Here is a list of significant bushfires in Australia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushfires_in_Australia#Major_bushfires_in_Australia

As you can see, the land area currently burnt in this summer's fires is NOT record setting. The largest recorded fire, at a whooping 110,000,000 acres, was in 1969-70 in the Northern territory. And this was just ONE fire (not the sum total of many fires over months as in this article).

So in reality the current amount of land burnt *so far* this summer is really quite small compared to some fires decades ago. But because we now have 24/7 news and internet social media combined with a massive political agenda we get continual blanket coverage of is this summer's fire season.

"whooping" should obviously be "whopping" in my last post.

Which bus would be safer to travel in, the one with a driver at the wheel or the one being guided remotely by "experts" far away?

Between the EPBC act and locking up all forest as carbon sink to appease the Kyoto/Climate delirium this country brought all landspace under state control.

Rural people predicted the outcome. But hey, what would they know right? Only a bunch of Kulaks anyway

The country the bush and our national parks managed much better by rational fol before the involvement of green ideologues and their intellectually challenged devotees.

One notes that rent-a-crowd was on the front foot screaming mindless abuse at Peter Andrews and his advocation of a plethora of micro dams in or uplands as a land management strategy that replicated the landscape before white settlement.

Simply put waterlogged ground an wetlands do not burn! Nor do properly watered rain forests. And it's these areas that are vital to our native species and their survival! The green solution for formerly well managed selectively logged native forest was and remains tourism!

Tourism among its first consequence, the accelerated rising cost of rented accommodation for resident locals some of who like middle-aged single women has made their former housing unaffordable and them homeless.

With all less than well thought through change comes unintended consequence, i.e., raging bush fires and smoke plumes half the size of Europe and over a billion native animals burnt to death!

Well done greenies (eco fascists) and congratulations, you should be proud of all you have accomplished with your mostly mindless, control freak, dictatorial, political activism!?

This is all down to you and what you made happen with your political, power junkie activism!?

Of course and as usual, there will be the usual blame-shifting an mindless excuses. But then rational thought is hardly ever on display in those circles, hence the subsequent anti-nuclear stance on nuclear power!
Alan B.

The bottom line is that no healthy Environment, NO US.

Dear thinkabit,

Could I ask you to think a bit.

“In total, 28.6 per cent of the Northern Territory was fire-affected in the winter and spring of 2002. This was due principally to the exceptional scale of fires in the arid zone, which were responsible for 45 per cent of the total fire-affected area in the Territory in comparison with a long-term average of around 10 per cent. There was no loss of life and minimal loss of structures and infrastructure but there was considerable loss of fencing and pasture in some areas.”
http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=scipapers

That year the fires were principally in the more desert area with vegetation extent a fraction of what it is in the Eastern States. In the savanna parts of the territory the fires were not exceptional at all.

Why on earth did you think this was a valid comparison to what has happen this summer?