This is a large part of what the USDA and The Department of Energy do in the US.
It's sad we live in a world where people would rather not know risks than know them -- think it's worthless to find studies that determine these types of risks that most people wouldn't think of, or know how to calculate, or what would be intelligent things to do to prepare for them...
I guess if all you care about is the market going up, you're better off if people know about less risks.
> I guess if all you care about is the market going up, you're better off if people know about less risks.
It's even more crass: the interests of a few oil/coal companies allow us to paper over the very real dangers of fossil fuels &c. to the detriment of basically everyone in the world, every other industry.
Yes, but this was the 2008 Rudd (Labor) government. The current Liberal government has spent most of its time reversing all the previous Labor policies it didn't like (like the carbon tax we briefly had) - which is business as usual in Australia after a change of government.
I really want to do an analysis of the money Australia would have made from that repealed carbon tax up to now, vs the total amount of all the recent donations to the RFS (currently at like A$48 million [0]).
It really is shameful that a nation with one of the highest GDPs per capita is getting donations to deal with a situation that was foreseen, and not just ignored but had (potential) solutions that were actively removed.
If you think carbon taxes are going to stop a 3 year drought from occasionally hitting Australia, a region with thousands of years of documented dry spells, I don't know what to say. We don't control the rain. The only sensible thing Australia can do is prescribed burning and bush thinning.
Sorry let me rephrase, a carbon tax would have done these things:
- reduced Australia's carbon emissions (not a massive deal by itself)
- built up a public repository of cash that could have been allocated to something useful, like funding the fire services
- lead by example; we will now never know if Australia's leading by example would have encouraged a wider implementation of carbon tax schemes and a reduction in carbon emissions
You are correct that it would have not by itself mitigated the natural drought cycle in Australia, however the opportunity to reduce the impact was lost - and Australia is poorer for it.
Finally, I did not suggest that a carbon tax would have stopped these fires, only that I would like to do an analysis between what the potential sum of taxes would have been versus the donation totals.
> The only sensible thing Australia can do is prescribed burning and bush thinning.
Which we are doing. But the opportunities to do prescribed burns aren't what they once were because the climate is changing and the window for these types of activities is smaller annually. We need more than just prescribed burns.
> If you think carbon taxes are going to stop a 3 year drought from occasionally hitting Australia, a region with thousands of years of documented dry spells
Are you implying that the rate and duration of dry spells have been the constant for thousands of years? If so, do you have data back this up?
If not, is it possible that we're living in exceptional weather conditions? A quick google gives me an article from the Bureau of Meteorology, an organization with a wealth of data, the requisite compute power to analyze the data, and actual expects of climate modelling:
> The only sensible thing Australia can do is prescribed burning and bush thinning.
Do you think that fire authorities haven't been doing this already?
If anything their capacity has been reduced by recent budget cuts from NSW Liberal Party - the core policies of the Liberal Party are smaller government, individual responsibility, and hence lower taxes across the board. The Victorian Labor party, on the other hand, increased their capability.
Unfortunately there's a number of forests that are exceptionally dry due to recent long term trends, and Australia just needs more and more resources to manage its land.
So sensible things to do are:
- provide more resources for land management
- stop making the world hotter
This is a deep drought but it's coming on the tail end of a wetter than average decade. So plants have had plenty of time to build up combustible fuel over the past decade.
"As former State Fire Chiefs call for a summit on bushfires, expert and scientist David Packham explains that it has nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with fuel-loads."
David Packham warned about the fuel loads in 2015.
Bushfire scientist David Packham warns of huge blaze threat, urges increase in fuel reduction burns
Darren Gray
By Darren Gray
Updated March 12, 2015 — 4.05pm
You've done some exceptional work here cherry picking a world view that matches your own.
> Australia has generally gotten wetter over the past 50 years than the first 50 years of the 20th century
Even if I take Roy Spencer at his word, higher rainfall isn't in opposition with some areas of the continent becoming drier, or hot, dry weather systems getting more intense. As with the link I provided from the Bureau of Meteorology, the rainfall patterns are changing and certain places are actually becoming wetter, but some places much drier - particularly the south east of Australia. You might want to read it.
> Worse still, they actively discouraged and fined people for attempting to remove firewood from national parks:
> That's negligence of the highest order.
That's hyperbole of the highest order. I'm not sure how you back your claim that local residents taking firewood (which is habitat for many endangered native birds) makes a significant impact on fuel load.
And fuel reduction burns are not a perfect strategy. Even when timed as best as possible, they are often not enough to solve the problem, and won't prevent canopy fires when you have catastrophic level weather patterns.
