How do we deal with bushfires in a warming climate?

[chiff]

My limited and redundant fire fighting experience and relating theory are no longer relevant.I defer to the experts like Greg Mullins et al.They have studied it, experienced it, and kept up with it.

 

[Joules MM1]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/clim...01/15/2010s-hottest-decade-world/?arc404=true

2019 capped world’s hottest decade in recorded history
It also marked the second-warmest year ever. “What happens in the future is really up to us," one scientist said.

By Brady Dennis ,
Andrew Freedman and
John Muyskens
January 15

Source: NASA’s Goddard's Global Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP)

 

[wayneL]

It looks like St Scott brought us some rain, c'mon leftist tw@ts, credit where credit is due

 

[Joules MM1]

ACT declares state of...

 

[moXJO]

Well that cleared that up.
I thought they said no significant rain till may or something?

That was a huge and much needed soaking in my area.

 

[moXJO]

Had a guy tell me some aboriginal elders told him a few months back that we "needed a big burn off to make it rain and break the drought".
I hadn't actually heard that one before.

So was the massive amount of rain (that wasn't forecast) a result of the bushfires, or just a coincidence?

 

[basilio]

Fascinating story on the AFL website about a bushfire relief game in 1983 after the Ash Wednesdays fires.

Real blast from the past.

Secret tragedy that inspired Blues great in 1983 bushfire game
When Wayne Johnston ran out with his Carlton teammates in a fundraiser after the Ash Wednesday fires, he was driven by a family tragedy

THE LAST time the League staged a best-of-the-best charity game to raise money for bushfire relief, two competing players were haunted by harrowing personal stories of how fires had scarred their lives.

Carlton's Alex Marcou gets a kick away despite the attention of David Ackerly, as Rod Ashman and Wayne Johnston look on. Picture: www.blueseum.org
https://www.afl.com.au/news/375647/secret-tragedy-that-inspired-blues-great-in-1983-bushfire-game

 

[SirRumpole]

Had a guy tell me some aboriginal elders told him a few months back that we "needed a big burn off to make it rain and break the drought".
I hadn't actually heard that one before.

So was the massive amount of rain (that wasn't forecast) a result of the bushfires, or just a coincidence?

Just coincidence. The rain was the result of the Indian Ocean dipole going towards negative from a strong positive condition resulting in higher sea temperatures in the Eastern Indian ocean, more evaporation from the sea and therefore more rain.

I remember a firefighting chief saying in about November that rain was forecast in late January/ early February so it actually was forecast.

 

[moXJO]

Just coincidence. The rain was the result of the Indian Ocean dipole going towards negative from a strong positive condition resulting in higher sea temperatures in the Eastern Indian ocean, more evaporation from the sea and therefore more rain.

I remember a firefighting chief saying in about November that rain was forecast in late January/ early February so it actually was forecast.

Someone here said no significant rain till may.
I wondered if the fires affected the climate in some way as to shift the weather pattern?

Perhaps the media just beat up the story

 

[SirRumpole]

Well anyway, here's Shane Fitzsimmons doing an interview last December.

https://www.news.com.au/national/su...hs-rfs/video/3b1b628b4dbb44375a287d866bd96bb5

 

[3 hound]

Interesting thread, I listened to a local indigenous elder on ABC radio recently very upset and angry about the way we manage these areas in terms of fuel load build up and sucker regrowth.

He feels climate change is being focussed on at the expense of proven methods that would still work regardless of the impact of climate change ie annual burn offs and fuel load reduction.

 

[sptrawler]

Interesting thread, I listened to a local indigenous elder on ABC radio recently very upset and angry about the way we manage these areas in terms of fuel load build up and sucker regrowth.

He feels climate change is being focussed on at the expense of proven methods that would still work regardless of the impact of climate change ie annual burn offs and fuel load reduction.

The problem is, there is just as much an outcry about burning off, as there is about climate change. You're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't.

 

[3 hound]

The problem is, there is just as much an outcry about burning off, as there is about climate change. You're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't.

That's nuts, anyone who opposes controlled burns and fuel load management should be criminally charged and locked up for a long time.

 

[macca]

That's nuts, anyone who opposes controlled burns and fuel load management should be criminally charged and locked up for a long time.

LOL I would not go that far but you are right in as much as it is a relatively new problem.

