Which immediately made me wonder, if the owner doesn’t like ‘the bush’ why does he choose to live there? Of, is it just that he doesn’t like it on his land? But then, if all his neighbours behaved the same way, none of them would be living in the bush, just bare paddocks. Unfortunately, bare paddocks burn too.

“an efficient and clever organisation” is Alcoa, says Roger. Well ignorance is as ignorance does!

http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,24594868-5017007,00.html

http://www.sprol.com/?p=323

http://savingiceland.puscii.nl/?p=3185&language=en#more-3185

Rest assured, environmentalists have had no influence on successive departments of environment in WA .This department now operates under the title: Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC.) This is an amalgamation with CALM. What say you, Roger? The DEC regard the big polluters as their “clients.” The environment and environmentalists are a poor last in the DEC’s disgraceful management of the environment.

Perhaps Roger should be reminded also of the DEC’s decision in December 2007 to send a convoy of trucks into a raging bushfire in the Borabbin National Park in WA where those truckies who could turn their trucks around, fled. Those who could not, perished. Then, in WA. we saw the largest chemical fire in Australia from DEC’s decision to grant a loan to a shabby, hazardous waste operator to clean up his operations. The whole place went up in smoke and taxpayers did not see the $100,000 loan, returned to state coffers. The underground hazardous plume is heading for the Helena river. Well that’s one way to get rid of a rogue operator.

The blunders are endless and as a result, I would be reluctant to take advice from the Underwood and Packham camps. Alcoa’s pillaging of the jarrah forests in WA are not a result of any influence from environmentalists, despite the protests. Packham and Underwood will need to find another scapegoat for their impotent management of Australia’s forests.

As written earlier today what really get’s me upset is the rewriting of the fire history of the mechanised logging industry from especially the 1970ies. They knew they were on a hiding with rainforest. But they logged as much of that until it was stopped. Then they moved onto the wet old growth forest types totally different to dry schlerophyll you mainly see today.

What a shock I got when my lecturer Andrew Cockburn now Prof at ANU in the eighties mentioned that all forest in the burbs of Canberra was “stuffed”. What did he mean I wondered. Then by 1992-3 I had Dr now Prof Tony Norton’s forest science paper showing barely 10% of the remaining forest estate in SE Australia was of the inevitably wet old growth type. And being logged daily. This was the ramp up along with RAC’s key govt reports to the wimpish National Forest Policy Statement.

But the logging industry kept at it. Taking out the wet forest types. Semi rainforest at Goolengook with forest types never burnt in 150 years, not by Aborigines either. Illegal logging of rainforest at Dingo Ck. That’s East Gippsland but it’s indicative of any high volume wet old growth forest across the logging regions. All targeted to close down any conservation claims and annexe the public land. But there was one big big big problem - it all converted to dry schlerophyll regrowth.

These logging hypocrites have left skinny dry regrowth across the land and its exactly these state forest that have been monstering up into firestorms. The parks service are absolutely neurotic about preventing fire leaving their tenures because they know the politics. 1994 in NSW only 70 fires of 830 were on national parks. Same in Vic, I would put odds on it.

But I suggest that Miranda Devine’s lynch comment is a separate issue altogether. She has incited violence. This is uncivilised and does not require or deserve any media ‘balance’.

I think it is simply unacceptable and the SMH need to respond appropriately. What do you think Clive?

I know that in Sth Hobart (the home of the Greens) if you so much as look funny at the dread-ed dudes littering the pavements you’ll get dog (I hope) poo shoved through your letterbox.

“As an aside this disaster should sheet home to all australians what a folly the iraq adventure has been where this bushfire and its casualties have been an horrific almost daily occurence”

Is there no end to the imbecilic Left’s non sequitur egregious debasement of the Victorian bushfire tragedy?

jboy is obviously yet another Clive Hamilton flunky.

Fair point re people facing 30 tonnes per hectare of (dry) fuel loads. Notice I add the dry. Assuming the metric is right, how the hell did we get to this situation? That’s my point about change of forest type across landscapes for 50+ years from patchy rainforest, wet old growth to now majority dry sclerophyll regrowth.

In a way this is an irrelevant historical comment. “How does it help with the threat now?” you would be fair to ask. But in another it’s a crucial starting point.

For instance: We have to know what happened previously to wet forest types to understand the problem now. For instance it is so wrong to be logging any of the last 10% of wet forest types. Absolute madness. It must be stopped to prevent preparation of more dry sclerophyl regrowth tinder box landscape in the age of climate change.

