Interesting stuff

So I share a boundary fence with a heavily wooded national park in Victoria and each year (winter) for the last decade I get written notice of planned back-burning that never eventuate. Talking to the rangers they say it wasn’t possible because all of the known reasons. This last spring they started using these massive ride-on machines that mulch up all the undergrowth like a huge mower. These are the facts Indo but carry on with the tripe, you really are a neoliberal slut.

"Warmer, drier conditions with higher fire danger are preventing agencies from conducting as much hazard reduction burning – it is often either too wet, or too dry and windy to burn safely. Blaming "greenies" for stopping these important measures is a familiar, populist, but basically untrue claim."

Ex-RFS chief Greg Mullins, written back in November.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/this-is-not-normal-what-s-different-about-the-nsw-mega-fires-20191110-p5395e.html

Then read some of the backburn stats here:

https://www.scienceparty.org.au/no_conservationists_are_not_responsible

Penrith just beat its all time hottest temperature: 47.4°

Meanwhile, around the other side of the globe, Sunndalsøra in Norway yesterday recorded its highest ever winter time temperature: 19°

Which is 26° above average.

Okay so windows cant be found in the last 10 to 20 years, gotcha.

What would the experts in my links know?

Keep burying your heads in the sand because it cant be your green ideology that is part of the problem, greens and their ideology are never wrong, but always first to point fingers.

I know we've been on this back burn issue before and in some instances it definitely is a factor.

But it just aint' the magic bullet answer it's being presented as.

Two major bushfires here at Lennox in the past 7 years, both in the coastal peat swamps. That's endangered ecological community.

It's probably already suffered irreversible ecological damage from being torched twice in 10 years.

The reason it burnt is because summer rain failed and following on from dry springs the normally wet swampy grounds completely dried up.

That shit ain't supposed to burn.

As it gets hotter and drier this idea that we can just keep burning it to keep ourselves safe - the scorched earth strategy- well say goodbye to any remaining biodiversity.

Indigenous burnt regularly to maintain grasslands, sure.

But they didn't burn rainforest or wet heath or heaps of other places that have all gone up in flames this summer. The proof of that was the existence of massive stands of rainforest including the Big Scrub, that basically carpeted from the Clarence to the QLD border.
Most of that got cleared anyhow.

What are we gunna go in an torch the leftover rainforest every 5 years?

Sure hazard reduction burns where appropriate but this idea that we can burn our way out of climate change is deeply suspect.

If anything we probably need more trees, more vegetation to try and bring moisture back into the landscape and increase evapo-transpiration.

"What would the experts in my links know?"

You tell me. You're the one who cherry-picked them.

Meanwhile, head cheese of the Rural Fire Service says the environment is changing, even has the temerity to mention the C word - actually the CC words - and ol' Indo dismisses him as an ideologically-riven Green.

Who'd a thunk it?

"reckon they were cowboys before and that’s why the backburns got done. Things went wrong and they got in the shit. Now they are way more conservative and less backburns get out of control"

1000000% correct Blowin heard old guys say the same thing, years ago they just got shit done and yeah i bet they were cowboys and most likely had the odd fuck up, I bet they just saw the perfect day and did things.

These days, everything needs to be planned and approved all kinds of BS and red tape, approval, studies, hold ups, and then set aside some tiny window, if they don't get the perfect conditions it's not going to happen.

And probably fair enough in a sense because if they do fuck up these days, everyone will come down on them like a ton of bricks, cost departments or government money in compensation or politically etc.

VB posted the link to this press release but it’s worth posting in full.

LABOR’S NATIONAL FIRE FIGHTING FLEET - SUNDAY, 17 MARCH 2019

17 March 2019

A Shorten Labor Government will boost Australia’s firefighting capabilities with a national fleet of aircraft and dedicated smokejumper units to keep Australians safe from bushfires.

All Australians understand the devastating impact that bushfires have. Lives are lost, homes destroyed and communities shattered.

Our firefighters and emergency services personnel are among the best in the world, and they do a tremendous job, often putting their own lives at risk. But they need more support from government.

At the moment, Australia doesn’t have a government-owned fleet of water bombing aircraft – making us reliant on borrowing from private companies domestically and from overseas.

The bushfire season in Australia is lengthening and already overlapping with the northern hemisphere, increasing the risk that we won’t be able to access the aircraft we need at times of peril.

At the same time, the Federal Government’s contribution to the National Aerial Firefighting Centre has plummeted from 50 per cent of funding to just 23 per cent, reducing our overall firefighting capability.

