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The Forum > Article Comments > The bushfire cause that must not be named > Comments

The bushfire cause that must not be named : Comments

By Geoff Ellis, published 13/2/2020

If we wallow in the Twittersphere, we would certainly be convinced that the cause of these tragic bushfires is climate change and that if only ScoMo would announce a 100% renewable target, the fires would immediately abate.

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Gawd's sake. Here we go again politicising the fires to score a risible rubbish political point. Who TF claimed that 100% renewables would stop forest fires!?

Nobody with half a brain is saying we shouldn't reduce fuel loads, just a few firebugs who cannot conceive of a better fuel reduction model than burn baby burn!

Can't conceive of anything else/superior, because they're a couple of sheep short in the upper paddock and consequently, write complete garbage like this!?

As for decarbing and electrifying/drought-proofing the economy, if we choose wisely comes with a huge economic upside that just keeps on giving!

Trouble is getting it past the coal-fired, anti-nuclear nincompoops who can only see their personal coal-fired dividends disappearing!? TBC.
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Thursday, 13 February 2020 10:22:10 AM
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There has been plenty of discussion about arson in the media but it is largely irrelevant. If 3D fuel is allowed to accumulate in the bush it will inevitably burn in extreme conditions.
Posted by Little, Thursday, 13 February 2020 10:30:11 AM
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Geoff,
Before going any further, please watch last week's episode of Media Watch – or at least read the transcript, which is at http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/news-corp-fire/11925590
When you see it, you'll realise not only why arson is a less significant cause of the fires than you think, but also why you shouldn't rely on the Murdoch Press so much!

As for fuel reduction, of course that's needed. But climate change has reduced the opportunities we have for cool burns...
Posted by Aidan, Thursday, 13 February 2020 10:55:13 AM
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Honestly, there are folk advising the government who want to cook coal to bake out the methane. Then pass it through a catalytic process to hive off the hydrogen atoms? Then bury the carbon.

Sounds good until you count the cost given the hydrogen is then supposed to be used for long haul traffic road and rail freight etc.
And used in reconfigured NG turbines to produce future electricity.

All done to protect the FOREIGN OWNED OR CONTROLLED FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY AND THEIR DIVIDENDS AND THOSE OF THE SPITTLE LICK LACKEYS?

Whose dividends would be decimated by (cheaper than coal) MSR! MSR (molten salt reactor) shouldn't be confused with SMR (small modular Reactor)

Thorium burning MSR as a say a reconfigured FUJI 350MW, Will only need one ton of cheap abundant thorium in a thirty-year unpressurised lifetime.

Whereas the conventional equivalent will require 2551 tons of as rare as platinum, uranium, which needs to be enriched the pelletised before it can be used in a highly pressurised system. 150 atmospheres needs seven-inch thick steel to contain it1

and as shown in Chernobyl the additional pressure caused the production and expansion inside solid fuel rods, (reaction) of xenon, added enough internal pressure to rupture something releasing superheated steam.

Which was hot enough to instantly flash to its component gases, hydrogen and oxygen and a massive fuel bomb that went off. And not a nuclear explosion per se. And why we should never build another solid fuel reactor in this country!

Even if it's carbon-free and cheaper by half than the proposed coal> hydrogen proposal! TBC.
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Thursday, 13 February 2020 11:17:49 AM
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"If we wallow in the Twittersphere, we would certainly be convinced that the cause of these tragic bushfires is climate change and that if only ScoMo would announce a 100% renewable target, the fires would immediately abate."

Please show me one person who has argued any such thing.

This is a serious national issue, and this kind of half-baked nonsense does nothing to advance the debate.
Posted by JBSH, Thursday, 13 February 2020 11:32:48 AM
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Yes arson is a despicable crime, & every effort should be made to catch these criminals.

However, even lighting a fire will not cause major bush fires, if the fuel load is not there. the hugely excessive fuel load is our problem.

It is fuel load reduction that is critical as the first priority in reducing this destruction, the rest is all secondary.
Posted by Hasbeen, Thursday, 13 February 2020 11:59:19 AM
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Aidan,
If you read the article, the research findings come from Fire Service reports. The research is an academic paper. Further, the article explains police have apprehended 180 or more people in recent times who were involved in arson or other suspicious activity causing fires.
I am not sure what Paul Barry of the ABC or the Murdoch Press have to do with this. Facts as shown in the research are facts and police actions are in response to what they see as criminal activity. If you do not agree, please show where the research is flawed and how the police are wasting their time.
Posted by Bluebottle, Thursday, 13 February 2020 1:27:48 PM
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If our deadbeat prime minister would commit to 100 % renu-ables its far to late for it to have an effect for around another 40 years. That is how long it will take for the atmosphere to renew it self.

