal mission at Port Keats. In 1969, colleagues discovered the world class Ranger uranium deposits. After consulting to them for a couple of years, I joined them as Chief Geochemist in 1972. We had a fair bit of friendship and involvement with local aborigines. From 1986 to 1992 I was VP or Pres of the NT Chamber of Mines. Aboriginal Affairs were the main agenda item.
I mention dates because in that overall term, academics started to get interested in a fairly comprehensive invention of a new history of the region. Stories we had been told by the locals were replaced by invented stories particularly from the Australian National Uni in Canberra. If aborigines have incredibly strong ties to the land, replete with tales accurately passed down through many generations, then land is power and power gives control of the land. Too bad about concepts like National Sovereignty.
One matter that suffered – in my limited experience – was this claim that all over Australia, aborigines had evolved profoundly wise and unquestionable knowledge about land management via fire use. What I saw, time and again, was lighting of small fires to clear away a few acres of rubbish dry grass so that game food like goanna and wallaby could be hunted more easily. Not uncommonly, a small fire grows to a large one, more by accident than by design. I saw no evidence at all of a wise and proven plan of management, but then my interest was in passing and not research paid for by a grant that required academic papers.
Believe what you will, but be cautious about veracity. History in the Top End has been comprehensively propagandised. Geoff S
The “guardian newspaper”, in my view, should be depicted as the information to equal mis-information.
This to all.
But a realise we have folk so out of understanding of reality, that this group, who calll themselves an informed source of information, factual, should be highlighted as a prime example of destruction!
When we have so much greed and hunger for power by a few, to have a publication which assists them, depicts warped minds and the need for some of us to alert the sane public to regain the balance in imparted information to correct facts, not to deny anyone wishing to read whatever they wish