Australia is on fire, at least 17 people have been killed, hundreds of homes have been destroyed, and an estimated half-billion animals — both livestock and wildlife — have been burned alive.
The area burned in the bush fires so far is six billion hectares — six times the area burned in last year’s Amazon rainforest fires and 60 times the area burned in California.
The stories and images that have emerged from Australia are vivid and dramatic…
Ecologists from the University of Sydney estimate that around half a billion mammals, birds and reptiles have been killed as a result of bushfires in Australia since September 2019. 😔#AustralianBushfires#AustraliaBurning #AustralianFires pic.twitter.com/vxXqjiap7N
— Nudibranch (@Nudiibranch) January 2, 2020
…
As Paul Homewood pointed out last month, there has been no significant long-term decrease in rainfall or an increase in temperatures in the affected regions.
Yes, it has been dry in New South Wales (where most of the worst fires are), but there have been several years, especially pre-1960, when it was drier:
First, let’s look at rainfall. All the data and graphs that follows are from the Australian BOM:
As we can see, rainfall in NSW over the last three months is well below average, but no worse than several previous years on record.
The same applies to temperature. Yes, this has been a hot spring in New South Wales. But there have been times when it has been much hotter — making a nonsense of all stories in the Australian media about temperatures being the hottest evah:
Neither is the monthly average of 38.0C a record high. The three years from 1899 to 1901 all saw average December mean maximum temperatures well above 38.0C.
Since the station moved to the airport in 1993, 38C has only been exceeded once until this year, that was in 2005, when it averaged 38.5C, still well below the December 1899 when the mean was 39.9C.
So, to be clear, there is zero evidence of any change in climatic conditions that might have increased the likelihood or severity of these bush fires. This is not — repeat NOT — a man-made climate change story, and anyone who claims otherwise is either a gullible idiot or a lying charlatan.
There is, nonetheless, a good reason to believe that the stupidity and irresponsibility of man are at least partly to blame for this disaster — just not quite in the way that the left-liberal MSM and the green wankerati would have you believe.
Man-made culprit #1: all the firebugs who have been deliberately starting fires in New South Wales, Queensland, and elsewhere. You won’t be surprised that their involvement has had very little coverage in the left-liberal MSM.
Here’s a story from December headlined ‘Firebugs blamed for destructive Queensland fires’ — it notes:
Figures obtained by AAP reveal 98 people – 31 adults and 67 juveniles – have been dealt with by Queensland police for deliberately setting fires.
A 16-year-old boy was found to have started a fire that razed 14 homes in central Queensland and dealt with under the state’s Youth Justice Act.
Two more teens, 14 and 15, were charged with endangering property by fire over a blaze that destroyed two homes and forced hundreds to flee.
Man-made culprit #2: well-meaning idiots who don’t understand that unless you manage forested areas with controlled burns, you’re going to end up with out-of-control wildfires.
Jo Nova has a damning story about locals in East Gippsland in the state of Victoria who successfully stopped a planned controlled burn at Nowa Nowa. Two of them were pictured holding signs saying, “Spring burns kill baby birds alive” and “Stop burning nesting birds”.
One grandmother was quoted as saying, “I’m more worried about climate change, and the impact the burns are having. I’m worried for my grandchildren.”
ABC — the excruciatingly left-wing Australian Broadcasting Company, so woke it makes the BBC and CNN look like Fox News — reported on the protests with some enthusiasm last September but has since mysteriously decided to delete the story from Facebook.
If this is the kind of obstructive idiocy that the mainstream media and the junk-science climate alarmism industry have created with their global warming propaganda, then the mainstream media and the junk-science climate alarmism industry have blood on their hands.
Man-made culprit #3: Greens
The people most to blame for the Australian bush fires are the greens. Just like in California, their tree-hugging Gaia worship blinded them to the reality that forests need regular clearance and maintenance if they are not to become a major fire hazard.
Some Australian politicians on the right side of the argument are well aware of this:
“The problems we have got have been created by the Greens,” Mr [Barnaby] Joyce told The Australian.
“We haven’t had the capacity to easily access (hazard) reduction burns because of all of the paperwork that is part of green policy.
