Re: Australia's burning
 

Every time I see an Australian political leader in the news they seem to be dealing with one disaster or another. Tony Abbott out fighting fires as a volunteer firefighter, Anthony Albanese handing out sandwiches to firefighters, Kevin Rudd wading through knee deep floodwater with a suitcase on his head, Bill Shorten coordinating the Beaconsfield mine rescue…

…Scott Morrison trying to recover from a holiday.



Given the prolonged drought in Australia it can’t be that much of a surprise this has been a particularly vicious fire season (another contributor mentioned the ’74-75 fire season which also preceded by drought.) Obviously it’ll take years for people to rebuild homes, to restore native habitat and for firefighting capability to be improved. Luckily there has rarely been a time when people could so readily be informed of imminent danger, what with everyone walking around with a cellphone in their pocket.

Re: Australia's burning
 

1974/5 was worse

Re: Australia's burning
 

Oh is this one over then? All information in? Good to know. You may well be right but making such a statement at the current time is a bit foolish. Imo only obviously.

Re: Australia's burning
 

Snowy Hydro 2.0?

There are 20 more wind farms lined up for construction this year.

12 coal powered plants closed between 2012-2017.

Lets not let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Re: Australia's burning
 

Snowy Hydro 2 maybe a Government backed initiative........the others are commercial decisions by the likes of AGL who are trying to make decisions on the back of lack of policy from the Federal side.

Re: Australia's burning
 

There's another couple hundred thousand dead birds a year but ho hum

Of all the renewable technology that could be deployed, I can't believe we're carrying on with that useless, inefficient, destructive shite

Re: Australia's burning
 

You know what......I walked around a wind farm a in WA a couple of years ago. Didn't see one dead bird. Not saying it doesn't happen, just some actual context rather than conjecture.

Hows many birds died as result of the bushfires?

Re: Australia's burning
 

Shitloads - millions probably

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational...-farms/4668750
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/wind-tur...dangered-birds

It's been a huge problem in the US where many thousand of larger birds (several billion smaller birds are killed there annually by domestic cats) - mainly apex predators - have been executed. Even that idiot, Bob Brown says that windmills can be a big bird killer in certain locations. Let's go renewable by all means - but not windmills. It's shit, inefficient technology that only gets built because it's heavily subsidised by the mugs/cash cows (aka taxpayers)

Re: Australia's burning
 

Snowy Hydro is government backed however as a tax payer it would be better if private like the AGL's you mention. Better for someone else to foot the costs rather than us. As for policy the federal government has targets it's going to meet. So do the state's. QLD as an example has quite an aggressive target to the point that there is worry about the load on the grid and massive job losses when they close down their coal fired power. Again, a lot of media and left wing beat up on Australia without really looking into the fact.

Re: Australia's burning
 

An interesting read on the BBC's web site. I wonder how long it will be before someone (who can change anything) listens? :unsure:

I remember seeing a long time ago a documentary on the BBC about the starting of "controlled burns" by dropping fire pellets out of a light aircraft, so as to start multiple fires to burn off underbrush in the forest. I don't remember where it was, though I don't think it was Australia, but if, as I guess, it was in the US, the practice was stopped long ago, and which is one of the reasons why parts of the US get horrific wildfires, notably in California, but also in places as far apart as Colorado and Tennessee in recent years. There were wildfires in North Carolina too a few years ago, and all fueled, literally, by excessive underbrush.

Re: Australia's burning
 

Worst smoke haze we've had this morning. Not seen it this bad, not even back in 83. Although we haven't got the ash with it this time around. Plus we can drive out of Melbourne unlike back then.

Hopefully, this lot of rain coming does and finishes the job for this season. It potentially will.

Re: Australia's burning
 

Let's hope so dude, south coast has been declared safe which is great but t as these things seem to work every good news story is cancelled out by some poor bugger copping it.

Re: Australia's burning
 

As you know,I came through Melbourne Airport yesterday. Shocking visibility through all the descent, and the runway only visible right at the last minute.Like flying in really bad fog. And the air quality was shocking in most of the airport - the Lounge was OK, but the rest was terrible. Now in southern Tassie and its bad here today - nowhere near as bad as Melbourne but there is a smoke haze and for the first time ever I am using an inhaler in Tassie.

Re: Australia's burning
 

Shouldn't be any when you get back. Gone tomorrow arvo they reckon.


It's starting to get 'orribly humid though and that bothers me more than anything.

Re: Australia's burning
 

Tried to put a cartoon on here (not a funny one, but cartoon used in the meaning of a story in a drawing), it showed a huge crowd of animals reaching the pearly gates, and there to meet them was Steve Irwin, saying come in, your all welcome, and we'll look after you. It's here for you to see, just couldn't separate the picture when I tried. The picture has gone viral on places like twitter which is where I found it.

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/enter...the-world.html