Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Viv Forbes; The The Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements Report has been released. But the commission’s apparent overt genuflection to climate disaster memes has already drawn harsh criticism from a group of highly experienced land management and fire fighting experts.
For example, on page 22;
…
23. Extreme weather has already become more frequent and intense because of climate change; further global warming over the next 20 to 30 years is inevitable. Globally, temperatures will continue to rise, and Australia will have more hot days and fewer cool days. Sea levels are also projected to continue to rise. Tropical cyclones are projected to decrease in number, but increase in intensity. Floods and bushfires are expected to become more frequent and more intense. Catastrophic fire conditions may render traditional bushfire prediction models and firefighting techniques less effective.
24. Natural disasters are expected to become more complex, more unpredictable, and more difficult to manage. We are likely to see more compounding disasters on a national scale with far-reaching consequences. Compounding disasters may be caused by multiple disasters happening simultaneously, or one after another. Some may involve multiple hazards – fires, floods and storms. Some have cascading effects – threatening not only lives and homes, but also the nation’s economy, critical infrastructure and essential services, such as our electricity, telecommunications and water supply, and our roads, railways and airports.
25. Australia needs to be better prepared for these natural disasters. They may not happen every year, but when they happen, they can be catastrophic. The summer of 2019-2020 – in which some communities experienced drought, heatwaves, bushfires, hailstorms, and flooding – provided only a glimpse of the types of events that Australia may face in the future.
…
Source: https://naturaldisaster.royalcommission.gov.au/system/files/2020-10/Royal%20Commission%20into%20National%20Natural%20Disaster%20Arrangements%20-%20Report%20%20%5Baccessible%5D.pdf
A group of land management experts has not wasted any time criticising the Bushfire Commission. I think its fair to say they haven’t pulled any punches.
BUSHFIRES ROYAL COMMISSION DOESN’T HAVE THE ANSWERS
Experienced land and fire managers from eight community groups across Australia have jointly written to the Prime Minister urging the restoration of healthy and safe rural landscapes. The grass-roots organisations represent more than 6,000 members and 14 regional councils. They have called for an end to the ongoing loss of human life and the socioeconomic and environmental destruction caused by extreme bushfires.
Former Chief of CSIRO Bushfire Research, Phil Cheney, says that a focus on emergency response at the expense of land management has created an unstoppable monster. Expenditure on firefighting forces is ever-increasing whilst volunteers are being cynically used to deflect criticism away from failed government policies. Land management agencies no longer have primary responsibility for suppressing wildfires. Consequently they have little incentive for stewardship and fire mitigation. Cheney is a scientific advisor to Volunteer Fire Fighters Association.
Chairman of Western Australia’s Bushfire Front, Roger Underwood, points to the stark contrast in historical fire management policies and outcomes on either side of the continent. Seventy years of data from WA show a strong inverse relationship between the area maintained by mild burning and the area subsequently damaged by high intensity fires. This relationship is especially apparent in extreme fire seasons.
Underwood is widely experienced in sustainable land and fire management at all levels from lighting or fighting fires on the ground, to leading a State land management agency. He highlights the deep divide between those who actively care for the bush and who understand bushfire science and operations, compared to the Academics and Fire Chiefs who are misleading governments. The Royal Commission did not call upon Mr. Cheney, Mr. Underwood or similar elders to give evidence. Their consideration of previous bushfire inquiries went back only as far as the COAG whitewash in 2004.
The Royal Commission has accepted wrong advice from academics and modellers rather than information from experienced practitioners. Consequently its conclusions on Effectiveness of Fuel Management are substantially incorrect.
Our land was successfully managed for tens of thousands of years, through some extreme climate changes, by people with long experience, but only the most basic technology. It is shocking to see how this has been replaced by reliance on computer modelling and hugely expensive but futile paramilitary response capacity. The inevitable carnage will continue in the wake of this Royal Commission unless active landscape management based on pragmatic science is reinstated.
Contacts
Phil Cheney 0420 896526 (ACT)
Roger Underwood 0429 339405 (WA)
Here is the letter sent by to the Prime Minister
https://saltbushclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/man-made-megafires-letter-to-pm.pdf
The signatories of the document criticising the report are:
- Gary Squires is a forester with 40+ years’ experience in land and fire management.
- Sandy Kam is the Administrator of NTCA which includes 14 Councils whose representatives are elected Councillors, many if not all having experience in land and fire management, all representing constituents with vast combined experience.
