There were less than a million aborigines on the continent (around 750,000) in 1788. There are now nearly 26 million people Australians. That has to be taken into account. And, of course we can do something about the current situation: stop listening to eco idiots and climate frauds for a start. We need to get into their goldfish brains that "The current weather and wildfire situation is neither unprecedented nor unexpected".

"It's all about fuel, not climate". How many times do the idiots have to be told that!

Well said, Vic,

It's simply commonsense to get rid of the fuel in the first place, rather than trying to control its burning during bushfires.

Aboriginal people used fire as an aid to hunting, not planned land management.
Fortunately this did result in removing build up of undergrowth and germination of some types of seeds but it is disingenuous to say their fires never got out of control and burnt huge areas of bush land.
My old inlaws told many stories of fires that got out of hand.

Sorry, have to disagree!

We've learned so much about how to effectively farm this land that we arguably lead the world in dryland farming practice!

One might also point out that we once believed the world was flat, BELIEF didn't make it flat!

Several primitive cultures traditionally used fire as a tool to assist hunting activities! Not understanding as they did so, they were destroying all the non-fire-tolerant species! As the smoke from those fires spiralled upward. It permanently removed scare soil nutrients and minerals!

The fossil record confirms with an indisputable record, this land was once covered from coast to coast in verdant forest! And that without question, "fire management" has destroyed most of it! Leaving baren arid landscape where the was once a forest that acted to recharge rain-bearing clouds!

In Zimbabwe recent trails that stopped fire being used in land management, replaced by concentrated herd grazing, complimented by overnight corralling of herds, turned a barren desolate drought-ravaged landscape into lush graze on vastly diminished rainfall numbers! Proving conclusively, that fire management can not be universally applied if applied ever at all!

I don't believe a primitive stone-age culture could ever know beyond question, they alone had and retain the best land management.

Sure they know everything about all the fire-tolerant flora and fauna that they weren't able to destroy with their stone age, primitive land management practises.

These very practises, coupled to routinely denied climate change, has dried out wetlands and rainforest alike, destroying in the process natural firebreaks! And guess what? Even now, these firebugs want to continue burning!

Fuel loads can be more effectively managed with cell grazing, whipper snippers and goats.

National parks they were routinely grazed had their fuel loads managed and had more eyes out there monitoring chance wildfires.

Fire can be used by terror cells or lone wolf operators to terrorize, kill and destroy property! Those who advocate it as a fundamental belief need to be very thoroughly investigated using covertly deployed, unbeatable, space-age lie detection!

Let's get the fundamentalists out and sanity back in!
Alan B.

Recent experiments with several fire-tolerant species have shown that backing can replace fire as a method to allow those species to germinate anyway without the disastrous consequences of fire!

I would think we've killed enough folk and species with fire that may have started as a cool burn!? But has gotten out of control with a sudden shift and or, increase in wind speed!

And hence as Big Nana observed. Alleged cool fires suddenly got hot!

Time to reflect on unintended consequences and adoption of a better and vastly saner, land management for the driest inhabited continent on earth.

Let me conclude for our Aboriginal Brothers and Sisters, I'm in favour of both a treaty and a bill of irrevocable human rights!

Moreover, some of my forbears come from an indigenous culture that was first among the first. So let's not start accusing me of racism or any of the other standard replies from the disgruntled!

No offence intended
Alan B.

Fire commissioners have reported that it's not just the climate induced recent weather, but the climate change induced change in winter weather and rainfall that has caused the recent disasters. Deniers chant that it's simple and 'they' should just burn off the fuel load, but when can they? Even June and July this year would have caused runaway fires! Once CSIRO climate expert on Aussie fires predicted this situation 40 years ago.

“It seems obvious, but actually we found the correlation was not temperature and fires, but relative humidity and fires. Temperature goes up, it gets drier, and then the fires go up,” says Beer.

https://tinyurl.com/wn5e6qc

Sorry, have to correct you AlanB.
Firstly, Aboriginal burning changed vegetation and exterminated the megafauna because it eliminated their browse. Open grassy ecosystems with diverse groundlayers and mesofauna flourished. Mild burning maintained these healthy, safe and productive ecosystems for 40,000 years. Charcoal in sediment cores is a measure of burnt biomass. There was a peak in charcoal around the time that Aborigines spread across the continent. After Europeans arrived and disrupted Aboriginal burning there was a much larger peak. This was unprecedented in 70,000 years of sediment records, indicating massive death and destruction, erosion etc.. There was a sharp decline after the mid-20th Century when foresters introduced mild broad area burning. The huge increases since greens interfered with burning from the 1980s onwards, haven't yet been investigated in new sediment cores. The diverse flora and fauna and healthy nutrient cycling processes when whitefellas arrived were perfectly in tune with frequent mild burning. Fire suppression turned everything to crap and failed abysmally. The first megafires in Victoria that burnt 5 million hectares in 1851 less than 2 decades after mild burning was first disrupted, didn't have much to do with climate change.

