Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t JoNova; According to a former regional forest manager with over 60 years experience managing bushfires, government incompetence, fuel load and local green activists are responsible for Australia’s 2020 bushfire disaster, not climate change.
An Inferno of Incompetence and Obfuscation
17th January 2020
Roger UnderwoodThe most frequent question I have received over the last month is “who is to blame for the bushfire mess up and down the east coast?” There is a school of thought, mostly put about by state premiers, that the blame game is bad form. We should put the whole bushfire business behind us and move on, they say. Forget the past, the future will be wonderful. I reject this concept, because in any disaster situation lessons must be learned (or rather re-learned) and those lessons applied to improving the way things are done. I also believe those who need to be accountable for the current mess must be identified and the ways they have let us down highlighted.
The trouble with side-stepping accountability is that mistakes are perpetuated. The same people go back to business as usual, and the same disasters re-occur. If nobody has done anything wrong, as the premiers maintain, no changes need to be made.
This, of course, is the beauty of the “blame it all on climate change” position. If climate change caused the bushfires, no individual can be pinned, not even those “fire chiefs” who were in charge during the entire time the current disaster was incubating and who now suddenly know what was the problem.
I reject the ‘blame it on climate change” position because it has two killer flaws: firstly, it ignores fuels, which are the main contributor to uncontrollable fires during a drought; secondly, it provides no practical solutions to the immediate problem. Both of these factors render the climate change argument utterly unsustainable, indeed ridiculous.
It is very obvious who the people are who should be held accountable for the current mess.
At the top of the list are the premiers and ministers responsible for land management, such as it is, and bushfire policy, and the public servants in their departments with jurisdiction over forests and national parks. State governments in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria have palpably failed to do the most important job they were elected to do: protect the lives and livelihoods of their citizens and the health of their environment. And their public servants have failed to do the job they are being paid to do: serve the public.
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Local government authorities are also high on the list of those accountable — and here again state governments bear responsibility, as they should never have allowed them to get away with the nonsenses we have seen coming out of town halls over recent years with respect to vegetation clearing and building approvals. Some premier or minister should have cracked down hard on this foolishness, and cracked down hard.
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Roger Underwood is a former district an regional forester in Western Australia with over 60 years experience in bushfire science, planning and operations
Read more: https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2020/01/an-inferno-of-incompetence-and-obfuscation/
To be fair, there is no doubt dry conditions have made managing the bush especially challenging the last few years. A few of the smarter greens have started suggesting that fuel loads are high, because climate change is making it too difficult to conduct controlled burns.
But accepting the climate change explanation for poor fuel load control would not absolve greens of responsibility. If green anti-burn activists are causing narrow windows of opportunity to be missed, the activists and their political and media enablers carry even more responsibility for this year’s bushfire disaster.
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Well,we consistently elect fools and bandits.
Local government has become so toxic and subject to so much nonsense that no one in their right mind wants the job.
What kind of inconsiderate jerk would subject their family and businesses to the kind of rabid attacks the media and progressive mob launch against anyone who supports uncommon sense?
Of course the incompetents blame “Climate Change” it is a get out of jail free card,undefined and yet responsible for every calamity known to man.
As an added bonus,you can dismiss every one who refuses to accept that Climate Change excuse as “Deniers”.
and all the chattering class will rush to defend your incompetence.
What could possibly go wrong?
The damage that this mass hysteria is doing to faith in government,institutions and experts, will be far more profound than the propogandists ever anticipate.
Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change(Global warming) is an intelligence test.
One the taxpayers will pass.
Dooming public funding for most of the NGOs and Government Agencies currently fanning the flames of Doom Saying.
Kind of hard to get taxpayer support once you prove you are useless and dangerous.
Which all of our institutions ,created to prevent public folly,have proven themselves to be.
Who watches the watchdogs,indeed.
Amazing comment.
Professor Karoly Jan 20th 2020, “Temperatures are about 1.4 degrees warmer than a century ago,” Can this be verified? And CO2 was not mentioned.
Anything Karoly says must be treated with extreme suspicion. He says a lot but just has no backup. He says one thing, and then a while later completely backtracks.
In Victoria, my understanding is dozers are welcome at the fire front , as long as the blade is not longer than 10 foot. Turn up with a 12 footer, and home you go!
Communist government style make government jobs program.
If not measuring the blade, they will be measuring the size, font, and location of the name on the sides.
Nothing must be overlooked.
You should see them inspecting our new Canadian cannabis stores……….
Incompetence by the conservative Australian government and conservative New South Wales government are to blame. Can’t manage the economy. Can’t manage disasters. Can’t manage a church fete. Neither can their useless supporters.
You are a coward. Just like The MSM won’t allow any other point of view except Leftist/Green.
You come in at the end of a post because you fear that you cannot refute the truth.
We could have a fireproof nation with undergrowth and firebreaks cut, we choose not to.