I think it is back-burning, predictive text? To stop fires jumping from fuel invigorating trees, you burn tracts of brush between them, causing fires to burn out. This no longer happens, not sure if it is a culture or funding issue.
Backburning (noun): a convenient way for the reactionary press to place the blame for a disaster caused by global warming at the foot of the very people who would work to stop it happening again, and have the population believe them.
The following Twitter thread by an enviromental scientist sets the record straight:
Obviously there's more to say, and ideally I'd keep politics out of this thread as it isn't on the politics board, but I can't stand to watch people who are being affected by the fire being led to such terribly inaccurate and damaging conclusions by the establishment press.
And yet more money was raised for a church in France
Not from the British foreign aid budget, though. Not, as far as I know, anything from any UK government department. Nor as far as I know did France expect something, still less ask for it, from us. I expect Australia would be the same. On the other hand if Australia thought the UK had specialist gear or people we could lend, it would ask, and I am sure we would say yes. Can't see what that would be though, especially as anything from our Navy is thousands of miles away.
If you want to make sure the right people get support, quickly, here's the donation page for the NSW Rural Fire Service. Unfortunately the Victoria one is not set up to easily receive donations from abroad.
Leuth, I am confused by your post. Do fire breaks prevent bushfires or create them? Is the crisis caused by arson or lack of fire planning? Or simply high temperatures from global warming?
It is caused by global climate change. Fire breaks (which can contain fires to an extent) have been increasingly difficult to do in recent years for reasons outlined in the links, all of which are to do with either climate change or land clearances (caused in part by over-vigorous backburning). The Greens have never been in power and have never been in a position to ban backburning. It is the usual culture-war bollocks, in other words, except this time it is culture-war bollocks about something that is eating an entire country as we type. And it's so fucking distressing
Thanks Leuth. I think land management here (Crown Estates etc) Madagascar, Brazil, Australia and other places, deserves more discussion. But the Oz crisis is down to this specifically, not climate change which is marginal but no less important.
That’s exactly the point Stu. Prague is saying if the uk government make a contribution it goes to the Australian government. I think what those of us who are apparently point scoring are saying, it should be possible that the aid budget can go directly from the uk government to specific front line groups that individuals are contributing to when in these diasister situations.
Ok, let's try to imagine this in real life. What do you want to donate from the aid budget? let's say £200m. Ok, where is it going to go? Towards beefing up the resources of the fire services perhaps. So we send the money directly to the fire services?
Right. I don't know Oz that well but both its politics and its media are even more raucous than here. Just imagine the absolute political shitstorm that breaks out when it is announced "Brits provide the money Morrision should have coughed up years ago" would be a mild version, I reckon. Look at those clips of people in the affected townships telling Morrison straight. Imagine what they would say to him if they now know that British money is coming in when their own (taxpayers) money didn't. No government risks that kind of internal political disruption as a result of trying to help. It isn't just the UK. It's international protocol. You give it to the government concerned and then you just hope they will use it wisely. It's a bit shit, but you tell me how it would be able to work more directly.
I’m not a fan of Nick Kyrgios, Aussie tennis player, number 30 in world rankings. He is the only player to have beaten Federer, Nadal and Djokovic the first time playing them. But his on-court behaviour does him no credit and I’m surprised he’s even allowed to compete the big tournaments. Worse, sometimes he cannt even be bothered - great for anyone paying good money to see a competitive match.
But my estimation went up when he announced he will donate $200 to a fire fund for every ace he serves this Australian summer. On the basis of last year that will be around $120,000. Other Players are donating too.
Climate change faciitates rural fires bit doesn't cause them (and I'm a huge fan of Greta Thunberg). We have had fires on Saddleworth Moor, Chobham Common New Forest and more and it is taters outside.
McBobbin, ever accurate Wiki? Graph purports changes in average temperatures since 1910 but X axis labelled since 1961. The graph demonstrates huge changes but the data ranges from minus one to plus one, a total of two per cent, not acceptable but not the calamity the statistics seek to portray. How has the world's population grown in last 60 years? Has that had no impact?
Not false news, but media manipulation of public opinion all the same.
That’s exactly the point Stu. Prague is saying if the uk government make a contribution it goes to the Australian government. I think what those of us who are apparently point scoring are saying, it should be possible that the aid budget can go directly from the uk government to specific front line groups that individuals are contributing to when in these diasister situations.
