ABC plan to stop bushfires with windmills and buckets of your cash

The Australian media are going all out on climate change and bushfires.

The ABC 7:30 Report last night clearly laid out the options for preventing mega bush-fires.

Funded by you whether you like it or not.

 

Watch the whole bizarre post-modern witchcraft here: ABC Channel 1

Yes, the world has warmed by 0.7C since 1900. We are living in a new climate. Before, when things were, on average imperceptibly cooler, megafires did not happen. Right?

Thanks to Peter Ritson for the short video version.

“The Science is in”. Annabel Crabb tells us “The link is established between climate change and bushfires”. (What “link” would that be Annabel? — That when there is a bushfire there are more media stories about climate change?)

As Simon at ClimateMadness jokes, obviously there is no groupthink at the ABC because they put forward all the views from every side of Greenness:

So they invite John Connor, alarmist from the Climate Institute, who essentially agreed with Adam Bandt, alarmist from the Greens, who essentially agreed with Don Henry, alarmist from the Australian Conservation Foundation, who essentially agreed with Andy Pitman, alarmist from UNSW, who essentially agreed with Don Henry (again), who essentially agreed with John Connor (again).

 

Andrew Bolt lists 11 major fires that occurred in Sept or October between 1926 – 2006. He also lists the real monster fires that show that none of this is unprecedented.

The ‘Black Thursday’ fires of 6 February 1851 in Victoria, burnt the largest area (approximately 5 million ha) in European-recorded history and killed more than one million sheep and thousands of cattle as well as taking the lives of 12 people (CFA 2003a; DSE 2003b). On ‘Red Tuesday’, 1 February 1898 in Victoria 260,000 ha were burnt, 12 people were killed and 2000 buildings were destroyed (DSE 2003b).

Image adapted from Wikimedia: Knutux.

9 out of 10 based on 109 ratings

177 comments to ABC plan to stop bushfires with windmills and buckets of your cash

  • #
    Neville

    Why is pig ignorance and lying such prized commodities in 21st century OZ? We have the ABC, Fairfax and IPCC heads telling outright lies about the NSW bushfires and yet nobody listens to the fire experts and fire fighters who tell us that the answer is simple.

    We must do much earlier and much more fire hazard reduction burning. David Packham who was interviewed by Bolt and Price last night has said that there is a greater fuel load waiting to burn now than at any time since white settlement of OZ.
    We must get rid of this excessive fuel load or suffer the consequences. We are putting more lives at risk because these liars and fraudsters have too much say.

    This has nothing to do with climate change but has everything to do with missed opportunities to burn excessive fuel loads.

    Aborigines regularly burned the bush in OZ year after year for thousands of years and we should also burn these excessive fuel loads when required.
    Here’s a good interview by Alan Jones this morning covering this lack of burning over many years.

    http://www.2gb.com/audioplayer/19126

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    • #
      DT

      In one word MONEY, ABC has received substantial sums of money while Labor was in power and they were granted a contract to broadcast into Asia Pacific despite Fox lodging a superior tender. In the private sector when PM Rudd was first in that position his Labor government arranged a $250 Million a year licence cost reduction for the industry after discussions with the chairman of a television channel and media business. Details can be read at Kangaroo Court website. In other words the left bought good news and support. ABC even had a large grant for social media services new ventures from Labor. Is it any wonder that so many Australians have lost whatever faith they had in the MSM?

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      • #
        Rick Bradford

        The answer is partly in what our host wrote above – “bizarre post-modern witchcraft”.

        In the post-modern world, feelings are all, and facts are nothing but cultural constructs.

        This ‘feeling’ movement seems to have bred a huge number of emotionally immature people, who think that if they want something to be true, it must be true; they also have the education to rationalize their way to believing that it is true.

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    • #
      Boris

      Totally agree Neville. The looney left and latte sippers in the Greens wouldn’t have a clue. The fires are of such ferocity due entirely to the lack of fuel reduction burns. Gum trees are just an explosion waiting to happen. Better to have many regular cooler burns that what is happening now. Idiot Greens and their policies and infiltration of Councils are greatly responsible in my opinion for this conflagration. If a green council approves house construction in middle of a eucalypt forest and then not allow residents to trim a perimeter of safety around these houses makes these councils just as culpable as the Greens’ policies. The Australian bush was fire-formed by aborigines for thousand of years, yet we have these ‘experts’ tell us climate change is responsible. Tell that to the 200 odd litres of turpentine in the crown of an average gum tree – when it reaches critical temperature (from a hot burn) – kaboom and people build houses under them. The ABC is going well out of its uninformed way to push this climate change scam causing bushfires. If it wasn’t so tragic it would be laughable. Message for Bandt – learn about the aborigine and the use of fire. Better still, try and grow a gum tree without firing (heating) the seed. You may class yourself as a Greenie but your ignorance of such basic gardening knowledge is astounding. Try getting out of Collins Street for once.

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      • #
        Olaf Koenders

        Boris;

        “The Australian bush was fire-formed by aborigines for thousand of years..”

        Beware that common misconception. It takes evolution millions of years to “fire-form” any vegetation and Aboriginals have only been here around 40,000. Correct/flame me if I’m wrong but Ab’s simply lit a fire and their fellows caught the escaping food at the other end, then sifted through and picked up the ready cooked stuff. I don’t think they had any conscious “stewardship” or any engineering knowledge beyond the humpy. Besides, lightning has been in Oz far longer than Man.

        Back to the topic. Agreed. People should be more aware where they build, however the green/left are fully responsible for people being prohibited clearing rights and even picking up firewood, They’re even prohibited from building underground for whatever bureaucratic reason, except in Coober Pedy.

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      • #
        Peter Miller

        I never believed a tree could explode until I saw it happen with a large eucalyptus in a bush fire in southern Spain about five years ago.

        All greenie actions can be guaranteed to trigger ‘The Law of Unintended Consequences’. Out of control wild fires is just one of those consequences.

        However, in Australia, you might just consider planting less flammable trees.

        20

      • #
        Olaf Koenders

        I was also thinking that the greenies/left purposely stopped clearing and reduced burnoffs so they could claim AGW when a fire came through. Sounds diabolical but, any takers?
        —–
        REPLY: Careful about making gross generalizations. That question would not apply to most. – J

        40

      • #
        veewee

        Bandt should try building a house under a bunch of gum trees, preferably in a fire prone area.

        He deserves to live with the dangers that the ludicrous, irresponsible regulations he supports create!

        20

    • #
      Leo G

      The solution clearly does not lie in planting more trees.
      Sydney’s urban planners envisaged a metropolis confined within an area less than 20% of the present sprawl. It has been developing a string of development in a ridge-like ring around a deeply gorged valley. The urbanised ring has an extraordinary risk of catastrophic fire without a combination of intensive zonal management of land use and fire protection measures and ongoing fuel reduction programs during high vegetative growth periods.
      If anything the adjacent forest areas need a change toward more open woodland, and possibly the return of logged native forest lots as additional buffers.
      Or we can leave it for another 10 years or so, and accept the consequences- which has been the default ‘solution’ for most of the last 75 years.

      70

    • #
      Albert

      The UN collects 10% of all carbon tax collected in Aus, when they promote carbon tax to stop fires, they have a conflict of interest, they are a beneficiary of their scare.
      When the government removes the carbon tax, the cheques to the UN will stop

      The UN scare is not supported by the very recent IPCC report

      140

    • #
      Safetyguy66

      Well people today arnt generally as bright as maybe they once were.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=l02E4cj4Vvo

      00

  • #
    Gee Aye

    Windmills? I guess if the fires take out the energy grid, there is liekly to be high winds so that our vital milling can still be done.

    151

    • #
      AndyG55

      Stone ground flour ! 🙂

      80

    • #
      Safetyguy66

      6 years ish in the Wind Industry and one of the worst words you could say was “Windmill”, you would get a loud and immediate chorus of “ITS A WIND TURBINE”.

      So these days I use windmill, because it more accurately reflects the nonsense of employing medieval technology to produce energy in the 21st century.

      In a 1000 years, a Time Team type show will unearth a windfarm and say “fascinating, look at how our ancient ancestors were building windmills for energy in the 21st century, we can only guess at what madness led them to think this was a good idea”

      Its a stupid idea proffered by stupid people to impress the stupid.

      30

  • #
    pat

    LOL LOL LOL:

    22 Oct: Sky News: Palmer to host world leaders
    Mr Palmer is the joint-secretary general of the Alliance which comprises of the World Economic Council and the world’s largest forum of former heads of State and government, Club de Madrid.
    ‘More than 40 former prime ministers and presidents will take part in the conference aimed at identifying solutions to further employment and sustainable growth in the 21st century,’ Mr Palmer said in a statement
    http://www.skynews.com.au/national/article.aspx?id=917358

    Club Madrid: Energy & Climate Change
    Addressing global climate change and po­verty are the most pressing environmental challenges for humanity, requiring an urgent response. Since 2007, the Club de Madrid has been working on two Climate Change and Energy related fronts:
    The mobilisation of the political will towards a global effective, efficient and equitable post-2012 climate agreement.
    The promotion of “universal access to clean energy” as a key contribution to po­verty alleviation.
    The Club de Madrid, based on the current projects and activities that is implementing, submitted a series of recommendations as its contribution to the Rio+20 process; that brought to the UN Conference in June 2012 during a Rio+20 side event. To access the report of this event, please, click here.
    Within this fra­mework, the Club de Madrid has been advo­cating for adequate recognition of:
    Cities and local level actors as key imple­menters of a low carbon economy.
    Needed support for Climate Vulnerable Countries to ensure that proper atten­tion and responses are given to their needs.
    Universal access to clean energy for po­verty alleviation and green growth.
    http://www.clubmadrid.org/en/programa/energy_and_climate_change

    it wasn’t easy to access this, so pasting all relevant bits:

