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Bushfires Are Raging Outside Every Major City in Australia. They're Only Going to Get Worse:
Australia has deployed military planes and ships to provide aid as hundreds of wildfires rage across Australia, forcing residents to flee and destroying homes.
The Australian Defense Force is sending ships to the Victoria town of Mallacoota on a two-week supply mission and using helicopters to bring in more firefighters since roads were inaccessible, according to the Associated Press (AP).
On Tuesday, thousands of people from the town on Australia's southeastern coast fled towards the water as a fire ripped through the area.
Photos of residents taking shelter on boats circulated on social media.
[...] In New South Wales, where Sydney is located, firefighters are battling more than 100 fires, according to the state's Rural Fire Service.
Sydney's famed New Years Eve fireworks went ahead despite the fires. A petition calling on the government to cancel the display and give the funds to firefighters and farmers instead got more than 280,000 signatures.
[...] New South Wales' Rural Fire Services Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said this wildfire season is the worst on record.
"We've seen extraordinary fire behavior," he said Tuesday, according to the AP. "What we really need is meaningful rain, and we haven't got anything in the forecast at the moment that says we're going to get drought-breaking or fire-quenching rainfall."
More than 900 homes have been destroyed in the state, according to New South Wales Rural Fire Service.
A fire tracker map maintained by researchers in Western Australia shows that they are also threatening areas around every major city in the country.
Additional coverage:
- Australia fires live: two dead in Cobargo as NSW and Victoria face bushfires threat – latest updates - interactive map too
- 9news live feed
- Large parts of the NSW South Coast are expected to lose all telecommunications in coming hours
- Tens of thousands of lightning strikes spark dozens of fires across South Australia
- More than 30,000 tourists in Australia who defied orders to leave area east of Melbourne amid raging bushfires are 'TRAPPED' as roads are cut off, after locals warned staying would be 'suicide' - have the pinch of salt ready
- 4000+ blocked on Mallacoota beach as forest fire approaches
- The Navy joins fleet of military helicopters called in to help evacuate south-eastern Victoria
- A total of 33 fires are still burning across Victoria as of 7pm Tuesday, with the majority of those blazes in East Gippsland.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Kell on Thursday January 02 2020, @01:57PM (57 children)
I was down in Canberra over Christmas - the smoke was choking. To stand outside in the thick of it, it feels like the world is ending. It's worse than the Canberra fires in 2003. My husband's sister and her family came up north last night to escape from the smoke; her son has had a bad reaction to it. My parents had a coast house down in Malua Bay, and we used to visit Mogo often. Now Mogo is gone; fortunately the zoo animals there survived. It's a catastrophe, and our fuckwit politicians are useless. We should use them as kindling for back-burning come winter. If there's anything left to burn back.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 02 2020, @02:28PM (25 children)
After a burn, how long does it take for the Canberra brush to regrow?
Outside Miami is the Everglades, and it will burn every few years, but it's just a bunch of sawgrass so it regrows almost fully within 12 months.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @02:37PM (15 children)
The rainforrest and alpine parts will likely never be the same. Otherwise will take a few years.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 02 2020, @06:12PM (14 children)
Gotta love when a fucking RAINFOREST catches fire and the deniers are still running around claiming everything is fine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @06:35PM
Sounds like a deep insight for someone with a shallow mind.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @06:46PM (2 children)
oh shut the fuck up, you fucking zombie.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @07:09PM
Lol, reality is finally making it theough your thick skulls! I forget all the steps of loss, but the first is denial if I recall. I'd have more sympathy for the loss of a happy world view if yours wasn't so very anti-human. Yes I am generalizing your stances based on being angry a climate denier comment.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 02 2020, @08:04PM
Haha, touche indeed! I guess this is what passes for an argument amongst the purposely ignorant.
(Score: -1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @08:38PM (9 children)
You don't understand Australian bushfires. The Australian ecosystem has evolved to be reliant upon bushfires; Australian rainforests are no exception to this. The problem is that humans insist on living within bushfire zones and then are politically forbidden to manage bushfire fuel around the homes. There are people who believe that burning bushfire fuel before a wild bushfire occurs will contribute to the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The consequence is that people are politically forbidden to manage the fuel by burning it before it becomes a threat to houses.
(Score: 5, Informative) by EventH0rizon on Thursday January 02 2020, @09:01PM (5 children)
"The consequence is that people are politically forbidden to manage the fuel by burning it before it becomes a threat to houses"
This is simply not true. We live in Gippsland. The fires are nearby. There has been extensive back burning here over the last few years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @11:37PM (3 children)
You mean hazard reduction burns? Back burns are used to contain an active fire.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by EventH0rizon on Friday January 03 2020, @04:21AM (2 children)
You're correct, but I mean both.
