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Australian Fires


Milky

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It is interesting that every time a news report comes on about the fires it is put down to global warming. Was watching Sky News this morning from Australia  and they were saying that for the past eight years the fire breaks and fire dams have not been maintained, cattle have been banned from grazing in the areas and that was the reason why the fires are out of control this year, dry weather hasn't helped  or the winds but they are not unique.

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The Greens and Environmentalists have persuaded the Australian Government to make it illegal for anyone to clear dead underbrush and trees and maintain firebreaks even on their own property. This results in a build up of fuel for wildfires which then spread uncontrollably. They've even put locked gates and barriers across tracks making it very difficult for firefighters to get near the fires. The laws of unintended consequences then take over. People have been fined large amounts for cutting down vegetation on their own property in any effort to stop fires.

Heres a video explaining things:

https://youtu.be/xNRB8SQbVvE

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  • 2 weeks later...

I’d hope that most thinking people would look at the big picture about what’s happening over there rather than take the word of an Aussie drongo with an internet conspiracy theory. Clearly these are the worst fires they’ve ever had and yes, some of the environmental laws haven’t helped but the consensus view of the professionals is that extreme weather conditions over the last year has been the primary cause.  These unusual conditions may well be linked to global warming, but equally so, it could just be down to the natural variability of the weather and that’s never going to change.

 

Bill :)

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The worst fires they've ever had Bill? The first British colony at Botany Bay was established in 1788, a mere 232 years ago. A mere blink of an eye in history really, and it's not even recorded history. The Aborigines used to set fire to brush to clear the land for planting and aid in hunting. In fact Captain Cook called Australia "the continent of smoke" so prevelant were fires at the time. It isn't "Internet conspiracy theories" that set government policies which penalise landowners for trying to protect their property.

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5 hours ago, asperity said:

The worst fires they've ever had Bill?

 

Well like most people I’m only going off what I hear and see on the news but if you know better, then feel free to update me of exactly when it was worse.

You’ve made your views on climate change/global warming very clear and I even agree with much of what you say but the authorities (while not directly blaming climate change), do say the that the scale of this disaster is down to the weather. The fire authorities said they couldn’t carry out a lot of the preventative burns they normally do, not because of any locked gates or green issues but simply because of the weather conditions this year made it unsafe.

Suppose it all comes down to who you choose to believe.  

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They don't do the preventative burns in the fire season Bill, it's obviously done in the winter. Also it has been widely reported that government policy, driven by a "Green" agenda, has led to landowners being heavily fined for trying to clear all the dead foliage from their land to try and reduce the fire risk. If you have a wood burning stove or household fire in Australia you can be fined for collecting deadwood for fuel. Sheer madness.

Bear in mind that it is only in very recent years that we have had satellite surveillance of the earth's surface which has enabled accurate measurement of the extent of these fires, so to try and say that they are "unprecedented" is something of an exaggeration.

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