Wildfires Are Raging Outside Every Major City in Australia
time.com
time.com
Summer in Australia always comes with one or two big fires in at-risk rural areas over the months from December to February.
Queensland and New South Wales were burning heavily by early December. And now Victoria and South Australia have joined in as well and we're still only just into the second month of three. It's unprecedented.
The one thing that may provide back handed comfort is that so much has burnt that it will be a few years before enough 'fuel' is regrown for fires of this scale to be possible again.
I'm wondering the unknowable tipping point at which the cost of rebuilding from bushfires outweighs the costs of de-carbonising the economy. Part of the problem with that is who / where the costs are borne / spread amongst.
Well, we hope there's only three. The long range forecasts weren't looking great, with lower than average levels of rainfall up until April.
It's not as if climate change would be reverted or even stop if we stopped burning fossil fuel now. There is a lag on the effect, and the situation would still be getting worse for a century or so.
The comparison is between all the extra future damage of burning even more than we already have vs the economic gains today.
Australia is a moderate player in global terms, but decarbonising is literally a symbolic gesture with real negative consequences. The only response that makes any sense is to focus on better bushfire prevention methods.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
Germany showed enormous leadership with their Energiewende. It was expensive, convinced nobody and has had what appears to be a marginal effect on their actual emissions emitted. Hoping that Australia charging into the breach would help in any meaningful way is wishful thinking. Business as usual until economic forces cause the US and China to switch away from fossil fuels is what is going to happen, we can't make their decisions for them. Fight that diplomatically, sure. But tank our standard of living for a symbolic gesture and there is going to be very stiff resistance.
[0] https://www.smh.com.au/technology/csiro-sells-concentrated-s...
But the raw numbers are not doing the same sort of damage as a 10% increase in general energy costs. So far it has been 1,516 homes. Australia will have something like 5,000,000 homes. That is bad, but entirely tolerable averaged over the continent - we build about that many homes in a month or two. The damage is a small % of GDP contained to one year.
We need to improve our bushfire management & crisis response, but there is no need to do anything rash.
https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/incidents/woma...
Ouch. That is bad. It does require a response. However it is close enough to normal that it wouldn't change any rational decisions about our energy mix. This crisis is small enough that we only need to respond to the threats directly, without winding in a decarbonisation scheme that doesn't actually do anything.
[0] https://soe.environment.gov.au/theme/ambient-air-quality/top...
I take issue with this. Australia's contribution to GHG emissions does contribute to warming. Even if it's only 1.3% (greater if you take exports into account [0]) it has an effect.
Also, more than 20% of global emissions are emitted by countries with lower overall emissions than us [1]. If they all used our excuse [2], do you think that would be acceptable?
We also have among the highest per capita emissions in the world [3].
And I haven't even talked about historic cumulative emissions, which have to be taken into account for an equitable solution.
Australia is already suffering from the effects of a climate emergency, with conditions predicted to get orders of magnitude worse this century. We should be taking a lead in the decarbonisation effort so we can urge the rest of the world to do the same, for our sakes, as well as theirs.
Instead, our government sabotaged negotiations at COP25 [4], and is acting for the short-term benefit of a few fossil fuel miners, even to the point of wanting to make secondary boycotts illegal [5]. They are criminally negligent at best, and an absolute disgrace.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/08/fossil-f... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous... [2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-01/australia-called-a-fr... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di... [4] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-16/australia-climate-car... [5] https://reneweconomy.com.au/morrisons-crackdown-on-climate-p...
The compliment of 20% is 80%. Those countries could all drop their emissions to 0 and any problem from emissions would still be 80% there and so still be about as bad as it ever was. So yes everyone smaller than us can use the same excuse. What matters policy-wise is the leadership in China & the United States.
> We also have among the highest per capita emissions in the world [3].
Yeah. We don't have any nuclear plants. Puts us a bit behind the 8 ball. We should fix that up too and build some. Labor needs to be more vocal about supporting nuclear energy.
There is a link between counties that make heavy use of nuclear energy and countries that have low emissions and air free of coal dust.
> Australia is already suffering from the effects of a climate emergency, with conditions predicted to get orders of magnitude worse this century. We should be taking a lead in the decarbonisation effort so we can urge the rest of the world to do the same, for our sakes, as well as theirs.
Germany already did that, it didn't impress very many people; it looked expensive and didn't actually help their emissions much. We should restrict ourselves to trying things that are likely to work and actually address the issues we are facing, which decarbonisation does not. There isn't anyone here who can seriously argue that Australia decarbonising would have had any impact on these bushfires. If Australia were completely decarbonised and had stopped exporting coal they would still have happened.