The Bureau of Meteorology has identified this summer as Australia’s hottest on record, which included devastating bushfires in Victoria and Tasmania. Now is the time to invest in giving our firefighters the resources they need to keep us all safe.

Labor’s national firefighting package will deliver:

$80 million to establish the National Aerial Bushfire Fighting Fleet of aircraft

This fleet will provide standing aerial firefighting capacity that can be used on demand in emergencies.

It will include retro-fitted Black Hawk helicopters as they are phased out from active use by the Australian Army and Erickson S-64 Air-crane helicopters (or ‘Elvis’ as they are commonly known) which has a 2,650 gallon tank capable of snorkelling or scooping fresh or salt water.

It’s expected that the national fleet will include a standing capability of up to six Large or Very Large Air Tankers, and up to 12 heavy rotary wing helicopters.

The benefits of aerial firefighting are clear. Aircrafts offer speed, access and observation advantages over ground crews. Containment is more effective and the final fire burned area minimised using aerial capability, thereby reducing demand on ground crews.

Australia’s first ‘smokejumper’ units

Smokejumpers are firefighters trained to be rapidly deployed by helicopters at remote fires during the short window during which those fires can be contained.

Smokejumpers usually rappel from helicopters and use chain-saws, hoes and other dry firefighting tools to establish a containment perimeter around the fire. They then patrol the perimeter to ensure the fire does not jump containment lines while working with water-bombing aircraft to ensure the contained fire is fully extinguished.

California and other US states currently have a number of smokejumper units which have proven successful.

As part of the $80 million commitment to establish a fleet, Labor will work with the states and territories to establish smokejumper units across the country.

$21 million for the National Aerial Firefighting Centre (NAFC)

A Shorten Labor Government will stop the Federal Government’s reduction in funding for our firefighting capabilities by returning to a 50-50 funding split between the states and territories and the Commonwealth.

Labor’s investment will ease the burden on state and territory governments, develop new national programs including a national risk management model, and national research and development programs including trials of new aircraft and night firefighting activities.

Labor can pay for new firefighting aircraft the smokejumper units because we are making multinationals pay their fair share and closing tax loopholes for the top end of town.

12 million hectares. How the fuck do you back burn 12 million hectares? I know Indo you hate the Greens, why you do I'm fucked if I know, but that's you. For fuck sake though mate, don't use the "It's the Greens fault for not allowing back burns" mantra that's being pushed by the PM and the Murdochs and the rest of that ilk. It is bullshit, you are smarter than that, I think (I hope).

The rangers I speak to have no immediate answers, they talk about wanting to back burn right smack in middle of winter then immediately say they don't have the staff/resources to do it at any effective level. They now use massive mulching machines in areas near houses and the risk of fire is great but only a few of these machines exist. It comes down to how much money the electorate and therefore government want to spend and so far that has been very little. Talk to any ranger and you will find them very despondent, the money, staff, machines doesn't exist.

A guy I know, actually he's a vet says in a land of feral animals - horses, pigs, rabbits, frogs and birds why not focus on removing these pests and introducing managed goat herds to keep forests under control near population centres. Goats will eat anything. It would be a 50 year plan and of course mean lots of money neither we of which we are good at in neo-liberal Murdoch land.

@Blowin,

Maybe it has been mismanaged, and when it next goes up in flames the blame may miss the mark too.

But it'd be folly to project what's happening on that tiny plot with bushfires that are burning simultaneously across six states, the worst of them still burning six weeks after they began. All coming on the back of unprecedented heat and dryness across the continent.

Sure, fuel loads, yeah...but take a look at the map showing Australia's temps in December. Not one or two outposts moving into 'highest temps ever' territory, but great swathes, in fact the majority of the continent.

Hottest ever.

At the risk of sounding hyperbolic apocalyptic: Is it possible this is in any way connected to the fires?

liveleak vid : aussie names real reason for large fire storms in Aust

Let's be 100% honest here Guy something like that goat thing would be opposed by Green groups be it unofficial community or official groups, there would always be some reason an endangered flower or some skink species etc.

BTW. 50 metres from me is kilometres of scrub and dune and a fire break between houses and it, they said they were going to widen it years ago but never did, use to be able to drive up it, now you cant as gated off, its never been burnt, its only low lying scrub but mostly to thick to walk through.

