Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Sydney was shrouded in a dangerous haze on Tuesday as high winds blew smoke from bushfires blazing along Australia's eastern coast into the country's biggest city sending pollution levels soaring.
Official data showed air pollution had reached "hazardous" levels across Sydney, with the highest readings of PM 2.5 particulates in the city's northwest reaching 186 parts per million on the air quality index - comparable to New Delhi in India. Residents were warned to avoid outdoor exercise.
[...] More than 110 fires are currently burning across the east, with dozens of blazes still not contained.
In South Australia state, a ban on lighting fires is in place ahead of predicted "catastrophic" fire danger on Wednesday, when temperatures are expected to soar to about 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).
(Score: 4, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday November 19 2019, @06:17PM (10 children)
I remember on a tour of the Blue Mountains west of Sydney the rangers said the bush fires spread exceptionally fast because the eucalyptus trees expire fine mists of eucalyptus oils that help bush fires crown rapidly. They also said the native bush is adapted to those fires, and that it's part of the region's natural cycle.
So it's all copacetic, except for the folks building suburbs and homes in the middle of the stuff.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday November 19 2019, @07:19PM (8 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @07:43PM (7 children)
Sssh. You should have figured out by now that he clings to his own alternative facts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @08:24PM (1 child)
Trees are made of wood and can catch fire. More news at 4:20
(Score: 4, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday November 19 2019, @08:54PM
Australian trees are made of wood and highly flammable sap.
Australian trees live on the 2nd driest continent on the planet.
Australian trees evolved to deal with annual fires, and in fact depend upon fires to reproduce.
People arrived and began putting the annual fires out, causing the fires to get bigger and bigger. People also decided the bush was a nice place to live.
I don't have a solution, just a list of causes for why the fires are getting worse. That may well be others.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 20 2019, @01:34AM (4 children)
"Like many plants native to fire-prone regions, eucalyptus trees (aka gum trees in Australia) are adapted to survive — or even thrive — in a wildfire." [livescience.com]
From the same article:
Or, from the Wikipedia article on the Blue Mountains National Park [wikipedia.org] I was referring to:
So, yes, my "own alternative facts," or in other words, actual facts. But who needs those when you have a Narrative and a snarky, devil-may-care elan?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Wednesday November 20 2019, @09:29PM (3 children)
The facts you've mentioned about the eucalypts are spot on.
There is more to the story than you are sharing/aware of though.
The last few years have had well below average rainfall. The winter, where there are often days of drizzling weather giving the ground a solid soaking and allowing fallen leaves to deteriorate was abnormally dry. So dry that trees are actually dying on my property. I live in the blue mountains. The few spots of rain were incredibly heavy, but passed on before the water could soak into the ground. We're on water restrictions as the main damn is at 46% capacity, that's just under 20% lower than it was last year at the same time. We're having the hottest driest periods in recorded history. All of this is leading to unprecedented danger for bushfires to get out of control and grow much larger and much faster than usual.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Sydney#Drought [wikipedia.org]
September 2017 was the driest on record, with the gauge receiving only 0.2 mm (0.0079 in) of rain. Furthermore, in that year, the city received less than half of its long-term average rainfall between July and December.[131] In the late morning and early lunchtime of 22 November 2018, a dust storm, stretching about 500 kilometres, swept through Sydney due to a low pressure trough and cold front that picked up dry soil in drought-ridden areas of far western NSW that week. Milder compared to the 2009 storm, the effect of the dust was still apparent across iconic locations such as the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge.[132]
One of the current fires that's pushing smoke into the Sydney basin is the Gospers Mountain fire. It has currently burrnt out more than 160,000 hectares.
https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/fire-information/fires-near-me [nsw.gov.au]
The current fire fronts of fires burning are more than 6,000 kms (over 3,500 miles).
This is not normal. This is not how australian bush "thrives".
A small fire will clear scrub while the larger trees survive and can drop seeds on freshly cleared ground. The types of fires that we are having here at the moment, they clear the small scrub. They also kill the medium and large trees. They incinerate everything leaving it dead and barren. It takes decades for the bush to recover, and even then, the largest trees will take many more decades to grow back to their full size.
As we say here, pull your head in mate.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday November 21 2019, @12:14AM (2 children)
"Pull my head in?" TFS read that there were bushfires in NSW. I shared what I had learned about bushfires on a visit to the Blue Mountains National Park some years ago about the role of fire in that ecosystem. Period.
The one thing I did say was that natural process only becomes a problem when humans want to build their houses in the middle of it, because then of course when fire comes along they will suffer.
But since you live in the Blue Mountains I'll say the other bit I learned from the park ranger on that visit (you know, the one that takes you on that funicular down to the bottom of the valley and then leads you on a hike on the trail half-way up the cliffs and under the waterfalls) was that it's the house pets of people building their homes in the Blue Mountains that are exterminating all the endangered species of birds and small critters in the park because cats and dogs are exceptional predators they're not used to. You don't keep dogs and cats, do you?
Pull your head in, mate.
