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The Forum > Article Comments > Bush fires, Australia and climate change > Comments

Bush fires, Australia and climate change : Comments

By Charles Essery, published 2/1/2020

Climate change has reached cult status and with the lemming-like adoration of characters like Greta et al, backburning is judged only to increase CO2 and therefore to be outcast.

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First of all, you need suitable weather conditions to backburn and the fire season has grown shorter and shorter. Average wind speeds seem also to have increased? The consequence of increased global convection. Which is caused by an average increase in the ambient temperature of around 1C. 1C is not a huge rise but as we can all attest, comes with significant weather changes.

And all down to increased CO2 already at record uncharted levels as a proportion of the atmosphere!

And the annual burns that the arsonists love does add more CO2 to the atmosphere even if those fires are cool. And also with every burn, scarce soil nutrients go up in smoke and out to sea never to return, where they do nothing but harm to the natural environment and balance!

We know this as fact due to the loss of tonnage in sugar cane that is burnt just before harvest, as a year in year out, result!

How long have we grown cane in this country? Imagine if we'd grown it for forty thousand years! Why the cane fields would be barren arid wasteland!

Not only that but repeated annual burnings bake the ground over time with the result more runoff and less penetration of available moisture.

Fuel reduction which is an absolute essential is done far better with very short term, intensive herd grazing, which has the effect of chopping up hardened ground to allow better penetration of rainfall and less runoff and with that, less erosion.

Add dung beetles and all the organic material that comes with intensive short term call grazing is added to the soil as increased carbon that also adds to its ability to retain moisture.

If management teaches us anything? It teaches us there is always a better way and that way is neither black or white, just a right way!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Thursday, 2 January 2020 10:17:45 AM
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"Cult status" and "lemming-like adoration of characters like Greta Thunberg". Great plain and straight language that sums up the hysterical climate change activists and babblers beautifully.

Bushfires will always be with us, but they could be made more manageable, as they were before idiot Greens started bullying gutless politicians, by reducing undergrowth, and ceasing to reduce productive land to pest-infested tinder boxes called national parks.
Posted by ttbn, Thursday, 2 January 2020 10:32:09 AM
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This author continues to trot out ignorant pieces that are a mixture of half truths, ideologically driven opinion, and unseemly sloganeering, especially for someone who has apparently held a professorship.

Even on the topic of water, which is touted as his area of expertise, he is lacking in fundamental understanding.

I'm no fan of the Greens but when this bloke says "The Greens' insistence that we leave our native forest alone has caused Australia's current fire hazards." despite a very clear Greens policy supporting scientifically valid fuel reduction it is obvious he has done little research for this puff piece.

We should be able to demand better from our academics, even the retired ones, and I do so now.
Posted by SteeleRedux, Thursday, 2 January 2020 10:44:59 AM
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Like Alan said, global warming is real. That's why bushfires are more common and worse.

Videos of average folk pointing to snow doesn't refute that. If anything, it proves Greta's point. Snow means more ice melts. If winds increase, it will *feel* colder. It's just windchill. It doesn't mean air temperatures have changed.
Posted by AyameTan, Thursday, 2 January 2020 11:08:28 AM
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"The Greens' insistence that we leave our native forest alone has caused Australia's current fire hazards."
SteeleRedux,
Yes but not only ! People building homes among the Gumtrees is not the primary cause although it has not been established fully that some of the fires weren't started around some homes. The degree of damage/loss is purely due to humans building in high risk locations.
Reason # 2 is that fires are being extinguished where they should be left to burn themselves out so as to the next fire season's lack of fuel being ensured.
Posted by individual, Thursday, 2 January 2020 1:26:50 PM
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More anthropologists and fewer economists, please

No, more pragmatists & realists & fewer theorists !
Posted by individual, Thursday, 2 January 2020 1:35:46 PM
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