This article was published today and provides a nuanced view on the topic.
At the scale this is happening, How is this different from the 'big one' predictions that talks about the San Andreas Fault earthquake possibility or the yellowstone volcano one even?
I guess beyond a particular point humanity is still at the mercy of nature isn't it? As bad as the reversals sound, making it a government thing seems like overfitting.
The vast majority of Australia's fires were caused directly by arson, so much so that the NSW police are starting a taskforce to tackle it while publicly saying it's the primary cause. How would a carbon price help arson, considering that it'll likely have a negligible impact on temperatures and therefore intensity of bushfires? Arson is also getting worse and more severe.
How can I, as an external observer that doesn't even live in Australia, disentangle these mutual accusations of fake news?
From what I can see there are those who claim that climate change has to do with it and there are those who claim it's mainly arsonist. Then there are those who claim that focusing on the arsonists is actively used to deflect from the climate change problem, and there are those who claim that such claim actively used to pursue the agenda of climate change activism.
Is there a way to objectively figure out what's going on?
Objectively, probably not - short of physically going and interviewing police officers etc directly involved.
But you can always attempt to more fully understand a given problem space and the political forces at work to shape the debate. You then need to apply a filter of rational analysis onto all 'news' you consume, attempt to work out any inherent bias in the source, hypothesise a reason for a bias to exist even if it is not apparent, then determine that if a bias exists, who profits from it.
Then make up your own opinion. Just like with everything else on the internet.
In this case, the Murdoch press has been actively supressing the climate debate in Australia for years, for which you can find more sources than I can reasonably link here I'm sure.
What if (for the sake of the argukent) they are accidentally right? I.e. despite a clear bias they reach the right conclusion that and indeed the effect of climate change is negligible as a causal agent in this case. Dismissing that possibility just because is supported by those who would support it no matter what (and furthermore backed what whatever ulterior motive there might be) is no different from what others ascribe to the environmentalist camp, labeling it just as political activism leveraging anything that happens on the world as a proof that they are right.
Don't get me wrong, I do have my own opinion about what's going on that I built using more or less the logic you described. But if I step back I see it has to be driven by by own biases, otherwise how would other reasonable people come to other conclusions. I wish there was more we can do to make it easier to discuss such topics between people who come from different starting points.
Yeah, I dunno dude. Probably the first step is for everyone to emotionally disengage from the topic at hand - which most people find difficult in my experience. I find that meditation often allows me to kind of subconsiously allow logical blocks to fall into place for various things I am mulling over, without colouring my final descision with whatever emotional biases I harbour.
That source does not refute my point. Arson has been confirmed by dozens of government and police sources. NSW police are on record as it being the primary contributor.
Scientists have warned about this for decades, but they were smeared or even harassed by bad-faith actors. I wish that those responsible would be punished or at least demoted.
That really depends on what end of the climate change stick the country is at. Such smearing/harassment has never been a thing in Russia/USSR. Back at USSR in the middle school in mid-198x we were taught the scientific fact of human caused climate change/global warming. The lessons were learnt well - these days Russia invests all the way into the things like the new and increased oil and gas production and builds up the new large fleet of ships and related infrastructure - ports, railways, etc. - to ramp full scale up during the coming decade the freight route through the clearing Arctic as that route is shorter than through the Suez channel.
31 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 61.7 ms ] threadIt's sad we live in a world where people would rather not know risks than know them -- think it's worthless to find studies that determine these types of risks that most people wouldn't think of, or know how to calculate, or what would be intelligent things to do to prepare for them...
I guess if all you care about is the market going up, you're better off if people know about less risks.
It's even more crass: the interests of a few oil/coal companies allow us to paper over the very real dangers of fossil fuels &c. to the detriment of basically everyone in the world, every other industry.
I really want to do an analysis of the money Australia would have made from that repealed carbon tax up to now, vs the total amount of all the recent donations to the RFS (currently at like A$48 million [0]).
It really is shameful that a nation with one of the highest GDPs per capita is getting donations to deal with a situation that was foreseen, and not just ignored but had (potential) solutions that were actively removed.
[0] - https://www.facebook.com/donate/1010958179269977/
- reduced Australia's carbon emissions (not a massive deal by itself)
- built up a public repository of cash that could have been allocated to something useful, like funding the fire services
- lead by example; we will now never know if Australia's leading by example would have encouraged a wider implementation of carbon tax schemes and a reduction in carbon emissions
You are correct that it would have not by itself mitigated the natural drought cycle in Australia, however the opportunity to reduce the impact was lost - and Australia is poorer for it.
