Keep in mind the article is talking about individual fires rather than the all the fires going on simultaneously. So far 26M acres have burned in this season and in populated areas unlike most other bushfires.
Exactly: the combination of size and proximity to populated areas makes this unusual. Unbelievably there was a bushfire in 1974/75 Central Australia which consumed ~117M hectares yet went UNNOTICED until after it burned out.
1. Bushfires may be more frequent in some parts of Australia than others. So two bushfires of equal size, but occuring in different regions, may not necessarily be equally common.
2. The list on Wikipedia is referring to final surface burned, after the fire is contained, or has burned out. However the 1.5M Acre figure mentioned here seems to be only the current surface burned - presumably it will continue to expand and burn more.
Bushfires are a natural part of the ecosystem in Australia. Many plants are adapted specifically to survive and thrive after bushfire conditions. However, bushfires on this scale is somewhat unprecedented.
It's a bit like 5 hurricanes hitting Florida in one summer. Aren't hurricanes normal in Florida?
I'm reading that last question as irony, experience suggests others will read it as an un-ironic rhetorical question.
So while recognising, what I believe is you're ironic phrasing, I'm addressing what I think will be the un-ironic reading others will take, you good with that.
Yes fire is a normal part of Australian ecosystems,
and it is unknown whether this spread with Eucalyptus trees or whether Eucalyptus trees spread with humans using fire.
Partisan politics has made it very difficult for many Australians to look directly at these topics. So while fire, is a terrifying but not unexpected feature of living in Australia, the scale of this year's fires are a unique horror that I believe will push enough Australians to engage with that difficulty.
I think we are going to see fast significant shifts in political discussion from this, that both the emotive calls to action, and populist denials or diminishment will we perceived as a distraction from direct sober engagement of an existential threat.
( As I first typed this I accidentally capitalised that as Australian Ecosystems, because I once worked for a company by that name that did environmental work, including controlled burning)
The gum tree or Eucalyptus tree of Australia is an example of a plant that needs bushfires to propagate. The seeds are normally sealed by a resin that must be melted by fire to allow them to sprout. Eucalyptus trees make up most of Australia's forests [1].
Other examples of Australian plants that are adapted to bushfires to the degree that they require them to propagate are found in the genus Banksia [2]. Together with the genus Eucalyptus they comprise hundreds of plant species[3]. These aren't the only pyrophytic plants[3] that require fires. For example, Melaleuca quinquenervia is another pyrophytic plant of Australia [4].
Wikipedia says this of the Eucalyptus:
> Most species of Eucalyptus are native to Australia, and every state and territory has representative species. About three-quarters of Australian forests are eucalypt forests. Wildfire is a feature of the Australian landscape and many eucalypt species are adapted to fire, and resprout after fire or have seeds which survive fire.
Eucalyptus trees survive fire so they can be classified as a pyrophytic plant; they benefit from fires that destroy competitive plants. The Giant Sequoia trees of the US also survive fires and are are considered pyrophytes. However some plants are considered to be active pyrophtes because they encourage fires or the spread of fires. The Eucalyptus is an active pyrophyte because it produces inflammable oils.
The carniverous Byblis genus of plants and cogongrass are other examples of fire adapted plants found in Australia.
This is historically different because severe fire weather started early in spring. The dry hottest summer months are still ahead. I'm not sure how long this will go on?
The current bushfire season started 5 September. Very early.
January and February are the hottest. December and March have similar temperatures. The seasonal weather and sea temperatures have delay relative to sun.
February is hot as hell here in Sydney. There's a long, likely dry spell to come. Any analysis of how bad the fires are historically should compare hectares burned "to this date" not "in total".
As an anecdote.. We live in Sydney. My wife was talking to her father who was being evacuated from his town in Northern California due to fire. We could smell smoke in Sydney already, despite being in the opposite season.
The mega bush fire was much larger and 50 years ago and therefore could not have been validation of a climate change feedback loop.
So today's fires are weak ammunition for reallocations of public resources towards climate change efforts, compared to existing arguments that can't gain consensus. I can see how it isn't budging consensus.
These headlines were only ever in dodgy conservative media sources (generally conflating people being warned for campfires, BBQs and angle grinders outside with "arsonists deliberately setting fires"). You should check the ownership of the news sources you previously used and stop reading them.
24 people have been charged over alleged deliberately-lit bushfires
53 people have had legal actions for allegedly failing to comply with a total fire ban, and
47 people have had legal actions for allegedly discarding a lighted cigarette or match on land.
That sounds about right - but the bits of the media with a vested interest in portraying this as an unusual arson wave have been saying 180+ people arrested for lighting bushfires.
This police report only notes 24 arrests for alleged arson, not which fires were set, how big they got or whether this was unusual. It could well be that this is a typical (or small or large) arrest haul and that the fires involved were easily controlled or small. What we can tell with certainty is that NSW is only one state and so this report doesn't say anything at all about fire ignition sources in the other states: WA, NT, Vic, SA, Qld.
A reasonable assumption might be that fires in unpopulated areas in central Australia were probably not arson (no people there to set them) and these are the largest fires (no people there to fight them).
But rather early for any broad conclusions. All we can say is - there's been some arson but we lack the context or details to really understand the relative importance. Currently arson doesn't seem like a major factor and it is probably over represented in densely populated NSW relative to the rest of the country.