A positive actions in anyone's book happens to be just waiting another decade until it becomes economic to build photovoltaic solar; according to the Finkel report.
In NSW tourism is worth $40B[2]. The situation is similar there.
Say this costs between 10 and 20% of that. That is roughlt $10B in direct costs this year alone.
Additionally your 10% additional cost of energy is nonsense. Australia hasn't had a functioning energy policy is 10 years, which is the primary reason costs are so high. Any kind of policy which both sides of politics agree on (at least roughly!) will provide investment certainty and cut that cost.
[1] https://www.business.vic.gov.au/tourism-industry-resources/t...
Finkel review [0], page 201, Levelised Cost of Electricity in 2020 estimates solar at ~91 $/MWh vs ~76 $/MWh supercritical coal.
So you were right that I was using an unsourced number. Now I've sourced it and am revising it to 20%. And I have a source that says if we just twiddle our thumbs for 10 years we should get a much better deal, with no extra cost given we produce somewhere between 1 and 5% of the worlds emissions depending on how we account for exports.
[0] https://www.energy.gov.au/sites/default/files/independent-re...
A future where (according to exactly the same reference!) solar will be cheaper than coal by 2030 (~61 $/MWh vs ~76 $/MWh supercritical coal).
I'd also note that this report was done in 2017, and the LCOE for solar has decreased more rapidly than expected. This Lazard report done only a year later puts large scale solar at US$36-43/MWh (= A$51-63/MWh).
> I'd also note that this report was done in 2017, and the LCOE for solar has decreased more rapidly than expected. This Lazard report done only a year later puts large scale solar at US$36-43/MWh (= A$51-63/MWh).
If it started to make commercial sense to build solar in 2017 then it really doesn't make sense to change anything we're doing after these bushfires since any problem will will resolve itself. The underlining point is that this crisis isn't a catalyst to rethink our energy policy. The two things just aren't realistically linked. We don't emit enough carbon for it to be relevant for global pollution.
Which is why you start transitioning now, so we get a resilient energy system.
it really doesn't make sense to change anything we're doing after these bushfires since any problem will will resolve itself
No, because the current government actually wants to build new coal fired power stations and open new coal mines.
The underlining point is that this crisis isn't a catalyst to rethink our energy policy.
Yes you keep parroting this line. But I noticed you ignored the tourism industry costs above as well as the arguments about how successful the German transition had been.
There is legitimate, marginally viable technology honed and perfected in Australia that always remains on the cusp because of endemic favourable treatment for fossil fuel and lack of strong support and willingness to invest.
To argue that the quality of life would be hit by changing govt funding priorities is like arguing against the construction of roads before automobiles were mainstream.
Also the suggestion that Australian research cannot make a difference I find unfathomable. Leave it to the "major players", so China and USA will just give away the technology for free? Why do any research at all, ever, there will always be someone better...
Cars are unsafe, expensive and make cities unwalkable. I would rather Australia beefed up its train network & river freight rather than this mania for cars.
> There is legitimate, marginally viable technology honed and perfected in Australia that always remains on the cusp because of endemic favourable treatment for fossil fuel and lack of strong support and willingness to invest.
Sounds pretty marginal, he might not be factoring in the consequences for grid stability in his calculations. It isn't just a raw numbers game.
> Also the suggestion that Australian research cannot make a difference I find unfathomable.
We are doing research, it probably is making a difference. If you go to UNSW the first building you run in to is the great big energy research facility. It wouldn't be too hard to get support for more research into better energy if anyone cared. And for all people blame the Australian right for coal they are the ones who push for dropping the effective ban on nuclear power in Australia and maybe doing some R & D on that front. It was much more promising technology than solar for most of the lest 50 years.
But we could be supplying SE Asia with clean energy instead: https://www.energymatters.com.au/renewable-news/australia-po...
We produce over 1% of the world CO2 emissions, one of the highest in the world, and we worked hard to wreck the Paris agreement.
And you think all we can possibly do is to try to prevent bushfires?
Maybe we could do that and try to become world leaders in clean technology?
So sick of this argument.
Global warming is important, but only one environmental problem, so important to consider here, but not the only environmental issue.
Contributing to every environmental issue, including this one, is overpopulation. Humans have altered every continent, reducing biodiversity, introducing species that don't handle local climates as well, or too well and displace existing ones, making extinct species, and so on. I'm no expert, but the situation in Australia looks related to huge cities and lots of farms supporting a much larger human population than had ever lived there reducing biodiversity and resilience to fire, exacerbated by global warming.