So in the mean time enjoy what time you have left on this planet as we are in deep trouble. We have plenty of adverse weather to come as it continues to become more severe.
Posted by Riely, Thursday, 13 February 2020 1:59:43 PM
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The fires may not be as simple as catching an arsonist or reducing fire load.
I have never witnessed a fire with blue flame burning forestry rubble before. Something else is at play. America and Australia have both had the blue flame fires
Posted by Riely, Thursday, 13 February 2020 2:09:43 PM
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Heat set the bushfires in motion. The amount of fuel available in the bush just determined the intensity of the bushfires.

The AGW/CC denialists say that the heat came from arsonists and God.

The AGW/CC proponents say that the heat was generated by a combination of the Sun's radiation and warming produced by the greenhouse effect.

The AGW/CC denialists do not believe that the greenhouse effect exists and say only God or an arsonist can light fires.

The AGW/CC proponents say that it has to do with the physics of spontaneous combustion.

The AGW/CC denialists say that the AGW/CC proponents have got it all wrong and that they need to accept the fact that God and arsonists caused the catastrophic bushfires of 2019/20.
Posted by Mr Opinion, Thursday, 13 February 2020 2:27:31 PM
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this kind of half-baked nonsense does nothing to advance the debate.
JBSH,
I agree so, what do you propose that would advance the debate ?
Posted by individual, Thursday, 13 February 2020 2:31:32 PM
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The most likely time for a bushfire is in the middle of summer, in the middle of a drought.

So what is complicated about that?

Dan
Posted by diver dan, Thursday, 13 February 2020 3:32:50 PM
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diver dan,

That's FN brilliant! You are a FN genius!
Posted by Mr Opinion, Thursday, 13 February 2020 4:39:14 PM
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That, that must not be named in relation to climate change exacerbated bushfires is carbon-free nuclear energy!

Why? Well, how many of the most disastrous fires were caused by white anted and falling power poles?

A product of privatisation/corporatisation and criminal cost-cutting by tax-avoiding, price gouging, profit repatriating foreigners or seriously incompetent state governments, who've used their power generating corporations as their own personal ATM?

And used operating capital and therefore, responsible for the cost cuttings that lead to, blame on lightening, tragedies?

Some of the maddest schemes have been cooking coal to liberate the methane then putting that through another industrial process to separate the hydrogen from the remaining carbon.

And based on largely tried and found wanting, problematic geosequestration of the carbon products of this mad hatters scheme!

Two things, the methane could be cooked out with safer flameless nuclear heat then transmitted via underground pipelines that eliminate most of the combined transmission and distribution 75% loses as the methane and the fed into individual ceramic fuel cells to produce on-demand, 24/7 power!

And where this system is deployed, the exhaust product is mostly pristine water vapour. It can also be used in backup turbines as is if that's the price gouging goal? Or as long haul transport fuel as compressed gas!

And the carbon wouldn't be buried but treated to convert it to other carbon-based commercial products. Added to recycled plastic to replace bitumen e.g.?

But then why would you just not use, nuclear waste burning MSR to create your power and given graphene highways are used to transmit the power, almost any desert region would suffice. With vastly reduced combined transmission and distribution losses as the first of many benefits! One of which, the world's lowest domestic and industrial power prices!

Current transmission, towers could be recycled for the steel and aluminium metals. And given carbon-free electricity (nuclear) and arc furnaces are used, plus hydrogen replacing coal as the reductant. produce carbo free metals for export to the world, using the world's cheapest energy in the arc furnaces. TBC.
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Thursday, 13 February 2020 4:40:17 PM
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Um, maybe we don't mention arson because there's no need. It's just assumed. Fires don't light themselves.

The problem with the dead handed "Harsher penalties" thing is the poor honest bloke who screwed up one day and never meant any harm. He's the one who'll get the book thrown at him.
No doubt somewhere penalties for arson will be increased, but it won't make any difference to the ill willed.

There's a saying. Good men need no laws and bad men aren't improved by them. It's very true.

Better to deny the arsonist the opportunities.

This is why the talk's about fuel loads, buffers, defendable spaces and removing vegetation clearance restrictions from private land.
Oh and manbearpig so the Al Goresketeers feel included.
Posted by jamo, Thursday, 13 February 2020 5:02:48 PM
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Nuclear power is great. It's a pity that advocates like AlanB can destroy its credibility in the minds of thinking people.
No disasters were caused by termites felling wooden poles.
Construction of underground pipelines burns infinitely more energy than erecting poles and wires.
Recycling transmission towers would burn more energy than erecting them in the first place.
The 'renewables' industry has already created a future disaster of dead solar and wind farms. Why stuff up the argument for achievable nuclear?
Posted by Little, Thursday, 13 February 2020 5:05:20 PM
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Cont. My prefered method of hydrogen production would be using modernised water molecule cracking from seriously abundant seawater.