I would say there's little evidence to support a hypothesis of an "unusual arson wave".
The authorities (don't know if this is RFS or police in this case) seem to pretty confidently attribute fires to causes for the most part. The percentage attributed to arson is lowish but disturbing (20%?).
I imagine lightning strikes and ember spread from existing fires are fairly easy to diagnose. I'm not sure how you tell "fires spread from sparks from roadway incidents" from "arson" but I'm not an expert.
It takes one exceptionally dedicated team of super-arsonists to burn a million hectares of cold wet forest. Such a thing has never occurred in history.
Weather patterns (hot and dry summer) create the conditions for a fire, an arsonist merely provides the ignition source. In the right conditions a single errant spark from a power tool can set off a giant bushfire. Or an arsonist with a single match.
I've seen this link pop up as a meme on conservative reddit forums for the past month, but with additional text using it to dismiss climate change.
Keep in mind, Australia is huge and has different climates.
While this isn't the biggest fire of all Australia, it is the biggest fire of that region in history by ~10x (according to that wikipedia link).
This is highly unusual.
And as a result of being in populated areas, it has done the most dollars of damage of any fire. This is what climate change advocates are pointing to: increased fires in areas that normally do not have them.
Also look at the history for that page. There are frequent updates/changes and later reversions to some of these numbers. Take the measurements with a grain of salt as people edit to prove a narrative.
Nature is a cruel place. It's hard to grapple with as somebody who values animal life equally to human life, but also is cognizant of how far beyond our reach it is to remove all the tragedies that are really just part of the ecosystem.
That seems to me a quite useless and potentially misleading comparison. Scientists should be aware that everything they say can be used against their own work in the wild world of social networks.
What's the point being driven at here? Is it minimizing the deaths of Australian wildlife, or is it making a quip about the sheer scale of cat hunting activity?
If it's the former, that seems like a bad comparison. The Australian wildfires are destroying ecosystems on a scale cats don't really do. And a much greater variety of wildlife is dying than what cats will typically kill.
Finally, wildfires don't support life. They're naturally occurring things, but they are not an activity occurring in the support of other life. Cats kill to hone hunting skills (or simply to hunt, if they're actually hungry). With that observation we can impose a reasonable normative, which is that we don't need to accept wildfires the same way we accept predator activity.
Put simply: I don't see that these two things belong to the same category of destruction.
It's a bad comparison, but for a different set of reasons.
Wildfires aren't part of the fauna. This is true. But even without humans, there are wildfires. When wildfires happen, they create a new playing field for species to inhabit. Moreover, life has adapted over the course of millions of years to a low number of wildfires i.e. the spread of a species over a large territory whereas wildfires may be incidental and localized. The adaptability of a species to wildfires - amongst other things - is what defines it's resilience.
The difference here is that the size and scope of these fires is far beyond the resilience of entire regional ecosystems. When this is over, what is lost won't return. It will be replaced by different species - plants and animals - that might not be as diverse or rich.
We can safely assert that wild cats are inherently part of the ecosystem. However, if a billion animals being killed a year by cats, well, that's not due to the mere presence of cats as a species. But because of the overwhelming number of cats in the ecosystem. And that number is anything but normal.
Cats are domesticated animals. The main reason why there are so many out there is simply because society tends to keep and protect cats. Cats and humans live in a symbiotic relationship. And that's why cats thrive as a species. Much to the detriment of other species.
Put more poignantly, nobody would argue against the need for pet owners to keep their dogs to a leash and their pet snakes and other predators locked in cages. But cats are the major exception. There are no laws that restrict home owners to let cats go out of the door and roam the neighborhood killing each any small bird, mammal or reptile around. Whereas other wild species who espouse pretty much the same behavior - rats, foxes, mice - are seen as pests.
And so, we can safely assert that neither mega wildfires nor the strain cats impose by their numbers are natural occurrences. In both cases, they are manifestations causes by irrational human behaviours.
> Whereas other wild species who espouse pretty much the same behavior - rats, foxes, mice - are seen as pests.
I have not heard of anyone having a problem with rats and mice hunting other animals. They are mainly considered pests because they eat human food stores. And the only context I have heard of foxes considered pests is when they hunt livestock, chickens, geese etc. If a domestic cat starts hunting chickens, I am pretty sure it will have consequences as well.
>> I have not heard of anyone having a problem with rats and mice hunting other animals
In Canada rats are a bigger threat to bird species than cats, topped only by humans. Or visit an island environment Galapagos where they've been introduced.
Rats and mice are classic examples of "invasive species" and can have huge impact on ecosystems. Just to pick two handy examples; rats in New Zealand[1] and regular house mice putting bird species at risk of extinction[2].
They don't "hunt" animals, they eat the eggs, removing the ability for the birds to reproduce. They devestate native bird populations that did not develop with pressure from rodants and lack defenses.
I think the point is that simply stating one billion animals died isn't, by itself, very interesting. It also draws attention to an interesting fact, a fact which some believe deserves more recognition, that cats kill many animals.
As you say, the real issue is massive ecosystem destruction and rare and/or endangered species being killed. But that doesn't spread on social media quite as well as the feeling driven "one billion animals died!"
I took it simply as a comment on how the same scale of impact has very different emotional responses if the cause is a big, notable event vs. a long-running regular one.