    26 July 2013: Australian: Hedley Thomas: How Palmer engineered entry to the ranks of world leaders
    As journalists received the news of Mr Palmer’s promotion, the reaction was immediately positive. The Sydney Morning Herald headlined it: “Palmer to advise on G20 summit”…
    “It’s a great honour for me to work with all those people,” he said. “I certainly don’t know why they chose me to be the world secretary-general.”
    An investigation by The Australian uncovered one reason why Mr Palmer may have been chosen in annual financial accounts, lodged in Spain two months ago by the cash-strapped Club de Madrid, the organisation that gave unexpected birth to the World Leadership Alliance and the World Economic Council.
    Mr Palmer, a resources tycoon, was in pole position to land the lofty appointments because he had, confidentially, been the largest donor of funds to Club de Madrid, a forum for former heads of state and government, including former Dutch prime minister Wim Kok, the club’s current president; former New Zealand prime minister Jenny Shipley, the club’s vice-president; former US presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter; former Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien; and former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan.
    Club de Madrid and its affiliates are not listed as advisers to the G20. Instead, the body says it works closely with “key international institutions” such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the OECD, the World Trade Organisation (WTO), ASEAN and the UN.
    Credible think tanks and senior government sources have scoffed at suggestions that Mr Palmer and the World Leadership Alliance would be key advisers to the G20…
    The financial accounts of Club de Madrid reveal that, last year, Mr Palmer opened his wallet with a donation of E500,000. It was channelled from Queensland Nickel, which made a loss of $58 million in the financial year to June 30, 2012.
    Another donation, E229,200, flowed from his loss-making Mineralogy, which is embroiled in litigation in a bid to be paid disputed royalty payments by Chinese company CITIC Pacific for an iron ore development in the Pilbara in Western Australia.
    These donations by Mr Palmer of more than $1m comprised about 40 per cent of the total that Club de Madrid received from the private sector for the year.
    Mr Palmer’s generous contributions even dwarfed those by major public-sector donors including NATO (E20,000) and AusAid (E95,000). Thanks to his donations, Club de Madrid’s 2012 deficit was whittled back to E214,000 after its 2011 surplus of E619,000.
    Searches by The Australian could not locate any evidence that the World Leadership Alliance or the World Economic Council had been promoted or written about in public forums until the fortuitous December 18 announcement of the new roles for Mr Palmer.
    Searches of internet domain name registrations and trademark applications show that, four months prior to his appointment, Mr Palmer had formally snared the names of the entities.
    On July 12 last year, according to a domain registry, an applicant named Clive Palmer with an email address and telephone number for his company, Mineralogy Pty Ltd, registered the domain name world-leadership-alliance.com.
    The following month, Mineralogy Pty Ltd lodged multiple trademark requests for World Leadership Alliance and World Economic Council, giving Mr Palmer the legal right to use the names that would be unveiled in December…
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/how-palmer-engineered-entry-to-the-ranks-of-world-leaders/story-fn59niix-1226685254989

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    • #
      DT

      Honorary Professor Palmer also made significant donations to a certain university and then called himself Professor.

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      • #
        Dave

        Amazing coincidence,

        Clive Palmer backs the Club de Madrid.

        One of it’s founding members, was José María Figueres Olsen, who is the brother of Karen Christiana Figueres Olsen who is the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and made these statements:

        the New South Wales bushfires are an example of “the doom and gloom” the world may be facing without vigorous action on climate change.

        Why is Clive backing this group?

        140

        • #
          DT

          Katter, Windsor & Oakeshott Syndrome, revenge against the conservatives who did not sit up and take notice of their demands

          50

  • #

    Notice on that list the single most obvious thing does not even rate a mention.

    Notice in the whole of that 7.30 report from last night, no one mentioned the single most obvious thing.

    Notice that every written or spoken article on this climate change debate the single most obvious thing is never even mentioned.

    Close down the bloody coal fired power plants.

    How easy is that?

    Tony.

    182

    • #
      Neville

      Tony here’s a comment that I left at Jennifer Marohasy’s blog a couple of days ago. I was just making a point about the con and fraud of mitigation of AGW.
      The EIA link tells the true story about future co2 emissions by 2040.
      My comment starts below.

      As I said Luke you’re either a liar or a fool. I’ve got zero interest in hiding the facts and the truth, that’s why I’m exposing the total fraud behind your so called mitigation of AGW nonsense.

      Here’s the EIA’s projections for co2 emissions by 2040. And I’ll start by showing emissions in 1990 as well.

      OECD 1990 emissions of co2= 11.6 bn tonnes This is the developed industrial countries.

      non OECD 1990 emissions of co2= 9.9 bn tonnes. This is China, India, Brazil etc or developing world.

      OECD by 2040 emissions of co2 = 13.9 bn tonnes or an increase of 2.3 bn tonnes over 50 years.

      non OECD by 2040 emissions = 31.6 bn tonnes or an increase of 21.7 bn tonnes over 50 years.

      You’ll note that the OECD will only increase by 2.3 bn tonnes by 2040, but the non OECD will increase by 21.7 bn tonnes by 2040. All tonnages of co2 are per annum.

      Here is that link, work it out for yourself and wake up. I hope you have the comprehension to understand how wrong you are? You don’t have any excuse.

      http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo/emissions.cfm

      161

    • #
      AndyG55

      I agree Tony.

      The coal fired power stations OUGHT to shut themselves down, for a week or 2.

      How will the lefties get their lattes then ???

      160

      • #

        The whole Eastern Sea Board States would totally and utterly shut down completely.

        There would be nothing, absolutely nothing.

        It would be chaos on a scale unimaginable, and that is why it will never be allowed to happen.

        The cost would be in Billions, literally.

        Governments know this, and that is why everything that they say is lip service only.

        The power generating companies have contracts to supply, another reason it would never happen.

        If it did happen, you know where the loudest of screams would be coming from. All those people with rooftop solar panels, because they too will be blacked out totally.

        That’s where those in the Green lobby know that they will always be able to get their meme across, because they too know that as soon as the power goes off, they will lose their argument completely and utterly.

        People have their electrical power as a staple of life, always there, and the Green lobby can always just say that they are making a difference, because power is always there and they can point to wind and solar and say that there is power, and see how wind and solar are actually providing something.

        However, crash the coal fired power, and there will be nothing. The Sun could shine for 24 hours and the wind blow perfectly while those coal fired plants are down, and there will still be absolutely nothing, because without that huge grid supply, then, all the wind and solar will never even come on line let alone supply anybody.

        THAT is the Renewable Lobby’s advantage ….. the fact that no one actually knows this.

        No one will tell them, the media, well they wouldn’t have a clue about it, and frankly, no one would even bother to find out.

        The chaos of a downed grid for even one week would be the sum of every flood, every bushfire, every Cyclone, all added together.

        That’s why it will never be allowed to happen, no matter what. Life as we know it would cease. Think about your day from when you wake up to when you go back to sleep. No electricity – nothing.

        Tony.

        390

        • #
          MemoryVault

          .
          Andy ses,

          The coal fired power stations OUGHT to shut themselves down, for a week or 2.

          Tony ses,

          It would be chaos on a scale unimaginable, and that is why it will never be allowed to happen.

          You know guys, I’ve been thinking about this for some time now. Despite the “unimaginable chaos”, it might just be the best thing that could happen, in the longer term.

          [SNIP. No, even as a joke, we are not going there – Jo]

          Now, I appreciate that no law-abiding reader here would ever even contemplate such action, even if we could find enough able-bodied people to execute it.

          .
          What say you, fellow Novarians?
          Worth a few days of “unimaginable chaos” to end this crap once and for all?

          228

          • #
            Truthseeker

            MV, I have to admit I gave you the first red thumb ever for one of your comments. I understand the sentiment, but the actual cost in human lives as a consequence makes this just as bad as walking into a cafe wearing a C4 waistcoat …

            61

            • #
              MemoryVault

              .
              That’s okay TS, I’ll live with the red thumb.
              It’s not as if it’s my first – I am after all, the Babe Ruth of this blog.

              What you have to live with is the sure and certain knowledge that it’s going to happen in the next couple of years anyway. Tony from Oz has many times posted the graph which clearly shows sometime in that period base-load requirements will match peak-load capacity. After that, the whole system crashes in a screaming heap.

              When that happens, simply turning everything back on will not help.

              All that needs to be decided is whether we engineer this to happen in Spring or Autumn, which is what I’m suggesting, or whether we wait and let it happen of its own accord, which inevitably means it will occur under peak-load conditions on the hottest day in Summer or the coldest day in Winter.

              To use your own analogy, do we sneak into the cafe after hours when it is closed, or do we wait for the busiest time of day on the busiest day of the year?

              .
              Morally and ethically, that’s the only thing that has to be decided.
              Everything else is already way out of our hands.

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          • #
            AndyG55

            This is a job for GREEN ACTIVISTS.

            Just point them in the right direction !

            40

            • #
              MemoryVault

              Just point them in the right direction !

              Multi-nationals, various special interest groups, rent-seekers of a dozen different persuasions, academics, the UN, and virtually every western government have been doing that for over twenty years, to their own ends.

              Why should we turn our noses up at such a tried and true tactic?

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            • #
              Olaf Koenders

              Good idea Andy. I know of 30 stranded in Russia prone to criminality. Trouble is, I like my electricity and so do hospitals, although they have backup generators. Unless I plug an inverter into my motorbike and run everything off that, I’d need to put a crank handle on my microwave, just like a Russian design 😉

              20

          • #
            MemoryVault

            [SNIP. No, even as a joke, we are not going there – Jo]

            What on earth gave you the idea I was joking, Jo?
            As I pointed out in my following comment to TruthSeeker, the end result is inevitable anyway.

            Or are we still waiting for the LNP cavalry to arrive in the nick of time and save the day?
            Another letter writing campaign, perhaps? Something along the lines of:

            Dear Mr Tony Abbott Prime Minister,

            Please build us some new coal-fired power stations real quick.
            Otherwise in less than two years we are going to be up sh*t creek without a paddle.