- Bruce McCormack is President of MCAV and a mountain cattleman with similar experience representing similar constituents.
- Peter Rutherford is secretary of SETA, and a forester with 40+ years experience in land and fire management representing similarly experienced constituents.
- Justin Law is Managing Director of an organisation representing a similar constituency.
- Mick Holton is President of VFFA representing RFS volunteers who are all firefighters.
- Viv Forbes is a pastoralist and explorer with science qualifications and wide experience at using and fighting fires in Qld and NT. He was an active member of a local bush fire brigade for about 27 years.
Many of the critics individually have very long experience in land and fire management, all are concerned with the centralised control by bureaucrats lacking local knowledge and land management experience. Mick has personal experience with Fire and Rescue NSW as well as NSW Rural Fire Service.
I love the graph the Bushfire Commission supplied (top of the page), because it demonstrates the absurdity of the Australian temperature anomaly projections the commission used for their statements about future climate change.
Even the age of the Dinosaurs, the Cretaceous, with an average atmospheric CO2 level of 1700ppm, was only +4C temperature anomaly.
Suggesting the Australian temperature anomaly could exceed the warmth of the Cretaceous in the next few decades, with an atmospheric CO2 level far below the 1700ppm of the Cretaceous, is a pretty wild claim.
During Cretaseous the location of Antractica was different than today, Drake’s passage was not open, Antarctic circumpolar current did not exist and ocean currents were vastly different than today.
You don’t need CO2 to explain the difference in temperatures – different geology is sufficient.
In fact CO2 level were higher due to missing cold Antartic sea solubility sink (Henry’s law) and due much warmer seas.
I agree, but when debating people who believe CO2 is the control knob it is funny to point out examples which contradict their claims.
Send them my paper, Eric.
And the CMIP6 update.
I’m afraid you are talking to people with a religious conviction and (non-scientific) zealotry that will not be swayed by facts of history or rules of physics or mathematics.
They fall into the this king of response :-
“Even if you prove it to me, I will still not believe it !” Doug Adams – A Salmon of Doubt.
Roger Underwood I couldn’t have asked for a better name to point out the cause of so many bushfires.
As soon as you see Stanmore Coal director Viv Forbes and his noxious saltbush club cronies inserting themselves into a debate that has anything to with weather or climate you can be guaranteed politically motivated, self-interested bs, designed purely to protect their comfortable status quo, is not far behind.
I think most alarmists would be surprised to learn that we are in an ice age caused by the closing of the isthmus of Panama. link Time after time after dreary time, I see academics who don’t have a sufficiently broad education that they can put what knowledge they do have in proper context.
What’s desperately needed is a Royal Commission to investigate post-secondary education with a particular focus on research funding.
Looking through the relevant sections on risk I see NO discussion of preventative burning at all. It is widely known that enviros opposition to controlled burning and lack of full time human resources to effectuate enough controlled burning during the limited meterological periods when this can be done is a key factor in the build up of dead fuel wood.
It’s hard to believe that ” from more than 270 witnesses, almost 80,000 pages of
tendered documents and more than 1,750 public submissions” this was not brought to their attention.
So there we have the getout clause.
What is needed is a Royal Commission into Royal Commissions and why this trivial analysis which takes no account of the reality on the ground and the history of forest management is allowed to happen under the supposedly serious and thorough process of a Royal Commission.
Both Victoria and NSW, the states where the big bushfires occurred last summer, had preventative burns on less than 2% of their forests. Western Australia regularly burns around 8% of its forests every year, and doesn’t have huge bushfires. A 2% annual burn rate is useless in eucalyptus forests that drop litter at a rate of 8 tonnes per hectare, of which only around 26% decomposes annually. Thus it doesn’t take very long for the forest litter to reach a level where any bushfire cannot be easily stopped.
The real cause of the bushfires was a strong blocking high off the east coast of Queensland, wrong place and wrong time of year, brought harsh north-westerlies across the eastern half of Australia.
And the inevitable failure of the responsible authorities to conduct controlled burning to reduce the fuel load on the ground, which was the one thing that they actually had under their control.
yup and while it was drough it was still cool enough early to have done far more burnoffs
this yr its been 2x last yrs rainfall (hooray) and the grass in my yards 6ft high in places and avg is 3ft
and
its too GREEN to even try burning
and the fire ban season will start on a set date regardless meaning i wont be able to burn it when it does reach the stage to do so and killit and the damned seeds!!!