Ok, let's try to imagine this in real life. What do you want to donate from the aid budget? let's say £200m. Ok, where is it going to go? Towards beefing up the resources of the fire services perhaps. So we send the money directly to the fire services?
Right. I don't know Oz that well but both its politics and its media are even more raucous than here. Just imagine the absolute political shitstorm that breaks out when it is announced "Brits provide the money Morrision should have coughed up years ago" would be a mild version, I reckon. Look at those clips of people in the affected townships telling Morrison straight. Imagine what they would say to him if they now know that British money is coming in when their own (taxpayers) money didn't. No government risks that kind of internal political disruption as a result of trying to help. It isn't just the UK. It's international protocol. You give it to the government concerned and then you just hope they will use it wisely. It's a bit shit, but you tell me how it would be able to work more directly.
You give it straight to the frontline and forget the political point scoring, worry about the people involved, not what happens to Morrison!
This is linked to climate change, maybe not entirely, but certainly partly, therefore we are all responsibility so have a responsibility to help.
Very interesting to see all of these perspectives on what's happening over here, very rare for Australia to be the centre of attention in the global media.
Thankfully, and somewhat bizarrely since it's been a bloody hot summer here in QLD, there are no fires in our area. However, I travel to Sydney every week for work and the smoke in Sydney - I am talking the middle of the CBD - has been really bad at times.
Now then, how to see the wood for the trees on this - if you forgive the pun.
Firstly, the politics. Scott Morrison has barely put a foot wrong since becoming PM in August 2018 - and winning the election against all odds in May - but he got off to a very bad start on this one by not only taking a holiday, in Hawaii of all places, but then having his office trying to mislead the media on whether he was on holiday or not. Bad move.
He has not handled the crisis very well at all, his interactions with people have lacked empathy and he has come across as robotic and wooden and even from a logistical level the Federal Government has not handled this very well at all.
That being said, a lot of the criticism he is getting is politically driven and is coming from a political and media class that just plain don't like the guy for mostly partisan reasons and are using this crisis as an excuse to put the boot into him politically.
Like I say, he has not handled this very well but let's not kid ourselves that the criticism he is copping is completely fair because it's not.
If you put the situation in the UK you can imagine how much Boris Johnson's enemies would use this against him to wound him - that's pretty much what's happening here.
Firstly, local fire management is the responsibility of state not federal (national) government, so the management of the day-to-day fire operations are not his or his government's direct responsibility.
Secondly, even if Scott Morrison had put in the most radical green legislation on the day he was sworn in as PM then these fires would still be happening, all of this was baked into the cake a long, long time ago.
Could the Federal Government had been better prepared? Yes, undoubtedly they could have done a better job, but the fires are of such a ferocious scale that any action would have only limited impact.
The situation has also been exacerbated by the fact that many of the impacted areas are holiday destinations so you are dealing with tens of thousands of tourists stranded as well as the usual inhabitants of these towns.
Now then, to the question of the cause of the fires themselves.
Firstly, the Federal Government is in a terrible place politically because the ruling Coalition parties (Liberal and National) are split between climate change deniers and those who believe in climate change - the parties are also heavily connected to the fossil fuel industries.
So, even if they chose to take some action on addressing climate change it would create an internal political bloodbath which could actually destroy them politically so they are obviously not so keen on that approach.....
Secondly, Australia, like so much of the rest of the world is embattled in a bitter left-right culture war and whereas the UK was split on the Brexit lines the lines here in Australia are split on the climate change issue - it has been the number one issue for the last decade.
The climate change issue ended the Prime Ministerial careers of Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Malcolm Turnbull - this is an absolutely pivotal issue here.
The right-wing media outlets here (Murdoch press + execrable 'talk' radio) have been very quick to blame the 'Greenies' for the current bushfires - echoing the arguments some of the posters above have made - and the Federal Government now looks focussed on addressing the 'land management' issue very shortly.
However, the problem with this argument is, how shall we say? Well, I guess the only way to describe it is to say that it's complete horse shit.
Yes, there are regulations in place - imposed by STATE not Federal governments - about where and when and how you can 'back burn' to manage land - but given that no Green party has ever held power either state or federally then it's hard to see how they can be blamed for these regulations. A small but important point I feel.
Through my work in the telecoms field I have had to liaise with state and local government officials on land access issues and have come to understand how back burning works pretty well so let me explain as best I can.
The aim of back burning is to stage controlled fires in the most dangerous locations whilst CONDITIONS ARE FAVORABLE AND ALLOW YOU TO DO SO SAFELY - therefore meaning that come the height of summer the most problematic locations will have already burnt through.