The Swifts Creek fire (as an example) has been active for months. Some of the terrain in the this years fire was burnt out last summer.
DEWLP and CFA personnel (local firefighting authorities) use fuel reduction burns, bulldozer clearing and back burning.
Our farm is blanketed in thick smoke today and I naturally worry about whether our part of Gippsland is next.
If I hear another fuckwit blame the fires on "Greenies" I think I may abandon a life time of civil discourse in favor of just punching them in the mouth.
Believing in made up, just-so stories has consequences. Voting for politicians who push same fabrications has consequences.
Down here we're living those consequences.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 03 2020, @04:38AM (1 child)
So what you're saying is that "the greenies" have had zero effect on reducing bushfire hazards in the recent times? It's great that your area has had these measures take place, but not all Australians are allowed to take the necessary measures.
(Score: 2) by EventH0rizon on Tuesday January 07 2020, @01:43AM
This statement (from firefighters themselves) tells it like it is: https://www.facebook.com/ColytonNSWAustralia2760/posts/2668626616551840 [facebook.com]
"Political parties of any denomination do NOT influence the decisions of organisations like FRNSW, ACT Fire and Rescue, ACT and NSW Rural Fire Services and Parks and Wildlife Services when choosing when and how to do Hazard Reduction burns. It just doesn’t work like that."
It's worth reading in full.
And then perhaps ask, how reliable is the information you have used to form your opinion?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 03 2020, @04:28AM
The fact that you have had hazard reduction burning in the past doesn't change the fact that your houses are in natural bushfire zones. There are two answers to the problem of bushfires 1) reduce the bush fire fuel loads even more 2) migrate to other land.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Friday January 03 2020, @04:08AM (2 children)
If your argument is on the line of "Aussie forests need fire; thus the more fire the better for them", neither you understand Australian bushfires.
False [vicrainforest.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 03 2020, @04:35AM (1 child)
Victorian rainforests are exceptions to the rest of the Australian ecosystem that are filled with fire loving eucalyptus forests. They are a relic of an older time when seas covered the continent of Australia. The Australian inland seas have drained which means the conditions that established the rainforests in Victoria can no longer support them over the long term. Even without human intervention, it is very easy to see that these rainforests will simply go away over time.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday January 03 2020, @05:04AM
First, your initial statement made no room for exception. So, you moving goal posts maybe?
Second, rain forests exist in other places of Australia - it's not "all eucalyptus", you know? - and they contain species that won't recover from a fire:
Examples:
1. World Heritage areas in Tasmania containing species as old as Gondwana [theguardian.com] - a large percentage burned last years.
2. Queensland rain forests - see the transcript here [abc.net.au]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Kell on Thursday January 02 2020, @03:57PM (3 children)
Canberra is surrounded by fairly spare forest and scrub. It takes a couple of years to grow back, but the big eucalyptus will take a bit longer.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 02 2020, @06:21PM (2 children)
Don't worry, it's not just brushfires wreaking havoc. Couple of years back the town of Palm Coast Florida got their first real hurricane with storm surge in centuries- how do we know? Well, for one, because the centuries old oak trees got their roots soaked in salt water and died right back to the flood line - that's something that hasn't happened since those trees sprouted.
Google Maps street view [google.com] hasn't updated since the storm, but the aerial view [google.com] has.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @08:39PM
That's likely because Florida is sinking though, due to pumping all that water out. If the sea rises a couple of inches and the land falls a couple of yards it's not the sea that is causing higher floodlines.
(Score: 3, Touché) by driverless on Friday January 03 2020, @11:32AM
Naah, there's no climate change, that's just just fake trees.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Friday January 03 2020, @11:35AM (4 children)
The smoke from the fires has now reached New Zealand, which has the entire Tasman Ocean between it and Australia. That's a sign that it's really, really bad, nothing like that has ever happened before.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 03 2020, @02:51PM (3 children)
I agree it's really really bad, but would the Maori have bothered to mention a little "smoke on the water" in their legends?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Friday January 03 2020, @09:47PM
Probably, if they saw it through the clouds (just come back from a trip to the South Island, I'm envious of the rain).
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday January 04 2020, @01:37AM (1 child)
Not sure, but given the red sunsets alongside the smoke on the water there'd be fire in the sky as well.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday January 04 2020, @02:03AM
If you don't know the story of Blackmore's Night, you owe it to yourself to look it up...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 02 2020, @02:31PM (18 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @02:58PM (4 children)
> we won't do what is needed
Don’t blame the player blame the game.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 02 2020, @03:38PM (1 child)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 02 2020, @06:24PM
I like the spin that some docu-dramas are putting on it: the energy industry (and many others) started advertising campaigns back in the 1970s to shift responsibility from centralized industry to individual choice. 50 years of brainwashing the Buzzards of the world into thinking that big organizations and corporations can do no wrong, it's all in the hands of the consumers and therefore the fault of the individuals when the collective has screwed things up. Seems like it worked pretty well.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday January 03 2020, @04:07AM (1 child)
Hey, dipshit, *who the fuck is writing the rules for the game if not the players?*
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday January 03 2020, @04:12AM
The big players.