I got a goat to manage weeds in the acreage I'm on.

feral goat from Tenterfield. Apparently goats can't eat everything.

fucker died within a week.

long time observer of these forums, been tempted to chime in on numerous fronts over the years, finally done it. This fire topic is an interesting one...

all the talk about backburning is just one part of the management of the increasing bushfire problem. I suggest the forestry profession has a major role to play in helping mitigate the problem. Over recent decades we've seen vast areas of formerly state forests, managed for commercial timber production along with multiple other uses including biodiversity and tourism, being converted to National Parks or non-production areas (labour governments usually behind this - look at the very recent plans by Vic to phase out all native forest harvesting). Much less, if any, active management now occurs in these NPs. Access and firebreak tracks are blocked and left to overgrow. The workforce that knew the forest well is lost. Fuels inevitably build up. Out of control bushfires will be a growing problem in these areas with the increasing frequency of extreme weather we now see. The biodiversity and carbon storage that these new NPs have been created for will be lost. The potential timber and its stored carbon also gone up in smoke. It's time to rethink this flawed policy. You could argue in this changing climate, we need to use the forests or lose them. I'm not suggesting all forests, many areas should still be protected from harvesting, but we need a better system of zoning, and strong active management of all areas on the outer peripheries of core protected zones. Anywhere nearby housing and towns etc. By that I mean selective timber harvesting, to create the more open-forest / park-like landscapes that were more common in the pioneering days.

anyway, that to me seems an overlooked issue in this debate, and one that I feel should be part of the future bushfire management strategies.

Not sure if it's been mentioned, but the main reason for everything going up once alight is the soil moisture. There's little to none available which would otherwise help some of these spots catching alight so easy. Flow on effect from drought, heat etc..

So the SW change came through here today, it's strong and dropped the morning temp. There is cloud, yes, but it's a dry change, like on Ash Wednesday. Those poor crew in Eastern and central Vic and Gippsland and S NSW. Thoughts and prayers.

"there simply wasn't the necessary onus put on climate change during the past couple of decades"...... There you go Blowin', fixed that last sentence for you.

I was chatting to my elderly neighbour on the Gold Coast this morning and he whipped out the “IT’S THE GREENS FAULT!” line when discussing the fires.
I said “What power do the Greens have, they’re not in government?”

I didn’t want to get into a political discussion with him but I told him I just think it’s about “MONEY”. No government of any level wants to pay for any sort of labour intensive vegetation clearing anymore.

Like me he’s an ex-South Australian so told him how I was back home on the Yorke Peninsula for a few weeks before Christmas and it was blazingly hot. I was driving through the bone dry pastures between Yorketown and Warooka and there was one metre high dried weeds and grass along the roadside verges.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that roadsides are the most likely places for a fire to start from a discarded cigarette butt or something. Twenty years ago all the councils used to cut or poison roadside grass and weeds every year in late spring for this reason. He agreed.

Why is this not being done anymore? Because governments don’t want to pay for it!

As linked over on shark thread, Hotham and Dinner Plain were evacuated today, now the cam reveals they have the snowmakers turned on, probably to defend the village:

https://mthotham.roundshot.com/

Scientist David Packham what a tosser, ignores lowest humidity readings on record, ignores highest extreme temperatures on record, ignores historical low rain fall on record.

Keeps stating climate is not an issue what a tosser.

Today Canberra 43,4 degrees humidity is 8% FFS.

Fuel loads are certainly an issue, prescribe burns are great in a normal climate range absolutely good for SFA under extreme conditions.

This is what the future looks like.

The Green stuff fck off they didn't cut the budgets that reduced off season burning.

Same Thredders VJ, hoses out and guns on..

Regarding back burning.
RFS volunteers don't take days off work to go to a fucking back burn, they only take days off work to fight fires.
Therefore the only opportunity to do back burning is on weekends during winter.
This adds up to 24 days.
Back burns are also training days for new members.
The last back burn I went to got cancelled 2 weekends in a row because of an unfavourable windy weather forecast.
The third weekend was perfect for a burn off, overcast, high humidity and no wind predicted for the entire day.

As Guy pointed out the RFS volunteers are not the right resource for back burning.
We need to set up a paid organisation just purely dedicated to implementing a back burning strategy. It would be easy to overlap this organisation with the RFS using the RFS equipment.

Found a youtube vid showing the type of small plane that was scooping up water on the Clarence River.
Hopefully there are a dozen of these on the Federal Governments shopping list.

Love the idea of retro- fitting the armies older Black Hawk helicopters to fight fires thankfully common sense is not completely dead.

The smokejumpers would of come in handy at the recent Mount Nardi fires, just to be able to get access to the fires on top of the mountain would have been so much safer than coming up from the bottom of the valley.
Heard one story where volunteers were clearing a fire trail down in the valley at Tuntable Falls and they all hear the loud cracking noise of a burnt out tree falling over, it starts a small landslide in the very steep country, few seconds later there are small boulders rolling down the mountain.
Fortunately no one got hit, but another example of the dangers of fire fighting.

https://volunteerfirefighters.org.au/bush-fire-environmental-assessment-...

