Comments
Australian Bushfires
It wasn’t climate change which killed as many as 300 people in Victoria last weekend. It wasn’t arsonists. It was the unstoppable intensity of a bushfire, turbo-charged by huge quantities of ground fuel which had been allowed to accumulate over years of drought. It was the power of green ideology over government to oppose attempts to reduce fuel hazards before a megafire erupts, and which prevents landholders from clearing vegetation to protect themselves.
smh.au.com: ‘Green ideas must take blame for deaths’
How do the ongoing tragic bushfires in Australia compare to events past in terms of the number of homes lost? Thanks to the work of John McAneney and colleagues at Risk Frontiers at Macquarie University we know the answer to this question (I have added the red star showing premininary 2009 losses based on media reports.)
Prometheus: ‘Trends in Homes Lost to Australian Bushfires’
February 14th, 2009 at 4:02 am
Paul – I have to use all the stuff you’d throw at the AGW camp back at
you i.e happened before; exposure risk.
Blaming the greens is just a ghoulish excuse for the pro-logging
anti-national park brigade to hang one on !
Where was the green movement during the rest of Australia’s historical
deadly fires?
In 1939 ?? – come on – !! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushfires – and the rest.
And like hurricane damage – it’s a question of exposure – so many
people now looking for a “tree change” to live among the Australian
bush. At some point it’s dangerous – it will burn. Dividing things up
into English like country estates is part of the problem. Landowners
are wary of control burns.
So instead of blaming the greenies – blame EVERYONE for not learning
lessons a century old.
Blame governments for sitting on emergency call system funding; for
allowing development of fire prone houses in fire prone areas.
Serious greens full well understand fire ecology.
The aboriginal inhabitants patch burn the forests continually in cool
conditions. We don’t have those wandering tribes anymore.
And if you know anything about Australia – while the southern forests
can explode in massive conflagrations, graziers have prevented fire in
mid-NSW to central Queensland resulting in massive loss of grasslands
and woodland thickening. All a result of Europeans changing the fire
ecology.
Northern Australia burns far too often – annually – which reduces
biodiversity. http://knowledgeweb.afac.com.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/19223/1510_Meyer.pdf
The bureau have released a statement on the heatwave – record busting
stuff on top of a 12 year drought. With some AGW assistance from IOD
and SAM. Recent papers.
The perfect storm just waiting for the right windy days and nutters to
light the place up…
AGW didn’t cause the fires. But it helped increase it. And all of us
have to relearn tragic lessons again. There will be more.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/statements/scs17c.pdf
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/statements/scs16.pdf
http://www.bushfirecrc.com/
http://www.bushfirecrc.com/research/downloads/climate-institute-report-september-2007.pdf
Lu, J., C. Deser, and T. Reichler (2009),
Cause of the widening of the tropical belt since 1958, Geophys.
Res. Lett., 36, L03803, doi:10.1029/2008GL036076.
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v2/n1/full/ngeo390.html
http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~ccumm/Ummenhofer.etal_2009_SEA.pdf IOD ….
http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~ccumm/publications.htm
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/322/5903/940
http://www.springerlink.com/content/q72520r149221353/?p=cd79881063c54d78ac356bb2a090d3e6π=7
SAM ….
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2007GL030854.shtml
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2006/walker.shtml
http://www.gfdl.gov/reference/bibliography/2006/gav0602.pdf
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/~gav/REPRINTS/VS_07_GWnCIRC.final.pdf
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/296/5569/895
February 14th, 2009 at 7:35 am
Fined for illegal clearing, family now feel vindicated
http://www.smh.com.au/national/fined-for-illegal-clearing-family-now-feel-vindicated-20090212-85bd.html
‘Full Moon’ Flannery:
Whoever owns the fuel
Arson is suspected, but Australians must accept pollution and unbridled growth are firebugs too
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/11/tim-flannery-australia-bushfires-pollution
Dear Benny,
I made the same mistake as Nick Sault (CCNet, 11 Feb) in assuming that
the lack of press comment about a global warming cause for the
Australian bushfires would last beyond the first couple of days of
events. As Don Parkes (CCNet, 12 Feb) has pointed out, thereafter many
and varied climate lobbyists and groups started spouting their obnoxious
alarmism, as reported and in some cases (the ABC, as Don described)
encouraged by the press.
The Australian newspaper’s coverage of the bushfires has been almost
uniformly excellent. Yet an important exception occurred on the day that
they declined to publish a letter I sent (that is reproduced below) and
published instead a letter from Guy Abrams that perpetrated the view
that the bushfires resulted from global warming. Resubmission of my
letter with an explanatory note as to why it was important to register a
comment from a qualified scientist on the issue resulted in a second
rejection.
It is a matter for concern that the only newspaper in Australia that
regularly airs both sides of the AGW debate nonetheless finds itself
unable to publish a correction to a widely promulgated and completely
inaccurate view regarding the cause of the bushfires. Sadly, it is the
case that nowhere within the paper’s copious reportage (which has
included editorials) has The Australian (or, so far as I am aware, any
other Australian paper) reported that many competent scientists are on
record as denying ANY link between hypothetical human-caused global
warming and the bushfires – for the very good reason that no evidence
exists that supports such an idea.
I would appreciate your bringing this matter to the attention of a wider
audience by reproducing my letter on CCNet.
Kind regards.
Bob Carter
————————————————————-
Letter to the Editor, rejected (twice) by The Australian, on 10/2 and
11/2/09
Dear Editor,
The commentators and letter writers (Guy Abrahams, The Australian, 11/2)
who assert that the recent firestorms in southeast Australia are linked
to human-caused global warming must be called to account, for their
statements are akin to shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre.