People fear discussing overpopulation because they only know of China's policy and eugenics, as did I until I learned of the successful, non-coercive policies of Thailand, Iran, Mexico, etc that increased peace, prosperity, and stability.
I first learned of successful noncoercive birthrate reducing policies through Alan Weisman's excellent Countdown https://www.amazon.com/Countdown-Last-Best-Future-Earth/dp/0..., and of the critical importance of population through Limits to Growth https://www.amazon.com/Limits-Growth-Donella-H-Meadows/dp/19....
Those examples show that we can peacefully and stably lower birth rate to increase peace and prosperity and ease all other environmental problems. Steady-state following de-growth works more successfully on a full finite planet than pushing economic and population growth forever, which exacerbates problems like these and increases their impact on humans and other wildlife.
With zero net overseas migration, the population would stabilise at 27 million then fall slightly. This is the most important change that could be made to assist the Australian environment, but sadly discussing immigration is completely disallowed in mainstream Australian media.
There is no need to limit birthrates - they are already sub-replacement in Australia. Just cut immigration.
Immigration puts a greater demand on land for that purpose. Plus, a greater population in Australia means a net increase in global emissions - since the vast majority of migrants are from three poorer countries: India, China, Nepal.
Widespread illegal logging is occurring - but the logging is by a Government-owned corporation, so it receives little attention: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-21/victorian-forests-app...
Citation needed. Why is 7.7 billion people a problem? IMHO earth as it is today can accommodate 9 or 10 billion people without problems. (And like you, I have no citation as well.)
We currently utilise 50% -- the best, most fertile, productive 50% -- of the earth's landmass. What remains is marginal land, scrub, forests, permafrost, mountains, savannah, deserts etc, or is simply too hot or too cold for us to live comfortably. We're mistreating land with over fertilisation and suffering steady soil loss everywhere that's adopted post-war industrial agriculture. Many of those bits of rubbish land, forests and wildlife preserves we're not using are chopped up by pipelines, roads, rail affecting viability of the species broken up and interfering with natural migration and regrowth. Wildlife and wilderness has no chance.
We're clear cutting forest to make monoculture grazing land, or to plant thousands of acres of uninterrupted soya, palm oil and other major crops. As environmental awareness grows we're doing that at accelerated rate. Europe was clearcut in liveable areas in the Middle Ages, yet we've shown little to no sign of most noticing our colossal destructive impact. We just started importing big trees and colonising.
Borneo has gone from essentially untouched in the 1980s to 50% cleared now. Earth overshoot day puts us as needing 1.7 earths to sustain the current rate of regrowable use (it only considers replaceable resources, not mining and minerals). 10bn would push that up to over 2.
A sustainable population would probably be 1 or 2bn, if we want to allow a little room for the unforeseen.
Australia is one of the most sparsely populated countries on the planet. And the land that is burning is (relatively undisturbed) native forest, not farmland or ‘huge’ (?) cities.
i.e. very to do with overpopulation.
I get sad when I’m in a parking lot and I see a flock of Geese walking around the empty parking lot trying to dodge traffic. To me it really encapsulates the overall issue. Nobody thinks twice about it.
Even now, in the midst of unprecedented heat, drought and fire that has gripped this continent for months, if not years, "friends" of mine regularly post the most ignorant climate denialist BS on FB.
[1] https://reneweconomy.com.au/cop25-talks-labelled-lost-opport...
That isn't really true beyond the margins. Polls show that a large majority of Australians have accepted the science on climate collapse for two decades.
Australians know what's happening, but they believe their wealth can insulate them personally from the consequences while they watch dusky foreigners die. The last federal election contained an implied declaration of environmental war on the Pacific island nations, with the tradeoffs very clearly spelled out in the campaign.
Australia is a rogue nation of self-comforting nihilists, for whom Scott Morrison is a very natural leader.
+1 on your diagnosis of the cultural problem.
I guess my point is that these extreme margins gain their power only because of the nihilism of the skittish 'moderate' Australian majority, which knows enough, and cares little about anything of significance.
I've recently been reading The Australian online, and any time there's a climate related article, there are literally 100s of comments almost all of which are rabid climate deniers. It's stomach churning to read.
No idea how representative of general population, but my gut-feeling is that it's a significant minority, e.g. 10-20%.
I've been encouraged by some of the interviews and coverage with local government officials, they seem to be really shocked into a truth: I wish we could do better than a temporary 'concern' over the earth.