Interview with VFFA Vice President concerning Gosper's Mountain fire.

It doesn't seem to be the greenies so much as getting through the permit system to backburn and you can hear the frustration in his voice.

FR: "If anything we probably need more trees, more vegetation to try and bring moisture back into the landscape and increase evapo-transpiration."

Absolutely, but we need the right kind of trees. Australia is a war between the Eucalypt species and the ancient, Gondwanic flora. In times of great rainfall, the Gondwanic rainforest species will expand and grow out the Eucalypt forest. As examples of these trees I'm thinking Myrtles, Huon Pines, Celery Top Pines, Bunya Pines, yes the Wollemi Pine too, Deciduous Beech, the big, old cycads. The trees that escape big fires being in mountain gullies which remain more moist. The leaf litter keeps moisture and adds nutrients to the soil.

The Eucalpyts use fire to decimate their opposition and have gone from 5% of the flora to 90+%. Their oils and leaves leach soil nutrients away.

If one were truly serious about revegetating Australia then Gondwanic species would be used. We'd also need to import water-retaining species of reeds and ferns to trap so much more water in the floodplains (see Peter Andrews' work), for the native species that filled that role are extinct.

Anyway...as this thread isn't solely about fires, but 'Interesting Things':

Took the dog to get shaved cos it's 40° outside and the poor bastard was struggling under his dreads. Just picked him up and he's looking sharp with a full body No 2 and a green bow in his hair.

I trust you all found this as interesting as I did.

Thats a hell of a feather duster for a tail still he seems happy enough I like his style....no shame :-)

I liked taking Maxy for a walk when he was Thirroul's own Rasta Dog. He always turned heads, drew people into his happy island vibe.

Think maybe the kids can walk him for a while.

Also, special apologies to VJ for this canine interlude. Yours was a great post.

Not a full 90s photo unless a barb-wire tattoo is visible.

Though Johnny Boy centre of screen is giving it a good nudge.

Far out, temperature records usually increase incrementally, but Penrith has just beaten its old record by 1.6 degrees and it's still rising.

Now 48.9°.

Always be froot loops.

"Thats a hell of a feather duster for a tail still he seems happy enough I like his style....no shame :-)"

You talking about the dog or Blowin?

Fire is well and truly over the Shoalhaven now. Reached Tallowa Dam and heading up the Kangaroo River. Wild country. Fear what's gonna happen to the valley once that SW change comes through.

This bloke has it all figured out.

Plenty more conspiracies to be informed about, via his Twitter page: https://twitter.com/tdincer61

Ha ha ha...everything is a hoax covering up something else.

Wow! #science

My neighbour’s daughter has a fluff box dog like that stu, he has been given the task of walking it, only ever walks it after dark.

When he's long and dreaded he's as cool as Bob Marley.

Right now he's more Milli Vanilli.

I give Blowin to much criticism as it is and a picture of his tail would be a sight best unseen..........

I recon Maxy WGAF, just give me good times and action sort of dog.

Choas in NSW South coast. Sister in law hiding sheltering at Moruya Showgrounds wit her horses, water bombers very close. Brother at Narooma, not sure if he stayed at his house. Sky is black in Merimbula were my sister lives.

Quite a chilling view from an outsider

NYT

Australia Is Committing Climate Suicide
As record fires rage, the country’s leaders seem intent on sending it to its doom.

"BRUNY ISLAND, Australia — Australia today is ground zero for the climate catastrophe. Its glorious Great Barrier Reef is dying, its world-heritage rain forests are burning, its giant kelp forests have largely vanished, numerous towns have run out of water or are about to, and now the vast continent is burning on a scale never before seen."

" The bookstore in the fire-ravaged village of Cobargo, New South Wales, has a new sign outside: “Post-Apocalyptic Fiction has been moved to Current Affairs.”

And yet, incredibly, the response of Australia’s leaders to this unprecedented national crisis has been not to defend their country but to defend the coal industry, a big donor to both major parties — as if they were willing the country to its doom. While the fires were exploding in mid-December, the leader of the opposition Labor Party went on a tour of coal mining communities expressing his unequivocal support for coal exports. The prime minister, the conservative Scott Morrison, went on vacation to Hawaii."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/australia-fires-climate-chang...

Brilliant piece from the inside from Australia's best non fiction writer.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/04/pm-tries-to-prese...