The number is a lot less. Twenty four in NSW for example. We have these morons every year. . So the figures are untrue. What is true however is that some people are claiming that the fires raise the ambient temperature by several degrees which causes the record conditions. Oh yeah. Sorry. You knew that. My bad.
Arsonists have made a bad problem worse, but they are not the primary cause of the problem - that would be the green politicians who have so effectively opposed rational fire suppression activities, specifically controlled burns and brush clearing. There are any number of anecdotes that illustrate the problem:
That Sheahan case was seventeen years ago. And what you can and cannot do to bushland around your property is based on the recommendations of the Rural Fire Service. That is, the mostly volunteer organisation who are the hands-on people who are on the front line of these disasters. They know what they’re talking about. They are literally the boots on the ground. They risk their lives (and some have already given them this year) protecting lives and properties around Australia and they live within the areas they have sworn to protect. When they talk, everyone listens to what they have to say.
You are right in that I am looking for evidence to support my position, which is more than you have done which is simply to declare that climate change is the culprit.
The “records” you cite are unconvincing. As was pointed out before, this has been a bad fire season even for those areas where the temperatures have been less than normal. If temperature was the culprit this shouldn’t have happened.
Erring on the side of caution is arguably the greatest contributor to the fire problems Australia is experiencing. This is a side effect of green theology, and it was caused by just the political posturing you condemn.
The fact that you deem it necessary to put scare quotes around the word records shows the mentality of your position. That we have record droughts and record temperatures are undeniable. But you can’t allow yourself to even admit that. Hence you can’t say the word without mentally doing some air quotes around the term because you don’t even accept simple basic facts.Freddy:
You are right in that I am looking for evidence to support my position, which is more than you have done which is simply to declare that climate change is the culprit.
The “records” you cite are unconvincing.
Regarding the 2019 drought, that clearly was a record, which appears to have nothing to do with average temperatures. I couldn’t copy the graph, but if you go here you can see what’s been happening in Australia since 1900 regarding rainfall. It’s been increasing for the last 50 years. It is 2019 that is the anomaly - droughts have been decreasing even as temperatures have risen. If you’re going to blame the 2019 drought on climate change how do you account for the fact that, overall, drought has been decreasing?
I’ll give you this one. I misread a temperature chart. That said, it is still an assumption to claim that climate change is responsible for the fires. The extent and damage of your fires are much more likely to be have the same cause as the extensive fires California experienced: a political failure to properly manage fuel loads in forests and grasslands. I think California might have learned from its mistake. We’ll see what steps Australia takes before the next fire season.
It is not so much the total number of arsonists that is significant, what matters is the number of fires they start. Based on an article in the Australian Institute of Criminology on the Causes of investigated fires in New South Wales (2001-2004), arsonists set about 2/3 of all fires. If that ratio is true in 2019 I’d say that was pretty significant. Maybe climate change affected them.
If the 2019 wildfires were exceptional, there is no reason to think the ratio would hold true. Also, if climate change makes wildfires harder to control, that would apply to both arsonist-caused fires and other fires. It is still climate change that is making things worse.
You are throwing figures and numbers and political comments against the wall to see what sticks. Without understanding most of what you are posting in regard to this particular problem.Freddy:
Regarding the 2019 drought, that clearly was a record, which appears to have nothing to do with average temperatures. I couldn’t copy the graph, but if you go here you can see what’s been happening in Australia since 1900 regarding rainfall. It’s been increasing for the last 50 years. It is 2019 that is the anomaly - droughts have been decreasing even as temperatures have risen.
If drought conditions have been improving for decades, what makes this particular year’s drought the result of global warming? Why isn’t global warming credited with improving conditions in Australia (and across the world) as clearly this has happened? If droughts have diminished overall, what makes this particular one the result of GW?
Facts and figures seem the most appropriate way to evaluate a problem. According to Wikipedia about 10.7 million hectares (Ha) have so far burned this fire season. How does that compare with past fires?
Are we having a light bulb moment?
Maybe you are begining to understand. It’s actually called climate change. As I said in an earlier post, the climate, especially when you have extreme conditions as you do down here, is a delicate balance. So when it’s thrown out of equilibrium it causes problems. If you have milder winters and more rain and then you have greater growth. That new growth won’t burn easily. And then not having fires is a problem because the fuel load keeps increasing. And then when you have drier and hotter summers, the net rainfall is down, the temperature is up and then when you do get fires it’s a disaster.
reading subsequent posts, then about disinformation being spread
FWIW noticed an insightful comment about climate change in a related thread
then there isBlueMaxx said:
along with the fact that
looking at the big picture what is happening to the environment is the direct result of profligate use of natural resources,… AND seems only when all those caught up in the excitement of political theater realize that science has shown fossil fuels like coal are a very real threat to the future of humanity as well as being a drag on the economy,… will the mission to benefit all people, actually be accomplishedInThePew said:
support for a carbon tax is political suicide for any conservative given the existing old school republican party establishment has in place a “Taxpayer Protection Pledge”
www.republicen.org/alerts/meet-emerging-ecoright-leader-tyler-gillette
It is the wild fires that made more likely in Australia by climate change, not necessarily drought. There are many factors that influence wild fires, such as drought, temperature, winds, as well as the distribution of these events. If all the water tends to come at once instead of spread evenly over the year, that can have an effect too, even if the yearly totals don’t change much.LeafByNiggle:
If drought conditions have been improving for decades, what makes this particular year’s drought the result of global warming?
Whenever it comes to specific events, localized in space and time, the connection to a global trend spanning decades will always appear tenuous. That is the nature of probability. And global warming is essentially a claim about probability and statistics rather than a claim about individual events. It is as if you had a weighted coin that came up heads 51% of the time. And one specific flip of the coin that happens to come up heads cannot be directly attributed to the weighting of the coin. But the statistical influence is still there in the aggregate.
They are two notions …
Exactly.
perhaps this would be an opportune time to point out,…Freddy:
Exactly.
The general rule of thumb on this is that due to increased energy levels, weather fronts tend to be larger on the average, and this causes all sorts of variations. Some areas may get more precipitation, some less. Higher wind speeds tend to be more common, sometimes matched with huge fronts that barely move because of their size. Some areas may find more cold than normal coming their way at times because of this.
