Lessons from the Australian fires

[RenewableCandy]

Are there ever any wildfires in the UK?

Last one I remember was in the New Forest in 1988.

Moors' fires have been a problem: the peat burns underneath and no-one knows the fire's there til it hits something, then they find out with a shock how widespread it is. I think there were a couple in 2003, there were certainly some in 1976. But we haven't really got enough forest for a forest fire.

[kenneal - lagger]

Moorland fires are the biggest problem in the UK. Gorse goes like a bomb and if it gets too big can constitute a huge fire load.

One of the problems I heard sited in Oz and the US is Greenies objecting to back burning. This leads to a build up of inflammable detritus and under storey so, when there is a fire, it is massive and does far more damage to both property and wildlife than a properly managed back burn ever would.

We have this potential problem on Greenham where the local authority, who own the common, won't allow any burning so the gorse is getting very high and thick. On UK commons back burning is usually done in the winter so the wet weather controls the rate of burn and it is more controllable.

[SherryMayo]

Backburning is one issue but another problem is that it had been incredibly dry over Jan and Feb so everything was tinder dry. The weather conditions on Saturday were absolutely worst case scenario and were predicted to be so. Everyone in Victoria was told not to travel on Saturday unless absolutely necessary.

We had 2 weeks of really hot weather - a record breaking 3 days over 43 degrees the week before and the day itself was and all-time record 46.4 degrees C. This was coupled with strong hot winds from the NW followed by a rapid wind change late in the day to the SW. This turned the fire into a firestorm that moved very quickly and engulfed people before they had time to leave. Part of the reason for the high death-toll is people moving into bushy areas for lifestyle reasons.

The Aussie bush is 'meant' to burn. A lot of it doesn't germinate or regenerate otherwise. However a 'regular' bushfire is usually survivable in a house - even a typical Australian one*. In fact houses usually burn down *after* the fire front has passed from fires lit by the remaining embers (which is why people often stay in them to defend them - popping out out their house after the fire front has passed to douse the spot fires).

This fire was something different - it completely incinerated houses and cars it passed over in a very short space of time. Firestorm fires like this are thought likely to become more common with the drying and warming of our climate down here. Backburning may help but it isn't a panacea. As for the idea of cutting down trees within x amount of their height around houses - many of these communities are dotted through mountain ash forest which are massive trees up to 90m high. You'd have to chop them all down to make it completely safe which would rather defeat the point of being there. I think making the houses fire-proof is the better option (or at least including a concrete bunker/cellar) - perhaps a hobbit hole would be a good look for rebuilding!

[Billhook]

Three points worth considering -

First, just how high does a firestorm carry embers ? 2 miles ? 3? 4?
And how far do 80mph firestorm winds then move them across the landscape - 6 miles ? 10? 20?

Before mounting a witchunt for arsonists, the authorities would do well to study the novel capacities of unprecedented bush fires.

Second, the prime lesson of these horrendous fires is sure;ly to halt the destabilization of the climate
that set up the unique forest conditions of inflammability.
Rudd has proposed a 5% cut in Aussie GHG output by 2020. - More absurd brinkmanship with China.

Third, it is about time that those in Aussie and elsewhere who not only deny AGW but also deny the relevance of the Precautionary Principle
are faced with their complicity in prevarication before a hazard that is killing people, including children,
by various impacts, including fire.

Regards,

Billhook

[DominicJ]

You are aware that significant portions of Australias flora is reliant on wild fires for reproduction arent you?
Kind of calls into question this being a "new" thing caused by man, when species have evolved to rely on it...

but also deny the relevance of the Precautionary Principle

This is the principle where people facing imminent death are denied experimental drugs in case they're "unsafe"?
Or garden chemicals that have been used for decades with no ill effects are taken off the shelves until someone pays the EU to test them?
Dont even get me started on "novel foods"

Edited for extra
There are two ways of doing, what is now the American way, everything is allowed unless specificaly banned, and the European way, everything is banned unless specificaly allowed.

The precautionary principle is just a nice way of dressing up the idea that the state owns you and grants you rights, rather than you own the state and surrender some of your freedoms to it.

[Billhook]

Backburning is one issue but another problem is that it had been incredibly dry over Jan and Feb so everything was tinder dry. The weather conditions on Saturday were absolutely worst case scenario and were predicted to be so. Everyone in Victoria was told not to travel on Saturday unless absolutely necessary.

We had 2 weeks of really hot weather - a record breaking 3 days over 43 degrees the week before and the day itself was and all-time record 46.4 degrees C. This was coupled with strong hot winds from the NW followed by a rapid wind change late in the day to the SW. This turned the fire into a firestorm that moved very quickly and engulfed people before they had time to leave. Part of the reason for the high death-toll is people moving into bushy areas for lifestyle reasons.

The Aussie bush is 'meant' to burn. A lot of it doesn't germinate or regenerate otherwise. However a 'regular' bushfire is usually survivable in a house - even a typical Australian one*. In fact houses usually burn down *after* the fire front has passed from fires lit by the remaining embers (which is why people often stay in them to defend them - popping out out their house after the fire front has passed to douse the spot fires).

