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Necro wrote: That is our leader ..... really a fat incentive witch.... Jesus what hope do we have....
To be honest, this is the thing that shocks me the most.
No politics, just straight WTF? Can we replace that ahistorical saying about Nero and the fiddle with something about this guy and Hawaii? That was the PM right? I haven't mixed that up?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/01/04 01:01:27
Thank you lord of hats your post means a lot to me right now.... I know so many affected people and we are on standby in the Capitol city Canberra. Yes that is our Prime Minister....
I just cant believe that a man who sleeps in silk can be so cold to people that have just lost everything......
Automatically Appended Next Post: God bless you all.....
Every time I read more news about this it's just baffling. A fire-front in one state long enough to stretch from Sydney to Afghanistan, an area the size of Belgium on fire, volunteer firefighters getting their benefits cut off for failing to fulfill work-seeking obligations because they've been busy saving lives for four months.
The videos of ScoMo grabbing people's hands to force a handshake when they didn't want to touch him... almost unbelievable. Meanwhile The Australian puts the bushfires on page four...
Ex-Mantic Rules Committees: Kings of War, Warpath
"The Emperor is obviously not a dictator, he's a couch." Starbuck: "Why can't we use the starboard launch bays?"
Engineer: "Because it's a gift shop!"
And therein lies the rub. Scotty from Marketing won against expectations precisely because he went in hard to court Queensland and the mining industry. And now he can't say boo about climate change, even if he wanted to.
It's a real tragedy, the scale of which isn't going to be known for quite some time,
is there enough untouched land to maintain viable population levels of a lot of the species effected or are we going to see a whole load of extinction events
and can the country support the transport infrastructure to repair the damage to small far flung communities (and is there any point rebuilding in the middle of a burn plain with nothing around for miles when the climate is going to remain this way for decades even if global warming is slowed down and brought under control
Didn't he also fire firemen just before this happened?
Like? Why?
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/766717.page A Mostly Renegades and Heretics blog.
GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units." Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?" Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?" GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!" Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.
MiguelFelstone wrote: Can anyone explain why Queensland is burning and the NT seems relatively untouched. Expat from Alice Springs would like to know.
The bigger bushfires tend to be in more heavily forested areas, which QLD and NSW have in spades, and the NT is somewhat lacking in.
That's a part of why this round of fires is so bad - it's been dry enough for fires to hit rainforest areas that typically don't burn well.
It's hard to watch the news (between this and the reef), i have so many found memories of the relatively unspoiled beauty of your country in the late 80s - i hope you can save it.
insaniak wrote: Fire services are maintained by the states, rather than the federal government. But yes, the NSW government cut a chunk out of their budget.
A lot of the rural services are manned by volunteers, but budget cuts do obviously have a big impact on available equipment.
The same guy who keeps putting his foot in his mouth. First with the vaction in Hawaii, forcing a girl to shake his hand, being cursed out by firefighters on live TV, directing donations to his political party, and this is just what i've picked up in the states. Regardless of what you believe politically this can't be good for your country to be run an idiot, but i guess that's going around.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/01/06 05:36:49
Smoke over Melbourne again today. I read there was smoke cover in New Zealand from the Australian fires, which is crazy when it’s (from memory) over 2000km away over the ocean.
MiguelFelstone wrote: Can anyone explain why Queensland is burning and the NT seems relatively untouched. Expat from Alice Springs would like to know.
In addition to what insaniak said, many of the fires will be started by humans, ether intentionally or accidentally. If NT has less people and / or the people are less stupid they might see less fires.
About 10-20% of fires start naturally, by lightning and stuff, the rest are mostly humans.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Smoke over Melbourne again today. I read there was smoke cover in New Zealand from the Australian fires, which is crazy when it’s (from memory) over 2000km away over the ocean.
MiguelFelstone wrote: Can anyone explain why Queensland is burning and the NT seems relatively untouched. Expat from Alice Springs would like to know.
In addition to what insaniak said, many of the fires will be started by humans, ether intentionally or accidentally. If NT has less people and / or the people are less stupid they might see less fires.
About 10-20% of fires start naturally, by lightning and stuff, the rest are mostly humans.
Ya i was reading something about the winds too, like a really strong El Nino type event in India ed the west half of your country, but i'm glad to hear at least some of you are getting rain.
I know Australia has a lot of eucalyptus, which to my knowledge have particularly toxic smoke when burned. Is that a problem or is the effect negligible?