Far, far more. Embers have been known to travel 10s of km. However, if that happens after a fire has been reduced to smouldering, if it lights something, that gets considered as a new fire.
so when you've got fires as big as european nations, it's impossible to extinguish, even contain.
Are they just trying to prevent the spread and wait till the fire kills itself?
Basically this whenever possible, often if it's not near a populated area they won't even try to limit the spread, they put themselves out eventually with the right conditions (wind, rain, geography). Near populated areas they do what they can, mostly controlled burns and having fire breaks that allow them to effectively concentrate resources (firetrucks, water bombers) where they can actually be useful, a firetruck can be effective where there's a firebreak but without one it would be suicide to be there.
We're hoping for rain, but that's probably not going to appear in any significant quantities for a couple of months.
Edit: 180km perimeter
I think the article says that one of the fires has burnt an area the size of the state of Rhode Island.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/image/11838160-3x2-460x307.jpg
* the number of active fires is high.
* we have no proper rain and the ground is like DEAD dry.
* the amount of resources we have to put them all out is not infinite.
* the transport network does not cover much of those areas.
* the population tends to cluster in or at the fringes of flammable regions.
* the weather and fuel load are combining into truly horrific, chaotic fire behaviour, that can create their own weather systems (fire storms).
It's a good question though! I wonder if we can invent some technology to solve this.
They say the only thing that can help now is rainfall. And it's not gonna come. All that the fire fighters can do now is saving lifes, helping people to evacuate, trying to keep important roads safe, etc.
- A lot of the trees are eucalypts which are super oily and incredibly flammable. Some have been known to explode when they get too hot.
- It's been getting incredibly windy, which is taking burning embers far ahead of the main firefront and starting advance fires. Recently, a firey was crushed to death after the fire engine was blown over on top of him the winds are that strong.
* the state-based Rural Fire Services are staffed mostly by volunteers
* and have been inadequately funded for the last few years, despite warnings that this fire season would be a shocker
* we don’t have enough fire bombers
* leadership by state and federal politicians has been a complete joke
If this nightmare scenario isn't enough to push people into taking action, what will?
I suspect if the elections were to happen now, things might be different. Lots of people have directly or indirectly (thanks to heavy smog) suffered from the wildfires, moreso than previous summers.
Labor were also saying that taxes will increase, I think that is the major factor for their loss.
Every country needs to do its fair share, and Australia is not: http://theconversation.com/australia-hit-its-kyoto-target-bu...
Oh, and our elected Prime Minister brought a lump of coal into parliament, which says as much.
All that matters is countries having fair targets, and meeting those targets.
Countries are free to meet their emissions reductions targets how they like, including buying cheap coal from Australia, planes from US, and cars from Germany.
Australia's coal industry provides few jobs, is heavily government subsidized (either explicitly or through direct infrastructure funding), pays little to no tax, and creates environmental harm that the majority of the electorate disagree with.
[Sorry HN: I know I should be supporting this with annotations but am time pressed today.]
Regional Queenslanders don't want to end up like the old coal mining towns of the UK, which still have not recovered from the mine closures in 1980s. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/aug/26/blighted-coa...
I'm not saying coal is morally defensible, but this is democracy in action.
That's not quite true. You're not including Australia's extraction economy in that equation, only their local emissions. A similar miscalculation happens when people pretend Norway is a low CO2 output & impact nation by ignoring its extreme fossil fuel extraction per capita.
The obvious answer is to stop feeding China's emissions engine, which is dramatically larger than anybody else when it comes to CO2 emissions (and they're building a very large number of new coal plants). Unfortunately that probably wouldn't help much for very long, as China is de facto occupying Africa for resource extraction purposes.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_coal_prod...
481.3 million tonnes of coal / 24.6 million people
You're basically saying we should tackle Australia's 481 before China's 3523 or India's 716 or US' 702. Maybe we should tackle China first, as it is producing 45% of the world's coal, compared to 6% of Australia.
Now if you were to say that Australia is the 5th biggest producer of coal in the world, that'd be a more convincing argument.
I'm also surprised by Indonesia (6th). And the fact that Germany and Poland contribute 60% of the EU's (4th) coal production.
Germany is a literal "black spot" in that the coal industry still has political muscle there, despite Germany's otherwise relatively strong (but still very much minority) green movement.
On the other hand, Germany had already experienced the Chernobyl cloud.
We've missed our reduction goals, but reducton did happen (about 20% over the last 15 years, and the decrease has even been monotonic since 2013).
I keep having to correct this on hackernews specifically. I have to wonder, is there some sort of concerted effort to lie about this?
Yeah, there is a strong pro-nuclear group on HN who believe it has unfairly been targeted.