Here is the problem though, back burning can be REALLY FUCKING DANGEROUS and can easily go wrong and lead to widespread fires raging out of control so you can only do it when conditions are completely safe.
The problem there is that the temperatures here are getting warmer and the ground getting drier - we are in the middle of a massive drought - so your opportunities to back burn safely are getting fewer and fewer - which of course creates even more dangerous conditions when bush fire season approaches.
So, with an incredibly hot summer in progress we really have had the perfect storm to create these bush fires and as a result people are going through a horrible time.
Whilst of course all charitable contributions to fire victims are welcome the reality is that Australia is actually a wealthier country than the UK so the idea of the UK Government donating foreign aid to Australia is absurd - money is not the problem here at all.
The problem here is much more complicated and really centres around how Australia - and the rest of the world, especially China, India and the US - deals with the issue of climate change.
These bush fires are an absolute game-changer here politically, only an absolutely cretinous politician would be out in public from this point onwards denying the reality of climate change, even Morrison - a man who took a lump of coal into parliament to demonstrate his support for fossil fuels - has now edged towards accepting the science.
However, even if the Australian Federal Government took significant action on climate change - unlikely under the Coalition - then it would have precisely zero impact unless the other major polluters listed above did so as well and as we saw in Copenhagen back in 2010 that ain't going to happen.
The fires will eventually fade and the rains will return but the last couple of weeks have changed this country forever.
A very interesting perspective Ormy! Thanks a lot!
Land management is something I know almost nothing about but I am aware that 'back burning' happens here in preparation for dry season and someone in my family is involved with one areas planning, she has mentioned before how for the last few years it has become much harder to get everything done as the window of opportunity is getting much smaller.
One thing the Yunnan government has done during the ever increasing dry seasons is to let off 'rain bombs' now whilst these may not be ideal for residents, as no one enjoys day long downpours but it certainly helps farmers keeping up supply of vegetables and it stops everything from dying due to a total lack of water, I wonder if this is something that has ever been considered in Australia.
Sadly I imagine these 'rain bombs' have a long term detrimental affect on the pollution levels on the ground and possibly in the atmosphere but as I'm sure you're aware, most things here are considered very much on a 'now' basis.
A very interesting perspective Ormy! Thanks a lot!
Land management is something I know almost nothing about but I am aware that 'back burning' happens here in preparation for dry season and someone in my family is involved with one areas planning, she has mentioned before how for the last few years it has become much harder to get everything done as the window of opportunity is getting much smaller.
One thing the Yunnan government has done during the ever increasing dry seasons is to let off 'rain bombs' now whilst these may not be ideal for residents, as no one enjoys day long downpours but it certainly helps farmers keeping up supply of vegetables and it stops everything from dying due to a total lack of water, I wonder if this is something that has ever been considered in Australia.
Sadly I imagine these 'rain bombs' have a long term detrimental affect on the pollution levels on the ground and possibly in the atmosphere but as I'm sure you're aware, most things here are considered very much on a 'now' basis.
They do something very similar here but it's incredibly expensive and has only limited impact.
I think it's hard for most people in the UK (I know you are in China) to comprehend just how hot and dry it gets here in summertime.
To give an example people can understand I put a load of bed sheets on the line yesterday after washing them and they were literally bone dry within 20 minutes - so you can imagine how dry the foliage gets after months and months of no rain.
It's been a bad year here for rain, resulting in large parts of the city only having water for 4-5 hours a day, so I can't even imagine how bad it is there!
Ormiston_Addick said: I think it's hard for most people in the UK (I know you are in China) to comprehend just how hot and dry it gets here in summertime.
To give an example people can understand I put a load of bed sheets on the line yesterday after washing them and they were literally bone dry within 20 minutes - so you can imagine how dry the foliage gets after months and months of no rain.
Bloody hell, my tumble drier wouldn't get a couple of t-shirts dry in that little time.
Australia has been burning for months now and its terrifying.
It's getting to the point now where the fires are completely unstoppable and there is little more we can do that pray for rain (and donate).
I have an uncle in a Sydney suburb (middle of a town) and has been told the first are 7 miles away are they are on an evacuation alert. Its terrifying because there are thousands of homes between the 'edge' of Sydney and where he lives so it must be terrifyingly close.
Reports are saying half a billion animals have already died and it will be more than a billion in a week or so. A BILLION ANIMALS. Its just heartbreaking, whole species will be completely wiped out. Awful.
