Taz, a friend's farm was hit by the 2003 fire which bowled straight down a long riparian corridor. We saw where parts that had been grazed by sheep had survived while those that had not been grazed were nothing but thin columns of ash.

To Xoddam, the issue of climate change is a seventh order issue. It is a plausible argument, that increased dry weather will increase the severity of bushfires, but these considerations are completely dwarfed by the real "impact multipliers", fuel load and seasonal influences.

The evidence is very clear that the main manifestation of "global warming" is not an explosion of extremely hot summers but rather, a rise in nightly minimum temperatures, and a reduction in extreme winter cold events.

And even when there is an additional day or two in a summer hot spell it is essentially more of the same. It is no use calculating the impact of an extra two hot days in late January if the whole forest was burned to cinders on Boxing Day.

If all the forest estate was divided into neat, mutually exclusive, 100ha plots then that line of argument might be valid. But they are not, and we have already seen that the forests already reach a mid-summer condition where 2 million hectares can go up in a single conflagration.

A midsummer hot fire with dry fuel in abundance and low humidity can burn at 900 degrees C with 80,000Mj of energy per square metre of fire face. But the same fuel load at the same location, but in mid-winter, at the end of a day with higher humidity (and a heavier dew) will only burn in the 300C range. The raw heat potential in the fuel is dissipated by the need to remove the moisture in both the fuel and the air.

So global warming may, at best, add one or two degrees to the temperature of a hot fire while a cold burn that removes most of the fuel in winter will substantially reduce both the intensity and extent of any fires that do start in summer.

I would hire some traditionalist aborigines (assuming they inherited the knowledge of their elders) and let them run the entire fire departments. (I'm dead serious, btw)

Perseus I find anything you say incredibly difficult to believe at face value since your prior bias against environmentalists is evident by your insults. They will have the last laugh I can assure you. Your favoured party proposed a ban on tungsten light globes.

Steel, you made it very clear from your first post that you have the kind of mind that runs every input through some sort of political, ideological filter before deciding whether to even take it in, let alone consider it. You then gave us a whole vomit load of your own prejudices, especially against anyone who did not come down in the last shower.

And that, matey, is the MO of a serious intellectual disability. So when you tell me you have difficulty accepting the things I say, you are hardly telling me something I don't already know. Your behaviour is so boorishly common these days that it has become a very tired old green cliche.

Do you seriously think that someone like me, who has spent big slabs of his life expanding and tending a native forest and all its splendid values, would suddenly wake up one day with an almost visceral loathing of the green movement? As if it just popped up without any justification or provocation? The green movement's record of deception, ignorance, incompetence and callous disregard for fairness and proper process speaks for itself.

Perhaps we should add breathtaking self delusion to that list.

alzo,

From the Wilderness Society page linked in your post:

"World Heritage celebrates and supports indigenous land management and use."

"Currently funding is hopelessly inadequate and problems such as pigs and poor fire management continue unabated."

"Traditional fire regimes also need to be funded. Communities living on the Cape could benefit from this."

If you want to misrepresent the position of a particular environmental group, why bother linking to a page which says exactly the opposite of what you're telling us it says?

Taz,

Clearly forest burns in extreme dry or windy conditions are a recipe for disaster. Fuel management does not necessarily have to involve burns in situ -- Taswegian's suggestion above of mechanical removal of mulch has some credit in these situations.

The issue of burning after coupe logging is not related to traditional fire management or cold burns for fuel reduction. Even "small" coupes are usually several hectares, and each coupe is individually clear-felled, and thereafter contains new trees regrowing all together at the same stage of regrowth. A carefully-managed forest would be filled with trees and shrubs in all stages of development. Mature forests have moister soil and respire moist air much better than rapidly growing trees after clearing.

Perseus,

I didn't say global warming was a major contributor (be it first or "seventh order", whatever that means) to any individual fire -- and I certainly didn't attempt, like you (or was that a strawman?), to calculate the specific effect of mean temperature changes on the internal temperature of a conflagration. All I said was that the journalists' inference was a reasonable one and therefore didn't warrant the strong language used to dismiss it in the article -- I'll readily admit it's also tenuous.

You write

"The green movement's record of deception, ignorance, incompetence and callous disregard for fairness and proper process speaks for itself."

That's quite a heavy load of vitriol you're pouring out on us without much justification.

While individual environmentalists have certainly displayed each of the characteristics you ascribe to the movement, so have individuals in any other category or belonging to any other movement or persuasion. I do not agree or accept that "the green movement" has an established record that "speaks for itself" on such matters.

Indeed environmentalist leaders and organisations have a very impressive record of constructive engagement with many of their opponents, and of being well-informed and very much before their time with respect to other political leanings.

Perseus you are a snivelling little pussy. Here's why:

> "Steel, ................you have the kind of mind that runs every input through some sort of political, ideological filter"

This is you in a prior thread: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6429#95201

Your 1st post:

> "AND PIGS MIGHT FLY."

Your 2nd:

> "Well take your head out of the paper bag, fella"
> "rabid greens"
> "dumb Turdistas were too thick"
> "ecotrogs "
> "Everything the green movement has anything to do with is contaminated by fraud and incompetence"

Now back to this thread (more of that below):

> "Steel, if all you can offer is a blatantly political personal attack on the Author"

How it is "blatantly political"? And how are your rants against environmentalists *not* so. Dumbass.

> "then take your moronic baggage"

I think it's obvious now you're the one with moronic baggage.

> " and crawl back under your rock. The slime mould is probably getting lonely."

What was that about personal attacks? Yeh thought so.

Continuing:

> "You then gave us a whole vomit load of your own prejudices, especially against anyone who did not come down in the last shower."
I think you should check what's spewing out your own mouth. The sheer amount of crap I've listed coming from you eclipses anything I could have produced about that "Author".

> "And that, matey, is the MO of a serious intellectual disability"
> "Your behaviour is so boorishly common these days that it has become a very tired old green cliche."
> "The green movement's record of deception, ignorance, incompetence and callous disregard for fairness and proper process speaks for itself."

*yawn*

> "Perhaps we should add breathtaking self delusion to that list."

Is this my self-delusion or yours?

Since you admit to your "visceral loathing of the green movement" you thereby seal the question of your own (if there was any doubt)... what was it that you said..."blatant politicism" that you inaccurately accused me of.

You are either a conceited hypocrite or stupid. Take your pick. Btw, my politics are beyond your feeble comprehension.