I guess I should not throw stones since both countries I live in are worse than this. Specifically they dig out more and more coal every year without stopping.
Who is 'we', and how do you suggest 'we' tackle China first?
Each country has to take care of its own emissions — we can’t wait for China to act first.
Unfortunately, I don't believe voting one way or another will make much difference. One party might be slightly better than another, but ultimately none will dare to implement sufficient measures. Climate problem will have to be solved outside of party politics. We need something akin to civil rights movement. On the global scale.
We also need someone other than Greta as the face of it. While she does a great job, she's often dismissed due to her age and the US president has even publicly called her retarded in the literal sense.
I didn't catch that one - is there a source? All I am Googling up is Trump telling her to chill, watch a movie, and a reference to anger management.
People in the streets is probably what you need.
A global movement should be able to muster a better spokesperson than a child. No matter how earnest and scared a child may be, it is still a mistake to make major policy decisions on their say-so.
Yours is a standard attack line, because it allows you to pretend that it's only her saying this, and ignore all the thousands of others who've been saying similar things, from the IPCC to the Green Parties of the world.
A line of attack being standard doesn't make it bad. Putting forward a child to speak to world leaders and get worked up on behalf of other children isn't going to do the movement any favours. Greta is a puppet chosen because someone cynically thinks that putting a child on stage is going to tug on people's heartstrings. They might be right, but she doesn't have anything going for her that should command respect.
That does not make the flaws are irrelevant. She is being suggested as a leader but she is in no position to actually provide leadership.
Al Gore also had a long list of problems, but he was much more respectable than Greta.
Then you are simply giving up on the whole thing? Because there is no other way to make much difference. If the current party platforms aren't sufficient, then those who care must first work to change those too. Become party members, work to select delegates that will then change it, etc. Same as any other democracy, regardless of details (in the US "party" (coalition) platforms and choices are determined by primaries before the country decides which one will assume government).
>Climate problem will have to be solved outside of party politics. We need something akin to civil rights movement. On the global scale.
It can't emphasized enough how completely, utterly wrong this is. Solving collective action problems requires coordinated use of power, which by definition is politics. Regardless of how the politics gets changed, it still will ultimately depend on politics. It's not some dirty word or concept, it's a descriptive/truism, when you work to get groups of humans to do something you're doing politics. It is our great good fortune, built on a mountain of blood a treasure, that so many of us live in democracies where it is so easy relative to history to work for radical political change through parties and government structures.
You mention the civil rights movement, but that ONLY WORKED THROUGH POLITICS. There seems to have been a huge forgetting in modern times that protest movements and the like are only means to a political end, not constructive in and of themselves. The civil rights movement had organized leadership that used the protests to mobilize voters, to gain public interest and recognition, etc., all with the ultimate aim of changing politicians/parties and actually getting actual for real legislation passed. They worked to the extent they translated into votes and in turn into actual power.
Conversely, consider all sorts of modern disorganized protests, no matter the size. It's perfectly possible to spend enormous amounts of time, effort, and resources and accomplish absolutely nothing whatsoever. It's a very dangerous and corrosive form of virtue signaling, and can actively harm progress because it burns people's limited capital to no useful end. And that in turn helps further breed disengagement, because people feel "they did something" "yet nothing happened". But "doing something" doesn't mean it's actually useful.
I was trying to say more or less the same, but maybe a bit too terse. [edit: with the qualification that I believe that protests and civil disobedience are essential means in "changing politicians/parties"]
What I was trying to say is that passive voting for the currently available options is not enough. People need to get off their couches and get actively involved in a climate movement and shift the overton window.
> Conversely, consider all sorts of modern disorganized protests, no matter the size.
Which ones do you have in mind specifically?
It's almost easier to ask the inverse, what modern "crowd movement" has had lasting effects at all? I'm thinking of big ones like Occupy, or Remain, or the Women's Marches, or Extinction Rebellion for really recent. What actual, tangible change did they directly effect? What concrete legislation? The US civil rights movement actually ultimately resulted in the enormous Civil Rights Act of 1964. Various movements created a full umbrella group, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, to coordinate lobbying efforts and help translate public will into Congressional action. And it was needed, because passage was fought vigorously all the way to the end, with heavy filibustering, rule maneuvering, etc. It passed not through some grand awakening but through sustained, multi-faceted application of power, including skillful use of grubby politics by supporters. And of course even it's passing was still only part of a process, there was resistance to implementation, lawsuits, and on and on. Yet none of that diminished the accomplishment or the lasting effect it's had on society.