“We don’t have access to dams because they have been decommissioned on national parks because of green policy. We have trees that have fallen over vehicles and block roads, so people cannot either get access to fight a fire or to get away from fires. And we can’t knock over the trees because of Greens policy.
Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack has lashed the “disgraceful, disgusting” behaviour of “raving inner-city lunatics” for linking climate change to the ferocious bushfires burning across Queensland and NSW.
Yet still, in large parts of Australia, it remains illegal to remove trees from your land even in order to create fire breaks and protect your property — despite the obvious risk this ban creates to homeowners living in potential bush-fire zones.
Trees have been designated a ‘carbon sink’, which supposedly offset Australia’s CO2 emissions.
Read rest at Breitbart
It’s disingenuous and deliberately misleading to say that “… there has been no significant long-term decrease in rainfall or an increase in temperatures in the affected regions.”
How about you post the mean temperature from the same Bom calculator that shows an significant upward trend since the late 1970’s. While rainfall anomaly may not be significantly different, a 40 year ongoing increase in mean temperature has significant impact on how dry the land is. If you have a constant heating and no additional moisture, the resulting impact is a much drier climate. Forget for a moment why it is occurring and just look at the numbers. Regardless of the reason, there’s no escaping the fact that we are facing a rapidly and unprecedented rise in mean temperatures not before seen in any historical record.
Donald Trump said of the California Fires, “they need to be Raked….” he did not mean a ‘garden rake’ he meant getting in there with Big Machinery and Removing all the Forest debris that acts as ‘fine fuel’ for the ignition of Forest Fires…. No Fuel = No Fire..!! We also Need to reduce the Forest cover in Dry Scleorphyll Forest by at least 2/3rds….. particularly within 5 ks of ‘habitation’ such a Small Country towns. Two thirds you say ?? Yup !! Two thirds….’Less Fuel equals less Fire !!’ Just imagine if a suburban House block say 1/4 acre size, was filled totally with half empty fuel barrels, tonnes of dead cardboard boxes and old Newspapers and waste plastic…… there would be a Public outcry !! And ‘the Authorities’ would ‘act immediately’ right ?? Well ~ not-the-case in Melbourne… Big ‘waste dumps in the City have gone Officialy ignored for decades , until they go up in Flames….and THEN they ‘get Noticed !! And the Govermnent if ‘forced to Act’……. its JUST like that with Bushfires…and the Greens wanting More Land to be Locked up and Left…..to provide More Fire …….for More catastrophic Burns !!
Whoops – I highly doubt 6 billion hectares. Try 6 million. That’s what Wikipedia is currently saying, anyway.
The reporting in the European media is depressingly similar – the situation is portrayed as if there was absolutely no question that so-called “climate change” is responsible for the fires. The TV and newspaper audience is essentially supposed to “know” as a matter of course that every bush fire, storm, flood, drought, lack of snowfall, too much snowfall, heatwave, extreme cold, etc., etc. are all consequences of “climate change”, or more precisely: of an alleged increase of 0.6 degrees C in average global temperatures over the past century that becomes less and less believable the more one learns about the data fiddling perpetrated by the alarmists tasked with gathering assorted temperature data.
For me, in the past week, on watching 7, SBS, 2, in that order, of an evening, I’m struck by the almost word for word narration with NEVER a hint about the nature of the ignition; whether dry lightning strikes, or curved bits of broken glass focussing the hot sun, or even spontaneous combustion, for were they to suggest any of those absurdities they’d immediately be exposed as covering for the arsonists and for also not putting the question of arson to the politicians, the firechiefs, the police, and any other pompous asses.
Good article. But it lost credibility for me with the cover picture. Photo shopped from at least 3 catastrophic pictures is not an honest depiction now, is it? The situation is way bad enough to do a good piece without exaduration.
why do you think this is photo shopped,
Lets start by putting those idiot Tree Hugger’s/Gaia worshiping nit-wits on all these fires lets start with Julia(BUTTERFLY)Hill and her idiot friends and followers
I’ve always said that these #ClimateCrackpots will be the main issue in changing the world, with their stupidity! They are scaremongering with their #ClimateScams and should be brought to justice for terrorism, because that is exactly what they are, terrorists! They are terrorising the World in an terrible way! #NoBrains #ShouldBeBanned!