            Thank you in advance.
            Joe Citizen.

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            • #
              Andrew McRae

              Still hoping to write the final chapter in your own dossier, eh Peter?
              That’s a Carbon “Direct Action Plan” straight from Action Directe.

              But They may use your actions as a justification to round up the rest of us. So don’t do it, please. Like you said, it’s the same power down result in the end. But one way I get rounded up, the other way I don’t. People who do have something to lose prefer not to.

              Besides, you must know that only the undercover cops are allowed to conspire to commit sabotage and to give suspects exp1ösives to do the job and yet still be immune from prosecution if the suspect goes ahead with it.

              And surely the life of a “prepper” is an exciting one, not knowing precisely when the Grid Down Scenario will occur. Wouldn’t want to miss out on that experience, especially now I know the lead time is about 2 years. It was always hard to get motivated without being certain the effort and sacrifice would ever be worthwhile.

              Based on a government report I’ve just seen, I’m not sure that demand will exceed capacity in 3 years, but I’ll take that issue up with Tony.

              20

              • #
                MemoryVault

                .
                I wouldn’t sweat it, Andrew.
                When the roundups start they are always of those with influence in the wider community.

                Always. No exceptions.

                That means any uncooperative politicians, the intelligentsia elite, the journalists, the academics, the radical student leaders, the activists (think Getup), and the trade union leaders.

                Always. No exceptions.

                I appreciate this represents a logical disconnect, in that these are the very same people who will have most ardently supported The Cause and The Movement in the first place, but there you have it. History does not lie. They are always the first to be rounded up and “dealt with”, which could mean anything from being disappeared to reeducation camps.

                .
                People like you and me who have little or no influence in the Grander Scheme of Things, are basically left alone to muddle through as best we can under the new regime. Unless, of course, we then get foolish and try sticking our heads above the parapet. Then we get slapped down.

                So, for the time being at least, we can go on being armchair anarchists.

                .
                PS – Prepping is easy. I’ve got my still and I know where there’s 8,000 gallons of molasses on an abandoned dairy farm.

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          • #
            ianl8888

            MV, I commented a few days ago on this – electricity supply is categorised as an essential service in law. Any supplier unilaterally closing down for no other reason than “showing the bastards” will find their executives in goal and fined many $$millions

            In the early 2000’s when the then owners of Loy Yang (LaTrobe Valley, Vic) were near bankruptcy as they were unable to meet interest payments on their bank loans, the Vic State Govt waived through legislation negating the ACCC, who were objecting to a sale on monopoly grounds, so that AGL could buy the power station and so keep it running

            40

            • #
              MemoryVault

              Ian,

              Obviously if I repeat what was [SNIPPED] it will only get cut again, plus understandably rile our host, Jo.

              However, I can absolutely assure you what I wrote had nothing whatsoever to do with power companies unilaterally, or even willingly, cutting off supplies to “show the bastards”, or any other reason.

              What I suggested was more along the lines of sneakily sub-contracting the work out (cutting off supply) to an organisation with a penchant for that sort of thing. You know, pirates or something like that.

              21

        • #

          This is a long read, but is interesting, especially for me, coming from an electrical background.

          Northeast Blackout of 2003

          In 2003 Northeast USA and parts of Canada were blacked out. It affected 55 Million people and while some power came back within 7 hours, some were blacked out for 2 days.

          Now, part way into this long text is a time line.

          The build up took just on 4 hours, but watch what happens in ….. 16 Seconds ….. from 4.10:34 onwards, and ends 2 minutes later with 256 power plants offline and into emergency shutdown ….. automatically.

          Most of those were the Majors. To get limited power back, all the hydro and all the Peaking power units were immediately requested to come on line, but they couldn’t handle all of it, so that’s why it took so long to come back up, most of those, the Majors, (large scale coal and the Nukes) which entered safe mode, and then to get them back the long procedure involved.

          Gone in seconds, and days to get back up. Some had their power back 7 hours later, but for most of those 55 Million, it was days without power.

          Note where I said specifically gone in seconds. That’s all it takes.

          The grid would cascade fail, and do it quickly. The rest is, well, absolute chaos.

          Blink. Gone. What do you do?

          Tony.

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        • #
          Ian

          Instead of shutting down coal fired power stations why not stop exporting coal, the export of which would significantly reduce Australia’s contribution to global emissions. Is that likely to happen? About as likely as shutting down coal fired power stations.

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    • #

      It is obvious why the Greens and their environmental mates want to blame Climate Change for the fires; if it isn’t CC then it must be the lack of hazard reduction and it was these very same people who are opposed to clearing and keeping the bush free of excessive fuel. It’s the Greens and their media syncophants along with reliant politicians who are responsible for the intensity of these fires if not their ignition. It has been estimated some of the fire grounds were carrying 30 tonnes of fuel per Ha when 8 tonnes per Ha is considered dangerous. Many individuals and local brigades have been calling for hazard reduction yet stymied by green bureaucrats and green policies at local councils.

      The Greens know they are in the firing line and want to deflect blame because it has worked before. This time more people are aware that CC is a scam and are laying the blame where it rightfully belongs. I’m disgusted that journalists and politicians are not calling the Greens out.

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    • #
    • #
      Dave

      Tom,

      Same as sex of turles and no more French wines?

      Tom, the reporting by the ABC, Fairfax, research by the UNI’s and CSIRO is just becoming a mouthpiece for the IPCC and their GAIA loving CAGW parasites.

      1. Vineyards take action as climate change threatens wines and livelihoods (see 2 and 3 why this is bullsiht)
      2. French Wine Production Seen Rising 13% From Lowest in 40 Years.
      3. The estimated size of the 2013 Australian wine harvest at 1.83 million tonnes has surprised many, increasing by 10 per cent on the prior year. Elsewhere in the world, Chile, South Africa and New Zealand are expected to harvest record or near-record crops.

      Grapes – tick, wine – tick, grains – tick, fruit – tick, vegetables – tick, seems the hottest September and the mega bush fires have not had that much of an effect on our agricultural industry in Australia and indeed the Southern Hemisphere.

      Bring on the rise in CO2 but please don’t get any colder.

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  • #
    Brian G Valentine

    Here in the USA we went through this “science” behind “brush fires” ad nauseam (including a Presidential affirmation)

    … until it was revealed that the majority of these were in fact arson, at which point a proven useless Media went curiously silent.

    (I was hoping that the “science” discussion would turn to analysis of the psychopathology of arson, but it never got to this point)

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    • #
      DT

      Brian one of the biggest fires west of Sydney was started by a military explosive device accident near Springwood and at least two others were lit by children who are being interviewed by police. Another was caused by a cigarette butt thrown from a vehicle at Homebush Bay, a Sydney suburb. I believe that many if not most fires here are arson or accidents such as a fallen power line.

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      • #
        ianl8888

        … near Springwood

        Marrangaroo Army Base, 10km NW of Lithgow, actually. Misnamed as the State Mine fire

        The Springwood and State Mine fires are completely separate, by about 150km

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  • #
    DT

    I wonder if the climate at ABC will be changed in the not too distant future as the public broadcaster’s Charter is dusted off and waved about?

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    • #
      Brian G Valentine

      Don’t expect much. Juveniles cannot perceive what Communism really is until they are thrown in some Gulag. Only then does it dawn on them what it was they were cheering along

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  • #

    When Australia ceases to have large bushfires then our climate has changed. At the rate the Antarctic is growing our bushfires will soon be covered in ice so no probs!

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      11th of October 1865.

      The Season.—Strong hot winds, clouds of dust, and a thick hazy atmosphere continue to be the prevailing characteristic of the weather in the district of Bathurst. On Saturday and Sunday last, the smoke from the enormous bushfires raging around us in every direction, hung over the plains like a huge fog, exceedingly oppressive and totally concealing from view the surrounding mountains.

      The above is a quote from The Bathurst times.
      http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/1280590?

      The false prophets who predicted permanent drought took eyes off the building fuel load. The good news is the rain they said would not come is raining on the fires right now!

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      Friday 15 October 1926

      Thrilling stories of endeavours to cross the areas where bushfires are raging In New South Wales are told by commercial travellers

      http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/54870355?zoomLevel=6

      1859

      “Disastrous Bushfires in New Zealand. From the Lytteton Times of October 19”

      http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/5691841?

      September 1854

      Double Bay. To persons at a distance, these clouds appeared at first to be formed of dust, but they gradually became heavier, mid sudden bright flashes occasionally breaking through the dark wreaths, told plainly that the bush was on fire.

      http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/4798134?

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      Dave

      Siliggy

      This is another lesson from the past that the current ABC could not comprehend.
      This is Judge Stretton, writing in the report of the Royal Commission to inquire into the 1939 bushfires: –

      “There is one fundamental policy of fire prevention and of protection against fire. There is only one basis upon which that policy can safely rest, namely, the full recognition by each person or department who has dominion over the right to enter the forests of the paramount duty to safeguard the property and the rights of others. No person or department can be allowed to use the forest in such a way as to create a state of danger to others.

      If conformity to this rule cannot be brought about, the offender must be put out of the forest, or, in the case of a public department its authority curtailed, or enlarged so that the rule may be enforced, or voluntarily observed as the case may require.”

      The managers of forest land, be they government or private, have a clear responsibility to protect the community from fire emerging from their land. If they cannot do this, they must either be replaced by someone who can, or be given sufficient funding to do the job properly.”

      Also in Victoria and NSW over 10,000 people worked in the forests in the early 1980s, in forestry, the electricity commission and saw-milling. It was a condition of the saw-milling licenses that if a fire broke out, the workers had an obligation to fight it. The Rural Fire Brigade had many hands on deck to put out fires quickly. The National Parks now many hours from the RFS even responding quickly enough.