On back burning. I've read a bit about it and the argument is that now the dry season extends for so long there isnt actually a safe time to carry out back burning. Without being able to rely on rains coming, back burning would be a massive risk at starting huge uncontrollable Bush fires.
Good luck to all those in Oz. No idea what the solutions are, I don’t claim to be an expert in land management, back burning or the correct application of our international aid budget, just hoping that those who do have the requisite skills are able to figure out the solution quickly.
I read online that the volunteer firefighters get their benefits stopped if they're unemployed as they can't apply for the number of jobs a week required by the govt agency that administers benefits (which I could imagine our DWP doing easily) - can any posters in Aus confirm if that's true? Another reason to donate direct to the Fire Services
Comments
The following Twitter thread by an enviromental scientist sets the record straight:
https://twitter.com/jagungal1/status/1212937426034782208
And then there's this:
https://twitter.com/marlenesarroff/status/1213028225783230467
And now an article, by yet another expert (a firefighter this time):
https://dingo.news/voice/2019/11/14/bruce-walker-wytaliba-rfs-member-survivor-correcting-disinformation-about-bushfires-causes-and-hazard-reduction/
Obviously there's more to say, and ideally I'd keep politics out of this thread as it isn't on the politics board, but I can't stand to watch people who are being affected by the fire being led to such terribly inaccurate and damaging conclusions by the establishment press.
If you want to make sure the right people get support, quickly, here's the donation page for the NSW Rural Fire Service. Unfortunately the Victoria one is not set up to easily receive donations from abroad.
Right. I don't know Oz that well but both its politics and its media are even more raucous than here. Just imagine the absolute political shitstorm that breaks out when it is announced "Brits provide the money Morrision should have coughed up years ago" would be a mild version, I reckon. Look at those clips of people in the affected townships telling Morrison straight. Imagine what they would say to him if they now know that British money is coming in when their own (taxpayers) money didn't. No government risks that kind of internal political disruption as a result of trying to help. It isn't just the UK. It's international protocol. You give it to the government concerned and then you just hope they will use it wisely. It's a bit shit, but you tell me how it would be able to work more directly.
But my estimation went up when he announced he will donate $200 to a fire fund for every ace he serves this Australian summer. On the basis of last year that will be around $120,000. Other Players are donating too.
Not false news, but media manipulation of public opinion all the same.
This is linked to climate change, maybe not entirely, but certainly partly, therefore we are all responsibility so have a responsibility to help.
Thankfully, and somewhat bizarrely since it's been a bloody hot summer here in QLD, there are no fires in our area. However, I travel to Sydney every week for work and the smoke in Sydney - I am talking the middle of the CBD - has been really bad at times.
Now then, how to see the wood for the trees on this - if you forgive the pun.
Firstly, the politics. Scott Morrison has barely put a foot wrong since becoming PM in August 2018 - and winning the election against all odds in May - but he got off to a very bad start on this one by not only taking a holiday, in Hawaii of all places, but then having his office trying to mislead the media on whether he was on holiday or not. Bad move.
He has not handled the crisis very well at all, his interactions with people have lacked empathy and he has come across as robotic and wooden and even from a logistical level the Federal Government has not handled this very well at all.
That being said, a lot of the criticism he is getting is politically driven and is coming from a political and media class that just plain don't like the guy for mostly partisan reasons and are using this crisis as an excuse to put the boot into him politically.
Like I say, he has not handled this very well but let's not kid ourselves that the criticism he is copping is completely fair because it's not.
If you put the situation in the UK you can imagine how much Boris Johnson's enemies would use this against him to wound him - that's pretty much what's happening here.
Firstly, local fire management is the responsibility of state not federal (national) government, so the management of the day-to-day fire operations are not his or his government's direct responsibility.
Secondly, even if Scott Morrison had put in the most radical green legislation on the day he was sworn in as PM then these fires would still be happening, all of this was baked into the cake a long, long time ago.
Could the Federal Government had been better prepared? Yes, undoubtedly they could have done a better job, but the fires are of such a ferocious scale that any action would have only limited impact.
The situation has also been exacerbated by the fact that many of the impacted areas are holiday destinations so you are dealing with tens of thousands of tourists stranded as well as the usual inhabitants of these towns.
Now then, to the question of the cause of the fires themselves.
Firstly, the Federal Government is in a terrible place politically because the ruling Coalition parties (Liberal and National) are split between climate change deniers and those who believe in climate change - the parties are also heavily connected to the fossil fuel industries.