Remember the golden rule: he who has the gold makes the rules.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday January 02 2020, @03:09PM (11 children)
Greta Thunberg said it best:
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Freeman on Thursday January 02 2020, @05:25PM (10 children)
Yeah, she still came across as a pretentious teenager. People have been dying for a very long time. Entire ecosystems have collapsed many times before. What makes this time more special than the rest? Who's to say that this "crisis" is any worse than any of the previous crises?
I've grown up having been taught to enjoy nature. When we camped we left our campsite looking better than when we got there, having picked up the trash left by others. Air quality is definitely a concern in my book and taking care of the environment is a concern. I just kinda gave up after a while. As it's pretty obvious that at this point, people / corporations are going to do what brings them the most immediate profit. Also, radical green peace "activists" don't help their own cause.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 02 2020, @06:32PM
Welp, I lived the last 50 years in Florida, and here we've gone from vast thriving wild spaces and a few cities with scattered spots of ecological tragedy to a broad landscape of ecological tragedy, built-out development to the limits of available resources - and beyond, with scattered spots of wild spaces barely hanging on, across the ENTIRE peninsula from Cedar Key-Jacksonville down to Naples-Miami.
The population growth in Florida over those 50 years roughly mimics the population growth of the world as a whole, though Florida started out a bit more resource constrained, the whole world is heading in the same direction, and unlike Florida, the world doesn't have outside resources to tap, or a place for people who are sick of the crowds and bullshit to emigrate to.
You can keep shoveling shit in a 5lb bag long after 6lbs are in there, but at some point it truly does get messy.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @07:13PM (2 children)
Wow you're the pretentious asshole here. Maybe if there wasn't science backing up her claim, and maybe if your position wasn't just selfish short sighted greed.... maybe.
As has been pointed out a million times before, what is the downside to reducing oil use? Cleaner air? Energy independence? New jobs in infrastructure and tech? Rearranging of world power dynamics?
And you call a teenager pretentious. Just wow, science harder broooooo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 03 2020, @04:44AM (1 child)
If the problem was only limited to whining, then I would have no problem. The problem is the unaccountable taxes and draconian controls that affect our way of life. I support the encouragement of new technologies that supplant coal and gas plant. What I don't support is the political push to replace cost effective coal plants with renewable generators that greatly increase the cost of electricity while reducing the reliability of base power.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 03 2020, @10:11PM
There is no other way to prohibit selfish assholes from doing bad things. Building reliable base power generation is just a matter of engineering and funding. Complaining about higher cost?
a) wrong, renewables have become competitive and would be more so when built at larger scale
b) even if it cost some more that is not a reason to continue destroying the only habitable planet we have
(Score: 3, Touché) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday January 03 2020, @04:08AM (4 children)
That girl is ten thousand times the Christian you ever have been or ever will be.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Troll) by Freeman on Monday January 06 2020, @04:27PM (3 children)
So far, in anything I've read or heard, she hasn't once claimed to be religious or to be a Christian. Though, she has been proclaimed as Christ reincarnate or something like that.
Google Translated:
https://twitter.com/Limhamnskyrka/status/1068826078498758656 [twitter.com]
Would you still support her, if she was a devout follower of Jesus Christ? That just so happens to have a bur up her saddle regarding Climate Change.
She's definitely vexed by the whole Climate Change thing, that much is easy to ascertain.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 07 2020, @03:05AM (2 children)
Hell yes I would. And you know why?
BECAUSE SHE IS A BETTER CHRISTIAN THAN YOU AND THE VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE WHO CALL THEMSELVES CHRISTIANS.
That's why. Jesus *hated* hypocrites, more even than I do.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday January 07 2020, @03:30PM (1 child)
Interesting, but as of yet I've been unable to dig up anything that has her or her parents claiming to be Christian. To be Christian you actually have to believe in Jesus. She could be Christian, but so far I've been unable to ascertain that fact. Have you had any luck?
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday January 08 2020, @02:53PM
Something something, slave who knows master's will and does it not, slave who doesn't know, etc etc etc. She's still a better Christian than you in terms of the "Chirstian virtures" even without (presumably) actually worshiping the demon smack in the center of all of this.