Isn't this the entire problem with climate change in general? It's really hard to get people concerned with very small temperature changes over long periods of time because we use our human perspective; it's hard for us to understand a geological time scale.
These types of observations help IMO.
>> The Australian wildfires are destroying ecosystems on a scale cats don't really do. And a much greater variety of wildlife is dying than what cats will typically kill.
Well, domestic cats are considered an invasive species in much of the world, and in Canada are the #1 killer of birds. Studies show they are the 3rd biggest offender towards putting species at risk. The story is worse on islands, of which we have many.
>> Finally, wildfires don't support life. They're naturally occurring things, but they are not an activity occurring in the support of other life.
This is absolutely wrong. Lots of forests in Western Canada depend greatly on regular, large-scale fires to support specific species of flora and fauna. Our excellent job of preventing these fires is likely to blame for many huge problems like mountain pine beetle and predator/prey imbalances.
There was a biologist on BBC Radio 4 this morning making exactly the point, and actually going a few steps further: as well as the numbers being extremely high, there are a number of species endemic to Australia whose habitat is entirely within the areas of the fire. He was able to name three or four species which may be entirely extinct at this point due to the fires (obviously, until the fire's gone, it's difficult to tell for sure...)
So once it finishes, we should have a clean slate with vastly reduced fire potential, right? Seems like there was a build-up of combustible material for some time, and nature decided to run its course.
Forest management will go down into one of the biggest failures of our generation. Combine that with a adverse climate and arsonist, and it’s going to be an awful next few decades.
True. This could have all been prevented with controlled fires during winter time. However, they are illegal to do in Australia. Creating a firebreak to save your home from a bushfire is also illegal and heavily punished.
This will be interesting to see in the few next years. Either the way we do the burns will have to change, or we'll just have to accept unsafe burns as better than massive fires a few years down the line. So far I haven't heard any announced alternative ideas.
It's illegal to construct firebreaks ... in certain places? At certainly times?
That sounds quite incredible to me - a quick search turned up plenty of WA firebreak building guides, as well as the Brush Fires act of 1954 which seems to mandate construction of firebreaks by landowners in certain situations.
You need permission to cut down a tree on your property. If you are not given permission then it's illegal to cut it down. Hence, it is illegal to create a firebreak if you are denied permission to do so. There is a minimum range that doesn't require permission but it's not far enough to save your house in a bushfire.
I wouldn't say it is illegal but the law in Australia is very tough and you can't just use common sense, you got to wait and get approvals which in many times don't come. Many times I was pointing out to people that there are too many dense forests around where people live and it is a fire hazard but people looks at me like this dumb immigrant who is anti "the environment". Australians just love their nature and are against anything that will hurt it, even if it is necessary. So it is easy to dismiss anybody who point it out as some climate change denier but meanwhile people houses get burned.
The RFS has permission to conduct materials clearing. The quotes below are from the head of the RFS:
> Shane Fitzsimmons told the program that while hazard reduction burning is part of a “really complex argument”, “environmental clearances are invariably not our problem with hazard reduction burning”.
> “Our biggest challenge with hazard reduction is the weather and the windows available to do it safely and effectively,” Mr Fitzsimmons said.
> “Sure, there’s environmental and other checks to go through but we streamline those. There’s special legislation to give us clearance and to cut through what would otherwise be a very complex environment.”
That’s a strange article. On The one hand they’re saying people who say lack of hazard management (controlled burning) is making the fires worse are literally “conspiracy theorist” and then the very next paragraph this line:
> Former fire chiefs who have been calling strongly for action on climate change, and who have been trying to meet Morrison for months, have also been calling for increased funding for hazard reduction.
The "conspiracy" is that hazard reduction burning has been blocked by the Australian Greens (and other environmental bodies).
More hazard reduction may be required, but this is orthogonal to the above. I have seen no evidence of the Greens blocking hazard reduction burns requested by the RFS.
As the article states, fire chiefs have been trying to meet with the Australian prime minster for months, but have been ignored. this suggests that any blame for poor preparation leading up to this bush fire season should be attributed directly to the party in power. To me the motivation behind this spread of disinformation is very clear.
I think it's only a 'strange article' if you only skim read it. It's saying that the claim that somehow the Greens prevented hazard management is a conspiracy theory.
The Murdoch media has decided to run with the idiotic idea that there was an 'easy' opportunity to reduce fuel loads and it was prevented by unspecified environmentalists at unspecified locations (the claims are always super-non-specific, for obvious reasons). In fact, as the fire chiefs point out, the limitations on hazard reduction burns have largely been due to weather (too wet or too dry).
Needless to say, the actual statement from the fire chiefs is extremely nuanced and well thought out. It's almost like they know something about fighting bushfires, unlike all the amateur hour geniuses that have emerged from the woodwork to sit in their pajamas theorizing on every major venue 24/7 including public holidays.
Sort of but not in a good way. When forests aren’t managed well and allowed to burn, the build up causes the fires to burn much hotter, making the soil itself burn underneath. There’s going to be significant nutrient loss for a large swath of land.