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    • #

      Thanks Dave. Clear thinking like that seems to have gone.

      October 1951

      Over 100 separate bushfires were reported during the day and night…
      The fires extended along the coast from the Shoalhaven and the Tallaganda Shires in the south to the Queensland border. They also raged in the north-west of the State.

      http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/63396997?

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      October 1936

      BUSHFIRES FOR 400 MILES…
      FANNED by a fierce westerly wind, bush fires, which have been raging throughout the south-eastern corner of the State, got out of control yesterday. Sweeping over large areas of country from Gympie to Coff’s Harbour

      http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/37002424?

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      • #
        Dave

        No lessons learnt here:

        Western Australian Department of Parks and Wildlife explanation for prescribed burns:

        Why does DPaW conduct prescribed burns?

        DPaW uses prescribed burning for a number of purposes:

        1. to maintain biodiversity,
        2. to mitigate the severity of bush fires and to help protect lives and property by reducing the build-up of flammable fuel loads, and
        3. to rehabilitate vegetation after disturbance, such as timber harvesting and mining
        4. to undertake research on fire and its interaction with our environment.

        So here we have the general attitude of most state and federal governments towards fuel load reduction. Four points and ONLY one actually states it is to save lives and property (only mitigate not prevent). The other three are just airy fairy bits of GREEN CARAP.

        How about the last one, to research on FIRE AND ITS INTERACTION WITH OUR ENVIRONMENT.
        FFS, fire bloody burns everything (nearly) and they want to study it. This is the bureaucratic process gone GREEN.

        I’ll show you FW’s what happens to the environment and our food here. Digest this Green Idiots.

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        • #
          Bruce J

          After the 1961 Dwellingup bushfires which practically wiped out Dwellingup and Karridale, the Western Australia Forestry Commission committed to a 7 year fuel reduction burn cycle, i.e. one seventh of the area was to be burned each year, for all the land it controlled. 7 years was selected as this was the longest an area could be left without the fuel load reaching a level where the “crowning” of large fires became a major risk. I’m only going from memory now, but I don’t recall any major fires in the Darling Ranges in the ensuing 25 years or about one generation. However, after 2 generations it seems that this logic has been forgotten or replaced by some interpretation of “science” which doesn’t really seem to hold up if last year’s fires are any indication.

          Not carrying out fuel reduction burns does reduce taxpayer costs via the Government while increasing them through insurance premiums. False economy really.

          30

  • #
    delory

    Umm… The black thursday and red tuesday fires occurred in February of their respective years. Putting this quote directly beneath a sentence about fires in Sept-October is a bit confusing.

    —-

    Good point. Will fix! Thanks. – Jo

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    • #
      Andrew McRae

      Agreed. It is confusing as the assumption is that the quote will support the sentence that preceded it, whereas that one doesn’t.

      Jo, I think you’ve just accidentally copied and pasted the wrong section of Bolt’s article there. Just before that para is his indented list, adapted from Romsey, which is the supporting quote.
      eg North-Western NSW: Bushfires – 01/09/84 deaths – 4 deaths (…etc)

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  • #
    Sunray

    Thank you Jo for another lacerating article about ‘their ABC’.

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  • #
    Dave

    To put bush fires in context:

    These are the 10 largest insurance disasters ranked by the indexed loss (current value $).

    1. 1989 Earthquake Newcastle 4300
    2. 1974 Cyclone Darwin 4060
    3. 1999 Hail Sydney 3310
    4. 1974 Cyclone-Flood Brisbane 1790
    5. 1983 Bush fire VIC, SA 1610
    6. 1990 Hail Sydney 1480
    7. 1985 Hail Brisbane 1430
    8. 1976 Hail Sydney 740
    9. 1986 Hail Western-Sydney 710
    10.1984 Flood Sydney 670

    And also the percentage of the accumulated building damage between 1900 and 2003 attributed
    to different perils.

    1. Cyclones 30%
    2. Thunder Storms 22.5%
    3. Floods 22%
    4. Bush fires 20%
    5. Quakes, L/slides & others 5.5%

    Annual numbers of buildings destroyed by bush fire since 1926 is 84 buildings each year. Of the more extreme events, some 2300 homes were lost in the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires in Victoria and South Australia; in 1967, another 1300 in Hobart, Tasmania, and, more recently, in 2003, 500 in Canberra. On five occasions since 1926, more than 500 buildings have been destroyed.

    95% of all building losses from bush fire, are located within 50 meters from bush land boundaries. 4.1% of all Australian residences are located within this 50 meter boundary.

    Live within 50 meters of bush land in Australia and you have a 95% chance of losing your home if a bush fire occurs.

    I can build a new home on the Sunshine Coast within 15 meters of a natural bush land area and the council will not allow clearing. Planning is non-existent in some areas, and now the ABC blames these the losses on Climate Change???

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    • #
      Gee Aye

      Dave, what is your citation for this? Does it include this century? Also what is your dollar value – millions?

      You also did not mention the more recent fires – e.g. Victoria 2009. Although I am pasting from wiki (nice encapsulated sentences so I stuck with it), a quick check elsewhere backs up these figures;

      Beyond the 173 deaths, 120 of them caused by a single firestorm, the fires destroyed over 2,030 houses and more than 3,500 structures,[10] and damaged thousands more….

      insurance claims, which the Insurance Council of Australia reported as $1.2 billion as of August 2010.

      anyway the point is taken: bush does not have a high dollar value.

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      • #
        Gee Aye

        Brisbane floods are also missing from the list?

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      • #
        Dave

        GeeAye

        1. From 1900 and 2003 for both sets of figures.
        2. John McAneney, Keping Chen, Ryan Crompton and Andy Pitman the authors
        3. Risk Frontiers, Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia
        4. Done in 2007, I just have a photocopy of it called Wildfire 2007 sent by Suncorp years ago.

        So Brisbane floods not in, Vic 2009 fires etc plus heaps more. Hopefully Andy Pitman will do another Report soon.

        10

      • #
        Dave

        GeeAye,

        Forgot this, value is millions AUD$

        20

  • #
    Sunray

    I no longer watch “their ABC”, because I can not afford to keep on replacing smashed TV sets, so I read articles on their taxpayer funded sites and swear, a lot.

    180

    • #
      Len

      When I was a young soldier, I used to listen to AM, The World Today and Mark Colvert on PM. Now the radio is never turned on.

      40

    • #
      King Geo

      I am with you 100% – ABC TV/Radio is “left wing” to the core. One has to question how this tax payer funded media outlet can expect to continue in this fashion when the majority of the adult population now don’t share it’s “left wing” ideology. I think it is time the ABC was privatised and see if it either floats or sinks on it’s merits, and becomes answerable to it’s shareholders.

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  • #
    Lank

    Has anyone calculated how much carbon dioxide these fires are producing?
    I think they may exceed all of the 2013 planned emission ‘savings’.
    Of more importance to the environment may be the CO and S output and effects of the ash.

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    • #
      Bulldust

      I wonder if any carbon-sequestration plantations have gone up in smoke… I am curious what occurs in the case of such an event. Does the plantation owner have to pay back all the carbon credits (with interest)?

      One does wonder…

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      • #
        pattoh

        & in that vein BD, I’ll bet the Insurance industry must be rubbing its hands with glee over the premiums it will be able to charge Carbon Farmers to in sure their “asset”…

        & how much they can bleed the neighbors for being so close to a massive fuel source….

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  • #
    janama

    They had one fire expert on the program but they just brushed him off by saying other scientists disagree with him and returned to their lefty activists none of whom had any qualifications in fire or forest management.

    That little worm Pitman was acting like he was an authority on fire control!! He’s the Director of the ARC (Australian Research Council I presume) Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science. What an arrogant title for a University Academic Centre.

    Can’t they see their own bias?? are they deaf and blind?

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    • #
      Ross

      Well done to Tony Abbott for saying publically that Christiana Figueres and others like Pitman were talking rubbish ( can’t recall the exact words but they were very blunt) when saying the fires were caused or related to climate change. He said fires were an unfortunate
      (for those affected) fact of life in Australia.
      He possibly said more but this bit was reported in NZ.

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  • #
    Andrew McRae

    I found the SMH interview video with John Willams quite interesting on a range of issues.

    On the bush fires, for instance, he’s critical of locking up land in national parks and doing nothing with them, since it allows the fire loads to grow. He had been informed of the specific numbers on it too, as anything over 10 tonnes of fuel per hectare makes fires uncontrollable. By comparison the Black Saturday incident had fuel loads of 150t/ha.
    It certainly puts the scale of the problem on solid ground.

    When the wood cutters were managing the land earlier in the 20th century they kept fuel loads low, presumably to ensure no huge bushfire could destroy the value of the timber, but now it’s all under government (mis)management and we are seeing the results AGAIN.
    Williams’ suggestion that the more open areas of national park should be opened up to cattle grazing to reduce grass loads seems reasonable under the circumstances, but it seems most areas burning in NSW this week would not qualify as open enough for grazing. Certainly it is far too late to make a difference this season.

    I tried to imagine designing some sort of robot fleet that could trundle through the bush sucking up leaf litter and chipping logs into a container for transport to the nearest Green buzzword-compliant biofuel factory, but the bush is so vast and fires are very cheap to light. The loads have to be kept down, yes, and the State governments should do more frequent backburns and allow grazing, but fires are still going to happen. It’s not a matter of if but a matter of when.

    IMO, even if loads can be lowered, people just have to realise they have only three options in these areas:
    • spend their own money to make their home as fireproof as a bomb shelter so it can survive being surrounded by an inferno without cooking the occupants.
    • move out to a less fire-prone area.
    • accept the possibility they will lose that house one day and may even die from fire burns or smoke inhalation.

    You could say much the same about flooding for all the properties in Brisbane built on the Brisbane river floodplain. People, and insurance companies, have taken such a short-sighted view of the natural environment and have forgotten some very old lessons. In the case of bush fires you could say they are lessons as old as the back burning done by Aborigines for tens of thousands of years.