In the past, before we had whiz bang, multi million dollar equipment the risk was reduced by wise people doing it when the weather suited.

Fires have been a problem in gum forests since forever, the Aboriginals were able to live there for a very long time simply by managing the fuel load.

 

[3 hound]

LOL I would not go that far but you are right in as much as it is a relatively new problem.

In the past, before we had whiz bang, multi million dollar equipment the risk was reduced by wise people doing it when the weather suited.

Fires have been a problem in gum forests since forever, the Aboriginals were able to live there for a very long time simply by managing the fuel load.

It's not just aboriginals the entire grazing industry from the start of white Australia did annual burn offs. It's not like they killed themselves and all their own stock of food and fibre animals and wiped out the grass the stock ate every year now did they??

No doubt they would have learnt the skill from the local Aboriginal.

TBH is have seen the type of housing/land the "tree changers" from the city that move to the country like. Many literally have there houses right in amongst the trees. It's like they give themselves and the local wildlife the worst possible chance of survival.

The local wildlife can walk away from a fire if the vegetation (fuel load) is managed right as has been done for tens of thousands of years.

Climate change has just become an excuse for incompetent vegetation management practices.

 

[basilio]

It's not just aboriginals the entire grazing industry from the start of white Australia did annual burn offs. It's not like they killed themselves and all their own stock of food and fibre animals and wiped out the grass the stock ate every year now did they??

No doubt they would have learnt the skill from the local Aboriginal.

TBH is have seen the type of housing/land the "tree changers" from the city that move to the country like. Many literally have there houses right in amongst the trees. It's like they give themselves and the local wildlife the worst possible chance of survival.

The local wildlife can walk away from a fire if the vegetation (fuel load) is managed right as has been done for tens of thousands of years.

Climate change has just become an excuse for incompetent vegetation management practices.

I'm fed up with this rubbish. Yes there is a need and good experience in keeping down fuel loads so that (theoretically) catastrophic fires can't get out of hand in Australia. And if the climate in 2022 was the roughly the same as 1980. 1950, 1850 or 1600 then certainly the point is relevant.

But the climate is nowhere near the same. The increase in average temperatures and extreme weather conditions as a result of global warming has completely altered the dynamics of bushfires. You can look at the raw temperatures figures for a numerical analysis of the change in situation. But it is far more instructive to listen to the people who have had 40 plus years direct experience in fighting Australian bushfires and can say with conviction how things have changed rapidly and irrevocably. And for good measure check out how climate scientists who predicted the increase in temperatures also pointed out that inevitably bushfires would become more intense and more difficult to control.

I understand that the usual suspects of climate change deniers look for any excuse to downplay the horrific increase in bushfires around the world. But trying to pretend that practices which worked effectively in one climatic situation will work in quite different circumstances is just wilful ignorance when the evidence is so clear.

Read what ex fire commissioner Greg Mullins experience has been over his 40 plus year career. Then check out how this scenario was explained 30 plus years ago to avail.

The world is burning’: how Australia’s longest-serving fire chief became a climate champion​

Greg Mullins says after the ‘black summer’ bushfires it is time for politicians to act on global heating

• Get our free news app; get our morning email briefing

‘We need to take action on emissions, and Australia’s not living up to its international responsibilities.’ Greg Mullins in 1979, aged 20, in his NSW Fire Brigades uniform

Calla Wahlquist

@callapilla
Sun 26 Sep 2021 18.30 BSTLast modified on Sun 26 Sep 2021 18.32 BST


The year 2019 was Australia’s hottest and driest on record. By 2040, those conditions – temperatures 1.5C above normal, contributing to the worst bushfire season the east coast has ever seen – will be average. By 2060, on current projections, it would be considered “exceptionally cool”.
The 2019-20 fire season, dubbed “black summer”, will become the norm.

It’s a grim future that has turned Greg Mullins, the longest-serving fire commissioner in Australia, into a climate campaigner.
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...-australia-must-take-climate-change-seriously
In 50 years of firefighting I had never seen fires like I did last summer. Australia must take climate change seriously
Greg Mullins

Read more
“It’s gonna be a very, very dangerous place to live – not Australia, planet Earth,” Mullins says. “I’m deeply worried about my grandsons and what they’re inheriting from us.”