I don't know about Australia, but here in Northern California, that's not how it works. 500 years ago, forest fires were common, cool burning, and did more good than harm. Today, it's been so long since the previous fire that there's a huge amount of underbrush and dead material. When a fire comes through, it's so hot that it kills everything, including huge, old growth doug fir trees. However, it's not hot enough to actually incinerate the old growth trees, so you get left with a bunch of standing deads, and plenty of dead wood for another fire.
Yes. That is what has started to happen. I live in Lake Tahoe for a number of years and you'd regularly see signs posted "Controlled Burn in progress, do not report" with smoke in the distance.
The problem is that there isn't enough money for the man powered required to control burn everything. And 50 to 100 years of "don't let anything burn" has led to a LOT of areas with a lot of build up. Those areas require a lot of care to controlled burn correctly and are often way way WAY out there - making it harder/more expensive to control.
There is also the problem of encroachment of civilization on the forests. At least in CA there are houses basically built into the forrest, or right up to the edge. How do you burn those areas assuring the residence 100% safety?
We could, but we don't do enough of it because of liability risks. Imagine if the controlled burn goes out of control, and burns down <someone's lakehouse/dacha/cabin/dog/three month old baby>.
People will be in the streets, crying for blood, and won't give up until the Department of Controlled Forest Burns is dissolved, and its executives are sleeping in the Bay, wearing cement overshoes.
Yes, you can buy insurance for this sort of thing, but no, money doesn't grow on trees, and insuring your controlled burn program is not going to come cheap.
Not sure where you are, but controlled burns are common in California. And it's expected that a small portion of them get out of control. Source: my neighbor, who's a retired wildland firefighter.
That has been practised for a long time in Australia. Ironically and sadly the authorities responsible are now reducing their controlled burning because they say there are too few days in the year when it is safe to do so due to climate change.
Planned burns are a thing here in Australia. It has turned into a bit of a populist talking point amongst certain people. The truth is that the time window to safely do burns in winter has sort of disappeared. Plus these fires have been intense enough to jump through places that have been burnt. As anecdata, I grew up in Southern Australia and little bushfires were common every summer. Occasionally a big one. I've moved to south east Queensland and never really seen any significant bushfires in the past decade (if I did it was government doing a planned burn in a national park). It is sub tropical, usually pretty wet in summer (sometimes with a drought, but usually much, much wetter than say east coast of tasmania). These last few years are different. The national parks I go to for walks are super dry. Creeks are dried up that are usually running. I had that scary feeling I had from my youth of smelling smoke on a hike and worrying about fire. It isn't something I have had for a long time.
Climate change and poor management means these fires are different: they burn so hot that the forest never returns or consists of entirely different plants and trees.
>That complete lack of regrowth happened most frequently at lower-elevation sites that have become measurably warmer and drier in the past 30 years, said Stevens-Rumann, an assistant professor in the Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship at Colorado State University. Those areas may no longer have suitable conditions for the growth of tree species that were there before and may become other types of ecosystems, such as grasslands.
>The fire was so intense in some places that it burned up all organic matter needed to help the soil retain nutrients and moisture required for trees to grow.
>[I]n some cases, the dominant black spruce and white spruce are being replaced by deciduous trees such as aspen. That's especially the case for forests that burned less than 80 years ago, where trees haven't yet had time to develop fire-resistant seed cones. Spruce trees are also outcompeted in drier areas, suggesting climate may also play a role, Whitman said.
Based on the way aspen actually grow, it's more likely that the area was originally an aspen grove and was planted with spruce because spruce is a better lumber product. I know in BC they actually spray (with Roundup) all the sites where there are forest fires so that the aspen can't come back, and then they replant with pine or spruce.
Aspen is a natural fire break species. So it'll actually prevent more big forest fires in the future.
In Australia it really is nature running it course in a big cycle. The Australian bush needs fires to clean out the scrub and trigger seeds to germinate - which they will not do without a little roasting.
I wonder if there's a point at which the particulates from the fire become globally relevant. Knowing what we know now about how awful particulates are for health and cognition, we would be in a bad place as a species if none of us can breathe clean air.
According to CIMSS Satellite Blog [0], the cloud of smoke from the Jan 4th flare up (the one that reached New Zealand) is still visible from space - traveling across the Pacific with some of the smoke even reaching Antarctica.
You could clearly see the plume going twice as far (as NZ) into the Pacific on the satellite photos. Apparently it made it as far as South America. Once it gets into the upper atmosphere, the jet streams and currents take it far. That said, it probably has little impact on humans when its that high up.
Particulates in the air can carry a few thousand kilometers, but they will also disperse and settle as they travel.
Living within a few hundred yards of a major street, or within a few miles of a major industrial district is going to have more impact on your health then smoke travelling from the other side of the world. Smoke particulates are also reasonably easy to remove from the air, using standard consumer filters.
I'd say that's definitely globally relevant. On the day that was posted you could look on Himawari and clearly see huge smoke clouds from space. It's terrifying.
The last time I saw, they were estimated to have released 75% of Australia's annual emissions budget from burning coal. The scale of them is mind-boggling. The total estimated to have burned is 5M hectares, which is twice as much as the recent fires in the Arctic, and over 5x the recent Amazon fires. And there's no sign they're coming under control yet.
Yes, those were the ones I meant, although from that page it's not clear whether the fires were above the Arctic circle or not. I thought they were but may have misremembered.
