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?

Binoy's watermelon credentials are showing well through this piece. His far left attitude leads him to blame the wrong people for this result.
The disaster is caused by green attitudes & pressure on a totally incompetent national park administration.

Of course the national park management are on a hiding to nothing, since lefty governments took productive well managed native Forrest, & made them national parks, to buy a few green preferences. It worked too. We got incompetent lefty governments, particularly in Victoria & South Australia, with hugely increased national parks, with no capacity to manage them.

Who killed these native animals Binoy, it was the Labor governments in Victoria & earlier in NSW & South Australia with no fire management in the huge areas of bush, no longer maintained as previously by the forest industry.

Close every national park, give the areas to forestry, & private citizens, & your screaming kolas will be much safer than with a greeny controlled national park management running the forests.

There have been bigger fires? And how many homes were burnt to the ground how many lives claimed how many native animals burnt alive?

There were allegedly bigger fires in the 1800s in sparsely populated Victoria that killed hundreds of thousands of sheep. But this and the fires in NT are not comparative. The NT has regular wet seasons that usually extinguish all fires, maintain wetlands/rainforests/natural firebreaks. In the 1800s In Vic, the area was very sparsely populated and there was an extreme shortage of fire trucks and water bombers!

The fires in NT didn't threaten major populations and may have been mostly done to allegedly "manage" pasture land? One of those so-called cool burns that as often happed, got away and was left to burn itself out?

And not apples with apples comparison in either example! I'd imagine the Daly could be made to saturate its adjacent landscape with a series of weirs every mile or so along the river. A metre-high weir thirty metres wide can generate enough power for as many as thirty households.

Trenches 100 metres apart dug out 1-300 metres from the (levy) riverbank can be made to spread this water into vast tracts of subsequently saturated and highly productive land. That will become a natural sanctuary and firebreaks Somewhere to graze the cattle during the big dry.

Similar engineering earthworks along every major waterway the length and breadth of the nation would change it forever as would some large northern dams that then forced water back into former western waterways, which even then, could also benefit from the engineering as above!

And until this is done and similar, we will remain the driest inhabited continent on earth and from time to time in similar perilous circumstances!
Alan B.

SR: Ok, if you want to play this game. Then look at the list I linked to and total the 1974/1975 season but exclude the Northern Territory, Western and South Australia because we assume that they are arid area fires.

We have (in acres)-
NSW : 11,000,000
QLD : 19,000,000
Total: 30,000,000*

So still, these current fires are not unprecedented and are *so far* not the worst bushfire season ever which the media relentlessly is trying the portray it has.

*Excluding NT=110,000,000 WA=72,000,000 SA=42,000,000. If we included these then the total is a staggering 254,000,000 acres which completely dwarfs the current season.

' Miners, rights, not Earth rights, are what counts.'

what on earth is 'Earth rights'. Only those ignorant enough to ignore their Creator starts talking about earth rights.

And as far as Governments managing the earth then we should get rid of every Green counselor and politician who have contributed in locking up forests and national parks, protesting against prescribed burns and allowing the fuel to build up for decades. A bit of a no brainer however the earth worshippers who believe in earth 'rights' will stick to their very pathetic anti coal gw narrative.

I don't like to compare the harvesting of seventy three million sharks per year, as a contribution to a Chinese aphrodisiac shark fin soup, to a handful of Koala bears in a bushfire, but I will.

Dan

Droughts in Australia have been the main cause of fires threatening humans. Also increasingly building homes or having existing homes/structures in fire-prone areas.

Droughts know no ideology, be it the ideology of the Left or of OLO's Murdoch Parroting Right.

More sensible people in between should try commenting.

yep, it a human centric world. i am glad i am not an animal.

When i was young, a teen, I thought one day that you may have to go to a rich coutnry to see Africa's wild animals.

it will be interesting to see what is washup of this fire season on our own unqique Australian animals and flora.

Can we stop with this ‘national parks are locked up’ crap. They are not.

Scroll down to the map and zoom into Gippsland to see the extensive planned burn program for 2018-21.

http://www.ffm.vic.gov.au/bushfire-fuel-and-risk-management/joint-fuel-management-program

Then look at the Otways and see how much of it was earmarked for fuel reduction.

The recent fires in Gippsland swept through previously treated areas. The reduction burns will slow or stop small or medium blazes, not the ones we have just seen.

The fuel reduction in this state over the last 5 years has outstripped anything in the State’s history.

So stop making stuff up.

Dear thinkabit,

At 350,000 hectares the Gospher Mountian fire was the largest forest fire in Australian history, and it went on to grow even further to 512,000 hectares.

That is well over 35% bigger than the previous record.

"By 15 December, the Gospers Mountain fire had grown to 350,000 hectares (860,000 acres), making it the biggest forest fire in Australian history. As of 27 December, the Gospers Mountain fire had burnt over 500,000 hectares (1,200,000 acres); and, after burning approximately 512,000 hectares (1,270,000 acres) across the Lithgow, Hawkesbury and Central Coast local government areas, the NSW Rural Fire Service reported the fire as contained on 12 January 2020, stating that the fire was caused by a lightning strike on 26 October."

Simply not worth the effort to comment, like much of the stuff this author writes.

But thankfully this is a free speech zone, so thank you (seriously) for exposing us your thoughts.