Whether in recent years the risk of bushfires has increased or not because of global warming is essentially irrelevant to the argument. In fact, the recent bushfires in mainly Eastern Australia are long overdue (which goes contrary to the global warming argument—no, don't put words in my mouth by suggesting that I'm a denier, I'm just stating a fact).
First, let me say that I do have some understanding and experience in such matters: decades ago when I was a young kid in primary school I stood on a hill overlooking the township of Leura in the Blue Mountains of NSW and watched a raging bushfire tear through the township burning down over 100 houses in about an hour. It is hard to describe or paraphrase neither the emotion that I felt then nor the experience I gained from witnessing the conflagration. Living in a bushfire-prone area, I've seen many fires like it over the decades.
It taught me a salient lesson about how truly dangerous and idiosyncratic bushfires can be—unpredictably, brick houses would often burn down whilst weatherboard ones would often be spared, and the fires would often unexpectedly gobble up ones out in the open whilst leaving houses with many trees and undergrowth in their yards or nearby.
Second, I've had to fight bush fires to save property, it's hot, horrible and extremely dangerous work.
The key issues are these:
- It can take many decades for a truly major bushfire to reoccur in a given location. For example, the recent fires in the Jamison Valley in the Blue Mountains of NSW burned through bushland that has not seen a major fire for over 50 years. Over such a long time, the undergrowth becomes thick, it's a tinderbox just waiting to ignite, and on the first truly hot day or lightning strike off it goes.
- Fire fighting in national parks miles from houses and other property is usually a waste of time (as I've just witnessed in the Jamison Valley where the water bombing was essentially useless (the fires progressed unhindered into more uninhabited national parkland despite ongoing efforts) and the cost of the fire-fighting helicopters was enormous for essentially nought effect). Fire fighting efforts would be more effective if they concentrated on protecting townships and populated areas. Nevertheless, gung-ho fire fighters have to be seen doing something even if it is useless.
- Unfortunately, as truly major fires only repeat every 50 or 60 years, these fire fighters don't have a firsthand memory of past events—simply: corporate memory of past fires is lost from one major fire to another and thus it usually results in stuff-ups which can be serious, loss of live etc. as we've tragically seen again in the recent Australian bushfires. (Remember, loss of life in bushfires in Australia is tragically common.)
- Residents in fire-prone areas often have short memories, they grow trees in inappropriate places and the tree-hugging councils make things worse as they will not take action to remove a dangerous fire situation. For example, near Echo Point in the popular tourist area of Katoomba (near where the fire was burning in the Jamison Valley) only a few weeks ago I personally witnessed the terrible situation of weeds and undergrowth right near housing and population centres that should have been removed by the Council. After all, fires are nothing new to that area but Council has done SFA about removing the fire threat.
- If fire fighting is overly successful in national parks and reserves, it can make the situation much worse for when the big one comes [which it inevitably will] as the fire will be much more intense. Instead of just burning the leaves of the trees it'll also kill them—great 400-year+ trees that have survived many a previous fire are now gone forever! It's damn stupid to do this!
- For those of you not in Australia who think I've lost my senses by saying this, you need to keep in mind what I said at the beginning—the Australian bush must burn periodically to survive. The seeds of many trees, Banksia for instance, only germinate after a fire has opened their seedpods. The aim should be to allow this to happen on a natural cycle whilst still protecting life and property. Unfortunately, the Australian people are like ostriches with their heads in the sand, decade after decade they continue to fuck-up fire management to the nth degree and they do so at the risk to life and property.
Finally let me note that Californians are not much better. Why they have let the Australian eucalypt, which burn like incendiary torches due to being full of inflammable eucalypt oil, overrun their state simply defies any reasonable logic that I can think of. Moreover, eucalypts, like many introduced species, grow like weeds in California (when I first went there both the size and the leafiness of the eucalypts amazed me). Unlike Australia where the eucalypt is native, Californians have a choice. It seems to me they ought to eradicate them, if for no other reason than in the interests of safety.