18 Royal Commissions on bushfire since 1939, all stating the obvious (inadequate management, inadequate fuel load reduction etc.) Now this one, swamped by – the swamp.
Why are we not surprised.
BINGO!
I know common sense isn’t a politician’s strong point but wouldn’t it be fairly straightforward to use the land management methods indicated in this post in part of the country and then compare the outcomes with the rest?
Thank you Mr. Clark for the body count of Royal Commissions on bushfire. It’s an impressive number. Many of the world-class fire experts cited above have testified and critiqued previous RC reports.
Sadly, it’s the same old dog-and-pony show with no effect and no changes in land management policies. For some reason I cannot fathom, the leaders of Australia have cement between their ears. Is it gross stupidity? Or death wishing? Have they been paid off by subversives who desire mass incineration again and again and again? Do Australians hate their own knowledgeable, experienced, intelligent citizens due to some obscure socio-psychological defect?
Why hold Royal Commissions at all if they are useless hand-waving without consequence? Is it some kind of national theater of the absurd? What is the problem?
The report was also slammed by Greentards because only 1 of the 80 recommendations was about climate change and that was simply about modelling. The initial discussion is littered with climate change rhetoric and crazy model predictions but they reach the inevitable conclusion … even if true there is nothing you can do about it that is up to the major CO2 emitters. Australian CO2 emissions while high per capita are very low as a total and cutting them does not change the bushfire predictions from any of the models submitted. The logic is straight forward but you can’t please a Greentard unless you are a true believer and ignore facts and logic.
A feature of the report is that it has not put a number on the amount of wind turbines needed to stop the fires.
I am certain that if Australia was to achieve independence from fossil fuels then forest fires would be prevented. It requires removal of all the forests and replacement with wind turbines and solar panels. No more forest; no more fires.
The alternative to WDGs is to manage all the forests for biofuel. That would also be an effective way to control fires.
One of the expert submissions to the NSW inquiry pointed out that the more money spent on fire suppression one year leads to more money being spent the next and so on. It is a viscous upward spiral that consumes every increasing resources for ever escalating risk.
The tree huggers build they environmentally friendly timber houses nestled into forest with 60m tall trees within touching distance and wonder why their little abode gets consumed when all that dead wood they have left in place for “habitat” goes up in smoke.
At least the report puts some focus on managing the fuel load.
Lived remotely in the Aussie bush for over 20 years.
I knew going in that nature is hostile to all living species.
It has always been thus.
If you don’t manage your natural surroundings for your own survival, you’re a naive fool.
And yes a lot of work is required each spring to prepare for the dryness of summer.
Blaming global warming for raging bushfires that have been a recurrent event across the Australian continent since time immemorial is arrant bullshit.
I am ashamed to admit it but I happened to see an interview on the ABC of a woman who had lost her house in the bushfires. She was whining because the Australian government had not done enough to prevent Climate Change.
There are many people who expect the government to look after them. They are not able to take any initiative to protect their own property.
Climate Change has become the ultimate cop-out. Everything bad that happens is due to Climate Change; Satan of the 21st Century.
I cannot help but think that Gavin Schmidt and his ilk have perpetrated a huge crime against humanity with the utter drivel they promote about “greenhouse gasses”. Who dreamt up this drivel?
“They are not able to take any initiative to protect their own property.”
Never been to Australia, but isn’t there a Green law against cutting down trees near your house, even if they are on your property?
It’s local council policy that prevents owners of property to do any kind off serious fuel load clearing. An owner of a rural property who cleared bush from around his property what fined AU$50,000.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/fined-for-illegal-clearing-family-now-feel-vindicated-20090212-85bd.html
Of course, this is the state of Victoria. It’s the same state that is now a police state, fully locked down, trying to deal with COVID-19.
Australia: The Lucky Country.
RickWill, you are correct about people who live in Australian bush-land areas who don’t take steps to protect their properties by sensible clearing. With enough dry undergrownth and the right conditions disasters will happen. However, you make one mistake. Never get your news and views from the ABC.
“Blaming global warming for raging bushfires…”
Except no one has done that. What is arrant nonsense is repeating the tabloid talking point that they have.
“Except no one has done that.”
You must live under a rock Loydo, is all I can say.
I recon Loydo lives in a very posh part of Melbourne.
Poor little loy satte can’t even listen to its own priests
So funny !
