Live data from Hacker News

Wildfires Are Raging Outside Every Major City in Australia

time.com

31–40 of 215 posts

Re: Wildfires Are Raging Outside Every Major City in Australia

#31
post #8
post #4

I asked a firefighter when is the fire considered safe once it appears to have stopped burning? The answer surprised me a bit. You need to have a 100m strip around the fire where someone has raked or inspected inside every tree, under every cow pat, bit of grass to make sure nothing is smouldering in that area. This is a huge job as for the fire I enquired about (Cudlee Creek SA), the perimeter is 180km and a fair bi…

Honestly I'm surprised that's sufficient . To my knowledge you can even have root fires burning underground for months . And I expect embers can travel in the wind far longer distances than 100m. It's pretty impressive to me they can do it with 100m of inspection, let alone how difficult that already is.

> And I expect embers can travel in the wind far longer distances than 100m.

Far, far more. Embers have been known to travel 10s of km. However, if that happens after a fire has been reduced to smouldering, if it lights something, that gets considered as a new fire.

Re: Wildfires Are Raging Outside Every Major City in Australia

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you expect them to actually do? The entire CO2 output of Australia could drop to zero with negligible effect on climate change.

Each serial killer has a miniscule effect on the overall crime rate, so it's stupid to have any kind of moral expectation for them to stop!

Yes, if I were in charge of reducing the crime rate, that is probably the stupidest way I could go about it.

Re: Wildfires Are Raging Outside Every Major City in Australia

#33
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you expect them to actually do? The entire CO2 output of Australia could drop to zero with negligible effect on climate change.

If every country acted that way, we'd make no progress. Every country needs to do its fair share, and Australia is not: http://theconversation.com/australia-hit-its-kyoto-target-bu...

Absolutely. Anthony Albanese (opposition leader for Labor here in Aus) said exactly this today on ABC. Whilst there is negligible correlation between the fires and our action (or inaction) to climate change as a country, the rhetoric of “well, we output so little compared of other developed nations” should not apply.

Oh, and our elected Prime Minister brought a lump of coal into parliament, which says as much.

Re: Wildfires Are Raging Outside Every Major City in Australia

#34

> The Australian Defense Force is sending ships to the Victoria town of Mallacoota on a two-week supply mission Sums up the lies from Time etc pretty well Using logic from primary school, exactly how could this happen? Two-week supply mission? Richest nation on earth, aka Australia. How does a fire destroy the ability for trucks to get through a road? Falling trees is the best fantasy I can think of. Which as long an…

Just saw a news article about it tonight. Look it up mate, it's fact.

Roads blocked, essential services non-functional, likely be weeks before these various facilities are restored.

You're obviously not familiar with the scale of Australian bushfires.

Re: Wildfires Are Raging Outside Every Major City in Australia

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you expect them to actually do? The entire CO2 output of Australia could drop to zero with negligible effect on climate change.

No definitely, the same is true of every single region on earth. But by our powers combined...

For those that don’t know the reference, it’s from Captain Planet:

https://youtu.be/WtUF1nEQ_2c

Re: Wildfires Are Raging Outside Every Major City in Australia

#36

If you live in Australia, what is this doing in terms of changing what people think and do about climate change? Is it motivating personal changes in diet, traveling and election voting choices? If this nightmare scenario isn't enough to push people into taking action, what will?

Here in Canberra, it feels like I'm living in a space station on a toxic planet; I haven't seen blue skies in a month. See this chart ( https://air-quality.com/place/australia/australian-capital-t... ) which has air pollution literally OFF their chart ranges. Hearing the drivel spewing from our PM and other politicians; It's always the same pandering responses with no real strategic change. It's beyond frustrating. W…

One of the issues is that the 'window' for fuel load management/back burning is shrinking because the bush fire season is starting earlier. We had out of control fires from September, which is unheard of, and concerns that they were started by back burning operations.

Re: Wildfires Are Raging Outside Every Major City in Australia

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> election voting choices Unfortunately, I don't believe voting one way or another will make much difference. One party might be slightly better than another, but ultimately none will dare to implement sufficient measures. Climate problem will have to be solved outside of party politics. We need something akin to civil rights movement. On the global scale.

> We need something akin to civil rights movement. On the global scale. We also need someone other than Greta as the face of it. While she does a great job, she's often dismissed due to her age and the US president has even publicly called her retarded in the literal sense.

Anyone who becomes the face of this will be relentlessly smeared, with no regard for reality.

People in the streets is probably what you need.

Re: Wildfires Are Raging Outside Every Major City in Australia

#38
post #5

As a long term Australian, this is categorically the worst fire season Australia has experienced. Summer in Australia always comes with one or two big fires in at-risk rural areas over the months from December to February. Queensland and New South Wales were burning heavily by early December. And now Victoria and South Australia have joined in as well and we're still only just into the second month of three. It's unp…

I would expect that intensive large fires will destroy all forests in affected areas... So next season will be 'fine' (= no trees at all).

Re: Wildfires Are Raging Outside Every Major City in Australia

#39
post #5

As a long term Australian, this is categorically the worst fire season Australia has experienced. Summer in Australia always comes with one or two big fires in at-risk rural areas over the months from December to February. Queensland and New South Wales were burning heavily by early December. And now Victoria and South Australia have joined in as well and we're still only just into the second month of three. It's unp…

> second month of three

Well, we hope there's only three. The long range forecasts weren't looking great, with lower than average levels of rainfall up until April.

Re: Wildfires Are Raging Outside Every Major City in Australia

#40
post #5

As a long term Australian, this is categorically the worst fire season Australia has experienced. Summer in Australia always comes with one or two big fires in at-risk rural areas over the months from December to February. Queensland and New South Wales were burning heavily by early December. And now Victoria and South Australia have joined in as well and we're still only just into the second month of three. It's unp…

> the costs of de-carbonising the economy

The costs are supposed to be about $94 T just in the US: See

https://cei.org/blog/how-much-will-green-new-deal-cost-your-...

But there is no good evidence at all that human sources of CO2 have any significant effect on the temperature or climate of the earth: There is no good evidence that more CO2 would increase temperatures or that less CO2 would lower temperatures.

For some solid details that drive a stake through the heart of the climate alarmist monster, see

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21933963

Here we can save the "costs", the $94 T in the US.

Post reply on HN