And it *is* a demon at the center of the Abrahamic religions. Only a demon would make "calling me exactly what I am" the "unforgivable sin" as opposed to, for example, genocide. Because, whoa-hoooo, Dan, Yahweh would be in trouble if that were an issue, now wouldn't he? Pull your head out of your ass: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are devil-worship, your God is either a myth or a demon, and you yourself are throwing your own natural conscience and humanity away by outsourcing it to this cesspool of moral nihilism.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday January 03 2020, @02:48PM
What's changed is the scale. Entire ecosystems have collapsed before, but not on the scale seen in the last couple of decades outside of the 5 major extinction events in Earth's history. People have died before, but the projections for unchecked climate change are on the scale of "everybody dies", not "a few million people die", it's already killing people and expected to get worse. We know what an environment very similar to Earth with an unchecked greenhouse effect looks like - we call it "Venus", and humans can't live there without a whole lot of technology we don't currently have.
And we're doing this to ourselves, on purpose, to ensure that some numbers in computer databases in New York, London, and Tokyo continue to increase. I don't see any way of making that out to be smart.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 03 2020, @01:24AM
Just pray real hard for rain to the sky fairy of your choice. It's supposed to fix all problems.
(Score: 2) by OrugTor on Thursday January 02 2020, @04:41PM (8 children)
There are various political factors (please don't demand citations) in the US that block wildfire prevention policies like prescribed burns, cleared buffer zones around habitations. Can you give us your take on why Australian wildfires are so out of control and destructive?
(Score: 5, Informative) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 02 2020, @04:50PM (2 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 5, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 02 2020, @10:34PM (1 child)
According to the Bureau of Meteorology (@BOM_au), 2019 was both the hottest and driest year ever measured in Australia. [twitter.com]
(Score: 1) by evilcam on Monday January 06 2020, @07:20AM
To further add to this, according to Australia's peak scientific body, the CSIRO (and the BoM) in this 2007 study [csiro.au] (cited an amazing 247 times according to Google Scholar) climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of bushfires in Australia (and presumably the world).
To quote former NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner, Greg Mullins [smh.com.au]:
It's a long bow to draw and say that had there been policy decisions over the last 7 years of LNP governments tackling climate change that these fires wouldn't be happening. But the science indicates they wouldn't be nearly as bad if everyone would stop digging up coal and subsidising the shit out of fossil fuels.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @08:44PM (3 children)
Australia has evolved to thrive through bushfires. Bushfires are an essential part of the Australian ecosystem. The problem is that people insist on building homes in bushfire areas and are politically forbidden to manage the bush fire fuel that surrounds the houses. The political reason for this is that burning the fuel releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
(Score: 5, Informative) by MostCynical on Thursday January 02 2020, @10:43PM (2 children)
Er, no.
some parts that are burning haven't burnt in thousands of years.
And the hazard reduction activities don't prevent fires, and aren't being stopped by politics [theguardian.com]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 03 2020, @04:54AM (1 child)
You do realise that thousands of years is still a small time in the time scale of how Australia works. The fact of the matter is that Australia is naturally a bushfire zone. The fact that some areas haven't seen an active volcano eruption in thousands of years doesn't change the fact that the area is an area of volcano activity. This is the case for Australia and bushes that haven't seen fires for thousands of years. We will see those bushlands recover as normally as eucalyptus forests normally recover.
(Score: 3, Informative) by MostCynical on Friday January 03 2020, @05:43AM
I work with people who have done PhDs and post doctoral research on the rainforests and other rare flora, fungi etc.
They think that, while *something* will grow back, it will not be the same ecosystem, and some rainforest species will not recover.
We won't know what does an doesn't recover, in some cases, because we don't know else [wikipedia.org] might be in there now.
Some of it just isn't meant to burn [theguardian.com]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 4, Informative) by EventH0rizon on Thursday January 02 2020, @08:55PM
This explains it pretty well.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/01/australia/australia-fires-explainer-intl-hnk-scli/index.html [cnn.com]
The so-called fuel loads in the mostly Eucalyptus forests in the South East part of the country after years of drought are through the roof. Add to that the fact that we're getting more high energy, high temperature weather events and you have countryside where the physics acts more like a pizza oven than a forest.
The size of the fires here is hard to comprehend.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Thursday January 02 2020, @06:34PM (2 children)
our fuckwit politicians are useless
Well, somebody must like them enough to put them where they are
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @09:12PM (1 child)
Ya, fuckwits like Murdoch who indoctrinate people with lies, assholes like Republicans who actively subvert democracy. It is pretty fucking clear, the problem is from fascists using money to erode the protections we had on democracy.
Blaming the voters has just enough truth to it to make people gloss over the methods being used to defraud the public.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 03 2020, @04:57AM
Cool story bro. No citations and all hearsay, just the way I like my fairy tales.