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0 pointsh0l0cube6y ago0 comments

> If you think carbon taxes are going to stop a 3 year drought from occasionally hitting Australia, a region with thousands of years of documented dry spells

Are you implying that the rate and duration of dry spells have been the constant for thousands of years? If so, do you have data back this up?

If not, is it possible that we're living in exceptional weather conditions? A quick google gives me an article from the Bureau of Meteorology, an organization with a wealth of data, the requisite compute power to analyze the data, and actual expects of climate modelling:

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/updates/articles/a010-southern...

> The only sensible thing Australia can do is prescribed burning and bush thinning.

Do you think that fire authorities haven't been doing this already?

If anything their capacity has been reduced by recent budget cuts from NSW Liberal Party - the core policies of the Liberal Party are smaller government, individual responsibility, and hence lower taxes across the board. The Victorian Labor party, on the other hand, increased their capability.

Unfortunately there's a number of forests that are exceptionally dry due to recent long term trends, and Australia just needs more and more resources to manage its land.

So sensible things to do are:

- provide more resources for land management - stop making the world hotter

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chrisco2556y ago· 1 in thread

Australia has generally gotten wetter over the past 50 years than the first 50 years of the 20th century: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2020/01/are-australia-bushfires-...

This is a deep drought but it's coming on the tail end of a wetter than average decade. So plants have had plenty of time to build up combustible fuel over the past decade.

"As former State Fire Chiefs call for a summit on bushfires, expert and scientist David Packham explains that it has nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with fuel-loads."

https://volunteerfirefighters.org.au/scientist-david-packham...

David Packham warned about the fuel loads in 2015.

Bushfire scientist David Packham warns of huge blaze threat, urges increase in fuel reduction burns Darren Gray By Darren Gray Updated March 12, 2015 — 4.05pm

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/bushfire-scienti...

The Aussie government apparently didn't listen to its own experts on this 4 years ago.

Worse still, they actively discouraged and fined people for attempting to remove firewood from national parks:

https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/news/removing-firewood-fr...

That's negligence of the highest order.

h0l0cubeOP6y ago

You've done some exceptional work here cherry picking a world view that matches your own.

> Australia has generally gotten wetter over the past 50 years than the first 50 years of the 20th century

Even if I take Roy Spencer at his word, higher rainfall isn't in opposition with some areas of the continent becoming drier, or hot, dry weather systems getting more intense. As with the link I provided from the Bureau of Meteorology, the rainfall patterns are changing and certain places are actually becoming wetter, but some places much drier - particularly the south east of Australia. You might want to read it.

> Worse still, they actively discouraged and fined people for attempting to remove firewood from national parks: > That's negligence of the highest order.

That's hyperbole of the highest order. I'm not sure how you back your claim that local residents taking firewood (which is habitat for many endangered native birds) makes a significant impact on fuel load.

And fuel reduction burns are not a perfect strategy. Even when timed as best as possible, they are often not enough to solve the problem, and won't prevent canopy fires when you have catastrophic level weather patterns.

This article was published today and provides a nuanced view on the topic.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-10/hazard-reduction-burn...

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