‘The world is burning’: how Australia’s longest-serving fire chief became a climate champion

Greg Mullins says after the ‘black summer’ bushfires it is time for politicians to act on global heating

www.theguardian.com

What could I have done?' The scientist who predicted the bushfire emergency four decades ago​

Dr Tom Beer’s pioneering 1980s research into bushfires and climate change has, to his dismay, proved all too accurate

Dr Tom Beer in 2017. Working at the CSIRO 40 years ago, he foresaw the danger climate change posed Photograph: Tamás Szigeti/Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Graham Readfearn

@readfearn
Sat 16 Nov 2019 19.00 GMTLast modified on Sat 16 Nov 2019 19.01 GMT


From his lounge in Brunswick, Melbourne, 72-year-old Dr Tom Beer has been watching the fury of an unprecedented Australian bushfire season unfolding on his television screen.
“I feel really sorry for the firefighters who’ve got extraordinarily tough jobs ahead, and it’s only going to get tougher,” says Beer.

“But I feel maybe I was not enough of a prophet crying in the wilderness.”
Back in 1986, Beer was working as a CSIRO meteorologist looking at bushfires when he was asked by his boss, Dr Graeme Pearman, to go and find out what the greenhouse effect might mean for the future of fires.
Beer’s findings in 1987, published in 1988 as “Australian bushfire danger under changing climatic regimes”, became the first study in the world to ask what climate change was going to mean for wildfires.


Former Australian fire chiefs say Coalition ignored their advice because of climate change politics
Read more
“It seems obvious, but actually we found the correlation was not temperature and fires, but relative humidity and fires. Temperature goes up, it gets drier, and then the fires go up,” says Beer.

'What could I have done?' The scientist who predicted the bushfire emergency four decades ago

Dr Tom Beer’s pioneering 1980s research into bushfires and climate change has, to his dismay, proved all too accurate

www.theguardian.com

 

[3 hound]

I'm fed up with this rubbish. Yes there is a need and good experience in keeping down fuel loads so that (theoretically) catastrophic fires can't get out of hand in Australia. And if the climate in 2022 was the roughly the same as 1980. 1950, 1850 or 1600 then certainly the point is relevant.

But the climate is nowhere near the same. The increase in average temperatures and extreme weather conditions as a result of global warming has completely altered the dynamics of bushfires. You can look at the raw temperatures figures for a numerical analysis of the change in situation. But it is far more instructive to listen to the people who have had 40 plus years direct experience in fighting Australian bushfires and can say with conviction how things have changed rapidly and irrevocably. And for good measure check out how climate scientists who predicted the increase in temperatures also pointed out that inevitably bushfires would become more intense and more difficult to control.

I understand that the usual suspects of climate change deniers look for any excuse to downplay the horrific increase in bushfires around the world. But trying to pretend that practices which worked effectively in one climatic situation will work in quite different circumstances is just wilful ignorance when the evidence is so clear.

Read what ex fire commissioner Greg Mullins experience has been over his 40 plus year career. Then check out how this scenario was explained 30 plus years ago to avail.

The world is burning’: how Australia’s longest-serving fire chief became a climate champion​

Greg Mullins says after the ‘black summer’ bushfires it is time for politicians to act on global heating

• Get our free news app; get our morning email briefing

View attachment 140523
‘We need to take action on emissions, and Australia’s not living up to its international responsibilities.’ Greg Mullins in 1979, aged 20, in his NSW Fire Brigades uniform

View attachment 140524
Calla Wahlquist

@callapilla
Sun 26 Sep 2021 18.30 BSTLast modified on Sun 26 Sep 2021 18.32 BST


The year 2019 was Australia’s hottest and driest on record. By 2040, those conditions – temperatures 1.5C above normal, contributing to the worst bushfire season the east coast has ever seen – will be average. By 2060, on current projections, it would be considered “exceptionally cool”.
The 2019-20 fire season, dubbed “black summer”, will become the norm.

It’s a grim future that has turned Greg Mullins, the longest-serving fire commissioner in Australia, into a climate campaigner.
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...-australia-must-take-climate-change-seriously
In 50 years of firefighting I had never seen fires like I did last summer. Australia must take climate change seriously
Greg Mullins

Read more
“It’s gonna be a very, very dangerous place to live – not Australia, planet Earth,” Mullins says. “I’m deeply worried about my grandsons and what they’re inheriting from us.”