And the eminently suitable flameless nuclear reactor heat as the most suitable flameless heat and from unpressurised, walk away safe, nuclear waste burning, MSR fifties technology! How many years do we want to wait for this tried and proven technology is deployed? Another three-quarters of a century?

Abandoned after several years of accident and incident-free trails due to the fact of the difficulty of weaponising the technology and the pulling of the funding jus as it was to be tasked with turning electrical alternators.

And able to be sited almost anywhere given more efficient turbines can be turned with CO2 Captured directly from the atmosphere. Some very modest water needed for the reactor surrounding water jacket, that prevents, rogue emissions!

What prevents any of this logical and timely transition?

Lack of a funding model?

NO!

Only fearmongering, blatantly illogical dullards who as always, know all the reasons it can't be done or why we must have/burn coal and annual, burn baby burn, bushfires! Or slimey, special vested interest? Or, all of the above!?
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Thursday, 13 February 2020 5:07:25 PM
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I agree Aidan

The overpaid, News Corp/Murdoch muppets (who dominate the thoughts of so many OLO commenters and authors) hype Arson all the time. see http://youtu.be/s23q9DkCaVY?t=10m

And note the NSW rural fire chief says the 2019-20 fire season was so fierce: "hazard reduction" (read fuel load reduction) "has very little effect at all" see http://youtu.be/s23q9DkCaVY?t=9m32s

Also senior firies talk about Dry Lightning as a major fire starter - see http://youtu.be/s23q9DkCaVY?t=13m
Posted by plantagenet, Thursday, 13 February 2020 6:20:23 PM
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Thanks for the good video Plantagenet. The taxpayer funded, sneering creep, Paul Barry, actually proves that Fitzsimmons is the main problem. He obviously hasn't got a clue about fire behaviour or fire management, and has been consistently rewarded for failure with more money for fire engines, waterbombers and bs. This takes away from sensible land management and leads to death and destruction.
Posted by Little, Thursday, 13 February 2020 6:45:37 PM
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Hi Mr O,

Maybe the fires happened as a result of hot dry weather and lots of combustible material. The smoke from the fires fertilised large areas of ocean off Australia's east coast. The resultant plankton trapped more of the solar radiation in the ocean surface. Over a period of many weeks the ocean surface heated, creating conditions more favourable for rainfall. Combined with other natural weather phenomena, eastern Australia has been getting quite a dousing as a result, but unfortunately not quite enough to quench the catastrophists' lust for doom.

Cheers
Posted by Fester, Thursday, 13 February 2020 8:31:41 PM
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Yer thanks Mr O for the compliment.

Me Muver never thought I was too bright, that's probably why she stuck me fingers in the light socket and used me as an emergency bulb when the light blew.

Anyway, fires are out now. What's next to panic about?

Dan
Posted by diver dan, Thursday, 13 February 2020 8:33:20 PM
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diver dan,

The number of coronavirus victims in China is skyrocketing and Soot 'Beam up me Scotty' Morrison is really upset that he had to extend the ban on Chinese entering Australia.

That's what we should start panicking about!

"Don't worry", says Soot, "if there's a coronavirus outbreak once I lift the ban then you'll be able to find me in Hawaii."
Posted by Mr Opinion, Thursday, 13 February 2020 8:56:39 PM
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Hmmm...

Maybe the arsonists are actually just doing the job that the government and other beaurecrats keep standing up and making excuses for not doing in the first place, and thus caused the problem.

They should've dealt with the issue themselves in the first place.
That is find a solution, not excuses.

The simple fact is this: if you don't get rid of accumulating fuel then eventually you get a disaster.

The 'excuses' for not backburning don't matter.
All that matters is that they didn't do it and didn't manage things properly.

What the point of government and authority if they're not even capable of doing what needs to be done?

Maybe a hamstung government and beaurecracy is worse than none at all.
Posted by Armchair Critic, Thursday, 13 February 2020 10:09:00 PM
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As the National Match Association puts it, "Matches don't start fires, people do."

I wouldn't place too much weight on a 2008 AIC report. The general view is that good old fashioned lightning started a lot more of the (big) fires than arson.

Let's do the counter factual. If you took all the arsonists out of the equation, would the fires keep happening. You be the judge.
Posted by Steve S, Friday, 14 February 2020 6:51:18 AM
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Maybe a hamstung government and beaurecracy is worse than none at all.
Armchair Critic,
Even with 95% of the public Service being Labor, the LNP still performs better than Labor with their support base.
Imagine what the Coalition could achieve if fewer Public Service bureaucrats could get themselves to work with the Govt for the the nation instead of against it ?
Posted by individual, Friday, 14 February 2020 7:57:41 AM
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Let's do the counter factual. If you took all the arsonists out of the equation, would the fires keep happening. You be the judge.
Steve S,
It is beside the point how a fire starts, it's what it feeds on that counts ! You could start a thousand fires if you want to but if the fuel is not there it won't burn ! That's how the Aborigines either by design or otherwise treated the bush & it worked ! Looks as though common sense was bred out of many !
Posted by individual, Friday, 14 February 2020 8:01:25 AM
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Bluebottle,
I wouldn't've directed my response to the author if I hadn't read the article. And if you had read the link instead of choosing to remain ignorant, you'd have known that most of the arrests had nothing to do with arson or the starting of bushfires.

