Interesting stuff

That’s it Andy, you never know.

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Hey Andy, ever heard about Spiros the boat builder?
https://boards.oce.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/general-discussion/HjaGrQkg-...

Impressive that LOL gets a link GS - have a Swellnetpoint on me!

Couple of things I saw this evening.

First, there's not predicted to be any significant rain until late January/early February at best, so it's another three months of these conditions.

Also, there are cretins around Kempsey and Lismore who are impersonating firefighters with a view to looting.

Donated some money to the Salvos and WIRES, the wildlife rescue group, today. Every dollar helps and those people are all volunteers.

If you in the areas affected by the fires, even if you’re in town, leaving water out in your garden for birds in shallow bowls would be good. Up off the ground to avoid cats. 3 years back during a week long heat wave here we were gently hosing Tawny Frogmouths too weak to fly. Water in private gardens really does help.

Great work GS, will do the same.

Off topic.. Sweden dumps Aussie bonds as country 'not known for good climate work'

"Australia and Canada are countries that are not known for good climate work," Mr Floden said in a speech on "Monetary policy in a changing world" at Orebro University in Sweden.

"Greenhouse gas emissions per capita are among the highest in the world."

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"As a result of the new investment policy, we sold our holdings of bonds issued by Alberta in the spring.

"For the same reason, we have recently sold our holdings in bonds issued by the Australian states of Queensland and Western Australia."

Would be interesting to know who supplies Sweden with Uranium to power their Nuclear that makes up 34% of their energy mix.(we are the third largest supplier just behind Canada)

Australia supplies many countries with Uranium for energy that has kept and continues to keep world emissions below what they would otherwise would be if nuclear was never used..

Same goes with Australia supplying quality coal to the OS market and gas which is obviously much cleaner than things like oil or kero, our coal is not only high quality in low moisture content but also in ash and sulphur content (Indonesia is the worlds biggest coal exporter but quality of coal is far lower)

And then you have the fact that Australia is a major provider of almost all the minerals that make renewables possible even battery tech.

Much bigger picture than some paint.

Back to bushfires,

https://www.willyweather.com.au/news/10847/a+cauldron+of+extreme+heat+de...

Craig or Ben, the Windy.com site currently shows on the North Coast the classic NE sea breeze coming off the water then meeting the westerly winds coming across the continent. At the confluence of the two winds there is this north-south zone (trough?) of low wind which seems to move east or west of the Pacific Highway.

The recent bushfires have highlighted this weather feature with raging fires in the escarpment while there are sea breezes on the coast. the Windy site is great for visualising it as well but was curious as to what drives the position of that confluence, is it just the strength of the westerly?

Yep, bang on and also the zone where thunderstorms will form etc if conditions suit.

If you're a subscriber to Weatherzone on the radar you can turn on streamlined winds and it shows the actual position from local observations.

still a lot of smoke here.
been two alerts for fires at Lennox in the past 2 hours, one of which was a hoax, the other a small grass fire that was quickly put out.

Other side of world, Utah freezes:
https://www.ksl.com/article/46663498/octoburrr-cold-brings-more-record-b...
https://www.ksl.com/article/46654273/several-low-temperature-records-fal...
Cold records going down like flies

https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/10/30/utah-sees-record-cold-of-43-6-of...

If that -43.6F (-42 celcius) is accurate, that's phenomenal for October and could be a record for continental US. Massive variations, hot and cold...

Sitting on the verandah here and it just rained, or did some timorous impersonation of it: clouds passed overhead, few odd drops descended with the evidence clear against the shiny woodwork, but then the sun came out again, the drops evaporated and it's like it didn't happen.

Surfed this morning with a fella who heard that some of the western fires were lit, or suspected of being lit, by farmers trying to propagate grass growth for their livestock.

I reckon the vast majority of mum and dad farmers just face a struggle every day to make a living and do the right thing for their family and land. If your dry farming anything and depend on rain well it’s a very hard thankless life. It is these people and not the agribusinesses that the Nationals now fiercely represent I want to support. Then there is the occasional fuckwit who just thinks he can do what they like on their land like the East Gippsland farmer now before the courts for poisoning wedge tailed eagles on and near his farm. Although it’s not likely he should be jailed and if I had my way compulsorily forced off the land.

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/bloody-well-done-texts-and-e...

Same goes with those yokels clear felling thousands of trees in water catchments for the GBR and at a time when tax payers money is being spent paying farmers not to do it, WTF.