Note, climate models don’t predict any significant change in rainfall in South Eastern NSW. They are all over the place, so much as to be TOTALLY USELESS, even if they were validated against reality
So YES loy, they are blaming the future on “climate change”
Also the use of “climate models” LOL also shows they have swallowed the “climate change” kool-aide.
The words “climate models project” appear in many places.. and are MEANINGLESS.
They also go on about
Measure sea level rise on the east coast of Australia is around 1mm per year.
Are you SCARED yet, loy?
When should we start PANICKING !
Who Mr? You must have an exact quote “blaming” to be so sure.
Well you could start here Loydo, and work your way down into the pile of bullshit from there.
https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/resources/explaining-bushfires-climate-change/
Nowhere in your link does anyone blame bushfires on global warming. No one says that, its just a straw man. Unless you can show a direct quote of someone saying “global warming causes fires” then just stop repeating the lie.
My friend, you clearly suffer from an acute reading comprehension deficit.
Sorry I can’t help you any more with this, buy maybe the climate councilors can explain their position to you as if you were a 6 year old, so you can understand what they’re saying.
“Blaming global warming for… bushfires”
No, the incomprehension is on your side. I asked for a name and a quote that supports your comment, instead you provided a link to where no one says anything of the sort. Until you do stop repeating lies.
Read the report, loy satte,
Quotes are directly from the report.
Stop trying to hide behind your ignorance.
Paradise would have done well to know this one.
all the greenluvvies buy the cheap land backing onto national parks etc
and are surprised when theyget burnt out
morons
darwin award entrants every one of em
outer suburbans just bought next door to me
the wife loved the beautiful fox walking through their block
vermin needs shooting my comment
oh you cant kill anything says she
so
yesterday I sent the pics of ALL my dead hens for her enjoyment
dear lil foxie
theyll not be getting any eggs for some time to come from here.
now i have to try n incubate the luckily unused eggs i had to replace the flock
They should have taken an old report from three or four decades ago, dusted it off, and changed the date. The benefits of forest management were discovered centuries ago.
By using Acorn 2 , they are using one of the most corrupted and tainted data sets in the world.
40%+ of sites are totally unfit for any purpose except propaganda.
A large proportion are affected by significant UHI effects.
Infilling usual non-data from climate models is also rife.
The homogenisation process is riddled with idiotic suppositions and also allows big urban UHI effects and model based infilling to be spread to wherever they choose to smear it.
Very little actual warming in Australia pre the 1998 El Nino
And NONE after it
fred250
“Very little actual warming in Australia pre the 1998 El Nino”
Your 1st chart’s labels indicate that the data you used starts in 1980. In fact it starts in Jan 1981. By dropping the first part off the record you managed to shave around +0.02 C/dec off the UAH Australia warming trend up to Nov 1996 (your chosen end point). If you had used the actual UAH start point, Dec 1979, then the warming rate rises to +0.12 C/dec and the trend line becomes that bit more obvious (a bad look for you, apparently). +0.12C/dec is considerably higher than UAH global rate over the same period (+0.09 C/dec).
“And NONE after it”
Well, at least your 2nd chart starts where the labels say it does, Jan 1998. However, it’s noticeable that it ends in late 2017 – so it misses out on roughly the latest 3 years of UAH Australia data, which runs to September 2020. Guess what happens when we add those missing data? That’s right, back comes our old warming trend of +0.12 C/dec. Again, a faster rate than global over the same period in UAH (0.09 C/dec). Overall, Australia has been warming a little faster than the global land average since 1979 according to UAH: +0.19 vs +0.18 C/dec global.
Keep the charts coming Fred. It’s strangely therapeutic to keep up with your various antics.
Fred doesn’t realise it but he is like an accidental double agent. There must be quite a few of the usuals here rolling their eyes at the ranting and raving and mickey mouse graphs, but yeah I’m kinda warming to him. In fact I’m rather flattered he bothers to reply 3 or 4 times to every one of my posts. I’m not sure its healthy, but what would I know.
The main problem last year was that there had been two years of above average rainfall, with lots of growth…
…. followed by two years of below average rainfall, and hot north westerlies, ..
…. so all that new growth became bush fire fuel.
Was there was time in the two dry years to significantly reduce the fuel load…. I doubt it.
But a proper attempt should have at least been made.
Just the WEATHER patterns and circumstance.
ie normal AUSTRALIAN climate.. !!
