With all due respect to Don Aitkin - and I do respect him - I think that we have had it up to to the fills bushfires, climate change and the very tenuous link between the two.

Gills, not fills.

Thanks, Don, for some common sense.

Do some people think that a forest, or national park, is an unchanging, pristine, perfect system, never to be modified or tinkered with ? That there isn't constant growth (faster after good rains) and the constant build-up of undergrowth and detritus ? That a national park isn't a constant work in progress, a striving for a balance between amenity and safety ?

Sure, CO2 may influence world temperature, and by one or two degrees in the past century. But one or two degrees don't make much difference to a bush-fire: it need dryness, fuel and ignition, not even necessarily a lot of heat to begin with. Nature, beautiful Mother Nature, Gaia, provides the dryness with Her periodic droughts, and the ignition through lightning strikes, but bureaucracy and policy control the amount of fuel available.

When the policy of NP authorities and councils dictates that fuel reduction programs are to be scaled back, year after year, then the chances of major bushfires surely increases ? Regardless of however much CO2 there may be in the atmosphere, or how fast global temperatures are rising ? What's one or two degrees to a raging fire of a thousand degrees ?

I realise that, to many of the New Religion of Climate Change, everything must be explained in terms of this new Satan; only witches ('Deniers') can't see that. Well, frankly, in this case, I can't see CO2 or climate change as all that relevant. We can't change the incidence or extent of droughts, we can't stop lightning strikes, but surely we can fund and staff programs to constantly reduce NP and forest fuel loads, by removal and/or cool burns ?

Joe

Don: We had a hotter year in 1909? Really? Source, please.

But what you as usual adroitly avoided was the fact this occurred if correct during a waxing phase of the sun when it would have not been too unusual.

And was this a localised regional event or global? You missed that salient point.

Moreover and as usual you also adroitly avoided mentioning that we've been in a solar waning phase since the mid-seventies (NASA) and what we should be experiencing is the cyclical cooling that a waning phase typically ushers in along with advancing ice, not the very opposite and on steroids!

In the news, this morning was the observation that's confirmed by overseas research that broad-scale irrigation has a localised cooling effect of up to 10C. Moreover, it's uncommonly rare for irrigated crops to burn!

Green advocates are against this it would seem and trott out the usual objections that it would be too costly, which is blatantly wrong! Some trails in Texas some years ago with space-age desalination (deionisation dialysis desalination) proved to be cost-effective on broad-scale irrigation! With seawater as the water source! Repeat, with inexhaustible seawater!

Not too difficult here if we can just sideline the robber barons in energy and water, both of who would have their bottom lines and presumably their big bottoms shrunk by any logical application of either as the de-privatisation of both these areas and set them up instead as competing co-ops ( cooperative capitalism) TBC.
Alan B.

Cont. Given broad-scale irrigation drops the local temperatures by a much as 10C and given the hottest parts of Australia are in the arid dry heartland. broad scale irrigation there would cool the entire joint down. Just add water and trace elements!

And given this cooling effect is created by normal plant asperation, would also act to recharge the storm clouds and drop more rain nearby, as is typical in rainforest areas.

One notes that wetlands and rainforests have in the past acted as firebreaks when traditional mosaic burning got out of hand and relatively common? As a prelude to fire assisted hunting and is only available in normal seasons for just a few weeks every year when hopefully, occasionally, weather conditions are ideal.

And the subject of much humbug by folk who just want to occupy land!?

Whereas, intensive cell grazing can occur 2/7 365 days a year or 366 during leap years.

Moreover, this primitive method of land management hardened the soil and sent rare soil nutrients skyward with every burn! To be lost forever.

Whereas, intensive year-round cell grazing reduces more fuel and turns that into soil nutrients and soil carbon all while breaking open hardened soil, that allows it to absorb more of the available rain and store it!

Intensive cell grazing is doable without fences if the stock are herded, corraled in temporary hessian corrals (2-3 nights per) overnight and their various watering points dewatered and watered to move them to a new adjacent area!

And doable via remote control from the homestead using mobile phones and drones.TBC.
Alan B.

I think i will go with what NASA has to say.