    __________________________
    Sorry, didn’t see there had been a new article in the last 2 hours. Had to repost this comment from previous article since it is more on-topic here.

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    • #
      Dave

      Andrew,

      Common sense interview with Wacka Williams.

      Similar interview here also on 4BC, with David Packham, a former deputy director of the Australian Counter Disaster College.

      He doesn’t hold back at all with the green policies, and absolutely tells everyone what he thinks of Global warming garbage.

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    • #
      Andrew McRae

      Further to the above I have discovered news from July this year that the NSW Parks and Wildlife dept had broken its record of highest amount of backburning in a year.
      They did 208,000 hectares.
      So they are not exactly asleep at the wheel on fire load reduction, but… Australia is a big place and they can’t burn everywhere at once. It just adds more credibility to Williams’ opinion that more resources for backburning programmes would go a long way.

      The best part? The Liberals AND the Greens agree backburning makes sense.

      30

      • #
        King Geo

        That’s good news but remember that the NSW Liberal State Govt has only just taken office (March 2011). How much “back burning” was done under the ALP’s 16 year watch (April 1995 – March 2011)? This “back burning” has to be done “year in year out” during the dry season (post June) – ie like painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge – start at one end & when you get to the other end start the process all over again. This should be done in all vulnerable eucalypt forests in Australia, ie “back burning” or “prescribed burning” year in year out so that one covers as many hectares as possible – don’t listen to the Greenies & “Global Warming Crackpots”. Listen to the brave souls on the ground, the fire fighters trying to put these fires out.

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      • #
        True disbeliever

        All except that ‘outstanding’ 🙁 Greens deputy leader and the party’s sole member in the House of Representatives Adam Bandt who has indicated that the fires now burning in NSW are further proof positive of climate change! When will these people learn that there have been bushfires burning all around Australia since the mid-1800’s …. hang on …. perhaps they were occurring even before that! Perhaps for hundreds of thousands of years before that!
        Perhaps he’s so ignorant he doesn’t realise that there were no fire fighting organisations around to fight them then! Perhaps small-minded Adam should just take a running jump at himself and wake up to the real world around him. Perhaps Adam should also stop trying to make political advantage of the current situation where hundreds are losing their homes. Perhaps he should apologise for being so stupid.

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      • #

        208,000 ha is still less than 4% of the managed area; parks.

        At that rate; there’s a chance for fuel to build up in the one place for more than 25 years.

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    Ron

    ‘ang on. Latest reports out of Germany suggests that 5 NEW coal fired generators have just brought on line and another 20 odd are planned. Wind Power IS DEAD!

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    scaper...

    When is someone going to get tired of whinging about the ABC and initiate an on line petition to sell it off?

    I can think of one or two out there that would buy it, lock, unstocked and barrel!

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    • #
      Dave

      scaper,

      Sell the ABC, or just close it (at $1.8 billion per year) and we could buy 7 of these 747 super tankers that can drop 75,000 litres of water or fire retardant and reload in 20 minutes.

      Imagine what 7 of these things could have done in NSW. And also you could use it on the OCCUPY crowd that seems to inhabit city centres.

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    • #
      Len

      Probably Clive Palmer.

      20

  • #

    I’m sorry – with so many bush fires, I can’t help but feel there’s a bunch of angry greenies who went out with a “We’ll show them” attitude and a box of matches.

    They’re losing power. They have to convince us.

    Doesn’t it feel that way to you?

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    • #
      DT

      A Green with a red match, that works for me.

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    • #
      Reinder van Til

      I would not be surprised either. Green marxists have no problem with violence. That is why Pim Fortuyn was murdered in The Netherlands. I would not be surprised if green marxists use Reichstag tactics in Australia immediately after the elections

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    Another Ian

    More around the breathless reporting this morning of UN-Not The Facts

    ABC radio (Qld) just before the 5pm news, cutting off an interview

    “The ABC news waits for no man”

    In the spirit of Mad Magazine’s complete the advertising slogan

    “The ABC News waits for no man or no facts”

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  • #
    Manfred

    The NZ MSM are trumpeting more ‘extreme weather’ leading to exacerbation of the bush fire situation in NSW. Thank god LCD TV’s are getting so much cheaper.

    40

  • #
    Safetyguy66

    I think John may have watched Terminator a few too many times and now thinks he’s here to save the world.

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    • #

      That was my thought, too. He’s living up to his fictitious namesake–except the John Connor in Terminator lived in a world with fossil fuels, so I guess the message got scrambled somehow.

      40

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    handjive

    The Leura Bushfire of *November 1957.

    The Mauna Loa Carbon Dioxide Record documents a 0.53 percent or two parts per million per year increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide since 1958.
    cO2 levels 1958; 315 parts per million
    This gas alone is responsible for 63 percent of the warming attributable to all greenhouse gases according to NOAA’s Earth System Research Lab.

    *Records of September bush fires also exist, but 1957 is highlighted here as it too is very similar to October 2013.
    ~ cO2 levels 2013 @ 400ppm.

    20

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    ursus augustus

    Well at least Annabel has got her hairdo back on the planet. That said all that we are seeing is a semi orchestrated propaganda flash mob of the usual suspects out in the media on a KRudd style headline hunt. That a UN climate cretin picks up on it just tells you about her credibility.

    This all resonates with the headless chookfest during the last election campaign where the ALP per KRudd went offworld for the 5 weeks or so with their ludicrous assertions. Tony Burke and some others are still at it. What we are seeing, I think, is the slow steady progress of that old glacier called reality slowly grinding the eco loon alarmist detritus and drivel down valley leaving just a few skid marks.

    Be patient folks. I think Gaia really has it in for these arrogant mice.

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  • #
    Dave

    So fire improves biodiversity?

    This below is from the Department of the Environment 1997 to 2003.

    Fires increase Biodiversity.

    Fire, along with climate and soil, affects biodiversity and the patterns of biodiversity across the landscape. Changes to fire regimes variation in fire season, fire intensity, fire type and, importantly, the intervals between fires—also affect biodiversity.

    Yet windmill industrial sites claim the following:
    Windmill Industrial Zones decrease biodiversity.

    Wind farms actually help prevent and contain fires as wind turbines act as lightning rods in endangered areas and the roads and clearings provide both fire breaks and access routes for firefighters.

    So do windmill industrial zones prevent biodiversity, the Greens should be onto this. Maybe the ABC will do a feature on this with David Suzuki and Tim Flannery.

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    • #
      Tim

      Here are a few questions for the turbine profligates…

      Would aerial water – bombers struggle to negotiate the turbines?
      Would turbines increase the risk of lightning strikes?
      Would sparks emanating from turbine equipment pose a risk?
      Would they create a wake turbulence that risks spreading burning debris?
      Would the – up to – 800 litres of highly flammable gear box oil create an incendiary device?
      Would rural fire brigades be able to extinguish fires in 150m high burning turbines?

      etc.

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    • #

      Kind of an expensive lightening rod. I bet I can make a less expensive one, say in the range of half a million dollars apiece, and save the government a lot of money.

      40

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    PeterS

    The ABC is such an evil organization for being so hell bent on coming up with many ways to destroy Australia’s economy with absolutely zero impact to the climate. They would make terrorists proud.

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    • #
      Dave

      PeterS,

      It’s coming up with ways to destroy Australia by having idiots like this on air.

      On 7:30 Report tonight,

      JANET STANLEY, MONASH SUSTAINABILITY INSTITUTE:

      With a child it might just be an accident, you know, it’s fun to watch a fire. You light it and in the circumstances that we’ve got at the moment with climate change it gets away when it probably wasn’t meant to get away.

      So kids before CAGW, the fires never ever got away.

      The ABC has definitely lost the plot big time for allowing this heap of lying garbage on the program.

      This person would probably blame Climate Change for the actions of terrorists. To the loony bin for all the ABC staff.

      She actually meant this – “When it probably wasn’t meant to get away,” because GAIA is now in control???? This is a religious cult.

      This is becoming totally mad.

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    Reinder van Til

    Can someone point me to a document explaining how labour/green policies are to blame for these bushfires? Thanks on forehand.

    25

    • #
      Tim

      I don’t need a document to explain the bleedin’ obvious…

      Wilderness area protection has been enthusiastically encouraged by greenies to save endangered species like the Hairy – assed Bunyips etc., by locking up forest as wilderness – ironically, the recipe for total destruction by bushfire.

      As Aussies have known for decades, the best way to stop a bush fire, if not the only way, is to back burn. This is done with the establishment of control lines and burning off these into the wind to create a buffer of burnt material so the fire cannot proceed and burn out the fuel that is causing the massive flames.

      The greenies have hampered – if not eradicated – this obvious human life and property saving measure (but, probably saved untold scores of Hairy – assed Bunyips!)

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      • #

        Actually, bigger fires kill more animals, too. Regular burning off kept animals safer, some due to thick fur, some just moving out of the way, some burrowing, others hiding in trees. I know this, I’ve seen this for myself. But bigger fires are hotter and there are fewer places to hide.

        The Green’s are responsible for massive destruction to our fauna as well as flora thanks to their idiot policies. They seriously don’t have a clue!

        30

    • #

      Too lazy to do your own research?

      Why don’t you google Liam Sheahan, the bloke who was fined $50,000 by his pinko commo green council for clearing some trees from his property.
      Liams home ended up being the the only house standing in a 2km area after the Victorian Black Saturday fires in 2009.

      Wake up and smell the coffee, peoples lives are being destroyed because of the whims of a bunch of socialist, latte sipping, sandal wearing pinko commo city dwellers.

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      • #
        Reinder van Til

        Thanks everyone. It is not lazyness, but if I use Google in this part of the world on the subjects Australia Bushfires Green Policies I get thousands of results.