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Smoke over Melbourne again today. I read there was smoke cover in New Zealand from the Australian fires, which is crazy when it’s (from memory) over 2000km away over the ocean.
Can confirm;
Spoiler:
But we are over 2500 miles away.
Scary stuff.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/01/06 21:06:49
NinthMusketeer wrote: I know Australia has a lot of eucalyptus, which to my knowledge have particularly toxic smoke when burned. Is that a problem or is the effect negligible?
I don't believe the smoke is too much more of an issue than bushfire smoke in general, although I could be wrong on that... The bigger problem with Eucalypts is that they are really flammable. When the fire moves through, they go up like a torch, which obviously spreads the blaze at a rapid rate. Conversely, some Eaucalypts have seeds that actually germinate after being through a fire, so as a species they bounce back quicker than other plants... but while the fire is going on it's a big problem, both for spreading the fire and for decimating the Koala population - those that don't die in the fire have no food once all of the current Eucalypts have burnt.
Literally every ecologist in the world knew for decades that this would happen, but politics > science.
Two things: the weather conditions are not in line with the historical ones the ecosystem is adapted for anyways, and human overpopulation has always had adverse effects on the local ecosystem, be said humans white or nonwhite native or colonial. While it is a case of politics not listening to scientific advice, the reasoning is not so simple as 'white man bad.'
NinthMusketeer wrote: I know Australia has a lot of eucalyptus, which to my knowledge have particularly toxic smoke when burned. Is that a problem or is the effect negligible?
I don't believe the smoke is too much more of an issue than bushfire smoke in general, although I could be wrong on that... The bigger problem with Eucalypts is that they are really flammable. When the fire moves through, they go up like a torch, which obviously spreads the blaze at a rapid rate. Conversely, some Eaucalypts have seeds that actually germinate after being through a fire, so as a species they bounce back quicker than other plants... but while the fire is going on it's a big problem, both for spreading the fire and for decimating the Koala population - those that don't die in the fire have no food once all of the current Eucalypts have burnt.
That makes sense. It is also highlights that it is important to keep in mind that the ecosystems in play are adapted to burn periodically as a natural, normal event. Like California, it is the severity that is unnatural. Put differently the inhabitants of areas like these need to accept that the ecosystem will burn one way or another, and we are in a position of managing fire but not preventing it.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2020/01/07 00:27:56
Saw this video, pretty crazy. For non-Australians, the area burned in the south east is so big that you could drive for several hours and still be in the burned area.
There’s been a lot of finger pointing. Scott Morrison has copped a lot of flak, but a lot of it just seems to me like stupid publicity things that the media has ripped into. Like the NSW firefighters saying on live TV they didn’t know about the support offered until they saw it in the media, it seems to me that maybe Scotty should have rung that bloke directly, but it was likely shared with the state government leaders who would have been responsible for passing it on (currently fire management seems to be very state based rather than federal). But folk are saying Scott should have done something more months ago, maybe that’s true I don’t really know what information was available back then. The greens are being blamed for fighting against back burning attempts over the years, but then other folk have been saying we’ve done as many managment burns as we have in years past. Going back to previous governments folk are being blamed for not maintaining fire breaks and tracks that historically the fire services could have used to fight the fires. I’ve heard people blaming white folks in general, because apparently the original a aboriginal inhabitants put a lot more effort in to controlled burns of the undergrowth, to clear out things like bracken which both provides fuels and also blocks access.
You also have the government being blamed for not being strong enough on climate change, but at the end of the day Australia only contributes a percent or so to global green house gases, the best we could do is lead by example, most of the emissions come from China, the USA, India, Japan, Russia and Europe. Our efforts at CO2 reduction are mostly morale/ethical than actually having a direct impact.
I don’t think there’s enough focus on the arsonists and morons who start fires on fire ban days thinking they can control them. We should be locking these people up and heavily announcing to everyone if they act similarly stupid they’ll also be locked up and fined massively. I found it odd that when I googled to find penalties for starting fires on ban days, it took me a while and still isn’t obvious to me what the penalties are. People know if they kill someone they’ll be looking at jail time, and they should also know that they’ll be looking at jail time for starting fires. It boggles my mind to hear from friends who live out bush the number of neighbors they’ve had lighting fires on dry days with 35+ degree heat.
Since the Greens were only a minor party in the Gilliard coalition from 2010 to 2013 it seems strange to blame them for policies which were surely under the control of the Liberal National coalition governments.