Gs he shouldn't be jailed for 14 days ,he should be hung ,fukin cretin.....

"Surfed this morning with a fella who heard that some of the western fires were lit, or suspected of being lit, by farmers trying to propagate grass growth for their livestock."

This sounds very unlikely apart from the fact it wouldn't do anything without rain fall, farmers are not silly they know the land better than anyone and have more to lose than anyone, livestock also eat dry grass so what exactly would the farmers be lighting up?

If we are going to go with out there unsubstantiated rumours, I've read on social media suggestions some fires being lit by radical climate activist. (think extinction rebellion types)

Now seeing some of their radical mindsets and extreme actions they have been doing lately and lack of respect for others and authority's this one wouldn't surprise me as being a possibility.

That is so fucked, he should be fed the same poison fucking maggot

BTW. That eagle thing is fucked up, this one of those rare cases where i agree with you GS he should have his land taken off him and sold to go towards protection of the species, 420 wedge-tailed eagle, that is just mind blowing.

@ID, but it has rained where some of the western fires are now burning. They had a downfall last week.

Understand it was hearsay but I thought it was interesting from the POV that our bush needs fire to regenerate and it was a desperate attempt to kickstart the process.

Some bush and some plant species are fire adapted, and require fire.

Many others aren't and are burning too.

Some of the Dorrigo plateau and Mt Nardi fires are happening in rainforest that has been moist/unburnt for tens of millions of years.

Those ecosystems are not fire adapted. The ecological loss in terms of plants and animals is fucking staggering.

The other thing for those bringing in historical fires as context is the sheer duration of these fires burning now.
Black Saturday, Ash Wednesday were limited duration events, even if horrific in intensity.

These fires have been burning for weeks, months and will be not extinguished for weeks more if the dry continues.

That’s so so reassuring indo but to me {self edited} .......

freeride your comments are very true. In my life the weather has significantly changed. I remember summers as a kid where we would have a “hot spell” where the temp would climb to the high 30s over a few days and would be broken with a “cool change” which meant a massive wind change to the S or SW and mostly always very heavy rain for a day or two and then some fine mid 20s days before it all repeated. Now it’s NE or SE winds, temps in the 40s and little or no rain all summer.

Read somewhere during the week our fantastic fire fighters will start getting over fatigued or possibly even PTSD if this keeps up.

I've been tuned to local radio all spring.

it's quite bizarre.

You've got the chatty announcers, then interviews with firies and people who have lost homes etc etc.
half of those end up with people unable to speak.

Bloke I work with who lives out Nimbin way has spent the last few days helping people evacuate from the Mt Nardi fire.

there's lots of stress and trauma out there.

And like I said, it's the sheer duration of this which is unprecedented, as much as I hate using that word.

it's bringing out the best in people for sure.

It’s the glue, that looking out for your neighbour, that makes us a great country, not all the other shit that politicians talk about.

"And to the clown who lit a fire at Ebor trying to backburn around his crop .... Good luck concealing the location of your plants by announcing their location with a huge plume of smoke at the very moment that every eye in the state is on high alert for that exact same thing."

Yes Blowin He did not hide his plants very well but it is deliverance country up there strange people have been exposed through there own stupidity.... Like the driver stopped by police on Wednesday morning driving around fire area banned for28 yrs full of ice with a loaded firearm

Great interview with the author of - The biggest estate on earth - discussing how aborigines used fire

Good interview farq, that book and Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu were referenced in an article in the Age yesterday, written by Tony Wright.

Speaking of Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu https://www.dark-emu-exposed.org

Indo, anyone who hides behind a pseudonym (yeh I know) cannot be taken seriously in Academia. Is Pascoe 100% reliable? Maybe not, but Justa QuietAustralian is much less reliable. In a serious debate over an issue like this you stand up and present your evidence with proper references. Starting up a web site to push an ideological perspective is how trolls and bullshit artists operate.

No Sunday surprises here .... . a link to a faceless/ nameless group of “quiet Australians” which when searched takes you to an article in the paywalled The Australian. Fancy that.

It's kind of irreverent who is behind the website, most of his points seem like he is taking historical accounts out of context or just making assumptions or exaggerations without the evidence to back up what he says, hence why most (if not all? ) historians don't agree with him.

Im sure the book is a good read though, id be interested in reading it myself, his book is popular because we often want things to appear different than what they are, hence why conspiracy theories are so popular and interesting.