        30

    • #
      Geoffrey Cousens

      “RVT”;for about 20 years the sinister and insidious greens with their loving labor cronies have exerted a shocking change to the literal landscape of most parts of Australia.Local councils and Govt. Deps. are deeply infested with [extreme-green] staff who just will not give up!Crazy rules and regulations ensure growing bushfire danger.No collecting firewood,no maintaining “firetracks”in a useable state to access trouble and minimum or no backburning done.The build up of “fuel” is typically up to 40 ft. deep.Criminal?As Govt.employees “they”cannot be held liable at all.Crippling fines are enthusiastically issued to transgressors.
      The Greens have a stated goal of keeping people out of remote areas.You must know this[?],if not an hour of research will set you straight.

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    • #
  • #

    So they are going to put big windmills (not turbines, of course, unless they’re really short 🙂 ) around the fire area and see if they can blow the fire back on itself???

    50

    • #
      Roy Hogue

      If it works for candles on a birthday cake, why not wildfires? 😉

      I can see it now, some high up government servant idiot is saying in his head right now, of course, why didn’t I think of that and make a big name for myself?

      Oh nuts! They already did. Silly old me!

      40

  • #
    Bite Back

    Clear the brush as you did for many years before the idiots took over.

    Problem solved.

    I was truly saddened when I saw the fires reported here (USA). There is no excuse for letting things get to the point where fire can run wild, no excuse at all.

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    • #
      Bite Back

      After watching the video a second time I’m even angrier than before and I could easily regret pulling my punch above. I should have said what I really wanted to. You are in the hands of morons who can’t see the obvious. You need to kick them out of office.

      Andy Pittman is a damned fool, driven by his obsession with trying to be a big man. He isn’t. A lot of others fall in this same category.

      BB

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    sophocles

    Every time there are fires, and especially when there are big ones,
    the Fire Service makes the same recommendations: reduce the fuel load
    regularly, make fire breaks around buildings, burn off small controllable
    patches in winter.

    They must be sick of the lack of attention they receive.

    In the mean time X-spurts come out of the woodwork and add their own
    gibberish to help confuse and confound the real issues.

    X-spurt: ‘X’ is the unknown quantity
    ‘spurt’ is a drip under pressure.

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    • #
      Roy Hogue

      Gee, I though it was ex-spurt: ex meaning has-been and spurt meaning a drip under pressure. What do I know? 😉

      But either way it’s a fitting tribute to the holier than thou class.

      50

      • #
        Yonniestone

        I’ve heard the EGG-SPURT version.
        Where an EGG: something not fully developed, and SPURT: a drip under pressure 🙂

        20

  • #
    Manfred

    Well now, Al Gore wanted his own footage of a ‘fire storm’ to add to the propaganda serving of extreme weather and catastrophe, all the more grist for the carbon dioxide is evil and needs to be taxed out of existence mill, isn’t it?

    Looks like he got it in the end. And at what price! The latte MSM crowd should be press-ganged into a fire fighting chain-gang where they can develop first hand experience of dealing with results of their Green zombie behaviour.

    When the dust settles, the truth will emerge, and IT WILL BECOME WIDELY KNOWN. The ‘heat of the moment’ clap-trap, enraging as it is, is all smoke and mirrors, nothing new in the tactic. We have witnessed this time and time again.

    The strategy wears thin, looks tired, and of course is plain wrong.

    51

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    janama

    I’m sorry but your link is NOT available in the UAE.

    10

  • #
    Fred

    A greater threat than climate change, even bush fires, is the ABC.

    Dear LNP,
    If you don’t get rid of the ABC, the public will get rid of you.

    80

  • #
    MadJak

    Can someone please provide just one valid argument as to why the australian and new Zealand Taxpayers should continue to fund the this obvious shill for the ALP and the greens?

    Why are we funding an organisation that is so nothing more than a propaganda vehicle for the ALP and the greens?

    I would rather my contribution was spent on toilet paper for the homeless.

    80

    • #
      PeterS

      Clearly there is no valid argument for a Liberal government to keep funding an leftist propaganda machine called the ABC using our money. It must be stopped ASAP. The only other option is for the government to fund in equal amounts a conservative propaganda broadcaster and a right-wing propaganda broadcaster. At least the public would have a balanced diet of information from which to make their own conclusions. However, I doubt many would even bother to listen to all three, and even those who do many would not have the intelligence or patience to make a proper conclusion. So, the more realistic solution is to sell off the ABC or just shut it down.

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      • #
        AndyG55

        from Malcolm Turnbull !!

        Dear Andy,

        Australia’s media, like media environments all over the world, are experiencing great, disruptive change of unprecedented speed and scale. In these challenging times our national broadcasters are more important than ever and the Australian Government recognises the important role the ABC plays in Australia’s cultural, economic and democratic way of life.

        As Australia’s primary national broadcaster, the principal function of the ABC is to produce programs that inform, educate and entertain all Australians. The roles and functions of the ABC are set out in the ABC Charter under section 6 of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983.

        The Government provides an overall level of funding for the ABC, but has no power to direct the ABC in relation to operational matters. Parliament has guaranteed this independence to ensure that what is broadcast is free of political interference. Internal programming and editorial decisions are the responsibility of the ABC Board and Executive. One of the ABC’s statutory obligations is to be accurate and impartial in its news and current affairs programmes.

        The Government understand the significant relationship the ABC has with the Australian public and we are committed to maintain quality, performance and efficiency. Above all the Government will ensure the ABC fulfills its Charter.

        The government has no plans to privatise the ABC.

        The following options are available if you are dissatisfied about ABC content or services and would like to make a formal complaint

        Email: Send your complaint via this form to the ABC
        Call: 139 994
        Write: ABC Audience & Consumer Affairs, GPO BOX 9994 (In your capital city)
        Telephone Typewriter: 1800 627 854

        If you are not satisfied with the ABC’s response you can write to The Australian Communications and Media and Authority (The ACMA)

        Regards,

        Malcolm Turnbull

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          MemoryVault

          .
          You honestly expected something different?

          An Australian career politician of whatever persuasion has but four aims in life.
          In order of importance they are:

          1) – Getting elected.
          2) – Getting re-elected.
          3) – Securing a nice little earner to go into when they are eventually unelected.
          4) – Screwing the system for all it’s worth while they remain elected.

          This isn’t going to change until the system reverts to the intention of our original Constitution:
          Only Cabinet Ministers are paid positions, all other Representatives and Senators are honorary and unpaid, apart from reasonable travel costs to and from Canberra to attend Parliament, and accommodation costs while Parliament is sitting.

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            AndyG55

            “You honestly expected something different?”

            No, I didn’t.

            It is EXACTLY the same response one would get from any LABOR minister !!

            It is EXACTLY what I expected from this limp wristed centre-left party that is current in government. (probably for one term only, the way they are going)

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            AndyG55

            This sort of response from the Liberals is EXACTLY why Palmer got the large initial vote that he did.

            People what an alternative … ANY alternative !!!

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      AndyG55

      GO TO POST #49

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  • #
    Safetyguy66

    Kind of OT but Im going to do my best longbow segue.

    Catalyst tomorrow night has a story on saturated fats and how they may not be the problem we have been told they are.

    http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/

    The relationship is of course “settled science”, no one would expect the polemic about fat in our diets to turn out to be utter crap, but the story preview is suggesting thats exactly what they are going to say. I dont find it the least bit surprising. Before Dr Karl completely lost his mind I remember him explaining his concept of the “half life of a scientific truth” and that in physics its usually about 20-50 years, where as in nutrition its about 12 months, so this was to be expected really. But it further illustrates the point many of us have been making to anyone who wants to listen for some time now and that is “stop being so bloody gullible and certain”, open your mind and think critically.

    So please join me in celebration of the love of butter (if you don’t leave teethmarks you haven’t spread enough on) by grabbing your favorite bottle of booze and having a drink every time they use the words “the science”, be ready to miss work Friday lol.

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      gnome

      What do you mean “spread”? Only wimps and Green Party losers “spread” butter.

      You cut it off the block with a knife and lay it on in chunx.

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        Safetyguy66

        Someone at work suggested battered butter sticks, Im guessing it was a shot at my girth, but it did get me thinking 🙂

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      Allen Ford

      I will be watching this show with interest but have my doubts, given the track record of ABC and Dr Karl. Cholesterol scepticism is nothing new, somewhat akin to the status of climate denialism. Danish medico, Dr Uffe Ravnskov and colleagues have been pouring cold water on conventional medical wisdom regarding saturated fats and cholesterol in heart disease for yonks.

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    pat

    Chatham House probably gave her the “tears” script!

    22 Oct: BBC: Matt McGrath: UN climate chief’s tears over future generations
    The head of the UN body tasked with delivering a global climate treaty broke down in tears at a meeting in London as she spoke about the impact of global warming on coming generations.
    Christiana Figueres told the BBC that the lack of an agreement was “condemning future generations before they are even born”.
    Ms Figueres said this was “completely unfair and immoral”…
    Speaking to the BBC on the sidelines of a climate conference at Chatham House in London, Ms Figueres became tearful when she reflected on the impact that climate change might have on coming generations.
    “I’m committed to climate change because of future generations, it is not about us, right? We’re out of here,” she said…
    “We have a choice about it, that’s the point, we have a choice. If it were inevitable then so be it, but we have a choice to change the future we are going to give our children.” ….
    She said she was determined to avoid the mistakes that were made in the run up to Copenhagen in 2009, when expectations of a far reaching global compact faltered.
    “We are not going to have another Copenhagen – the leaders of the world are not just being brought in at the last minute, to face 300 pages of text that is completely impossible to digest…
    This year’s Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC will take place next month in Poland.
    Chasing pirates
    ***Some environmental campaigners are concerned that because of the country’s heavy dependence on coal, it is less committed to strong action on climate change.
    Critics took issue with comments on an official website for the conference that suggested there were many positives to the unprecedented melting of Arctic ice, including the opportunity to chase “pirates, terrorists and ecologists”…
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24615946

    ***good, let’s condemn Poland to even greater poverty.

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      Safetyguy66

      But she has no issue with people dying right now in the developing world due to exposure to indoor cooking fires.

      http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs292/en/

      3 Billion people at risk and her cronies can only further condemn these poor souls by refusing to assist them in access to affordable electricity with policies like this.

      http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2013/s3805219.htm

      She is a racist and a eugenicist. She has no care whatsoever for other people, she is simply seeking to secure her own position and the budgets of the departments full of frauds that she represents.