The bigger problem is that a lot of carbon offset measures involve planting trees/forests. But forests burn (and will do so with greater frequency as the temperature increases).
Is there a reason to use acres at this order of magnitude?
In case anyone else finds it easier to imagine this way: 1.5M acres converts to 2,343 mi^2, which i can then envision as multiples of a reference area (7 NYCs).
But we need to strike a balance here. I agree with the person above that putting big numbers as to exaggerate and drive panic is not really a prudent approach. At the end of the day, it hurts more than helps for a very simple reason: people remember. If you sell a doomsday scenario and nothing happens, people will start to dismiss your claims, like the boy who cried wolf. I recall 20 years ago seeing articles claiming that "Snow will be a thing of the past" or "Arctic to be ice-free by 2020". Nothing happened. Now we hear that we are facing mass extinction in a few decades. People get anxious and nervous when they see that, but then when nothing happens they will start to discount heavily your claims.
> if you sell a doomsday scenario and nothing happens, people will start to dismiss your claims
You are massively missing the point: what is happening in Australia the past few weeks / months, the 4-50°C temperature, the gigantic fires, ... Are not warning signs or a possible doomsday scenario people are trying to sell.
It is the doomsday scenario actually happening in its early phase. It's too late to avoid it, it's happening, now the best we can do is slow it down and try to reverse course.
> I recall 20 years ago seeing articles claiming that "Snow will be a thing of the past" or "Arctic to be ice-free by 2020". Nothing happened.
Of course, if by nothing happened you mean it is actually happening faster than even predicted and the ice coverage is thinning so fast you can see it on year-on-year comparisons.
> It is the doomsday scenario actually happening in its early phase. It's too late to avoid it, it's happening, now the best we can do is slow it down and try to reverse course.
You are reinforcing his point by making these silly exaggerated claims of doomsday scenarios. Nearly 50 years ago, the 1974-1975 bush fires burnt 95 million hectares, which is an order of magnitude bigger than the 10.7 million burnt so far in 2019-2020. Epic bush fires have been regularly occurring in Australia for a very long time, well before the industrial revolution.
Also note that some of these fires were started by arsonists, which is obviously not climate related.
I'm starting to think people will refuse to understand just how deep in the proverbial mud we're already in until we're all actively on fire, given comments like these.
Which world do you live in has regular occurrences of fires so big they turn the skies orange in an adjacent country?
Yet more irrational hyperbole. Why can't you comprehend the simple fact that the latest fires are AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE SMALLER than the fires 45 years ago. Conditions have been MUCH worse in the past.
More irrational hyperbole. Try to understand the simple fact that the latest fires are AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE SMALLER than the fires 45 years ago. Conditions have been MUCH worse in the past. This is an objective hard fact.
More irrational hyperbole. Try to understand the simple fact that the latest fires are an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE SMALLER than the fires 45 years ago. Conditions have been much worse in the past. This is an objective hard fact.
I suspect that acres were chosen because it is a reasonably familiar unit, given the organ is NPR, and makes for a huge number. If you are aware of an acre, you will know it is a fair sized bit of land and 1.5M of them is absolutely huge.
For us European types (lol - UK) 0.3 Wales or 0.2 Belgiums gives an idea as to absolutely awful these fires are.
Anyone saying this fire is a natural occurrence is completely deluded. There's no such thing as random in the Universe (shocking to some but true), everything has an inherent reason. A causal force. In this case it appears to be humanity itself.
Global warming yes. Sorry about the "esotericism". No conspiration intended. I forget to keep it filtered down. People can be really sensitive to it i find. It's natural for me, not so much for most.
You're just assuming it was lightning. Or that lightning was the only culprit. Which is most likely false; Natives have been setting control fires for centuries, yes. That's wrong and primitive i think. But the problem was most likely aggravated by climate changes;
No, I've witnessed lightning start a fire. And so have many others. You have no basis to deny this natural occurrence. Even climate change deniers can't disagree with this. Its not even up as part of a climate change debate. At best, you're just plain wrong; at worst you're simply committed to a useless narrative which blinds you from actual truth.
Insulting natives for lighting fires shows complete disrespect and ignorance of the underlying environments, flora and fauna as well as their part in all of it. You aren't advanced and knowledgeable: you're just ignorant, smug, and delusional.
> I've witnessed lightning start a fire. And so have many others. You have no basis to deny this natural occurrence.
I agree that there seems to be a bit of bias (if not racism) in the OP's point, but there's no denying that the vast majority of fires are created by humans, whether indigenous, farmers, or hikers.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 169 ms ] threadJust skimming wikipedia and there are a bunch of bushfires that were bigger than this instance, and bushfires seem pretty common there
1. Bushfires may be more frequent in some parts of Australia than others. So two bushfires of equal size, but occuring in different regions, may not necessarily be equally common.
2. The list on Wikipedia is referring to final surface burned, after the fire is contained, or has burned out. However the 1.5M Acre figure mentioned here seems to be only the current surface burned - presumably it will continue to expand and burn more.
It's a bit like 5 hurricanes hitting Florida in one summer. Aren't hurricanes normal in Florida?
Except if 3 of those hurricanes arrived before hurricane season.
So while recognising, what I believe is you're ironic phrasing, I'm addressing what I think will be the un-ironic reading others will take, you good with that.