The problem last year was that the previous year fire fighting measures were largely successful. That just leaves more to burn when the real fire comes.
If people must build in a fire prone area then they need a buffer of about 200m in all directions. The proof is that football fields and show grounds usually offer safe assembly areas for bush fires.
Some regional councils in Australia regulate buffers of at least 50m and only certain trees to grow within the buffer. 50m not really enough but at least it gives a fighting chance if water is available.
Also notice that the Acorn fabrication starts in 1915 or so,
Why not use real data from before the. Proper screens existed.
And this is the sort of CORRUPTION of real data that Acorn and BoM represent
What was it like in the 1930s in Australia? In North America it was hot. The official records have been massaged to get rid of the 1930s records and paint recent history as the hottest ever. link
If it wasn’t for data shenanigans, the Sydney max temperature would still be from 1934.
The AWS in February 2013 reached 45.3C same as in 1934.. but for some unexplained reason was recorded as 45.8C
ie.. it was FAKED. !!
And when you consider the abysmal placement of the Observatory Hill site, it is amazing that the 1934 temperature is still the REAL maximum.
There are still several records from around that time in the SE of Australia..
…., but most of the real heat was between about 1880 and 1910..
… which BoM have conveniently erased from the data they show to the public.
oops , reliable non-UHI record for Observatory Hill was Jan 11 1939, not 1934.
…
It appears they used RCP8.5 for 35 simulations.
A big carbon footprint on a large computer, and a total waste.
As Richard wrote @ 7:37 – – –
The entire exercise was a waste.
Zero result.
Cost was ?
The overwhelming number and areas of wildfires in Australia continue to occur in the northern savanna woodlands and grasslands started by lightning.
The 2019 – 2020 wildfires in temperate forests were big but the historical trend shows no relationship to the CO2 or supposed temperature trends (see Figures 1,2 & 3):
https://www.industry.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-04/estimating-greenhouse-gas-emissions-from-bushfires-in-australias-temperate-forests-focus-on-2019-20.pdf
I was a forester in the Forestry Commission in the SE NSW where we fought huge fires in the early 80’s, i.e. Ash Wednesday. We had a fire that burnt from Vic into Bondi State Forest through the Tennyson Ck Flora Reserve. This are had not been burnt for over 500 years. I was fireboss the night that the fire came through on a 17km front and flame heights of 200m, (I was in a helicopter over the fire when the wind change occurred). Imagine a D8 bulldozer prior to the fire making firebreaks in this area at a rate of 100m by one blade width every hour. After the fire everything with a DBHOB less than about 2m was completely consumed and only soil remained on the forest floor. This fire was not exacerbated by climate change it became intense due to huge fuel levels south of the Vic border. Fires are all about fuel management, what has a bigger effect, increases in temperature of less than 1 deg C or a doubling of available fuel. Foresters then were degree qualified ex ANU and were lectured by professionals such as Phil Cheney who spend a lifetime in fire research.Now we have unqualified volunteers and chiefs who know nothing about eucalypt silviculture or forest management in general. My degree was 5 years (with honours).
I subsequently became a brigade captain after I left NSWFC and was the only brigade that actively suppressed fires on the night that the Canberra fire began in 2003.
I am deeply annoyed as a tax payer by the whitewash that was this recent Royal Commission.
Dr Raymond Roberts
Thank you for your service Raymond.
In the late 1970’s I worked with the Australian Survey Office on the Naas River Dam project which was to be Canberra’s fifth dam but was abandoned mainly due to perceived environmental concerns. The Surveyor General at the time called in the four survey teams to his office at the beginning of the project to warn us of the shenanigans that the Parks and Wildlife Service were getting up to regarding the clearance of vegetation which is sometimes required in minuscule amounts to conduct survey lines. The Parks and Wildlife Service were already drinking the green koolaid at the time and any interference with undergrowth was seen as a reportable offence. Fire trails were neglected and overgrown with vegetation fuel layers increasing in depth. Entry points into forests through gates were often padlocked and in some cases blocked off completely with boulders and on the story goes. The Surveyor General warned the survey teams of the fire risk posed in the summer time with the increasing fuel loads occurring. He predicted a major “hot burn” within the next twenty five years if this kind of land (miss)management was continued. He was proved right as in 2003 when all the forests were decimated by hot burns. Later on, during the 1980’s, while studying for my science degree, our wise statistics lecturer(s) warned us about the pitfalls of modelling and how it should not be used to replace observations and complementary research and analysis. It seems that modelling has replaced observations, research and analysis in all manner of pursuits.