      If she should be crying over anything, it is that she only has one lifetime to waste public money and assist in the crushing of development in the countries that most need the assistance to benefit from their natural resources. She is a scammer and a disgrace.

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    pat

    22 Oct: Bloomberg: Chisaki Watanabe: Macquarie, Maeda to Set Up Clean Energy Venture in Japan
    The venture will first focus on large-scale solar projects in Japan, Macquarie said in a statement. The partners intend to expand it to include wind power generation and road and airport concessions.
    They are targeting 300 megawatts of generation capacity and investment of 100 billion yen ($1 billion) in renewable energy businesses in the first three years, according to the statement. For each project, the partners will set up a special purpose company and raise financing from lenders.
    The companies are hoping to take advantage of Japan’s renewable energy subsidies introduced in 2012, and infrastructure projects related to rebuilding after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami and for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, according to the statement…
    Macquarie Capital is a unit of the Sydney-based Macquarie Group.
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-22/macquarie-maeda-to-set-up-clean-energy-venture-in-japan.html

    yet another push for nuclear:

    23 Oct: Business Spectator: Rob Burgess: The UN calls time on our carbon wars
    In parliament, there are dozens of ‘friendship groups’ in which cross-party backbenchers get together to agree that something is a Very Good Idea. Never mind if their leaders won’t do anything about it…
    But you won’t find one on energy policy or climate change in the official parliamentary list.
    That’s a pity, really, when Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd nearly got a friendly approach to these core issues off the ground with the bipartisan carbon pollution reduction scheme in 2009…
    If power costs increase, gullible Australians believe it’s all down to Labor’s price on carbon. Or if power costs rise, it’s down to vote-buying solar subsidies by state governments…
    Both the federal government and opposition are avoiding suggesting the fires are due to climate change, though UN climate chief Christiana Figueres has not been shy about linking the two…
    Tony Abbott or Bill Shorten can’t say this as they’d lose support from Australian voters, but Figueres has no interest in Australian votes – she wants to use Australia as a graphic example of what will happen elsewhere if current climate modelling is on the money.
    And Figueres knows that Australia is an unusual country when it comes to climate change policy.
    (???)As overseas commentators often remark (as did the head of the UK government’s Committee on Climate Change Lord Deben recently), Australia leads the world in giving air-time and column-inches to under-qualified commentators to rubbish the views of highly credentialled scientists…
    Australia is also a world leader in casting the climate change debate as a ‘socialist conspiracy’, while elsewhere conservatives lead the charge in doing something about it.
    In Britain, there is now talk of a ‘new dawn’ for nuclear power as the best solution to reduce carbon emissions…
    Turning that situation around is a Tory project, and one that aggressively seeks to stamp out Green dissent. Doesn’t sound like a socialist conspiracy to me…
    The real question – the kind of question a Turnbull-Rudd friendship group might address – is how the economics of baseload power can be freed from any particular fuel source, made ‘technology agnostic’ (one of Turnbull’s favourite phrases with the NBN) and still permit a steady shift to non-carbon energy sources to reflect global developments.
    And who knows, they might even choose to follow the Brits and look at the nuclear option?…
    http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/10/23/climate/un-calls-time-our-carbon-wars

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    John Knowles

    On the topic of ABC relevance I was amused to see the 7 o’clock news on Tues. My neighbour was filmed filling his gutters with water and the ABC were peddling a doom and gloom disaster angle.
    Reality is very different. We have the situation well monitored and down at the Bilpin fire-shed we joke about the idiotic media. At the Bilpin servo I met two young journos from the Daily Telegraph who admitted the fire situation was being drummed-up to be more than it really was.
    Tues nights rain virtually extinguished the Mt Irvine fire across Bowen’s Ck from us. At 11:00 to-day (Wed) it is 23ºC, humid, clear and windy from the W and will back off to the SW, becoming cooler. The only threat to Berambing is from paracites knocking off stuff from houses evacuated by sheeple who have listened to the consistently pessimistic advice from the Rural Fire Service in Sydney and the media generally.
    One has to wonder if there is a deliberate political policy to instil fear and servitude in the plebs.

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      ianl8888

      One has to wonder if there is a deliberate political policy to instil fear and servitude in the plebs

      Yes

      At the Mt York site near Mt Vic last night, a TV reporter (his employer station is known) was caught trying to get into the actual seat of the fire while dressed up in National Parks & Wildlife overalls. His excuse was that “we are ordered to exaggerate and sensationalise for the public good”

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        ianl8888

        I meant to add another example:

        Two nights ago an RFS local commander had three crews out doing their stuff. He was talking to a large group of local residents when all of them got a text on their mobiles from the RFS HQ in Lidcombe

        “Fire has jumped xxx Creek. Evacuate now”

        His reaction ? “That’s utter bullshit ! I have two dozer crews out there right now working on containment lines”

        Lidcombe’s reaction to this ? “We were just doing the right thing”

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    pat

    comprehensive coverage of various frauds, not only the Nilsson case:

    10 Oct: The Atlantic: Ryan Jacobs: The Forest Mafia: How Scammers Steal Millions Through Carbon Markets
    When the product is invisible, the cons are endless.
    When the balding Australian first stepped off the riverboat and into the isolated pocket of northeastern Peru’s Amazon jungle in 2010, he had what seemed like a noble, if quixotic, business plan.
    An ambitious real estate developer, David Nilsson hoped to ink joint venture agreements with the regional government of Loreto province and the leaders of the indigenous Matses community to preserve vast thickets of the tribe’s remote rainforest. Under a global carbon-trading program, he wished to sell shares of the forest’s carbon credits to businesses that hope to mitigate, or offset, their air pollution…
    Nilsson’s Hong Kong-based company, Sustainable Carbon Resources Limited, planned to help the indigenous community set up the Peruvian carbon credit project in exchange for sharing the profits once they were sold…
    By this point, Pantone’s relationship with Nilsson had soured, and his suspicions had boiled over into a full-fledged investigation into his past. In late March, Pantone was able to reach two of Nilsson’s former associates, who claimed that they and indigenous communities in the Philippines had been victims of his deceit…
    Many of the conmen of the voluntary carbon market can expect to run free without oversight on the ground or law enforcement follow-ups. “Because it’s not a mandatory market, there often isn’t the same regulator oversight, and so some of these carbon cowboys aren’t necessarily being pursued by the law in the way they necessarily should be,” Stewart said. And coming up with a case is difficult because it’s hard to prove much beyond a simple breach of contract, even though the ultimate damage can devastate the environment and financially ruin communities…
    “It’s a bit of a murky world really,” Europol’s Perryman said. “It’s a shame because obviously the whole idea from the politicians and legislators was to promote a cleaner world, and that has just been completely sunk. The good ideas and good intentions have been scuppered by the activities of fraudsters.”
    http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/the-forest-mafia-how-scammers-steal-millions-through-carbon-markets/280419/

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    RoyFOMR

    Everyone knows that CO2 is only a ‘durdy’ pollutant when it’s produced from fossil fuels.
    Clean CO2 from biomass is harmless and possibly even beneficial to the environment.
    Let’s gather up this bounty from Gaia and harness it to produce clean electricity in modified power stations as is being done at the UK Drax plant.
    The cost of production will be far cheaper than coal because CCS would not be needed because of the Clean Carbon used and every ton of fuel would generate massive credits.
    I’m clean out of envelope backs at the moment but a quick mental calculation indicates that the cost would be so low that it wouldn’t be worthwhile metering it; thus saving the cost of those high faluting smart meters too!

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    handjive

    Today, some of the kool-aide drinking climate zombies are squealing about the cuts in Fire Fighting staff & facilities, blaming current “right” governments.
    Current “right” governments are certainly compliant by not speaking up against extravagant wastes of taxpayer funds.
    Money saved from closing the Department of Climate Change, which added zero value to stopping fires, can now be used wisely.

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      handjive

      PS. Judging by the current group of politicians of both stripes and their perceived entitlements in these times of austerity, I use the word “wisely” very loosely.

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      Safetyguy66

      Can I take a bet, without even researching it, that Tim Flannery, John Conner et. al are not members of a volunteer fire fighting group.

      For the record I was in the Humpty Doo CFS (NT) for 2 years, I am not currently a member.

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    steve

    Maybe its time to chase those who obstruct doing fuel reduction burns – by suing them for loss of property and damages after the fact?

    In a way, it could be a form of negligence, by not removing a known hazard.

    I’m not suggesting punative action, but rather anyone obstructing sound fire risk mitigation could be deemed a criminal act. This would put a lot of councils in the firing line presumably who have been wrongly inlfluenced by the greenies to perhaps re-think and apply some common sense.

    Any thoughts please?

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      RoyFOMR

      Yup,where I work a failure to report a health & safety hazard is liable to disciplinary action.
      And quite correctly too!

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      Safetyguy66

      Well in Tassie they are proposing just that sort of thing for Aboriginal Heritage sites, so why not for bush fire risks.

      http://www.examiner.com.au/story/1853100/aborigines-could-be-fined-over-sites/?cs=95

      As a Safety Professional I can confirm RoyFOMR’s thoughts. Not reporting a hazard is the cardinal sin at my workplace. I encourage everyone to report everything and since joining the organisation I work for, I have reviewed the reporting procedure and reduced it from 19 pages to 2 in order to encourage reporting. Hazard identification and management is the backbone of safety.