Yes fire is a normal part of Australian ecosystems, and it is unknown whether this spread with Eucalyptus trees or whether Eucalyptus trees spread with humans using fire.
But :
The Australian climate is getting hotter:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/month/aus/summary.shtm...
'The national December mean temperature, 3.21 °C above average, surpassed the previous December record set in 2018 by more than a full degree.'
British conquest and subsequent settlement has ended traditional indigenous fire practices in most part of the country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire-stick_farming
Which means that the fuel load are not reduced by smaller cooler burns below levels that would feed a catastrophic fires.
https://www.science.org.au/curious/earth-environment/bushfir...
Partisan politics has made it very difficult for many Australians to look directly at these topics. So while fire, is a terrifying but not unexpected feature of living in Australia, the scale of this year's fires are a unique horror that I believe will push enough Australians to engage with that difficulty.
I think we are going to see fast significant shifts in political discussion from this, that both the emotive calls to action, and populist denials or diminishment will we perceived as a distraction from direct sober engagement of an existential threat.
( As I first typed this I accidentally capitalised that as Australian Ecosystems, because I once worked for a company by that name that did environmental work, including controlled burning)
Other examples of Australian plants that are adapted to bushfires to the degree that they require them to propagate are found in the genus Banksia [2]. Together with the genus Eucalyptus they comprise hundreds of plant species[3]. These aren't the only pyrophytic plants[3] that require fires. For example, Melaleuca quinquenervia is another pyrophytic plant of Australia [4].
Wikipedia says this of the Eucalyptus:
> Most species of Eucalyptus are native to Australia, and every state and territory has representative species. About three-quarters of Australian forests are eucalypt forests. Wildfire is a feature of the Australian landscape and many eucalypt species are adapted to fire, and resprout after fire or have seeds which survive fire.
Eucalyptus trees survive fire so they can be classified as a pyrophytic plant; they benefit from fires that destroy competitive plants. The Giant Sequoia trees of the US also survive fires and are are considered pyrophytes. However some plants are considered to be active pyrophtes because they encourage fires or the spread of fires. The Eucalyptus is an active pyrophyte because it produces inflammable oils.
The carniverous Byblis genus of plants and cogongrass are other examples of fire adapted plants found in Australia.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksia
[3] https://www.britannica.com/list/5-amazing-adaptations-of-pyr...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melaleuca_quinquenervia
Previous severe big bushfires started much later:
infographic: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/ECEF/production/...
article: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-50951043
January and February are the hottest. December and March have similar temperatures. The seasonal weather and sea temperatures have delay relative to sun.
As an anecdote.. We live in Sydney. My wife was talking to her father who was being evacuated from his town in Northern California due to fire. We could smell smoke in Sydney already, despite being in the opposite season.
So today's fires are weak ammunition for reallocations of public resources towards climate change efforts, compared to existing arguments that can't gain consensus. I can see how it isn't budging consensus.
edit: removed bad news regarding arson
Source: NSW police official website
A reasonable assumption might be that fires in unpopulated areas in central Australia were probably not arson (no people there to set them) and these are the largest fires (no people there to fight them).
But rather early for any broad conclusions. All we can say is - there's been some arson but we lack the context or details to really understand the relative importance. Currently arson doesn't seem like a major factor and it is probably over represented in densely populated NSW relative to the rest of the country.
I would say there's little evidence to support a hypothesis of an "unusual arson wave".
The authorities (don't know if this is RFS or police in this case) seem to pretty confidently attribute fires to causes for the most part. The percentage attributed to arson is lowish but disturbing (20%?).
I imagine lightning strikes and ember spread from existing fires are fairly easy to diagnose. I'm not sure how you tell "fires spread from sparks from roadway incidents" from "arson" but I'm not an expert.
Weather patterns (hot and dry summer) create the conditions for a fire, an arsonist merely provides the ignition source. In the right conditions a single errant spark from a power tool can set off a giant bushfire. Or an arsonist with a single match.
Keep in mind, Australia is huge and has different climates.
While this isn't the biggest fire of all Australia, it is the biggest fire of that region in history by ~10x (according to that wikipedia link).
This is highly unusual.
And as a result of being in populated areas, it has done the most dollars of damage of any fire. This is what climate change advocates are pointing to: increased fires in areas that normally do not have them.
[1] https://sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2020/01/08/australia...
> Sad and tragic.
> Incidentally, this is also how many animals that cats are estimated to kill in the United States each year.
If it's the former, that seems like a bad comparison. The Australian wildfires are destroying ecosystems on a scale cats don't really do. And a much greater variety of wildlife is dying than what cats will typically kill.
Finally, wildfires don't support life. They're naturally occurring things, but they are not an activity occurring in the support of other life. Cats kill to hone hunting skills (or simply to hunt, if they're actually hungry). With that observation we can impose a reasonable normative, which is that we don't need to accept wildfires the same way we accept predator activity.
Put simply: I don't see that these two things belong to the same category of destruction.
Not entirely true. Forest fires and prairie fires are a part of some plant lifecycles.
https://www.britannica.com/list/5-amazing-adaptations-of-pyr...
Wildfires aren't part of the fauna. This is true. But even without humans, there are wildfires. When wildfires happen, they create a new playing field for species to inhabit. Moreover, life has adapted over the course of millions of years to a low number of wildfires i.e. the spread of a species over a large territory whereas wildfires may be incidental and localized. The adaptability of a species to wildfires - amongst other things - is what defines it's resilience.