As for Scott Morrison, one of the things about being a leader is that you are expected to take responsibility during a crisis, not go on holiday to Hawaii. Ultimately, final responsibility rests with the Prime Minister, that comes with the job. Don't like it, don't apply.
Australia itself does not contribute a huge amount of CO2, though it certainly produces a lot more per person than many other countries - it is 11th in per capita emisions, higher than the USA, China and the European Union, India, Russia and Japan. So maybe there is some work to be done? Certainly, if the rest of the world lived like Australians, there would be a much bigger problem than there currently is.
Ultimately though Australia is going to pay a bigger price with regard to the climate than most countries, especially the likes of Russia who are actually looking forward to the warming, or the likes of Europe who will ikely not see the same extremes.
I wasn’t paying as much attention at that time, but I don’t think the fires were at national crisis level when Scotty was on holidays. My understanding was he returned pretty soon after a sudden flare up that led to a couple of deaths.
It’d be interesting to see a break down of where the emissions come from, I know we rely more than we should on coal, though is that where the relatively high per capita emissions come from, or is it maybe the mining and construction industries we have? Or the bigger distances we have to travel? Or being isolated? Or poor city layouts? Or because we don’t use nuclear like a lot of other countries?
We definitely should be aiming to reduce emissions regardless, but it also seems a bit silly we’re all getting our knickers up in a twist about it when we don’t actually have the capacity to significantly alter global emissions levels. It seems people just want to be able to point fingers of blame for the fires.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/01/07 14:54:46
Ultimately though Australia is going to pay a bigger price with regard to the climate than most countries, especially the likes of Russia who are actually looking forward to the warming, or the likes of Europe who will ikely not see the same extremes.
Europe and Russia potentially run into even worse problems when decreasing salinity in the Atlantic shifts the course of the gulf stream.
One 'upside' to fires as compared to other natural disasters is they have 'diminishing returns' when happening back to back. It will be literally impossible for Australia to suffer fires this bad next year, because there simply will not be the same level of foliage there to burn. It takes time for an area to reload itself for another big fire.
There are fire breaks in some areas, where they're appropriate and possible. The problem is, they can't do as many hazard reduction burns as would be ideal, for a number of reasons, but primarily because it's been so hot and dry for so long that the window for safely doing so keeps shrinking.
On top of that, the current fires are extreme enough that they're just jumping over the existing breaks anyway.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/01/08 03:19:11
I live in California, I know how it goes. As a kid I remember getting school off for a week so it could be used as a shelter, and I spent that week playing around while it rained ash outside.
...I may not have quite understood the large picture at that age.
The fires have also effected Western and South Australia. There's 1.2million+ hectares burning in Western Australia and the Nullarbor is blocked off on the W.A side. Many people are stranded in truck stops along the Nullarbor as there's no other roads to get to and from Adelaide-Perth.
In SA, we've had fire scares since early November with several towns threatened in small flare ups on the Eyre and Yorke peninsulas.
SA's two worse so far have been the Cudlee Creek fire (Adelaide hills) and the Ravine fire (Kangaroo Island).
The Cudlee creek fire burnt 25000+ hectares from the 20th of December into the New Year. Small in comparison to the blazes on the southeast coast, but it threatened many towns and destroyed 80+ homes, 400+ other structures, a few hundred vehicles, and killed 1 person. Its also destroyed many of the areas vineyards and cherry trees which are said to take 10-15 years to recover. It also saw the town of Lobethal cancel its annual Christmas Lights event as it was one of the towns cut off in the fire zone.
The Ravine fire started as 2 smaller fires in inaccessible land on the west of kangaroo island. These merged and have since broken multiple containment lines in hot weather and strong winds, burning an estimated 160000+ hectares. Roughly a third of the island. The flare up was so significant that the entire island had Emergency warnings deeming only the towns of Kingscote and Penneshaw safe at the time. This fire has also killed 2 people caught trying to flee during the wild flare up.
We also had a fire start north of Kersbrook the same day as the Ravine fire got out of control that was luckily extinguished before it got established on the edge of the Mt Crawford forest reserves. Otherwise that would definitely have been another massive firezone in dry native and pine forests a short distance north of the Cudlee Creek firezone. We really dodged a bullet with this one. Its about the only thing thats really gone our way tbh.
ed the west half of your country, but i'm glad to hear at least some of you are getting rain.
