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Comment by huffmsa | Hacker News Reader

Ah, it's the climate's fault. Not shitty forestry management policies by the various government entities who are "responsible" for that kind of stuff.

Letting underbrush accumulate because you have a zero tolerance burn policy is the problem everywhere there's been a severe fire.

We thought we'd improved a million year old system, but all we did was make it a tail end event.

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Winters are shorter and summers longer in Australia compared to 70 years ago:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-51697803

This means a reduction in the length of the cooler stable weather periods when prescribed burns are able to be performed:

https://www.dpaw.wa.gov.au/management/fire/prescribed-burnin...

So the opportunities when the weather is "just right" for conducting a fuel reduction burn are fewer. Various regional fire departments have stated they are not able to complete their planned burns as a result.

https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/hazard-reduction-may-be...

Not risking a prescribed burn getting out of control due to unfavorable weather conditions doesn't sound like shitty forest management policy.

Another factor leading to fuel load build up is the decimation of native wild life like quendas and woylies due to predation by feral cats, dogs and foxes:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-06/quenda-poo-helps-tree...

These small marsupials eat the leaves or dig the leaf litter into the soil while foraging. This reduces the build up of dry leaves on the ground and thus reduces the fuel load.

> Letting underbrush accumulate because you have a zero tolerance burn policy is the problem everywhere there's been a severe fire.

Australia doesn't have a zero tolerance burn policy. New South Wales alone burned ("bushfire hazard reduction") 187,041 hectares in the 2018-19 financial year[1].

Your comment comes across as an American who doesn't actually know anything about Australia.

[1]: https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/12989...

I'll comb through that document and find it myself if you don't have it offhand, but do you know what section I'll find information about controlled / planned burns? And / or underbrush removal policies?

Strike that, found it after rereading your post

The article doesn't talk about fault - it simply says such events are more likely now that temperatures are higher.

If I do a postmortem at work and conclude that, say, kernel X.Y's page cache makes deadlocks under unusually high load more likely, that doesn't mean that kernel X.Y caused the outage. Something had to provide the high load in the first place. But the kernel was a contributing factor - we could have survived the unusually high load otherwise.

You're correct. But it never says what the base likelihood of a severe even is.

30% higher than a base of 0.01%? 30% higher than a base of 10% probability?

That makes a difference.

Especially if other factors have much higher contributory rates. Like "letting underbrush accumulate increases chances of severe events by 400% YoY".

And it's not a postmortem if you only discuss a single factor. It's an opinion/position piece.

>letting underbrush accumulate increases chances of severe events by 400% YoY

It's interesting you use this example because this has been covered by the RFS - the period during which hazard reduction burns can be safely done to clear the underbrush is shrinking because the fire season is longer and winter is shorter. They can only do those burns when it's both safe and not raining, so a change in climate can indirectly impact the severity.

It's like not sleeping for a week and then when your organs start failing and you're deeply depressed and have to sleep for 4 days saying "it's the culture's fault!"

No, it's your fault for thinking you're better than a billion year old process.

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