This fire was something different - it completely incinerated houses and cars it passed over in a very short space of time. Firestorm fires like this are thought likely to become more common with the drying and warming of our climate down here.

Well said Sherry Mayo

Regards,

Billhook

[skeptik]

You are aware that significant portions of Australias flora is reliant on wild fires for reproduction arent you?
Kind of calls into question this being a "new" thing caused by man, when species have evolved to rely on it...

Aboriginal Australians *regularly* burnt the place down in a controlled manner to keep Australia the way they liked it. The fact that they are no longer doing so is one of the reasons that there is now a build up of dead plant material resulting in *sporadic* out of control bush fires.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/usTopNews ... 9P20090209

[Billhook]

Aboriginal Australians *regularly* burnt the place down in a controlled manner to keep Australia the way they liked it. The fact that they are no longer doing so is one of the reasons that there is now a build up of dead plant material resulting in *sporadic* out of control bush fires.

Below are the views of Australia's leading scientist, with an intimate personal knowledge of the state, its history, ecology and changiing climate.

Quote:

Australian bushfires: when two degrees is the difference between life and death

Scientist Tim Flannery recalls the long, wet Victorian winters now replaced by a drier and dangerous climate
______________________________

The day after the great fire burned through central Victoria, I drove from Sydney to Melbourne. For much of the way –
indeed for hundreds of miles north of the scorched ground - smoke obscured the horizon, entering my air conditioned car
and carrying with it that distinctive scent so strongly signifying death, or to Aboriginal people, cleansing.

It was as if a great cremation had taken place. I didn't know then how many people had died in their cars and homes,
or while fleeing the flames, but by the time I reached the scorched ground just north of Melbourne, the dreadful news was trickling in.
At first I heard that 70 people had died, then 108. Then 170. While the precise number of victims is yet to be ascertained,
the overall situation at least is now clear. Australia has suffered its worst recorded peacetime loss of life.
And the trauma will be with us forever.

I was born in Victoria, and over five decades I've watched as the state has changed. The long, wet and cold winters
that seemed so insufferable to me as a young boy wishing to play outside vanished decades ago, and for the past 12 years
a new, drier climate has established itself. I could measure its progress whenever I flew into Melbourne airport.
Over the years the farm dams under the flight path filled ever less frequently, while the suburbs crept ever further into the countryside,
their swimming pools seemingly oblivious to the great drying.

Climate modelling has clearly established that the decline of southern Australia's winter rainfall is being caused by a build-up of greenhouse gas,
much of it from the burning of coal. Ironically, Victoria has the most polluting coal-fed power plant on Earth,
while another of its coal plants was threatened by the fire.
There's evidence that the stream of global pollution caused a step-change in climate following the huge El Niño event of 1998.
Along with the dwindling rainfall has come a desiccation of the soil, and more extreme summer temperatures.

This February, at the zenith of a record-breaking heatwave with several days over 40C, Melbourne recorded its hottest day ever –
a suffocating 46.4C, with even higher temperatures occurring in rural Victoria. This extreme coincided with exceptionally strong northerly winds,
which were followed by an abrupt southerly change.
This brought a cooling, but it was the shift in wind direction that caught so many in a deadly trap. Such conditions have occurred before.
In 1939 and 1983 they led to dangerous fires. But this time the conditions were more extreme than ever before, and the 12-year "drought"
meant that plant tissues were almost bone dry.

Despite narrowly missing the 1983 Victorian fires, and then losing a house to the 1994 Sydney bushfires,
I had not previously appreciated the difference a degree or two of additional heat, and a dry soil, can make to the ferocity of a fire.
This fire was quantitively different from anything seen before. "

www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb ... bush-fires

Regards,

Billhook

[kenneal - lagger]

............ rather than you own the state and surrender some of your freedoms to it.

Does that include the freedom to dump any excrement you desire into the environment? It was agreed that it was bad to dump huge quantities of sulphur into the air because it caused acid rain which destroyed forests in Europe and elsewhere. The same with CFCs which destroyed the ozone layer.

The quantities of these two gases dumped into the atmosphere by humans palls into insignificance compared to the amount of CO2 we are dumping. But CO2 doesn't harm the environment in any way? At its least it's acidifying the oceans which will eventually destroy an essential source of food for us humans.

It's widely accepted in scientific circles that the high CO2 content of the atmosphere of Venus keeps the planet at a constantly high temperature while the temperature of Mercury which, despite its being closer to the sun, varies according to whether the sun is shining on that bit of surface. It's also widely accepted that the only reason the earth is habitable is because the CO2 content of the atmosphere raises the temperature enough to support life as we know it. Why should increasing the CO2 concentration not effect the temperature of Earth?

[RenewableCandy]

For someone so concerned about the AGW-inflicted pain on his country, our Tim seems to do an awful lot of flying and driving. I suppose it's unavoidable in his line of work.