Doesn't matter if public bushland burns. It's just bush. What matters is the destruction brought on private property that landowners could mitigate against themselves if allowed.
State takeover of private property through the various vegetation and biodiversity preservation laws is the main culprit. The tendency toward self preservation of bureaucracies is another.
The climate fad has run it's course. All that's left there is for public figures to realise there's more saving face to be had from admitting it was nonsense than trying to keep it going for vanities sake.

On the subject of mismanagement of national parks. There's a growing argument for the separation of park maintenance and fauna management. Combining those two things into Parks and Wildlife services appears to have created official bodies zealously focused on wildlife habitat protection above all other things.
This is probably wouldn't be so bad if P&W services were constrained to public land only. The Wildlife responsibility however extends jurisdiction of what should be parks focused services to all tenures.

Climate change ...zzzzz

Forty two degrees is predicted for Adelaide tomorrow; half a degree less than the record in 1962. In 1962, there was no mention of climate change, and the fire risk was 'extreme'.

Now the risk is 'catastrophic', because when the lies are not working, the liars manipulate or misuse language to frighten the hoi polloi whom they think are not as smart as they are. Catastrophic sounds much worse than extreme. But, there have probably been too many lies told about climate change and natural events for more lies to work.

Oh Vic, if only it was so simple.
David

maybe we should sue the Chinese and Indian Government for polluting the atmosphere. What a joke the warmist are.

TTBN,
You think the climate record for Adelaide is 42.5?
Before posting something like that did you even start with the Adelaide climate wiki?
"Hottest temperature: 46.6 °C (115.9 °F), 24 January 2019"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Adelaide

Also, we've known about climate change forever.
This Bell Telephone Company "Science Hour" warned us way back in 1958, only 2 minutes long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-AXBbuDxRY&t=4s

Soylent Green showed us global warming had already leaked into the popular culture by 1973.

<Aborigines knew it was about management more than climate:>

Allow me to be Politically incorrect. "Buls#it." The management part came as a consequence of the Aboriginals forcing out, Rats, Mice, Bandicoots, Goannas & Snakes so they could eat. Usually for a Corroboree. They knew nothing about Climate Change.

It all sound good but that call is all Buls#it. Aboriginals used what ever worked to get food. When the little animals broke cover they banged them with their "banging stick", took them back to their makeshift camp & chucked the whole animal on the coals to cook.

Yes, they contained the fire. I don't ever recall reading about Aboriginals using this method along the East Coast. only in the Dry Savana & Desert Areas of Australia or in the Dry Tropics just before the rainy season.
Cont.

Cont
There is a story about how Aboriginals, now-a-days, read the Weather.

It goes.

The BoM put out an alert that there is going to be "a good rainy season." then later they modify that to "A heavy rainy season." Then still later the modify it again to an "Intense Weather Event." Still later the modify it again to a likelihood of "Severe Cyclones."

A journalist goes to the BoM & asks them why all the changes in the Weather Prediction. The Head of the BoM says, Well, we use Satellite technology. We can look down on the Land & we can see what's going on."

Well, the Journalist is intrigued, & says, How is this done."

The Head of the BoM says, We can see the Aborigines preparing for the rainy season., if they gather some firewood we know that it going to be an average Wet Season. If they gather more we know it going to rain a lot. If we see them gathering lots & lots of firewood we know that there is going to be really bad weather."

The Journalist is fascinated & so he goes to interview the Aborigines & asks them how they know what the weather is going to be like in the coming Season.

One elder steps forward & says, We look up the BoM on the Computer. If they say it's going to rain we go & collect firewood, then if they say it's really gonna rain we collect more firewood & so on."

And, this, people is what call the ultimate "Feedback System." ;-)

I forgot to tick the button

Big Nana and JayB don't get it. Blackfellas lived thru extreme climate change. They didn't worry about it, they got on with day to day management by firestick. Tasmania got separated by rising sea levels. Aborigines survived. Kangaroo Island got separated, Aborigines died out, scrub grew up and high intensity fire regimes ignited by lightning took over. Saying that blackfellas used fire for hunting is like saying that whitefellas use money to buy food a - a pretty narrow view. Mild fire was the mainstay of the economy. It was for maintaining access, food, sanitation, heating, cooking, safety and celebration. Dry storms and extreme weather weren't a problem. You're not politically incorrect, just factually incorrect. Read Firestick Ecology and get an education.
AlanB: Goats can control fuel if you fence them into small paddocks. The reason they're in plagues in the semi-arid zone is that scrub is booming and they eat scrub. They don't control it, they respond to it. In the humid zone there are plagues of deer for the same reason. You've got it exactly arse-about.

Alan B: he fossil record confirms with an indisputable record, this land was once covered from coast to coast in verdant forest!

So was the Sahara Desert 12000 years ago. That didn't become full desert until about 8000 years ago.

It all has to do with the Tilt of the Earth from 26* to 23*. We are at about 23* now so more sunlight is falling on the Earth from straight on rather than a steeper angle.

The bands of forests & Deserts move up & down as the change of the Tilt of the Earth. Man most likely wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the tilt changing & the Ethiopian Plateau drying out making the people move North, South, East & West. thereby causing the first diversity. "So the Fossil Records say."