Finally, I did not suggest that a carbon tax would have stopped these fires, only that I would like to do an analysis between what the potential sum of taxes would have been versus the donation totals.
Cheers.
-divert funding to sustainable and productive industries which would further reduce Australian carbon emissions
-create commercial opportunities in exportable industries that would have positive impact on GDP and net exports.
https://theconversation.com/bushfires-bots-and-arson-claims-...
Which we are doing. But the opportunities to do prescribed burns aren't what they once were because the climate is changing and the window for these types of activities is smaller annually. We need more than just prescribed burns.
Are you implying that the rate and duration of dry spells have been the constant for thousands of years? If so, do you have data back this up?
If not, is it possible that we're living in exceptional weather conditions? A quick google gives me an article from the Bureau of Meteorology, an organization with a wealth of data, the requisite compute power to analyze the data, and actual expects of climate modelling:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/updates/articles/a010-southern...
> The only sensible thing Australia can do is prescribed burning and bush thinning.
Do you think that fire authorities haven't been doing this already?
If anything their capacity has been reduced by recent budget cuts from NSW Liberal Party - the core policies of the Liberal Party are smaller government, individual responsibility, and hence lower taxes across the board. The Victorian Labor party, on the other hand, increased their capability.
Unfortunately there's a number of forests that are exceptionally dry due to recent long term trends, and Australia just needs more and more resources to manage its land.
So sensible things to do are:
- provide more resources for land management - stop making the world hotter
This is a deep drought but it's coming on the tail end of a wetter than average decade. So plants have had plenty of time to build up combustible fuel over the past decade.
"As former State Fire Chiefs call for a summit on bushfires, expert and scientist David Packham explains that it has nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with fuel-loads."
https://volunteerfirefighters.org.au/scientist-david-packham...
David Packham warned about the fuel loads in 2015.
Bushfire scientist David Packham warns of huge blaze threat, urges increase in fuel reduction burns Darren Gray By Darren Gray Updated March 12, 2015 — 4.05pm
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/bushfire-scienti...
The Aussie government apparently didn't listen to its own experts on this 4 years ago.
Worse still, they actively discouraged and fined people for attempting to remove firewood from national parks:
https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/news/removing-firewood-fr...
That's negligence of the highest order.
> Australia has generally gotten wetter over the past 50 years than the first 50 years of the 20th century
Even if I take Roy Spencer at his word, higher rainfall isn't in opposition with some areas of the continent becoming drier, or hot, dry weather systems getting more intense. As with the link I provided from the Bureau of Meteorology, the rainfall patterns are changing and certain places are actually becoming wetter, but some places much drier - particularly the south east of Australia. You might want to read it.
> Worse still, they actively discouraged and fined people for attempting to remove firewood from national parks: > That's negligence of the highest order.
That's hyperbole of the highest order. I'm not sure how you back your claim that local residents taking firewood (which is habitat for many endangered native birds) makes a significant impact on fuel load.
And fuel reduction burns are not a perfect strategy. Even when timed as best as possible, they are often not enough to solve the problem, and won't prevent canopy fires when you have catastrophic level weather patterns.
This article was published today and provides a nuanced view on the topic.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-10/hazard-reduction-burn...
I guess beyond a particular point humanity is still at the mercy of nature isn't it? As bad as the reversals sound, making it a government thing seems like overfitting.
[0] - https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/dangerous-...
From what I can see there are those who claim that climate change has to do with it and there are those who claim it's mainly arsonist. Then there are those who claim that focusing on the arsonists is actively used to deflect from the climate change problem, and there are those who claim that such claim actively used to pursue the agenda of climate change activism.
Is there a way to objectively figure out what's going on?
But you can always attempt to more fully understand a given problem space and the political forces at work to shape the debate. You then need to apply a filter of rational analysis onto all 'news' you consume, attempt to work out any inherent bias in the source, hypothesise a reason for a bias to exist even if it is not apparent, then determine that if a bias exists, who profits from it.
Then make up your own opinion. Just like with everything else on the internet.
In this case, the Murdoch press has been actively supressing the climate debate in Australia for years, for which you can find more sources than I can reasonably link here I'm sure.
Don't get me wrong, I do have my own opinion about what's going on that I built using more or less the logic you described. But if I step back I see it has to be driven by by own biases, otherwise how would other reasonable people come to other conclusions. I wish there was more we can do to make it easier to discuss such topics between people who come from different starting points.
But you know, that might just all be bullshit.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/1/6/21051897/austral...
Left-wingers seeking to "prove" climate calamity.