I think its fine people having these different views and theories, the problem is when people start giving them too much weight which seems to happening with some of his ideas/theories that seem to be creeping into even schools.

BTW. Even his claims of indigenous ethnicity have come into dispute as far as those who have studied his family tree can find all his ancestry goes back to Europe.

inspiring story from the fires near nimbin https://www.facebook.com/groups/170989276370775/permalink/1678421058960915/

This quote suggests you've read the book, "...most of his points seem like he is taking historical accounts out of context..."

But then you say you haven't, "I'm sure the book is a good read though."

So you've actually got no idea about it except through the lens of those who oppose it, and you've selected a pretty nutty website.

FWIW I think Dark Emu is a terrible read, I couldn't finish it. However I got enough out of it to know that all Pascoe did was ask open-ended questions about our pre-conceived ideas of Pre-European Australia. Some of the evidence he offers are still visible today, such as coastal fish traps and inland NSW traps.

At other times, he suggests the divide between hunter gatherer and agricultural societies isn't as fixed as the European example. Big deal, here in isolation things evolved differently. Why not try to understand it more?

Is it any great surprise that we don't know as much as we could? Surely, we can rise above Culture War and realise that because Aborigines were ostracised for nigh on 200 years after European arrival, there's a large gap in our knowledge. That's fact, it's simply what happened, it's not an invitation for the Murdoch-styled Culture Warriors to open up another front (or another website).

It's the screaming sensitivities that get me. An anonymous author on that nutty website lambasts Pascoe for suggesting yams might make a good commercial product. Well, mightn't they? They've grown here for millenia, thrive on our unpredictable weather, and are nutritious. Yet Nutty Author thinks Pascoe is being racist for suggesting it. The only good ideas are European ones, you see.

It's a rubbish website and I've got a good mind to delete the link from this website. Not only does it not add to the conversation Pascoe invited, but it attacks him as an uppity native unthankful of his European inheritance. Racism has always been a loaded term, but it's ever more so now, however it's hard to read the fabrications on that website and not think there's something behind it all. It's not academic inquiry. It's something else.

Anyway, I'm gonna let the link stand, free speech etc etc, but it's a bullshit piece of propaganda and it says way more about the person that posted it than anything Pascoe wrote.

Agree.

Indo if you want to read a contrarian who is prepared to put his name to his words, read some of Keith Windschuttle (not sure how he spells his name) stuff.

He's an arrogant grubby little man in person I'm afraid to say.

Indo interesting link, I was mildly aware of the ongoing political stoush of this aspect of Australian history. A couple of the articles are close to home, as I reviewed the primary documents relevant and prepared dissertations on it as part of my own undergraduate degree.

I was happy at the time to conclude the yams and huts noted in the Dongara area by Grey in his epic and unfortunate trek were indeed a form of agriculture and domesticity. My suspicion was that the sheer variability of Australia's ENSO climate sees a combination of ag and h/g and shifting location as being used and appropriate.

Riffing on a Sunday afternoon:

Good mate of mine was sent to a NZ boarding school when he was in year 11. Did something bad, still has never told me, and saw out his school days in a country he only had a distant historical connection to. Think his grandma was a Kiwi. A white Kiwi. Which made my mate a Pakeha. Even worse, an Aussie Pakeha!

Yet he learnt the Haka.

Because that's what all NZ kids learn at school. They also learn much more about their cross-cultural heritage, Maori language is spoken in Parliament, and though disadvantages exist, they're not in the same realm as what has happened here in Australia.

Yes I know, Treaty of Waitangi etc etc, those Maori fuckers fought back, not like the more docile - relatively speaking - Aborigines. Thus the sharing of a bountiful land and intermingling of two great cultures, Maori and European.

Martin Luther King aint the only bloke to have a dream, but lately mine has been to live to see elements of Aboriginal culture adopted into mainstream Australia. I hate footy but I'd love to see Aboriginal celebration dances after goals and tries, and not just by the brothers and sisters but by all Australians - the same way my skinny Pakeha mate was welcomed to stand up and do the Haka.

Quick digression...old mate still knows most Haka dances, it's now his connection to New Zealand, there's no weird Culture War implications such as we have in Australia but a pure expression of a country he came to love.