I'm definitely worried there is an increasing movement towards flashy, feel-good and "exciting" efforts without the necessary accompanying political party effort needed to actually do the work of translating popular will into concrete power. And as there isn't an unlimited budget of political capital or popular attention there really is something of a zero-sum aspect to all this, if people are spending their time and resources on ineffective measures that's quite harmful. We need full carbon cost internalization for example, which will not just dramatically aid in finding the most efficient ways to go carbon neutral but also be helpful in the critical next step of going carbon negative. Protests are likely a necessary component of getting carbon cost internalization laws passed, but we do in fact need those laws passed so while necessary they're not sufficient.
Hearing the drivel spewing from our PM and other politicians; It's always the same pandering responses with no real strategic change. It's beyond frustrating. We will have to be destroyed (are being?) before anyone admits there is are real problems requiring real actions. I have noticed that at a more local level of government, the messaging has changed and is more serious now.
Here are some thought bubbles;
* more aggressive back-burning and fuel load management: managed at a federal level by law.
* stop all new coal, keep replacing with ?whatever?, including a reappraisal of nuclear.
* start retreating populations back towards cities: reverse the sprawl into protected urban bubbles.
* start requiring building to have ventilation and filtering systems that can handle smoke better, and are more efficient at sealing air: I've heard many people complain about smokey insides: happens to me too !
* stricter criminal penalties for any arson related crimes.
* restrictions on tourism to risky areas during the fire season.
Either that or we finally DO become a giant desert from coast to coast: should be safe enough then!
We just had a political cycle where the Labor party lost on (among many reasons) a more climate-change focused agenda in the federal election, so we won't know for another three years if there is any any voter backlash. Additionally, parliament is not in session and the major parties are currently focused on crisis response (instead of attacking each other), so the political football has yet to truly begin.
Aside from the considerable pain and hardship for these local communities and the potential increase in politicization of environmental issues, the tourism sector is being obviously effected as you simply can't drive to many parts of New South Wales right now, tourists are being asked to leave many areas, and Sydney has been smog filled for the last month.
Labour will say your taxes will increase, liberals will promise more tax cuts and everyone will vote for Liberal again.
Not smog, just plain smoke.
The current government is no exception. We need to do more to protect Australia's environment, including from climate change. We are letting the Great Barrier Reef wither away, and our land is burning.
The lack of leadership is particularly frustrating. Instead of developing and growing new sustainable industries that will be around when the world has de-carbonised the government is doubling down on coal. It is utter madness. We have lacked a cohesive energy policy for over a decade due to climate change being a political issue where sides have been divided. Its hard to believe, but in 2007 the collation under John Howard took a carbon emissions policy to the election. We have regressed in policy from that point.
Ultimately, a lot of the blame for all of this sits with the Greens. If they had been so blinded by purity and supported Rudd's carbon pollution reduction scheme. It would have been in place, and like the GST been settled. Instead they allowed it to become a political football. That plus Gillard's ineptness with the carbon tax has made this a toxic debate.
Talk is cheap, and the only thing that will change it is writing to your representative and letting them know. I strongly urge you to respectfully write to your MP and let them know they need to do better.
Could the country promote or even mandate permaculture style landworks?
The wide-scale promotion of non-native flora should be obvious enough as a non-starter.
Look up gold-plating poles and wires.
The grid death spiral is a long way off. It's also something that could have been mitigated by the networks themselves if they'd had any economists worth their salt.
Most rural areas were blue for the last election.
(Blue represents the conservative Liberal Government, whilst Red is the opposition, Labor party. The Liberals are quite 'denialist', or at least obstructionist, when it comes to progress on alternative energy. Neither party are particularly inspiring to the Australia populace at the moment though).
If we had rational worldwide leadership we could conceivably work greenhouse gases into the WTO and other trade agreements. If China needs to be tamed for everyone else to take part, factor it in.
Basically, hazard reduction burning is a viable technique when the fire season lasts 3 or 4 months. This fire season is looking like it will last for 6 to 7 months, which leaves very little time to plan and execute hazard reduction.
You are probably not taking into account the size of the areas that require hazard reduction management, and the low (now even lower) number of people who are responsible for it.
In short, environmental activists (and, mostly, arsonists) are a bogeyman created by people trying to divert attention away from the real problems.
The main real problems are:
Due to forestry the water cycle on the western side of the great dividing range (and other mountains in Australia) has been disrupted and areas that usually receive rain have had declining rain or no rain in the past decade.
Global patterns such as El Nino have been disrupted leading to less precipitation and one of the worst droughts in Australian history.