Also at times the Sea was much lower & there was a land bridge before that there was an inland Lake around Longreach. "So the Fossil Records say."

Correct Jayb.

Milankovitch cycles are a powerful climate driver that the IPCC has studied in depth. The CO2 feedbacks account for about 40% of the height or depth of the ice ages. So CO2 was acting in that scenario, but acting as a feedback from the Milankovitch drivers. In a way it's the same today. CO2 is acting as a climate boosting feedback to a new driver. Us.

just burn off the fuel load, but when can they?
Max green,
Whenever it is required, let's get away from this insipid mentality of "managing".

New day! Climate change? Zzzzz

Dan

Dear Big Nana,

You are absolutely correct.

PS I love ttbn's opening remarks criticising people with having 'goldfish brains'. And that coming from someone with a $1 brain.

Dear Max Green,

You are absolutely correct! And I like the way you were able to tell it so succinctly. You obviously belong to those of us with million dollar brains.

PS It's easy to tell who are the ones with $1 brains, isn't it?

Misopinionated, yes indeed it is.

Joe

Dear Individual,
"Whenever it is required, let's get away from this insipid mentality of "managing""

Well, can we practice your forestry management strategy in the parks of your suburb first can we? And see how that works out for you now that the fire commissioner is saying no time of year is 'safe' to burn off. Just run and tell the commissioner that you're volunteering your suburb. There's a good chap.

Mx,

I'm sure that you're not suggesting that undergrowth and weeds and dead timber should accumulate under trees across vast forests ?

Instead of burns, is it possible to gather and remove such detritus on a cyclical basis, say once every five years ? I believe this has been done for hundreds of years in some European forests (Solzhenitsyn writes [in 'August 1914'] of this being done in East Prussia).

Of course, it would be never-ending work on a large scale. But it could be an steady earner. Plant material could be mulched, and timber turned into sawdust to be mixed with mulch or potting soil.

Just a thought :)

Joe

Loudmouth 2,
In the natural system that applied for 40,000 years, mild burning recycled the litter, releasing nutrients to the trees and the herbs and grasses that fed the animals. Now the litter becomes mulch that sickens the trees, suppresses the herbs and grasses and promotes the scrub that feeds the megafires.

LOUDMOUTH: check the comparative size of Australia's bush vs our population compared to whatever European size vs population. What you are suggesting is just not possible in our vast continent, and I'm not suggesting that we just let it build, but that we burn it when we can and NOT BLAME CITY GREENIES for the very climate-change induced weather pattern changes and resulting fire-bans they've been warning about for decades!

LITTLE: do you have links to support that ecosystem change you're mentioning? I mean it seems rational enough, but I just want to confirm there's some solid science behind it.

Max Green,
There's a wealth of scientific data supporting the changes. Have a look in the Bibliography of Firestick Ecology - fairdinkum science in plain English by Vic Jurskis.

Max & Little,

Okay, certainly cool-burn whenever it's possible, and remove major undergrowth and litter when it's not. Of course, fires started by lightning strikes are always going to be unavoidable, but surely a lot of effort has to go into minimising the damage to forests and national parks wherever possible ?

Cheers,

Joe

I have mentioned before some of south east Queenslands fires are fueled by dead lantana. There are 10s of thousands of acres of national parks in Queensland so chocked with lantana grown in the wet 2017, now dead, just looking for a spark.

Southerners may not understand our lantana. It grows so thick that nothing bigger than a scrub turkey can penetrate it. It renders these parks useless to wildlife, man or beast. It grows around 3 meters high. When dead or dry it will throw flame 12 to 15 meters up into the trees in an instant.

We burn it on my 22 meter high riverbank. We can't use machinery on the steep bank, & you need motorcycle leathers to cut it by hand it is so nasty. It is an on going annoyance. Every flood we get reinfested with seed washed down from the up stream national parks.

Believe me, national parks are the worst neighbors on the continent. It they aren't sending fire to burn you out, they are send noxious weeds or feral pests to give you hours of hard labour controlling their unwanted gift. You had better clear these pests, for unlike national parks, we get fined for having them on our properties.

Has been: There are 10s of thousands of acres of national parks in Queensland so chocked with lantana grown

Tell me about it mate. In the 60's I did a lot of Army Exercises on Levers Plateau, Waiangri & numerousness other places. All loaded with Lantana. I always said If an enemy ever landed in Australia we could lead them into Lantana Country, then fire it. No-one get out alive.

I full agree with the fireload argument. My first home in Australia was on a hilly 40-acre block of mainly forest, with grass/lantana below the house. I was able to burn this off as necessary, with a degree of control which would have allowed any animals and many non-flying insects to get out of the way. I strated at the top of the hill and worked down, so the fire couldn't run away. I didn't burn the bulk of the property, and once when I was away, some boys lit a fire in a rubbish dump some distance away which reached my block. I returned to find most of the surface covering reduced to ash, but relatively few trees succumbed. The regularly de-loaded area didn't burn.