Australian bushfires

[Theknacktoflying]

Is anyone else absolutely floored by the info coming from Sydney that almost 480 million animals, birds and reptiles have died.

The loss of human life, the loss of homes and habitat is quite something.

What a way to begin 2020

Brokenlegs people have died , have lost their homes, so many animals have died. We are all way here but it’s terrifying to watch and read about.

I’ve just watched the prime minster visit to the damaged town. and how angry that woman was , I felt so sorry for her.

It’s truly horrible.

Excuse me if this is a stupid question, but if the weather is too dry for hazard reduction burn, can the trees and vegetation not be cut down instead?

Excuse me if this is a stupid question, but if the weather is too dry for hazard reduction burn, can the trees and vegetation not be cut down instead?

Burning the bush is very different to cutting it down. The Australian bush is designed to have fires, a fire will reduce the vegetation but the plants will come back as strong as they were. Cutting it down has a whole different effect. Also the man hours to cut it down would be impossible

This is probably a stupid question but how are these fires actually starting?

For what I understand once the fire is burning. The wind is fanning it. The ground is so so dry so is igniting instantly, then the fires are creating its own weather, dry thunderstorms and lightning which in turn creates fire. Also add in the burning embers and ash carried in the wind and igniting the ground it lands on.

NotYourTypicalNerd S - wow that really puts it into perspective. Those poor people and animals. I saw a vet programme a few years ago with poor koalas who had their paws burnt. Horrible.

This is probably a stupid question but how are these fires actually starting?

The ones that start in the middle of nowhere are usually lightning strike. The ones closer to population are often man made, either accidently or deliberately. Could be things like cigarette butts, glass bottles, arsonists.

There were big fires that destroyed a number of homes near my parents house in 2013, their fire was started by sparking power lines. But if you look at the chronology section you'll see a number of different reasons

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_New_South_Wales_bushfires

I can pretty much tell from reading some of these posts who many of you voted for!

Australia has been living on borrowed time for a while, on an economy relying on digging up and exporting coal/iron ore etc. Its press is owned by Rupert Murdoch, and it has the second highest CO2 emissions per capita in the world.

5% of its energy comes from solar power; its population is pushing ever deeper into bush land, demanding swimming pools, air con and long commutes.

Then it elects a PM who is entirely in the pocket of fossil fuel magnates.

My own BIL and SIL (rural Qld) think ScMo is 'a good bloke' because of his hardline anti-asylum seeker stance. Not that they see non-white faces from one month to the next. But that's a separate issue.

They also don't 'believe' in climate change.

Today’s rolling news updates (collated)

www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-03/nsw-vic-australia-bushfire-crisis-live-blog-january-3/11838342

Scientific modelling 'not coping' with the load of the fires

Bairnsdale Incident Controller Andy Gillham told ABC Gippsland some communities will have fires coming from almost all directions.

He says, “the scientific modelling that we use to try and predict where fire might run is not coping with what’s happing in the landscape just purely because of the fire load.”

“When the fires build they can create their own weather, and the fires are doing what they want in the landscape.”

The Bairnsdale incident control team are expecting significant movement from all fires starting from this afternoon through till Sunday morning when conditions will ease off.

Excuse me if this is a stupid question, but if the weather is too dry for hazard reduction burn, can the trees and vegetation not be cut down instead?

we rural and in our council area we not allowed to cut down trees for personal fireplaces, nor take fallen branches that look like animal homes.
We actually have a couple trees with dodgy looking branches, drop risk on our roof, yet council wont remove them, we asked several times, if we chop, we get fined.
It worse if you near a national park
We lucky in other ways like most of land cleared for farming cos if it was all like the sides of road aka council owned scrub, we would be screwed in a fire. The couple that had been close would have roared

I'm not Australian so I don't know how it feels to live there - perhaps I'm playing it all out of context. However, knowing what I know, imagining I was Australian, I'd be looking to move to a new country within the next 2 to 3 years.

Actually, people are still moving to Australia because they like the hot weather. It certainly wouldn't suit me, it's hot enough here (NZ), but then I don't like heat.

FFS, Australia will not become inhabitable, any more than the UK will with its shitting cold long winters and floods...There is a state of emergency in Aus, but I'm getting a little over the hysteria on MN

Sydneys water supply (Warragamba dam) is predicted to run dry by January 2022. So five million people will have no running water. Rural towns have already run dry and currently have to have water trucked in. This is a serious situation, it's not hysteria.

Its press is owned by Rupert Murdoch

Unbelievably, his newspapers aren't even reporting on the fires!

www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jan/04/the-australian-murdoch-owned-newspaper-accused-of-downplaying-bushfires-in-favour-of-picnic-races

Friends in Australia have told me that they believe the papers over there are downplaying the situation.

I didn't know that about Sydney's water supply.

My in-laws evacuated earlier today from their home. We are listening anxiously to the local RFS radio in London and plotting the fire spread as they call the roads. Their area wasn’t predicted to be part of the fire spread today but it has happened anyway.

They just announced one family is still in their home, surrounded by fire & needs help - horrendous.

@AtomicRabbit Australia could power most of Asia if they plastered the interior with solar panels & built a undersea pipe to Indonesia. They could use the revenues to set up a sovereign wealth fund like Norway did. Sadly that’s not what the mining companies want, so it won’t happen.

There was a thing on R4 this morning from one side saying climate change / coal issue v do not do solar power / look at the science

I missed some of it but found it very interesting

Atomic ah I posted in a rush and my toddler always knows when I’m listening to something good and chats.

But I found it - on the Today programme this morning R4 at 1.48 mins in. (I found it on Radioplayer)

Craig Kelly MP and Catherine King

Craig saying no link between climate change and drought and solar power will not change weather and not stop one fire. What is needed is hazard reduction.

Catherine saying hazard reduction not possible.

Craig saying no link between climate change and drought and solar power will not change weather and not stop one fire. What is needed is hazard reduction.

Given that the largest hazard for this sort of fire is fire weather....

Craig Kelly - former rugby player and small business owner, hates renewable energy and carbon taxes, thinks Cardinal Pell is a fine upstanding guy.

I wouldn’t take it no chance, but I bet he’s got some voters along the way. Sounds like a political football no doubt.

They did have an IPCC guy on earlier who raised an interesting point about Aus as a rich country facing the effects from climate change.