Average temperatures across the continent have been setting new records for the past decade, with 2019 being the hottest year on record, and about 3 weeks ago we had the hottest day on record Australia wide.
Serious budget cuts to the organisations who are responsible for hazard reduction in fire prone areas.
It's basically the perfect storm of climate change and government ineptitude.
But, according to our glorious leader, we should not worry, stay calm and watch the cricket.
Seriously, you couldn't make this shit up if you tried.
Also seems like the Australian media supported the protestors:
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/01/abc-deleting-facebook-posts...
Here’s the thing: the reportage of the protest was on a local-news Facebook page maintained by the national broadcaster and was not reported more widely at the time (September 2019). You can find the post cached, it doesn’t read as being in favour or opposition to the protest. But it did contain the names and faces of the (two) protesters.
The planned burn zone is in the one of the current fire-affected areas - although probably not the massive ones you’ve been reading about, 500 miles away.
The article posted asks whether the area of the planned burn “has now been completed by Mother Nature” alongside screen grabs of the cached article, and you can see the tenor of the comments section what sorts of feelings that provokes.
It’s pretty reasonable to assume that the post was deleted to protect two protesters from harassment.
I don’t think that makes the article less on point.
EDIT: I just read the link you provided. Do you honestly not see how unreliable that source is? They are basically an anti ABC hate farm. Do some independent fact checks and get back to me.
> But, according to our glorious leader, we should not worry, stay calm and watch the cricket.
Ironic, in that last I heard, several big matches were being canceled due to the weather...
FYI - I'm an Aussie born and bred, and part of our culture is to laugh at ourselves, even during the hard times. That's how Australians stay so resilient through hardship.
Nobody has used Centralia, PA as a generator despite the long burning underground coal fire - it has also been moving underground in a regular pattern.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21934288
from user voldacar is:
> Could you repost your original post (now flagged) so I and others can see your argument?
From
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21933963
here is the original post:
For
"1/ The looming climate crisis will be to this century what the two world wars were to the previous one. It will require countries and institutions to re-allocate capital from other endeavors to fight against a warming planet. This is the decade we will begin to see this re-allocation of capital. We will see carbon taxed like the vice that it is in most countries around the world this decade, including in the US. We will see real estate values collapse in some of the most affected regions and we will see real estate values increase in regions that benefit from the warming climate. We will see massive capital investments made in protecting critical regions and infrastructure. We will see nuclear power make a resurgence around the world, particularly smaller reactors that are easier to build and safer to operate. We will see installed solar power worldwide go from ~650GW currently to over 20,000GW by the end of this decade. All of these things and many more will cause the capital markets to focus on and fund the climate issue to the detriment of many other sectors."
there is an accurate one word summary -- nonsense. With two or more words, even worse than nonsense.
It's time to drive a stake through the heart of this climate change alarmism. We can do a good job just in this little post.
In simple terms, there is no serious evidence that CO2 from human activities at anything like probable concentrations will have any significant effect on the temperature or climate of the earth.
Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but it is a long logical path from there to any claims of a significant effect.
We need just two steps:
(1) History.
There is NOTHING in the climate history from the present back to about 1 million years ago that supports the idea that anything like realistic concentrations of CO2 from human activities will have any significant effect on temperatures.
(i) For the ice core records going back ~1 million years, yes, both temperatures and CO2 concentrations went both up and down. BUT, if we just look carefully at the big graph in Al Gore's movie, with high irony, that graph totally destroys his claims from that graph: He misread the graph. The main point is that there is an 800 year delay; CO2 concentrations changed 800 years AFTER the temperature changes, from whatever cause.
Specifically: (a) When temperatures started increasing, from whatever cause, CO2 concentrations were LOW, not high. (b) About 800 years later CO2 concentrations were HIGH, from increased biological activity from the higher temperatures. (c) When temperatures started to fall, from whatever cause, CO2 concentrations were still HIGH, not low. (d) The high CO2 concentrations did not keep the temperatures from falling. (e) Once the temperatures fell, about 800 years later so did CO2 concentrations. Net, CO2 did not cause the higher temperatures or keep the higher temperatures from falling.
(ii) In the last 2000 years we had the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, and there is no suggestion that CO2 concentration changes caused either.
(iii) Starting in the 1940s and through about 1970, we actually had some significant cooling, but in those years CO2 from human activities -- WWII, pulling of the Great Depression, and the economic boom after WWII -- increased. So, we got COOLING, not warming, with the additional CO2 from human activities.
Net, there is NO data from the historical record that supports the claim that higher CO2 will cause higher temperatures.