It blamed “climate change”? WOW! What a surprise.
Institutional climate alarm is now a world wide standard response, to any and every natural event.
Since when, did IPCC stand for Introduce Permanent Climate Concern?
The writers of this report, who are easily duped, tell us that “Globally, temperatures will continue to rise, and Australia will have more hot days and fewer cool days”
Then, they visit their financial consultants, whose currrent caution is “Past performance is not an indicator of future performance”.
So, they lose money, contented that they have taken the advice of experts.
Geoff S
The fire zones of Australia have long been known, well documented and discussed in the literature*. These zones are seasonal and are not governed by higher temperatures but by rainfall; period!
The fire season in the north occurs in the dry of winter not in the “Wet” of summer! In the southern extremities fire is more likely in the dry of the cooling late summer and autumn. The fire season on the east coast of Australia occurs in spring, in a zone following the Great Dividing Range above Sydney along a line which arcs west across central Australia from Brisbane.
The “real” and only “hot” summer fire zone in Australia is restricted to a line west of and including Canberra across to Perth that includes most of Victoria down to Melbourne across to SA and Adelaide. Fire south of this line is more likely to occur in late summer and autumn.
The hype about global warming causing more intense fire* is simply wrong. If warming is real – above the noise – at worst it will entrench the existing zones or at best expand the wet-season south, thus, further contracting the dry summer zone on the mainland.
*Luke R H and McArthur A G, Bushfires in Australia 1978, DPI Forestry and Timber Bureau, CSIRO
Division of Forest Research.
“west of and including Canberra across to Perth”… That’s pretty much the entire width of the continent.
And your point is?
I’ve tried to comment but WUWT is just as censorious online as the rest. ;-(
It is almost a law of physics, that the more effort you put into a comment, the more effortless the response will be!
The “real” and only “hot” summer fire zone in Australia is restricted to a line west of and including Canberra across to Perth that includes most of Victoria down to Melbourne across to SA and Adelaide.
So almost the entire southern populated region of the country? If you think high heat and the resulting lower moisture and humidity doesn’t play a part in bushfire risk and severity then you shouldn’t bother writing such long posts that expose your ignorance.
Roadside management
Sections 12.33 to 12.40 discuss roadside management, which leads to recommendation 12.1 Roadside Vegetation Management.
Government agencies.. “should ensure that there are appropriate arrangements for roadside vegetation management..”.
This is a cop out. It is virtually the same as the 2009 recommendations.
The fact is, there is plenty knowledge of which roads are critical and need to be cleared.
The environmentalists infesting government just won’t let them be cleared.
At the beginning of my career in industry in the ’60s, I became interest in climate change — “A new Ice Age is Coming!” I disagreed.
Over the next 30 years I helped save a major manufacturer millions of dollars, largely using data mining techniques. Lot’s of regression analysis.
Not part of my job, but I started following John Daly, and was blown-away by another study relating acres burned in Florida with El Viejo, El Nino swings. Huge fit!
The upshot is that similar pattern shifts probably exist for brush fires in all areas where they are prevalent. Helps put a framework on short term climate changes.
Australia needs to stop giving tax breaks for “carbon farming” where carbon (wood and undergrowth) is allowed to build up on land. This carbon improves the Australian CO2 figures until the have a bushfire and it all goes back into the atmosphere.
Why not have the local fire experts challenge the enviro fire experts to see who is right? Using the local expertise, clear one of the forests that is in danger of burning or note those forests that are clear of fire load and compare to those forests that are heavily in danger of burning and see what happens during the fire season. Duh! Using the definition of the two types of forests, I’ve answered my own question. Why can’t others to the same?
Good heavens man, this is Australia. Sense does not prevail.
The Australian CSIRO ran extensive bushfire tests to determine forest fuel loads that could be contained during a bushfire. The figure was around 10 tonnes of litter per hectare, on level ground. Considering that eucalyptus forests generate around 8 tonnes/ha annually, this isn’t much. Their report is worth reading. Actually despite our current criticism of the CSIRO, they have done a lot of good forest fire research in the past and have produced many worthwhile reports. Their studies are used by Western Australia to significantly reduce the risk of major bushfires.
What? No mention of PYROTERRORISM? Even the U.S. Forest Service had a conference on PYROTERRORISM. I’m sure Australia has it’s share.