"Victoria's wet mountain forest ash species eucalypts have evolved to only regenerate after very hot fires which generally only occur during severe drought which dries out the gully systems sufficiently to allow such fires to spread rapidly and burn with great intensity. " MWPoynter

More nonsense from a man who is supposed to know about forests.

I know of numerous sites where Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regnans) forest has different age classes. If you go to Cambarville near Marysville you will see old growth Ash forest in excess of 200 years old with at least two generations of Ash regeneration underneath and a rainforest understory. (Not sure if it survived Black Saturday but it survived 1851 and 1939) The regrowth is/was a result of cool fires that were not hot enough to kill mature trees.

The myth of the climax Ash forest is fostered by the timber industry so that the public don't get too upset by the slash and burn clearfelling holocaust that passes for forestry amongst those neanderthals.

If you want to see climate change in action start looking at the number of dead trees appearing in forests. Moisture stress is thinning the forests, all types of forest. If that doesn't convince you start looking at the number of tree ferns dying in formerly wet gullies.

I know sites where up to half the tree ferns have died in the last ten years. Many of the tree ferns would have been hundreds of years old.

The timber industry doesn't want people to think about the impacts of climate change on forest because it won't be long before the timber industry is identified as a key process compounding the effects of climate change. In terms of the causes of forests becoming more flammable with climate change, the timber industry is second only to anthropogenic carbon emissions.

Ridiculous as it sounds, I have a science background. Climate change, specifically anthropogenic climate change, has bypassed all the normal scientific protocols completely. Ordinarily, an idea starts as a hypothesis. If it cannot be disproven, it becomes a theory. If it can be proven as well as not be disproven, it becomes law. This is why we have Darwin's THEORY of evolution and Newtons LAW of gravity etc. Even pointing this out will have me tarred as a "denyer" etc.

The scientific approach, in deciding if anthropogenic climate change has played a part in the fires, would be first to gain reliable baseline data. This is fairly easy, by ascertaining the amount of charcoal in the soil profile. Alone, this wont tell you much about the intensity of historic fires. Combine it with pollen records in peat swamps etc. and isotopic signatures in the geological record, and its quite esily apparent whether its a valid concern.

Unfortunately, the socio-political considerations are that the final outcome is decided before any research has been done. You would be unlikely to get any funding to research an open-ended question like that. The unscientific layman often uses climate and weather interchangeably, though they are not the same. You will never find agreement amongst environmental scientists what an appropriate level of burning frequency is for any given bioregional ecosystem, and the concept of mosaic-burning is completely lost on fire authorities.

Its a tragedy what has happened in Victoria. It should not be used for any political platform or soapbox, or to hassle the police about not acting properly.

Maaate are you serious? You have no idea. The timber industry doesn't create ash forests - disturbance does. These forests existed before logging because they they are a disclimax community - the only way they can perpetuate is via a major disturbance. And if you can tell us a disturbance other than fire can occur over such a large area then congratulations - you have rewritten history.

The only fire disturbance that can recreate a wet sclerophyll forest over a large area is a crown fire. In some cases, sheltered slopes reduces the effects of these crown fires and different levels of disturbance occurs which leads to an uneven structure as the dominant trees survive a fire but there is enuogh disturbance to allow regeneration. But this is the exception not the rule.

Climate change in the way you insinuate has nothing to do with it. CO2 wasn't an issue in 1851 nor was it in 1926 and 1939. Tree ferns have been dying and recovering for millenia - tell us something we already don't know. You need to understand the effects of wet and dry (aka droughts). Read history and you will realise the big conflagarations occurred at the end of severe drought years.

You can pontificate about climate change all you want but the fact remains that nature is ignoring your diatribe. Wildfires which kill and then assist these forests to regenerate have occurred before logging and without anthropogenic global warming.

Open your mind maate before you embarass yourself is my advise. Just because YOU don't like logging doesn't mean it is envrionmentally destructive. Everyone has their own perceptions and clearly yours is less informed.

"the only way they can perpetuate is via a major disturbance."

I've told you what I've seen with my own eyes and it clearly refutes your dogma but you still want to argue with me?

You're a fool.

I don't give a stuff if you believe in AGW or not. I don't bother arguing with deniers anymore as they are invariably ideology driven freaks. The consensus in the scientific community is good enough for me. Don't bother quoting a few fruitloop outliers, call me when you have majority opinion against AGW amongst climate scientists.

Irrespective of AGW, industrial forestry practices contribute to the flammability of forests through disturbance to the hydrological systems and physical structure of forests. If you want to provide arguments to counter that point go right ahead but don't insult my intelligence with your dogmatic braindead waffle.