(2) Yes, CO2 is a <i>greenhouse</i> gas. The absorption spectrum is at
https://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?Spec=C124389&Index=0&...
So, CO2 absorbs in three narrow bands, one for each of bending, stretching, and twisting of the molecule, out in the infrared.
No, Tom Friedman of the NYT: CO2 does not absorb sunlight, and anyone can confirm this by looking at a source of CO2, e.g., exhaling or the bubbles from soda pop, and simply observing that the CO2 is not visible and does not cast a shadow.
So, the theory has been that the CO2 warms the planet. Then there has been
ALARMIST CLAIM: Extra CO2 from current human activities will soon cause significant extra warming and, thus, "climate change", a "climate crisis", etc.
Since the historical record can't support the ALARMIST CLAIM, we have to rely on the theory based on the absorption spectrum of CO2 and computation.
Well the computations were done by dozens of teams, and the results are summarized in
http://www.energyadvocate.com/gc1.jpg
Net, as in this graph, nearly all the computations predicted rapid, significant increases in temperatures soon. Well the time of predicted increases came and went with no sign of anything like the predicted increases.
In science, when predictions are made and found to be false, we junk the science.
No doubt, the failures in that graph are some of the worst in all the history of science. GOOD science, e.g., the hunt for and finding the Higgs boson at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), the observations that confirmed the predictions of black holes, many other confirmed predictions of special and general relativity, the A-bomb, the H-bomb, the design of the Hubble telescope, to the quantum mechanics in semi-conductors that are the core of current digital electronics, the science was just rock solid.
We are just awash in super solid science, and the global warming computations in that graph are just a humiliation of anything scientific and just sick.
So, for the ALARMIST CLAIM, there is no scientific support.
For more there is the video documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg
there see (A) the remarks of MIT Professor R. Lindzen on (i) why any warming we might be getting now cannot be from CO2 and (ii) the huge pile of money that didn't just buy off the climate scientists but HIRED the climate alarmists pretending to be climate scientists, maybe 10 times more alarmists than real scientists.
Also that documentary argues that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age were caused by variations in the rates of sun spots. More sun spots increase the solar wind which, from more links in a causal chain, in the end slows cloud formation and has a net warming effect.
So, since both (1) history from ~1 million years ago to the present and (2) the computations based on CO2 being a greenhouse gas fail to support the ALARMIST CLAIM, we have no scientific support or even meaningful evidence for the ALARMIST CLAIM or the proposed very expensive reductions in carbon, etc.
In this case and quite generally, if we are willing to go forward with big, expensive changes without good evidence, then we leave ourselves open to some of the worst mistakes in all of civilization.
One current example of such mistakes is killing off the rhinoceroses to get their horns for use in Chinese medicine.
For another such mistake, there is from page 76 of
Susan Milbrath, Star Gods of the Maya: Astronomy in Art, Folklore, and Calendars (The Linda Schele Series in Maya and Pre-Columbian Studies), ISBN-13 978-0292752269, University of Texas Press, 2000.
with
"Indeed, blood sacrifice is required for the sun to move, according to Aztec cosmology (Durian 1971:179; Sahaguin 1950 - 1982, 7:8)."
That is the Mayan charlatans killed people to pour their blood on a rock to keep the sun moving across the sky. No doubt the sun actually did keep moving across the sky.
If we go forward with the Green New Deal, the Paris Accords, carbon taxes, etc. we are making a mistake as irrational as in the Chinese medicine and the Mayans.
Warning: It appears that now the sun is entering the part of the 11 year or so sunspot cycle with fewer sun spots. So, we are in line for a few years of cooling.
So, don't believe a claim of the global warming alarmists that their efforts caused the cooling.
At this point, continuing with entertaining the ALARMIST CLAIM is just nonsense, expensive nonsense.
Otherwise it might look like Europe is only interested in forests that compensate their CO2 emissions.
Should I stop burning CO2? nahhh, it's too expensive. Let's pretend we care about others forests and blame on them.
But now Europe has the 'moral authority' to prevent poor countries from explore their own lands to give a decent life to their citizens, that have been left in misery after decolonization.
BTW, Europe talk so loud about climate changes, sign agreements and so on but do nothing relevant about it. Do you know why?
The Australian forest is much thinner and does experience some natural burning, but this one is much bigger due to climate change.
Also, both of these are bad.
So now the policies and fire prevention techniques changed (for the worse) and exactly what many firefighters predicted has happened: mass fires covering the east coast. It doesn't matter how much the climate changed when the whole part about prevention has been screwed up.