Australian Bushfires

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

3 hours ago, DougN said:

...oh oh I am so angry about what I have just heard on the ABC saying that Scomo won't push the conservative parts of the government to increase our commitment to reduce our impact... are they idiots... how much are the coal industry paying them. Aggghhh. (Just had to get that out)

This is where the major change to governance has the potential to happen. If there are enough of your fellow electors feeling this way and ready to find representatives with better ideas and enough appeal to get elected, then it begins. It will be hard work and there will be plenty of opposition and even hostility from those whose interests are well served by the present position, and they will likely have the resource to produce endless argument of a plunge into destitution consequent on the proposed changes.

[Fat Controller]

On 10/01/2020 at 22:44, DavidB-AU said:

 

And he was sacked from every marketing job he had.

Sounds like one we had here until fairly recently; definite 'B-Ark' material.

[monkeysarefun]

9 minutes ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

This is where the major change to governance has the potential to happen. If there are enough of your fellow electors feeling this way and ready to find representatives with better ideas and enough appeal to get elected, then it begins. It will be hard work and there will be plenty of opposition and even hostility from those whose interests are well served by the present position, and they will likely have the resource to produce endless argument of a plunge into destitution consequent on the proposed changes.

 

Incumbents just flood facebook with " Labor will introduce death tax" posts and get re elected again..

 

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

1 minute ago, monkeysarefun said:

Incumbents just flood facebook with " Labor will introduce death tax" posts and get re elected again.

So you start a 'fixit' party that has no political baggage. An examination of what has happened in the UK to destabilise a cosy and long established political fudge should be informative. There just have to be enough of the electorate prepared to vote 'different' and to accept that while the consequences may not all be to their taste; at least the risk of being regularly downwind of the world's biggest bonfire has been mitigated.

[kevinlms]

A fireys viewpoint.

[kevinlms]

13 minutes ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

So you start a 'fixit' party that has no political baggage. An examination of what has happened in the UK to destabilise a cosy and long established political fudge should be informative. There just have to be enough of the electorate prepared to vote 'different' and to accept that while the consequences may not all be to their taste; at least the risk of being regularly downwind of the world's biggest bonfire has been mitigated.

Easier said than done, I'm afraid.

Some recent changes have occured to how our (preferential voting system) votes are distributed. Effectively it means that smaller parties with similar ideals, find it harder to 'share' votes between them.

 

The Greens come close with many of their ideals, but as other posts have indicated, they are (wrongly IMO) coping a lot of the blame for the fires and to a large percentage of the population, they are toxic.

[ikks]

9 hours ago, kevinlms said:

Pauline Hanson and still the Queenslanders vote for her!

Why Why Why???....and Malcolm Roberts, Craig Kelly, Barnaby Joyce, Scott Morrison et al  This continent is on the brink!!

For Christ's sake!!!!

 

Mike

[ikks]

2 hours ago, kevinlms said:

A fireys viewpoint.

A sobering and insightful post

 

Mike

 

[kevinlms]

20 minutes ago, ikks said:

Why Why Why???....and Malcolm Roberts, Craig Kelly, Barnaby Joyce, Scott Morrison et al  This continent is on the brink!!

For Christ's sake!!!!

 

Mike

Beats me!

[monkeysarefun]

7 hours ago, DavidB-AU said:

 

Could be a lot sooner than that. They are functionally extinct in many areas already and there are only two small populations not affected by chlamydia (one of which was on Kangaroo Island and just got halved).

And the  area hosting  the only disease free colony in nsw - at Wilton near campbelltown has been rezoned for a housing estate. 

[Gwiwer]

In terms of species extinction the great majority of Australian creatures live as close to the brink as humans do in a continent which barely supports many life forms.  So many are exclusive to a very specific and small area.  Koalas are iconic but are already functionally extinct across wide tracts of what was their home territory.  This follows successive catastrophic fire and storm events damaging and destroying their habitat.  It has left survivors without food, water or homes.  Any survivors would be lucky to last long under those conditions.  They require interaction with other groups to sustain their numbers.  A few single survivors scattered over a wide area may not be able to form a nucleus and repopulate even if vegetation re-grows.  We do not yet know how devastating the current fires have been to that vegetation.  Eucalypts require fire to regenerate but there would be a point at which the intensity of the fire kills the seeds which rely upon it to open.  If nutrients are stripped from the soil through burning or fire-fighting activities then re-generation will be a long time coming.  Koalas cannot wait.  

 

Kangaroos are iconic.  To and extent they can move quickly to safer places but again are by no means immune from the effects of widespread fires.  Many thousands - possibly tens of thousands - will have perished and some populations will have been wiped out for good.  As with koalas they require food, water and somewhere to call home.  