Of course facts are facts, but spin is not. People are very often misled about the implications of facts.

I never implied police were wasting their time. I don't think they should ignore it when people breach firebans or toss cigarettes. But you've been wasting my time! In future please try thinking before responding.
Posted by Aidan, Friday, 14 February 2020 9:50:51 AM
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What a telling post, "The overpaid, News Corp/Murdoch muppets (who dominate the thoughts of so many OLO commenters and authors) hype Arson all the time. see http://youtu.be/s23q9DkCaVY?t=10m" from plantagenet.

I guess we can see where he gets his opinions formed.

Then we have Aidan berating someone for not reading his link to the worst greenie propaganda sheet in the nation, the ABC. Aidan linking to the ABC is like referring someone to James Cook University, & suggesting you would find anything like the truth there. No self respecting person will ever follow such a link, so why put them in there, & to suggest one would find truth there is simply laughable.

If you want to use links folks, do try to make them to somewhere at least moderately trustworthy, where there may be some chance of finding something believable. Linking to propaganda sheets simply prove that your opinions are based on such propaganda, & of no value.
Posted by Hasbeen, Friday, 14 February 2020 11:17:47 AM
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Hasbeen,
I guess to those who treat the environment with contempt, any source that doesn't do likewise counts as "green propaganda". But by any objective standards, the ABC is not a propaganda outlet. It doesn't have an official line it's trying to push. It does always try to be unbiased, which is more than can be said for News Corp. And when it fails, the bias is not in a consistent direction.

But hypothetically, even if the ABC were "the worst greenie propaganda sheet in the nation", that doesn't prevent the criticism on Media Watch from being correct. People and institutions (yes, including James Cook University) can often identify the truth on one issue even when they're not doing so overall. And though a track record of bias should make anyone wary of taking claims at face value, you shouldn't just instantly reject everything; you should read the counterclaims and look at the evidence before coming to a decision.

>No self respecting person will ever follow such a link
It may surprise you to learn that even on this board, there are at least a sizeable minority of people who aren't complete idiots!
And make no mistake, anyone whose self respect is based on not knowing what the ABC are saying is a complete idiot. Doubly so if they blindly accept what News Corp is saying.

And BTW, what I was berating Bluebottle for wasn't merely his failure to follow my link, but his lazily berating me without following the link, based on his erroneous assumption that I hadn't read the article. The link was mainly for the benefit of Geoff Ellis, though there are many others here who would benefit from seeing it.
Posted by Aidan, Friday, 14 February 2020 1:27:25 PM
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It does always try to be unbiased,
Aidan,
are you for real ??
Posted by individual, Monday, 17 February 2020 7:55:29 PM
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individual,
Of course, and I did acknowledge its failure in this regard.
Please also understand that favouring the truth is not bias.
Posted by Aidan, Tuesday, 18 February 2020 12:28:57 AM
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favouring the truth is not bias.
Aidan,
It should be a bias for decency !
Posted by individual, Tuesday, 18 February 2020 7:24:08 AM
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Come off it Aidan, the lovies that infest the ABC wouldn't recognise or see the "truth" if it hit them over the head with a baseball bat.
Posted by Hasbeen, Tuesday, 18 February 2020 9:08:59 AM
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Dear Hasbeen,

Get off the drugs old cock, you know they aren't good for you.

The ABC is the most scrutinised media organisation in the country. It has strict codes against media bias and is repeatedly subjected to outside inquiries which find little to report. If any of the majors were to suffer this level of auditing they would all be put out of business immediately.

What you are really saying is the ABC doesn't reflect your concocted, crazy, right wing, jaundiced, so called version of the truth and that is what gets up your nose.

Is there a single solitary thing you can point too in Paul Barry's piece that ws untruthful? Bet you can't.

And pray tell where do you recommend people go to get he 'truth'?
Posted by SteeleRedux, Tuesday, 18 February 2020 9:24:05 AM
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And pray tell where do you recommend people go to get he 'truth'?
RT News & Al Jazeera !
Posted by individual, Tuesday, 18 February 2020 5:10:16 PM
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Australia would be much better off without the Marxist rantings and feminist straight man hating dogma of the abc.
Posted by runner, Tuesday, 18 February 2020 5:50:29 PM
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