Now that tit-for-tat is out of the way, I'm sorry you are experiencing drought. It's tough to see your property wither. We went through a doozy in '88 in the heartland, and a couple summers ago the forest fires across the West were so severe the smoke filled the air as far east as Pennsylvania.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Thursday November 21 2019, @03:29AM (1 child)
The point is that anyone reading what you said would read it as "what's happening is perfectly normal, nothing to see here" and move on. That's decidedly not what's happening here at the moment.
The sort of bushfire that the Australian landscape needs is a clearing, a lightning strike that will start a fire, clear our a few acres, perhaps more and leave the majority of large trees alive and intact. Then rains would come and bring a new rush of life through and the cycle would start over. The fires that are happening here are so large, so intense that nothing is surviving them (the larger ones) It's leaving giant swathes of dead forest in its wake. And with no projection of any meaningful rain, that drives the chances of regrowth even lower. Add to all that, the fact that's it's the very start of what we would call our bushfire season and we're already seeing so much damage done that it is really scary to imagine what it's going to be like towards the middle or end of the summer period.
I don't keep cats or dogs. My neighbour has a cat run (fancy way of saying huge cage the cats can feel "outside" in without being able to get out into the wilderness) as do the folks that live two doors down. I completely agree that humans moving in and not respecting the place has impacts - but I'd also say that large scale deforestation, farming and removing of vital nature corridors has played a very significant part in what is happening in Australia right down to macro areas like the Blue Mountains. The other side is that the Blue Mountains council is exceptionally strict on what you can and can't do. Cutting down a tree illegally can result in thousands of dollars of fine per tree and most residents both appreciate and agree with that mentality. We're not a bunch of folks clearing the land then wondering "what happened to all the nature?!".
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday November 21 2019, @04:04PM
Droughts happen, Fluffeh, even severe ones. New York City suffered a pretty severe one about 20 years ago, and the Atlanta area 10 years after that. California was in a severe multi-year drought and IT WAS THE END OF THE WORLD (tm). Then, they got record precipitation, all the reservoirs refilled, and the snowpack was more than replenished. All the while, in the midst of it all human agency played zero role. Nobody stopped driving their F150s, yet the rains returned anyway.
And I think that's what's at stake here: do human beings dominate Nature, or is it Nature that is large and humans that are small and at its mercy? I was fully in the tank for the former for a long, long time, but now I think that Nature will be perfectly fine no matter what humans do, because it is so much vaster and more powerful than we are, and it has survived far, far worse than us in the past. The question, then, is really whether humans would like to continue to be a part of the tapestry of life. That's an important distinction.
But don't wring your hands about horrible bushfires in the Blue Mountains and then confess that you're essentially part of the problem. Stop doing the things that are creating the problem, instead of blithely doing them and then wailing, "But how oh God could this have happened?"
If you want to save Nature, move back to Sydney. It's a fine town. Sure you might not be able to find something you like and can afford in the Rocks, but the amazing geography of Sydney Harbor means basically everybody can have waterfront property.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @09:28PM
Its actually worse than that. The oils trapped in the bark can explode due to the high temperatures, so you'd get fireballs shooting out which contributes to the rapid spread of the fires.
(Score: 3, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday November 19 2019, @07:18PM (4 children)
I live more than 2,000 km to the west of Sydney, and have been getting incredible sunsets for the last couple of weeks due to the Australian fires.
The Sun also looked slightly red to me on Sunday, which I assume is for the same reason.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @10:36PM (2 children)
Did you mean East of Sydney? I thought you were a sheepshagger.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday November 19 2019, @11:12PM
New Caledonia, Vanuatu and the NZ's Northern Island [twitter.com] got a share too.
Looked like this in places https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EJZ_h8xUwAElv2h.jpg [twimg.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday November 20 2019, @12:14AM
Yes, I meant East of Sydney of course.
We are not allowed to shag sheep anymore, as they are nearly extinct here, so are protected.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday November 19 2019, @11:18PM
You'll have to warm the Pacific Ocean around your neck of the woods.
As of now, the El-Nino Southern Oscillation is neural and the Indian Ocean Dipole is weakening. Don't know how's gonna impact you, they don't show it [bom.gov.au]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @11:31PM (2 children)
They didn't rake their forests like Smokey the Trump recommended.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 20 2019, @01:42AM (1 child)
Controlled burns [wikipedia.org], what Trump was talking about, has been a standard of fire control in the American West for decades. That, along with other preventative measures aimed to reduce undergrowth that builds fire potential.
Recently, however, pressure from environmentalists has discouraged the practice and favored a "Let It Burn" policy. Result: massive, massive forest fires that obliterate scenery and wipe out billions of dollars of valuable timber.
Now, the forests are fine with wildfire in the long run because most of those species have pine cones that are adapted to open and disperse seeds when heated. But it sucks for human purposes. West of Logan Pass in Glacier National Park there are still skeletal remains of lodgepole pines that burned in a fire in the 50's. Pretty similar story in Yellowstone, where they let that place burn in the 90's.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @12:55PM
Controlled burns? Ah, of course, the nazi solution.
You bad bad person.
That isn't an option anymore.
We can just send them all home.