Beoz

Yep. Seems there's some type of neutral factor playing out in both the pacific and indian oceans which is keeping a balance and making the monsoon late. Not highly unusual. It happens from time to time.

Amazulu

So, as I tend to do these days, I decided to do some research and try and find out about the current fires in an historical context - and what I found was surprising and fascinating. This current east coast fire situation has burnt about 10-11m hectares. In 1974/75, there was a bushfire event that spread across much of central Australia. Approximately 117m hectares, or 15% of Australia's total land area was extensively burnt - incredible. Because the fires burnt in largely remote parts (in fact, huge areas were only found to be affected through satellite photos), only 6 people were killed. This kind of puts the current events in context. It looks to me that large scale burning is a frighteningly regular occurrence in Australia - we live in a land of fire

Beoz

The 70's had the second lowest December rainfall and the highest December rainfall a few years apart. A bit like the current situation. The cycles return.

scrubbedexpat098

Have you been to central Australia? It's all Spinifex and bushes, not the vast ucalyptus forests we're seeing going up here. I would class myself as a climate change sceptic (we're screwing the planet but carbon reduction won't save it) , but if you want to contextualise it it needs to be done right.

Amazulu

I'll assume you were replying to my post. I purposely made no mention of climate change as it's not the place for that debate. I was just trying to put these current fires in a historical context. They are not the worst ever and large fire events in Australia are definitely cyclical. That's it

scrubbedexpat098

I didn't make any mention of climate change either, other than to say that wasn't my angle but a grass and bush fire is far less intense than a forest fire, the two can't be compared.

Pollyana

Have to agree.
Apart from anything else a large spinifex fire in the desert would be largely left to burn itself out hence burning a far greater area than the current bushfires, which being in populated areas have to be tackled. That in itself leads to a far smaller area being impacted.

ozzieeagle

The thing about grass fires, is they travel very very fast. 60K's an hour or more at times.

There are a lot of those on the outskirts of Melbourne. Especially out West around Melton and Werribee.

They are the ones that catch people by surprise. It's probably another factor for a RC inasmuch as what is more dangerous to human life. There are ads on the TV about grass fires in Vic about moving Two streets away from them as they are generally close to Suburban fringes.

ozzieeagle

Can anyone come up with a reason why the Catylyst for the Bushfires outbreaks are so different up North than here in Victoria?

Victoria police report Bushfire Arson is totally overstated in Victoria.

Amazulu

Agree but I stand by my comments that large scale fire events are cyclical and inevitable - and where they start seems to be about where it is driest. Big fires have always happened in Australia and always will - which is not to say that there cannot be mitigation which reduces their intensity and risk

BadgeIsBack

Agreed, in this sense, there have always been big fires

BadgeIsBack

And out West has always been dryer than East.

BadgeIsBack

in some circles you could be scorned for being a sceptic or even denier.

I believe many of us simply can't know. We don't have access to the numbers.

Even if we did something about CO2 China would wreck it for us.

We need to pump money into firefighting on a Federal response and reduction burns - which has some challenges - regardless of change.

Tom Sawyer

[QUOTE=BadgeIsBack;12788176

I believe many of us simply can't know. We don't have access to the numbers.

Even if we did something about CO2 China would wreck it for us..[/QUOTE]

Thing is though, China does at least have a plan. A few articles I have read over the past few weeks about the disinformation being put about by certain areas of the press, have predictions of China's "peak coal" somewhere between 2023-25. They are one of the world's biggest investors in renewable energy projects and they aim to have renewables as their primary power source in the future, whereas here there is no such plan for anything. It is the people in this country driving renewables by putting solar on their roofs, not the Government. Why is it not legislated that all new build houses have solar panels on their roofs from new? Household battery technology is getting cheaper and more reliable also. I was in Hong Kong for 2 months last year. I saw more electric cars there in the first few days there than what I have ever seen in Australia and that would be partly driven by the local tax breaks. Again, no such plan here.....in fact during the election I seem to remember some scare plan put out about "losing your weekend" to try and discredit Labor's electric vehicle plans. The UK has a plan and look at how the energy balance is changing there and the jobs being created. The Government here should be recognising that the coal industry will decline over the next 10 years or so and start looking at re-employment and investment plans to cope with the inevitable job losses as Germany did over a decade ago.

It is the lack of any form of planning by the Government here that is annoying people. We have an abundance of natural resources here for cleaner energy generation and associated industries, and the opportunities are being missed. I saw some scheme about generating solar power here for transmission to Singapore. Why aren't we doing that for home consumption? Saying it is not worth our while doing anything as there are larger emitters is a cop out as those same emitters have a plan to transition which is going to leave Australia floundering. Nuclear should be seriously looked at also, although it is not perfect at least it produces less emissions and we have the necessary requirements right on our doorstep.

Even if you are a denier/sceptic/whatever...... what is wrong with cleaner air?

scrubbedexpat098

I say sceptic because just reducing emissions isn't the fix all solution that everyone seems to think. Reversing the large scale deforestation, population reduction must go hand in hand with it. It's about time we realised that every human living in the modern world is an affront to the environment.