Posted on 01/27/2020 7:04:34 AM PST by SeekAndFind
With at least 27 people killed and 18 million acres incinerated as of last week, the worst bushfire season Australia has seen in decades is a bad one, no doubt about it. Reproduced with permission of the Western Australian Land Information Authority, the FireWatch map below shows the location of individual fires as of Jan. 14, 2020. Disclaimer: The size of the icons on the map relates to the location of the fire and not to the size of the fire on the ground. Any opinions expressed herein are mine and were not arrived at in consultation with the Western Australian Land Information Authority.
©2020 Western Australian Land Information Authority
The season’s fires have been intense and widespread, but not nearly as much as reported by some media that made it seem as though virtually the entire continent was ablaze. Eighteen million acres destroyed is a disaster by any measure, but that acreage represents less than 1 percent of Australia’s landmass, and less than 6% of its forests.
No one denies the fires were made worse by dry conditions resulting from a drought and record hot temperatures. But, as measured by the amount of forestland destroyed, the 18 million acres for this year’s fires pale in comparison to the 290 million acres burned to the ground during the 1974 bushfire season. That’s equivalent to the size of France, Portugal and Spain combined, and the 1974 fires occurred years before anthropogenic global warming theory suddenly appeared out of nowhere in the 1980s. And, as measured by the respective death tolls, the recent fires pale in comparison to the under-hyped 2009 “Black Saturday” bushfires in Victoria, which killed 173 people. Why so much more hysteria this time around?
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
If global warming alarmists are wrong in blaming this season’s bushfires on Earth’s ever-changing climate, then what was the cause? The answer, or at least a big part of it, is not hard to see. It’s now summer in Australia, and intense bushfires have occurred on the continent with regularity for thousands of years. Numerous government fire commissions have all reached the same conclusion: that hazard reduction is the only way to prevent bushfires from spiraling out of control. According to Australian forester and former acting fire control officer Ian McArthur, climate change did not cause the current crisis:
“Long unburnt fuels [dead trees, tall grass, undergrowth, etc.] in national parks are the primary cause. Basic fire management states that a fire needs oxygen, a heat source and fuel. The only one of those that can be manipulated is fuel. The more fuel, the more intense the fire, the harder it becomes to suppress the fire.”
In other words, planned fire prevention burns eliminate the natural ground fuel upon which rapidly spreading wildfires depend. In commenting on the cause of the fires, Ms. Devine wrote that “blaming climate change is a cynical diversion from the criminal negligence of [Australian jurisdictions] which tried to buy green votes by locking up vast tracts of land as national parks, yet failed to spend the money to control ground fuel and maintain fire trails.” (Fire trails are roads built in forests to provide emergency access to firefighting equipment and personnel.)
There were published reports of numerous arsonists arrested, then denials, followed by reports of a few arsonists, plus lightening strikes. I’m confused.
“No one denies the fires were made worse by dry conditions resulting from a drought and record hot temperatures”
I bet that is not true. What is true is if anyone does deny it they will be ignored.
Netflix has a movie called - The California Water Wars. A good in its own respect if you queue up to the 56-minute mark there is a section that explains how the water underground in Australia was auctioned off.
Netflix has a movie called - The California Water Wars. A good in its own respect if you queue up to the 56-minute mark there is a section that explains how the water underground in Australia was auctioned off.
There was probably a mix of ignition sources for these fires. The key take-away is the same there as it is here in the Western US. We must do a better job of managing fuel loads to have healthy forests. The indigenous people here long ago (just like Australia) did not put out fires as we do and they purposely set fires in the spring to burn undergrowth (ground fuels) when conditions were moderate, which increases the survival of trees when fires occur.
We have the same problem that Australia does - we are not allowed to do controlled burns, selective logging and replanting, and fuel mitigation. We are very good at putting out all fires when often it would benefit the forests to allow them to burn when they are moderate and do not climb into the crowns of the trees.
As a result, our forests are unhealthy with little diversity and TOO MANY trees. The pine beetle is flourishing because stressed trees growing too close to one another cannot fend them off. All those dead fuels now lay on the forest floor creating ladders to put the fire in the tree tops (where they are most vulnerable) creating mega-fires that sterilize the soil and destroy everything in the forest.
It is a nightmare. Real scientist from the USFS know this and they have been telling anyone who will listen that we have to “manage” the forest to prevent megafires and *gasp* to make the forest more healthy and biologically diverse!
Here is a great video from a USFS PhD researcher who knows what he is talking about that explains this and shows it in photographs taken early last century and now -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edDZNkm8Mas
Huge forest fires in California for thousands of years, too. Proof = the giant redwoods, the sequoias... The pine cones only open and release the seeds when there is a forest fire. Some of the trees are 2000+ years old. Thus, forest fires date back at least 2000 years, well before glowbull warming
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