The difference here is that the size and scope of these fires is far beyond the resilience of entire regional ecosystems. When this is over, what is lost won't return. It will be replaced by different species - plants and animals - that might not be as diverse or rich.
We can safely assert that wild cats are inherently part of the ecosystem. However, if a billion animals being killed a year by cats, well, that's not due to the mere presence of cats as a species. But because of the overwhelming number of cats in the ecosystem. And that number is anything but normal.
Cats are domesticated animals. The main reason why there are so many out there is simply because society tends to keep and protect cats. Cats and humans live in a symbiotic relationship. And that's why cats thrive as a species. Much to the detriment of other species.
Put more poignantly, nobody would argue against the need for pet owners to keep their dogs to a leash and their pet snakes and other predators locked in cages. But cats are the major exception. There are no laws that restrict home owners to let cats go out of the door and roam the neighborhood killing each any small bird, mammal or reptile around. Whereas other wild species who espouse pretty much the same behavior - rats, foxes, mice - are seen as pests.
And so, we can safely assert that neither mega wildfires nor the strain cats impose by their numbers are natural occurrences. In both cases, they are manifestations causes by irrational human behaviours.
I have not heard of anyone having a problem with rats and mice hunting other animals. They are mainly considered pests because they eat human food stores. And the only context I have heard of foxes considered pests is when they hunt livestock, chickens, geese etc. If a domestic cat starts hunting chickens, I am pretty sure it will have consequences as well.
In Canada rats are a bigger threat to bird species than cats, topped only by humans. Or visit an island environment Galapagos where they've been introduced.
Don't forget the plague and other diseases. "peste" literally means "plague" in French.
[1] https://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/pests-and-threats/animal-pest...
[2] https://www.goughisland.com/
As you say, the real issue is massive ecosystem destruction and rare and/or endangered species being killed. But that doesn't spread on social media quite as well as the feeling driven "one billion animals died!"
Isn't this the entire problem with climate change in general? It's really hard to get people concerned with very small temperature changes over long periods of time because we use our human perspective; it's hard for us to understand a geological time scale.
These types of observations help IMO.
>> The Australian wildfires are destroying ecosystems on a scale cats don't really do. And a much greater variety of wildlife is dying than what cats will typically kill.
Well, domestic cats are considered an invasive species in much of the world, and in Canada are the #1 killer of birds. Studies show they are the 3rd biggest offender towards putting species at risk. The story is worse on islands, of which we have many.
>> Finally, wildfires don't support life. They're naturally occurring things, but they are not an activity occurring in the support of other life.
This is absolutely wrong. Lots of forests in Western Canada depend greatly on regular, large-scale fires to support specific species of flora and fauna. Our excellent job of preventing these fires is likely to blame for many huge problems like mountain pine beetle and predator/prey imbalances.
That sounds quite incredible to me - a quick search turned up plenty of WA firebreak building guides, as well as the Brush Fires act of 1954 which seems to mandate construction of firebreaks by landowners in certain situations.
This may be true in downtown Sydney or a National Park, but it's very much not the case in most of rural Australia.
If you don't get it, it's illegal to build an extension to your home.
Therefore, it is illegal to build extensions to your home.
That's the flow of your logic.
Hazard reduction burning is not illegal in Australia [1]. I don't know where you got that idea from.
It is also legal to create a firebreak [2].
[1] https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/resources/publications/hazard-red... [2] https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/18453...
> Shane Fitzsimmons told the program that while hazard reduction burning is part of a “really complex argument”, “environmental clearances are invariably not our problem with hazard reduction burning”.
> “Our biggest challenge with hazard reduction is the weather and the windows available to do it safely and effectively,” Mr Fitzsimmons said.
> “Sure, there’s environmental and other checks to go through but we streamline those. There’s special legislation to give us clearance and to cut through what would otherwise be a very complex environment.”
https://www.news.com.au/national/rural-fire-service-boss-rej...
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/05/expla...
> Former fire chiefs who have been calling strongly for action on climate change, and who have been trying to meet Morrison for months, have also been calling for increased funding for hazard reduction.
More hazard reduction may be required, but this is orthogonal to the above. I have seen no evidence of the Greens blocking hazard reduction burns requested by the RFS.
As the article states, fire chiefs have been trying to meet with the Australian prime minster for months, but have been ignored. this suggests that any blame for poor preparation leading up to this bush fire season should be attributed directly to the party in power. To me the motivation behind this spread of disinformation is very clear.
The Murdoch media has decided to run with the idiotic idea that there was an 'easy' opportunity to reduce fuel loads and it was prevented by unspecified environmentalists at unspecified locations (the claims are always super-non-specific, for obvious reasons). In fact, as the fire chiefs point out, the limitations on hazard reduction burns have largely been due to weather (too wet or too dry).
Needless to say, the actual statement from the fire chiefs is extremely nuanced and well thought out. It's almost like they know something about fighting bushfires, unlike all the amateur hour geniuses that have emerged from the woodwork to sit in their pajamas theorizing on every major venue 24/7 including public holidays.