2nd it helps explain why the damn dry fuel load won’t rot down in previously moist conditions, moist even in hot weather. Those wet old forests were giants pumps of humidity. Took hundreds of years to establish.

It gives clues to how at least in some smaller buffer areas we might be able to help improve the water cycle in dry regrowth - possibly selective ecological removal of skinny regrowth to speed up dominant trees and closed canopy. I don’t have any science for this idea but we need to think as laterally as possible. It’s either that or face theoretical cool burns over millions of hectares of dry regrowth courtesy the logging industry of the last 50 to 100 years.

Another concept is breeding up native critters as what Darwin would call co-evolutionary rabbits. Fence out ferals and munch the understorey and leaf litter.

I live in the Far South Coast of NSW which is also a highly flammable and heavily forested part of Australia. Here the National Parks and Wildlife Service has a very active program of annual control burns in national parks. But they don’t try to burn everything in the forests - they concentrate on areas that are most dangerous to adjoining communities, or areas that are most likely to burn.

Ecologists tell us that if you burn the Australian bush too often you actually make it more flammable - you encourage annual grasses to take over and you have an almost unmanageable annual fuel problem. But you do need to burn the bush and manage the fuel levels, so the national parks managers use science and experience to optimise the burns and get the best results possible.

Of course that doesn’t please the people that want nice simple solutions - the ones that write for the Australian newspaper and want to have baddies and goodies, and create a ‘them and us’ mentality.

Bob Ross
(Chair, Regional Advisory Committee, Far South Coast Region, NSW NPWS)

Who tried to stop that, I heard someone going on about it I think some few even had a megaphone. Even President Kennedy gave speaches about global warming.

Oh yes and some where in the big picture we invented the combustion engine.

Keep planting trees. They grow best on good farm land and we don’t need more of that since we’ve become so good at watching people starve to death. If you don’t breath you don’t add carbon dioxide.

It would have been cheaper to put the Amazonian Indians up in Hilton Hotels and not let them clear the Amazon jungle to grow beetroot.

Ayatollah Manteghi Boroujerdi wrote in his letter:
“Australia’s 9/11 would be an act of revenge. Yes, it would be an act of revenge for Australian’s participation in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It would be an act of revenge for the Bali bomber’s execution which was the result of Australian pressure on Indonesian politicians. It would be an act of revenge for all kinds of oppression our Government has committed.

Dear Mr. Brumby if the victims of the Victorian bushfires were innocent, the civilians who were killed by the Australian soldiers in Afghanistan were innocent as well.
Australians are busy with sex, drugs, drinking and gambling, so as a result our corrupt politicians have the opportunity to oppress other nations.
Australian citizens will be killed as long as they don’t stop their authorities from killing the citizens of other countries.
Australians deserve to be burned in the fire of hell, the fire of Bush is nothing!”

Do you think Victorian bushfires were Australia’s 9/11?

Also Sheikh Haron has issued a Fatwa (Islamic edict) to deliberately light bushfires for defence.

http://sheikyermami.com/2009/02/18/australian-jihad-website-issues-islamic-fatwa-about-deliberately-lighting-bushfires/

http://www.sheikhharon.com/announcements.php

ABC Radio on 15 February says about Sheikh Haron:
http://www.abcscience.net.au/rn/spiritofthings/stories/2009/2487292.htm

David Packham gave the greenies a metaphoric poke in the eye with his recent comments. Clive Hamilton comments are evidently a reaction to that. He tries desperately to discredit David Packham. To me his attempts only highlight the pettiness and feebleness of his own position. He portrays Packham as someone who was sidelined by the progressive and trendy greenies. Packham was one of the few who were willing to raise the alarm and confront the authorities. If he did this in spite of being unpopular our respect for his efforts should be greater. Hamilton should give credit where it is due and be willing to learn some lessons. Instead his comments show he failed to grasp the magnitude and gravity of what has happened. He fails to realize and admit that his cherished ideology is heavily implicated in this human catastrophe.

We’re hearing greenies now claiming to support controlled burning. What we are also learning is that this support is heavily qualified. It has to be at the right time, temperature, and after numerous studies have been conducted etc etc. In practice those qualifications are so onerous that they are a major impediment. Adequate clearing around residential areas could have prevented the vast majority of deaths. In spite of this we continue to hear greenies telling people that they if want to live in the bush they need to accept the inherent risks.

And that is the fundamental problem with this ideology. It is this almost fatalistic belief that we should limit our impact on the environment even if this means putting human life at risk. Man