‘The world is burning’: how Australia’s longest-serving fire chief became a climate champion

Greg Mullins says after the ‘black summer’ bushfires it is time for politicians to act on global heating

www.theguardian.com

What could I have done?' The scientist who predicted the bushfire emergency four decades ago​

Dr Tom Beer’s pioneering 1980s research into bushfires and climate change has, to his dismay, proved all too accurate
View attachment 140525
Dr Tom Beer in 2017. Working at the CSIRO 40 years ago, he foresaw the danger climate change posed Photograph: Tamás Szigeti/Hungarian Academy of Sciences

View attachment 140526
Graham Readfearn

@readfearn
Sat 16 Nov 2019 19.00 GMTLast modified on Sat 16 Nov 2019 19.01 GMT


From his lounge in Brunswick, Melbourne, 72-year-old Dr Tom Beer has been watching the fury of an unprecedented Australian bushfire season unfolding on his television screen.
“I feel really sorry for the firefighters who’ve got extraordinarily tough jobs ahead, and it’s only going to get tougher,” says Beer.

“But I feel maybe I was not enough of a prophet crying in the wilderness.”
Back in 1986, Beer was working as a CSIRO meteorologist looking at bushfires when he was asked by his boss, Dr Graeme Pearman, to go and find out what the greenhouse effect might mean for the future of fires.
Beer’s findings in 1987, published in 1988 as “Australian bushfire danger under changing climatic regimes”, became the first study in the world to ask what climate change was going to mean for wildfires.

View attachment 140527
Former Australian fire chiefs say Coalition ignored their advice because of climate change politics
Read more
“It seems obvious, but actually we found the correlation was not temperature and fires, but relative humidity and fires. Temperature goes up, it gets drier, and then the fires go up,” says Beer.

'What could I have done?' The scientist who predicted the bushfire emergency four decades ago

Dr Tom Beer’s pioneering 1980s research into bushfires and climate change has, to his dismay, proved all too accurate

www.theguardian.com

Can you please refrain from calling people climate change deniers because they dare question the conventional wisdom. Its a cheap tactic that is wearing thin.

 

[sptrawler]

The problem is, there is just as much an outcry about burning off, as there is about climate change. You're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't.

That's nuts, anyone who opposes controlled burns and fuel load management should be criminally charged and locked up for a long time.

Don't shoot the messenger, there are just as many eco warriors, as climate change stick yourself to the road types.

'How could this have happened?' Scientists lament destruction of an ancient ecosystem by controlled burns

This corner of Australia is recognised as a biodiversity hotspot. Now scientists are warning it's becoming collateral damage from WA's prescribed burn regime.

www.abc.net.au

From the vault: Prescribed burning in numbat habitat under fire

Western Australian scientists petitioned their Premier this week for a full, independent scientific enquiry into the state’s prescribed burning practices,

cosmosmagazine.com

 

[3 hound]

Don't shoot the messenger, there are just as many eco warriors, as climate change stick yourself to the road types.

'How could this have happened?' Scientists lament destruction of an ancient ecosystem by controlled burns

This corner of Australia is recognised as a biodiversity hotspot. Now scientists are warning it's becoming collateral damage from WA's prescribed burn regime.

www.abc.net.au

Nobody thinks there are easy solutions, my issue is while we are waiting for the entire world to adopt climate friendly farming practices, zero emissions energy sources and transport, environmentally friendly wars....etc then wait for the global temperatures to come down as a result of completely reconfiguring every aspect of human life all over the world and the entire world's infrastructure we might just want to think about reducing fuel loads in fire prone areas as a risk mitigation factor.

Just a suggestion.

 

[sptrawler]

Nobody thinks there are easy solutions, my issue is while we are waiting for the entire world to adopt climate friendly farming practices, zero emissions energy sources and transport, environmentally friendly wars....etc then wait for the global temperatures to come down as a result of completely reconfiguring every aspect of human life all over the world and the entire world's infrastructure we might just want to think about reducing fuel loads in fire prone areas as a risk mitigation factor.

Just a suggestion.

I don't disagree with you, just saying there are just as many people against prescribed burning, as are for it.
I think it is crazy to let the bush build the undergrowth to ridiculous levels, then when there is a massive bushfire blame it all on global warming, one extreme to another IMO.
Thankfully the majority are middle of the road.