Common Dreams says it’s very bad in Australia.
The fires in Australia’s southeastern state of New South Wales (NSW) were at the “catastrophic” level on Saturday, according to the BBC.
“These fires are likely to continue to spread well past Christmas,” said NSW Rural Fire Services Inspector Ben Shepherd.
Photos shared on social media showed hazy skies around the country.
“Everything is burning,” said one Twitter user.
As Common Dreams reported Thursday, Australia just endured a heat wave that broke records for temperature in consecutive days.
“I think this is the single loudest alarm bell I’ve ever heard on global heating,” said Kees van der Leun, a director at the American consultancy firm Navigant.
The view from above:
And guess what: escape routes are closing.
The fires are out of control and will be stopped only by rain. The forecast is no rain for the next couple of months.
Comments
10 responses to “It’s here”
And meanwhile, all over the world, we keep electing people who think the most important problem is how to keep dark-skinned people from getting goodies they believe are the god-given property of white-skinned people.
Aldo Leopold once said “To have an ecological education is to live alone in a world of wounds”. I can testify to the truth of that statement. I weep for the world.
We have had far worse fires in the past, don’t you know? I know this because the shock jocks tell me so. They remind us that in January 1939 71 people died in Victorian bushfires, along with hundreds of home and businesses destroyed.
What they ignore is that in 1939 few people had cars, rural roads were poorly maintained, and most firefighters were equipped with knapsack sprayers and wet sacks. The severity of those fires would have been much less if fought with modern tankers, aerial water bombers, and if people had better escape routes.
Climate change isn’t causing the fires, they still mostly start by arson, lightning, or human error, but the climate is making them harder to stop. The seasonal window for preventative burning is getting shorter, meaning the fuel load is greater. The drought, in some places, is stretching into its third year, so the fuel is well ready to burn. We have been lucky, so far, that the death toll is light. I cannot imagine what it would be if we only had 1939’s firefighting equipment.
But we are blessed. We have a Prime Minister who puts all his faith in god. With god on his side, he has no need to listen to wise counsel from those with experience.
.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-14/former-fire-chief-calls-out-pm-over-refusal-of-meeting/11705330
The missing link for second quote
https://www.thebigsmoke.com.au/2019/11/15/fire-chiefs-called-out-scott-morrison-theyre-yet-to-receive-a-response/
His conversations with the Supreme Being take up all his time. His calendar is full:
9:00 – God
10:00 – God
11:00 – God
12:00 – Lunch
1:00 – God
2:00 – God
3:00 – God
4:00 – God
5:00 – off for the day
(I used a typical US schedule; I’m not sure they use the same schedule in Australia. If not, forgive me, I am being USAcentric again. Because it’s what I know.)
Yep, iknklast, far too USA-centric. :-)
Our pollies aren’t as self-assured as yours, so don’t get a direct line to god. Scott Morrison gets his instructions from Hillsong Church, founded by Brian Houston, who knew his father was sexually abusing children in the Church but did not report these crimes to the Police. How very Christian. Hillsong is an Australian virus, exported to the USA, and infecting the likes of Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, and the Kardashians, among others.
Oh, and unlike your Prezz, our PM really does start his day well before 0900 and is often still working well beyond 2200. Maybe he should watch more TV and let others do the real work.
Roj @ 2 – fires caused by lightning can also be caused by climate change though, can’t they? More fuel because of drought, as you mentioned? That connection has certainly been made a lot with regard to the California wildfires, and I think Canadian ones too.
Yes, there are two frightening aspects of lightning linked to climate change. One is what is called “dry lightning” where the thunderstorms are not accompanied by any significant precipitation. Then, some fires are so intense that they create their own weather, howling winds, and in some cases, lightning strikes to light further fires. this leads to fires “crowning” where they race through treetops, sucking all the oxygen from below, leaving anyone in its path with limited chances for survival.
Don’t know about California, but the biggest impact climate change is having here is the much earlier start to the fire season. These fires began in November, we don’t usually see fires of this intensity and spread until after Xmas. November used to be a time when some preventative burning could still be done, but no longer.
Ultimately, we will always have fires, and the cause of an individual fire is irrelevant to the effects of climate change. What we do know is the fires are earlier, faster, harder to control, and if climate change isn’t a contributor, then I don’t know what is.
I sort of think of these brush fires in Australia and school shootings in the US in a similar vein. Both are awful, both have obvious public policy steps that could be taken to begin to address the situation. In both cases, those steps are actively resisted by ostensibly democratic institutions instructed by majorities. Both seem to be getting worse, particularly the Australian fires. For the outside, neither make a whole lot of sense.
In Australia’s case, their government was among the four most significant in ensuring that the latest round of climate talks were a complete disaster, rather than the usual waste of time to achieve minimal progress towards too-modest goals. Yet there are few populations in the world more clearly seeing negative effects of shifts in the climate. At some point, you would think someone would do something about it.
I’ve read a bit, and/or seen a bit on sciencey tv (Nova or similar) about fire tornadoes, when as Roj says the fires are so intense they make their own weather. BAD weather.
But the real problem, the elephant in the room, the bit that everyone else fails to see, where Australia has gone wrong – is we didn’t sweep the forest floors. If only we’d listened to Trump.
/snark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6jbx0vlRiE
The first 10 seconds show how fast it is, incredible heat igniting the eucalyptus oil in the canopy. This is the fire that cannot be escaped.
And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, we even have birds that carry burning twigs to help spread fires. They have learned that fire drives their prey into the open.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK1XfBDBuAM