 

Many smaller creatures will have vanished.  Despite very recent reports of wombats sharing their burrows with other species (apparently not recorded before - they can be quite aggressive beasts and are larger than many people think) we are unlikely to ever again find certain bandicoots, numerous birds, some indigenous ferns and perhaps even the shy but hugely iconic platypus.   The populations have simply been burned to extinction.  

 

I don't care what the politics of the individual are.  Australia needs a leader to step up and LEAD the recovery on all sides.  Aid to the communities, support to the wildlife shelters, a comprehensive bushfire survival plan and an acceptance that human intervention has played a very large part in the increasingly frequent and destructive nature of Australian storm events - be they wet, windy or fire storms.  And Australia needs better than  handful of - admittedly extremely selfless and dedicated - volunteer bush firefighters.  How many images have we seen of those CFA / RFS crews typically of older men and if the truth be known often working out of a small rural base with a couple of fire trucks.  Given the thinly distributed population in most parts of the country it is unrealistic to expect more folk to do more for more of the time; it is time the armed forces were placed on permanent stand-by and sent straight in with heavy equipment and water-bombers as soon as any fire takes a hold.  

 

 

[monkeysarefun]

5 hours ago, kevinlms said:

But that is just Koalas. There are estimates going around that at least 500,000 animals & birds have died. Some species are now expected to be extinct as their limited habitat has been savaged by fire.

 

The Koala is quite widespread, so while large colonies might be wiped out, there is some diversity.

I think the estimate is 500 million and that's since been upped to the billion plus, not including birds and imsects. Also the number will rise substantially as the survivors starve due to habitat destruction and numbers plummet due to inability of potential mates to find each other having been forced from their homelands and scattered.

[Gwiwer]

1 hour ago, ikks said:

Why Why Why???....and Malcolm Roberts, Craig Kelly, Barnaby Joyce, Scott Morrison et al  This continent is on the brink!!

For Christ's sake!!!!

 

Mike

Because.

 

As Mother-in-Law states (in her opinion) these people do a wonderful job and are terrific leaders.  

 

They get votes.  And the Australian proportional representation voting system can mean that they get more votes through preferences and that individual voters may end up allowing them into power through their votes.  

 

To each their own.  It is possible to vote for party not person.  But I remain convinced that many politicians are in their jobs largely because of their personal vote and secondarily because of the way preferences work in their favour.  

[maico]

Australian Co2 output per head is over 16 tons pa, the highest in the Western World due to coal burning. The UK is 5.7 tons with half of electricity production now coming from renewables and coal phased out, apart from a couple of standby power stations.

Although solar is only a small percentage of the total at 3.6%, in 2018 the UK still generated more MW from solar than Australia.

 

Some like to point the finger at China and India but they would say, in per capita terms, India is just 1.6 tons and China just over 6 tons.

Edited January 12, 2020 by maico

[Gwiwer]

China is Australia's main export market for coal.  But has stated they will be running down coal-fired power generation in the next few years.  Australia's response has been to authorise a huge new coal mine and to ship that coal out from the Queensland coast across (and contributing to the terminal damage to) the Great Barrier Reef.  

[maico]

Watching the Australian PM waving a lump of coal around in Parliament it's clear there is deep routed denial 

 

[MarkC]

16 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

Looking out the window in the  morning and seeing thick smoky haze has just become part of life here now. It is 11.30 in the morning in the middle of an Australian summer and I am inside in semi-darkness with the lights on.

 

In this weird almost apocalyptic orange world a ''normal' clear day is something to be amazed at, as Thursday was when I could actually see the trees on the hill about 2km from here for the first time in what seems like ages.  I opened the windows, for the first time since the first week in December.

 

The smoke returned about 3 hours later as the wind shifted. .

 

Heres the current view from https://webcamsydney.com/

 

 

What were previously considered off-the-scale pollution readings are  now just the 'norm', and values  under 150ppm of 2.5 particles - the particularly deadly ones that cause not just respiratory issues but cancers and strokes - are now  considered good, even though officially they are  'very poor' and strenuous outside activities should e avoided.

 

For intstance heres todays figures - just another summers day in Sydney..

 

 

 

 

Hazardous levels occur very regularly now, in these levels the official instructions are to remain inside to avoid risking serious health issues.

 

And yet, life here has to go on. People need to go outside. Ignoring the misinformed who you still see jogging through the thick haze, riding bikes or doing fitness classes (ironic!) posties still need to deliver letters, transport workers still need to man trains and stations and drive buses builders still need to work, people are needed to do strenuous work including  repairing bushfire damage, let alone fight the never ending fire emergencies.