I coach a young Aboriginal kid in soccer (he's mates with my eldest) and when Dan does good he rejoices with a sly dance, lifting his heels and slapping his upper thigh. My son Sam has started copying Dan. I neither encourage nor discourage them, but I like it as it's also a pure expression, for both of them

Mainstream acceptance of our Aboriginal heritage - I use that word deliberately - insists on two things:

- Culture Warriors of the right to open their mind to the possibility of non-European knowledge, that exposing ourselves to it may actually enrich Australia, and stop deriding every motion towards reconciliation as patronising.

- Bleeding Hearts of the left to stop invoking 1788 at every turn and insisting upon storing Aboriginal culture in a jar of formaldehyde, unable to evolve and progress with the times.

There's still a lot of trauma at the core of Aboriginal culture, but wider Australia is getting better and better, we're starting to understand, but progress involves rising above the petty ideologies that plague Australia.

Mistakes were made, move on. The future is unwritten.

So many good things to take out of that.

Lots of goodness there Stu. It will happen, it has to, we have no choice if we want to keep the landscape we all know... Either that or be swept away by increasingly larger fires.

Goes for anyone of any race here. Then there's the spiritual bit, planetary chakras include both Kata Tjuta and Glastonbury...

OMG how on earth can you view the website as racist?

If i had read the book, like many i might believed what was written not knowing that he is not telling the full story, reading through the websites it makes clear explanations with evidence to back them up in particular it shows you how he has taken citations out of context, it seems like he has just tried to find little bits a pieces that fit into his views, but left out other important aspects, sometimes lines straight before or after the citations he uses.

It's only a rubbish website to you because you want to believe what he has written, to me that view is closer to being racist because you cant accept the reality of history, it's like for you Aboriginal society was not good enough and somehow needs to be more than what it was, and crazy enough want to believe it was more like other cultures even ours(assuming here you have a European background).

It's the same as all the BS Herc use to spew here of how perfect life was before non indigenous came, apparently no violence and life was easy (despite physical evidence to prove otherwise like shields and bone fragments) it was like some garden of eden, it's complete BS doesn't matter what culture going back hundreds or thousands of years life without the luxuries we have today life wouldn't have been easy, violence in most cultures much higher and brutal, life expediencies short, in general women seen as much lesser than men etc

It's not racist to acknowledge this, yours and my own cultures going back would have been exactly the same.

Perhaps the problem that people have is that many of these aspects of our culture aren't as recent in history.

BTW. Aspects like fish traps are well documented and im sure all historians agree they were used, there is even still clear evidence of they're use, i cant see anywhere on the website where they try to argue they weren't used.

Your on fire this arvo Stu, your comments about NZ in particular ring true to me, on my many travels there Maori culture is seamlessly everywhere, it’s respected and celebrated and it makes NZ a better and richer place. I too have reflected how much better Australia would be if we equally embraced our our indigenous culture.

I’m currently reading Buckley’s Chance by Garry Linnell, the story of William Buckley life with the Wadawurrung people around Port Phillip Bay. It describes the deliberate burning of country, William learnt these skills, it also describes many geographical features that are still identifiable today including a very well known surfing area east of Torquay where William lived and fished.

It also details how John Batman pretty much stole the land “to form the village” that he is famous for, him and Fawkner acted explicitly against the direction of the governor at the time in claiming land in Port Phillip. Frontier men acting very badly. Both men describe the rich glass lands extending over the horizon, pasture perfect for sheep. Batman is also known for dying of syphilis but only after his nose was eaten away from the disease. Batman and Fawkner are celebrated in the usual ways in and around Melbourne, place names , parks etc so our full history needs telling.

Wow.

Open question from discussion above : if you have to continually burn your country in small amounts to avoid larger, later catastrophic fires - how does this fit in with the carbon accounting and CO2 targets you are supposed to meet? Do you get a special exemption because of eucalypts?

I've got a rule not to reply to comments that begin "OMG", but I'll make an exception this afternoon...

As I wrote, I didn't outright say it was racist, however there are so many ad hominen attacks, incorrect assertions, and what seem to be wilful fabrications on that website, that it's hard not to think there's some greater motivation in the project.

Of course, you wouldn't be aware of those inaccuracies because you haven't read the book, and the quotes they use are selective, out of context, or wrong. It's foolish to rely on them without reading the book.

I don't agree with everything Bruce Pascoe says, and I really don't like the way he writes it, but I take 'Dark Emu' as an invitation to explore something we know little about and not as a threat against European civilisation. I'm secure in the capacity and ongoing influence of European thought not to have to tear every other belief system down.

European thought taught me to be curious, so I am.