The problem is that there isn't enough money for the man powered required to control burn everything. And 50 to 100 years of "don't let anything burn" has led to a LOT of areas with a lot of build up. Those areas require a lot of care to controlled burn correctly and are often way way WAY out there - making it harder/more expensive to control.
There is also the problem of encroachment of civilization on the forests. At least in CA there are houses basically built into the forrest, or right up to the edge. How do you burn those areas assuring the residence 100% safety?
People will be in the streets, crying for blood, and won't give up until the Department of Controlled Forest Burns is dissolved, and its executives are sleeping in the Bay, wearing cement overshoes.
Yes, you can buy insurance for this sort of thing, but no, money doesn't grow on trees, and insuring your controlled burn program is not going to come cheap.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/forests-wildfires-1.44449...
>That complete lack of regrowth happened most frequently at lower-elevation sites that have become measurably warmer and drier in the past 30 years, said Stevens-Rumann, an assistant professor in the Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship at Colorado State University. Those areas may no longer have suitable conditions for the growth of tree species that were there before and may become other types of ecosystems, such as grasslands.
>The fire was so intense in some places that it burned up all organic matter needed to help the soil retain nutrients and moisture required for trees to grow.
>[I]n some cases, the dominant black spruce and white spruce are being replaced by deciduous trees such as aspen. That's especially the case for forests that burned less than 80 years ago, where trees haven't yet had time to develop fire-resistant seed cones. Spruce trees are also outcompeted in drier areas, suggesting climate may also play a role, Whitman said.
Aspen is a natural fire break species. So it'll actually prevent more big forest fires in the future.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50969488
Maybe not exactly global but the smoke made it ~2000km to New Zealand!
https://www.correiodopovo.com.br/not%C3%ADcias/geral/fuma%C3...
Which, clearly, we are. What I never imagined is that people would be _paid_ to actively fight the fight against climate change.
Satellite imagery of the cloud from GOES-17: https://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/satellite-blog/images/2020/01/20...
[0]: https://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/satellite-blog/archives/35342
Particulates in the air can carry a few thousand kilometers, but they will also disperse and settle as they travel.
Living within a few hundred yards of a major street, or within a few miles of a major industrial district is going to have more impact on your health then smoke travelling from the other side of the world. Smoke particulates are also reasonably easy to remove from the air, using standard consumer filters.
Particulates in the air can circumnavigate the globe if they get high enough in the atmosphere.
I'd say that's definitely globally relevant. On the day that was posted you could look on Himawari and clearly see huge smoke clouds from space. It's terrifying.
The last time I saw, they were estimated to have released 75% of Australia's annual emissions budget from burning coal. The scale of them is mind-boggling. The total estimated to have burned is 5M hectares, which is twice as much as the recent fires in the Arctic, and over 5x the recent Amazon fires. And there's no sign they're coming under control yet.
The where?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Australian_bus...
https://insidestory.org.au/slow-burn/
In case anyone else finds it easier to imagine this way: 1.5M acres converts to 2,343 mi^2, which i can then envision as multiples of a reference area (7 NYCs).
- Exaggerated or misleading numbers in the news and other popular, non-scientific media
- Human CO2 emissions over the past 100 years
You are massively missing the point: what is happening in Australia the past few weeks / months, the 4-50°C temperature, the gigantic fires, ... Are not warning signs or a possible doomsday scenario people are trying to sell.
It is the doomsday scenario actually happening in its early phase. It's too late to avoid it, it's happening, now the best we can do is slow it down and try to reverse course.
> I recall 20 years ago seeing articles claiming that "Snow will be a thing of the past" or "Arctic to be ice-free by 2020". Nothing happened.
Of course, if by nothing happened you mean it is actually happening faster than even predicted and the ice coverage is thinning so fast you can see it on year-on-year comparisons.
You are reinforcing his point by making these silly exaggerated claims of doomsday scenarios. Nearly 50 years ago, the 1974-1975 bush fires burnt 95 million hectares, which is an order of magnitude bigger than the 10.7 million burnt so far in 2019-2020. Epic bush fires have been regularly occurring in Australia for a very long time, well before the industrial revolution.
Also note that some of these fires were started by arsonists, which is obviously not climate related.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/07/australia/australia-fires....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushfires_in_Australia
Which world do you live in has regular occurrences of fires so big they turn the skies orange in an adjacent country?
But if they used km^2 then almost everyone would be able to visualise it, as almost everyone knows what running or walking a km feels like.
https://graphics.reuters.com/AUSTRALIA-BUSHFIRES-SCALE/0100B...
I suspect that acres were chosen because it is a reasonably familiar unit, given the organ is NPR, and makes for a huge number. If you are aware of an acre, you will know it is a fair sized bit of land and 1.5M of them is absolutely huge.
For us European types (lol - UK) 0.3 Wales or 0.2 Belgiums gives an idea as to absolutely awful these fires are.
If it's something else, it might need to be hidden even better.
In short: humans aren't required for fire to exist. Your argument is faulty.
Insulting natives for lighting fires shows complete disrespect and ignorance of the underlying environments, flora and fauna as well as their part in all of it. You aren't advanced and knowledgeable: you're just ignorant, smug, and delusional.
I agree that there seems to be a bit of bias (if not racism) in the OP's point, but there's no denying that the vast majority of fires are created by humans, whether indigenous, farmers, or hikers.