So, even if they chose to take some action on addressing climate change it would create an internal political bloodbath which could actually destroy them politically so they are obviously not so keen on that approach.....
Secondly, Australia, like so much of the rest of the world is embattled in a bitter left-right culture war and whereas the UK was split on the Brexit lines the lines here in Australia are split on the climate change issue - it has been the number one issue for the last decade.
The climate change issue ended the Prime Ministerial careers of Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Malcolm Turnbull - this is an absolutely pivotal issue here.
The right-wing media outlets here (Murdoch press + execrable 'talk' radio) have been very quick to blame the 'Greenies' for the current bushfires - echoing the arguments some of the posters above have made - and the Federal Government now looks focussed on addressing the 'land management' issue very shortly.
However, the problem with this argument is, how shall we say? Well, I guess the only way to describe it is to say that it's complete horse shit.
Yes, there are regulations in place - imposed by STATE not Federal governments - about where and when and how you can 'back burn' to manage land - but given that no Green party has ever held power either state or federally then it's hard to see how they can be blamed for these regulations. A small but important point I feel.
Through my work in the telecoms field I have had to liaise with state and local government officials on land access issues and have come to understand how back burning works pretty well so let me explain as best I can.
The aim of back burning is to stage controlled fires in the most dangerous locations whilst CONDITIONS ARE FAVORABLE AND ALLOW YOU TO DO SO SAFELY - therefore meaning that come the height of summer the most problematic locations will have already burnt through.
Here is the problem though, back burning can be REALLY FUCKING DANGEROUS and can easily go wrong and lead to widespread fires raging out of control so you can only do it when conditions are completely safe.
The problem there is that the temperatures here are getting warmer and the ground getting drier - we are in the middle of a massive drought - so your opportunities to back burn safely are getting fewer and fewer - which of course creates even more dangerous conditions when bush fire season approaches.
So, with an incredibly hot summer in progress we really have had the perfect storm to create these bush fires and as a result people are going through a horrible time.
Whilst of course all charitable contributions to fire victims are welcome the reality is that Australia is actually a wealthier country than the UK so the idea of the UK Government donating foreign aid to Australia is absurd - money is not the problem here at all.
The problem here is much more complicated and really centres around how Australia - and the rest of the world, especially China, India and the US - deals with the issue of climate change.
These bush fires are an absolute game-changer here politically, only an absolutely cretinous politician would be out in public from this point onwards denying the reality of climate change, even Morrison - a man who took a lump of coal into parliament to demonstrate his support for fossil fuels - has now edged towards accepting the science.
However, even if the Australian Federal Government took significant action on climate change - unlikely under the Coalition - then it would have precisely zero impact unless the other major polluters listed above did so as well and as we saw in Copenhagen back in 2010 that ain't going to happen.
The fires will eventually fade and the rains will return but the last couple of weeks have changed this country forever.
Land management is something I know almost nothing about but I am aware that 'back burning' happens here in preparation for dry season and someone in my family is involved with one areas planning, she has mentioned before how for the last few years it has become much harder to get everything done as the window of opportunity is getting much smaller.
One thing the Yunnan government has done during the ever increasing dry seasons is to let off 'rain bombs' now whilst these may not be ideal for residents, as no one enjoys day long downpours but it certainly helps farmers keeping up supply of vegetables and it stops everything from dying due to a total lack of water, I wonder if this is something that has ever been considered in Australia.
Sadly I imagine these 'rain bombs' have a long term detrimental affect on the pollution levels on the ground and possibly in the atmosphere but as I'm sure you're aware, most things here are considered very much on a 'now' basis.
I think it's hard for most people in the UK (I know you are in China) to comprehend just how hot and dry it gets here in summertime.
To give an example people can understand I put a load of bed sheets on the line yesterday after washing them and they were literally bone dry within 20 minutes - so you can imagine how dry the foliage gets after months and months of no rain.
It's getting to the point now where the fires are completely unstoppable and there is little more we can do that pray for rain (and donate).
I have an uncle in a Sydney suburb (middle of a town) and has been told the first are 7 miles away are they are on an evacuation alert. Its terrifying because there are thousands of homes between the 'edge' of Sydney and where he lives so it must be terrifyingly close.
Reports are saying half a billion animals have already died and it will be more than a billion in a week or so. A BILLION ANIMALS. Its just heartbreaking, whole species will be completely wiped out. Awful.
New Zealand has been sending troops and firefighters.
Sadly neither are likely in the near term.