First, an individual extreme weather event such as caused the current
bushfires cannot be attributed to global warming. Second, no agreed
evidence exists for a post-industrial increase in extreme weather
events. Third, the only basis for such alarmist assertions is
unvalidated computer models which project that future warming will be
accompanied by more or more intense climatic extremes; with a little
legitimate tweaking, the self-same models can equally well project fewer
climatic extremes or future cooling. And, to cap it all off, the global
temperature has anyway now been cooling for nearly ten years.
Climate scaremongering at this time is a gross offense to the many
Australians now faced with reconstructing homes, careers and lives that
have been shattered by a natural weather disaster.
Bob Carter
Annandale, Townsville
February 14th, 2009 at 8:02 am
“It was the unstoppable intensity of a bushfire, turbo-charged by huge quantities of ground fuel which had been allowed to accumulate over years of drought.”
I don’t agree at all. I don’t agree that bushfires are “unstoppable.”
I think I (or anyone else who took appropriate measures) could have saved 90+% of the houses that were destroyed and 95+% of the lives that were lost. And I could have done it for–on average–less than $10,000 per house, and $1,000 per life.
February 14th, 2009 at 9:08 am
Well Bob would say that wouldn’t he? His word for it is as good as mine – personal opinion and no publications of relevance in the literature – and I see he’s banging on about oooling in the middle of a record heatwave.
Far out.
Unvalidated computer models have got nothing to do with his lack of validation of the observations in Victoria which I have listed above and recent science which is conveniently never mentioned.
All just ruse arguments. We’ll expect the Melbourne heat island one next which Tamino and David Jones have comprehensively smacked down.
Nevertheless living in the Australian bush like these communities have done is extremely dangerous in the long term. Can be years or decades till an event occurs. But when it does …
A rapidly moving firefront, mad and bad arsonists, ember storms moving ahead of the front, and exploding dry eucalyptus trees would be a nightmare to fight.
If councils have prevented people from building firebreaks then the councils are directly culpable.
But living in large blocks in this sort of vegetation community is an accident waiting to happen.
Ironically the very attributes that attracted people in the first place were eventually the seeds of their own destruction. And that was primed by a deteriorating climate.
February 15th, 2009 at 3:36 am
There is a short global cooling trend from 2002, a heat wave in parts of Australia, record cold in parts of the US, and we’ve been freezing our nuts off in the UK since October. No top 700m ocean warming since 2002 either. CO2 is either very versatile or irrelevant. Peer review has its limitations, being only a cursory review that doesn’t properly check data or methodology, or insist on archiving of data for replication of results by other scientists. Recorded meteorological data is short, so we don’t have actual measurements from previous warm periods during the Holocene to compare current ‘records’ with.
February 15th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Cooling? Says who?
Not to mention a totally changed southern hemispheric circulation and Walker circulation – strangely not mentioned.
The climate of the MWP is also an interesting history lesson for the future? e.g. http://www.amazon.com/Great-Warming-Climate-Change-Civilizations/dp/1596913924
February 15th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Most data sets show a slight global cooling trend since 2002 including the satellite data, no surprise if GISS is an exception.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/
We don’t know how warm the MWP was, and the hockey team’s selected data and methodology hasn’t helped.
February 15th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
For a scientist of his experience to put a curve like that through those data is so utterly pretentious and bogus.
It’s indefensible. e.g. the early part of the 20th century not shown wouldn’t fit. Why not use a 20th degree polynomial – LOL !!
Is the trend significantly different to zero? Why start at 2002?
There’s plenty of information regardless of the Hockey team on climate around the world – mega-droughts southern USA, Africa, Asia
Not all was cathedral building and grape growing.
I note McIntyre’s position, quite fairly, is that he doesn’t really know what the global temperature was with respect to today. Evidence isn’t conclusive. Mann’s work rejected. That’s OK …
February 16th, 2009 at 12:42 am
Luke:
“I see he’s banging on about cooling in the middle of a record heatwave”
Cooling – fact is that both November and December were not particulariy hot in Victoria – with December (and first half of January coolish and below average in terms of max temps)…
Rainfall – the areas in question received average rainfall in the three months prior – with only January dryish…
http://i41.tinypic.com/9ps1nb.jpg
As for record heatwave – the conditions were very similar to that in 1851 (Black Thursday)
http://home.iprimus.com.au/foo7/fire1851.html
Note – in one of the newspaper items is says that the temperature in Malbourne was “at eleven o’clock the thermometer stood as high as 117 degrees ( 47.2 Celsius ) in the shade”.
Which makes it at least equivalent if not warmer! Don’t see much of a change in climate over 150 years… This was the perfect storm, driven by synoptics and probably exacerbated by the increased fuel loads in the forrests. And once a fire gets hold in these conditions – there is nothing that will stop it.
And yes, I pretty much well agree that it has happened before and most likely will happen again. Hopefully there will be some learning from this…
cheers
Arnost
February 16th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
What in the shade of a tin shed?
We’ve been through all the bogus claims about Cloncurry record temperatures too….
It’s really hard to know with these anecdotes. Siting can make significant differences.
In any case it’s the trend that matters and hotter nights increasing more than cooler.
February 16th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Siting can make significant differences – absolutely…
I asked Blair about this one today and he pretty much well agreed that siting was probably an issue, plus he suggested that the temperature “in turn would be expected to be 1-1.5 degrees higher than a Stevenson screen”.
Nevertheless, 150 years ago there was an equivalent event – one where a “third of Victoria” burnt. Compare this to the Dec 7 event (satelite pic from 9th):
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/36000/36979/vict_AMO_2009040_fc.jpg