 

So now attention is shifting towards this aspect. Are employees within their rights to refuse to work in toxic air - and do employers have a duty of care to their employees and not force them to  work through hazardous days. Just before Christmas when the smog first rolled in employees at Port Botany walked off over the conditions and were threatened with punishment -I am not sure how that ended but it is something that is more and more likely to become an issue, especially as people are becoming more and more aware of he dangers of being out in it.

 

Should workers put their health first and refuse to go out into the air, the city would effectively come to a halt. Postal services and flights were halted in Canberra last week when the PM2.5 values hit 15 times  hazardous levels, values that have approached here in Sydney on a number of occasions lately.

 

This could become a huge issue in the future as people start to come down with issues and succumb to the pollution.  The great smog of London in 1952 killed an estimated up to 12000 people, and although that was due to burning low grade coal there are still just as dangerous particles in wood smoke, especially when breathed in week after week as is becoming the norm here.

 

The full effects of these bushfires are likely to be felt for years to come.

 

https://www.smh.com.au/national/bushfires-creating-unprecedented-health-crisis-say-doctors-20200111-p53qm5.html

 

And finally to explain where the smoke is coming from, heres todays update of the current equivalent  size of the burned out areas..

 

I can relate to the atmospheric conditions - I was in the Arabian Gulf in June 1991, only a couple of hundred miles south of Kuwait, at Al Jubail, Saudi Arabia. Was there for a week. The sky was thick with smoke from the burning Kuwaiti oil wells. It was dark by 4pm, although sunset wasn't until much later. And the smell...

 

Mark

[Ozexpatriate]

I'm going to hold back most of my opinions here because I feel they breach our "no politics" guideline here on RMweb other than a couple of observations.

 

Having experienced a couple of different systems, I do think Australia's preferential voting system has some serious unintended consequences. Personally I don't think it is a good system and voting by preferences is complicated. (And yes, I've done it.)

 

The polarization we see in the politics of the English speaking democracies (like the UK, US and Australia) is destructive to our societies*. It has led to willful ignorance of science (climate science in particular, but in reality any science that shines a light on dangerous ecological impacts of unfettered commerce). I could give many examples but they would "appear" to be political.

 

* I don't have a perspective on Canada.

 

There's also a "she'll, be right, no worries mate" element of the Aussie ethos that has permitted the bad behaviour of their elected officials to let the situation get has bad as it has. Having said that, with the level of polarization in the US I see particular voting blocs overlooking executive behaviour that is completely antithetical to their beliefs. Our human ability for cognitive dissonance is truly staggering.

 

In the meantime, I hope the drought of the last year in Australia will be broken soon, extinguishing fires and cleaning the air.

[monkeysarefun]

Bill Shorten bushfire policy, March2019:

 

https://www.billshorten.com.au/_labor_s_national_fire_fighting_fleet_sunday_17_march_2019

 

Oh well, at least peoples Franking credits are safe, whatever the fook they are anyway.

[monkeysarefun]

Getting back to the animal issue..

https://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/massive-food-drop-to-help-save-endangered-wallabies-in-fire-affected-areas-20200112-p53qss.html

 

 

[kevinlms]

6 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

I think the estimate is 500 million and that's since been upped to the billion plus, not including birds and imsects. Also the number will rise substantially as the survivors starve due to habitat destruction and numbers plummet due to inability of potential mates to find each other having been forced from their homelands and scattered.

Correct I missed some zeros!

[kevinlms]

5 hours ago, maico said:

Watching the Australian PM waving a lump of coal around in Parliament it's clear there is deep routed denial 

 

With the grinning Barnaby Joyce, then deputy PM.

[kevinlms]

6 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

China is Australia's main export market for coal.  But has stated they will be running down coal-fired power generation in the next few years.  Australia's response has been to authorise a huge new coal mine and to ship that coal out from the Queensland coast across (and contributing to the terminal damage to) the Great Barrier Reef.  

Siemens (as main contractor for the signalling on the required railway line) are under pressure to cancel the deal. A decision by Siemens is expected soon.

 

Update

 

Sooner than I expected, a friend was on their email list and has been advised that Siemens has determined that they need to 'fulfill contractual obligations'.

Edited January 12, 2020 by kevinlms
Updated info.

[kevinlms]

Then there is the issue of communications failure.

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2020-01-13/are-australias-telecommunication-up-to-the-new-kind-of-megafire/11860238

[DavidB-AU]

14 hours ago, kevinlms said:

But that is just Koalas. There are estimates going around that at least 1/2 a billion animals & birds have died. Some species are now expected to be extinct as their limited habitat has been savaged by fire.

 

The Koala is quite widespread, so while large colonies might be wiped out, there is some diversity.

 

It's now well over a billion animals. The koala populations are spread out but very small and in increasingly smaller pockets due to encroaching development. They were critically endangered before these fires and all but 2 small populations were being wrecked by chlamydia.