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        Winston

        What sort of a Green are you, Safety?

        Don’t you realise that you need to immediately restore those 19 pages to their former glory, and render them in impenetrable legalese, with as many contradictory passages within it to stifle any and all opportunities for any reduction of any hazard.

        This is because, according to Green ideology, maintenance (rather than negation)of the hazard is paramount to the integrity of the regulation, since the absence of said hazard renders the said regulation obsolete and/or superfluous. Comprende?

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    AndyG55

    I’m surprised the insurance companies haven’t jumped on the NON-clearance of firebreaks around houses.

    A simple clause saying that “any house in or near a bushland setting MUST maintain adequate fire breaks”, would be a great get-out clause for them. If the fire break is not maintained… no payout !

    Would really stick it to the Green infested councils too.

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      Safetyguy66

      Thats a good point considering many rural councils have penalties for not maintaining firebreaks on acreage blocks.

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        AndyG55

        And then penalties when you do maintain them !

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          Safetyguy66

          Ah yes sorry, I forgot to point out that in this country at this time, you cant win!

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            Steve

            Penalized for maintaining them? How does that work?

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              Safetyguy66

              Yup, back in the day when my parents had property in WA, my Dad was doing our firebreaks on our 360 acres near http://www.gidgegannup.info/

              We backed on to a National Park and when Dad turned the dozer around at the end of one of the breaks he went about 3/4 of a dozer width into the park and cleared some brush (no felled trees). He got a please explain letter from the parks management and though I cant confirm it without ringing him, my memory is he was fined. I distinctly recall him fuming and saying they can do their own @!$%^& fire breaks next year.

              This sort of thing is a pretty common occurrence I think you will find.

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    No, No, No!

    Sometimes I wonder if the ABC really listens to what their announcers actually say.

    I’m currently listening to The World Today. (We get it her on a one hour delay)

    It just plays in the background, and I just do what I always do, but it’s amazing how your brain takes notice while your conscious mind is not really paying attention.

    I heard this ridiculous thing and again, your brain triggers you to hear the really important stuff, so that’s why I got it when I did.

    Now, luckily there is the facility for the ABC (thank you taxpayers) to keep all its reports so that they can be accessed.

    So, I just chased it up, and there it was. They were talking about bushfire preparedness.

    Now, here’s what was said, and note how hand in glove one taxpayer funded body supports another taxpayer funded body, and this is just a classic: (I have bolded the relevant parts here)

    TANYA NOLAN: But it may be worth it if early data on the link between fire weather conditions and deaths are anything to go by.

    The CSIRO has been mapping the link which shows that one life is lost for every 17 houses and most lives are lost when people decide to leave their homes at the last minute.

    So far in the New South Wales fires there’s been one death and more than 200 homes destroyed, but authorities fear both tolls could rise.

    There was no break between the end of one sentence and the start of the next, so my question is whether they actually read the text prior to going on air and then repeating it.

    Now surely they’re not using MODELLING for this sort of thing, and hey, it seems to me that once again, as usual, the facts do not bear even the slightest resemblance to what the models have predicted.

    Sometimes you can only laugh.

    It’s all you can do.

    It’s their ABC, They can do what they like, and we have no say in it.

    And I feel certain there are people out there who think this is just a fabrication, so here’s the link to the relevant article at that site. Once you get there, you’ll see the full text of the article, and there is a small audio bar at the left, of just a tad over 5 minutes. Just press play, and the relevant part is at the 1.38 mark.

    Questions raised about bushfire preparedness

    Unbelievable.

    Tony

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      Andrew McRae

      Wrong by a factor of 12? mehhh….
      “Close enough for government work.” 😀

      To be fair, you would have to know the probability distribution around the central estimate of 17. Is it Gaussian and if so what is the standard deviation, or is it a Poisson or a Power Law distribution and what is the likely spread, etc? Whether the model is rejected by the evidence depends on how unlikely 200:1 is on a single incident, and indeed whether you count last week the last two weeks’ fires as being several separate fires with separate damage tolls or whether you take the new Green trend of combining them all into a “Megafire“.

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    Steve

    I just keep plodding along – jabbing the warmists in the ribs with the missing MWP and the missing hot spot – drives ’em bonkers!

    The best gift we can give our kids is to train them to think laterally and to pursue truth. No, its not some byline from an american tv show, but rather if we dont teach kids that there is truth and that at times we are lied to on a massive scale, kids dont “get” that the powers taht be will shaft you given half the chance.

    I give “Pollyannas” short shift – they annoy me no end and are part of the problem.

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    Al in Cranbrook, BC

    Without going through all recent posts here to avoid being repetitive…

    Great must read article by Matt Ridley!

    http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9057151/carry-on-warming/

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    DT

    I just read at Pickering Post that ABC The Insiders host Barry Cassidy, former PM Bob Hawke ALP media adviser, will be leaving at the end of this year, but has a part time job position provided for him as the ALP prepared to leave office at taxpayer’s expense. The exodus has commenced maybe. He was one of the most biased ALPBC presenters and was openly hostile towards now PM Tony Abbott.

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    Safetyguy66

    Heres a hangover from my windfarm days. We used to get sent this crapola on work email all the time by the company green propaganda department (with whom I had many a run in), read this and giggle. I did, then change your power over to Origin, who seem to actually be on the right track. Anyway here is the letter… Comedy Gold, I particularly like “Dirty Gas” LOL… thats funny.

    Dear Peter,

    I’ve just left the Origin Energy AGM, where a big new community campaign targeting one of the biggest blockers of renewable energy has just kicked off.

    For years now, Origin has been vocal about the renewable energy target, calling for it to be reduced or abolished. Grant King, Origin’s CEO, has been quoted saying that renewable projects are “free-riding” on the grid – all the while investing more and more in dirty gas projects.

    The next review of the renewable energy target is scheduled for next year. Origin Energy is already putting its plans in place to see the target wound back. But if Origin knows there could be a big backlash from customers and the public for their position, they’ll be more likely to pull their heads in.

    Can you sign the petition to Origin Managing Director Grant King?

    Origin has the ear of the Coalition, but we have the ear of the Australian community. We know that Australians want more renewables – not more dirty coal and gas.

    Our first big activity targeting Origin kicked off today at their annual shareholder meeting. We have released a report detailing Origin’s actions to hinder our renewable revolution and held a community action outside of the AGM.

    We have more activities planned, but we need your support to make this happen. We need to make sure Origin knows how much customer and public support there is for more wind and solar in our communities. Please sign this petition now to show your support for more renewables.

    Origin may literally have more power than us, be it financial or political, but we know that if we all stand together, we can beat them. This action is just the beginning of a campaign we’ll be running with Greenpeace to stand up to Origin Energy, but we need your help to do it – show your support for more renewables by signing our petition now.

    We need to get our message out there and be as loud as possible – Orign is strangling renewable energy, and the big energy company is putting its bottom line over our energy future.

    Standing together, we can challenge King and make sure the voices of the Australian people are heard.

    Yours for a clean energy future,
    Adrian and the rest of the 100% team

    PS – Our report was released this morning, if you want more information on how Origin is strangling renewables check out this page on our site for more: http://www.originenergy.org.au

    Adrian Brown, 100% Renewable

    Hes a funny guy…

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    John F. Hultquist

    For the USA, see . . .

    http://firewise.org/about.aspx

    ““About the Firewise Communities Program
    Brush, grass and forest fires don’t have to be disasters. NFPA’s Firewise Communities Program encourages local solutions for safety by involving homeowners in taking individual responsibility for preparing their homes from the risk of wildfire. Firewise is a key component . . .””

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    AndyG55

    A petition asking Mr Abbott to privatise the ABC has been started.

    http://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/tony-abbott-privatise-the-abc-2

    I invite EVERYONE to go and sign it!!

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    Tiresome

    So after a record La Nina with some nice warm SSTs and VP

    leading to record vegetation growth (proved by Jo herself – heaps of CO2 fertilsation – it’s plant food you know)

    all nicely cured in record temperatures

    some loonies want to suggest an AGW link. Hah ! It’s the greens fault I say – for over 200 years they have changed the countries fire regime. The scoundrels were there on the First Fleet.

    Call Bolt – call Alan Jones – get a priest – get a vicar quick. Revive Menzies and take us back please.

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    pat

    O/T but how i wish i could have found the audio from the ABC Overnight programme very early Tuesday morning. i did try to find it on the website but third hour of the programme from the link wouldn’t play, so guess it might have been on that rather than the final hour.

    anyway, ABC guy was talking to Mike Girardi, a Wall St type they have on twice a week, who they describe as an “independent financial consultant” but who used to work for Cantor Fitzgerald from what i’ve seen online, even on an ABC website.

    23 March 2010: ABC Overnights: Mike Girardi
    Mike is an independent financial consultant with over 35 years experience in the Financial Services Industry.
    http://www.abc.net.au/overnights/stories/s2853822.htm?site=overnights_new

    May 2010: ABC: Reporting Wall Street : Mike Girardi
    Mike is an Executive Vice President of Cantor Fitzgerald, a NY based finance company…
    Listeners will remember Casey, his daughter, who also presented the finance report when she was working at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. She has since taken to a career in politics.
    http://blogs.abc.net.au/localradio/2010/05/reporting-wall-street-mike-girardi.html

    ABC presenter – Trevor, Rod or whoever – brings up the latest JP “too-big-to-fail-or-jail” Morgan fine for being naughty, a record $13 billion on this occasion, tho the ABC presenter couldn’t remember the actual amount. Girardi sounded like he was about to have a heart attack. there was nervous silence, there was a refusal to speak of the amount, even when prodded further, with Girardi eventually mumbling was a billion or so. he kept repeating how they are such a wonderful bank and said the fine was nothing in the JP Morgan scheme of things. the ABC presenter sounded confused. naturally, Girardi wouldn’t even mention what the fine was for. in recent times, i’ve noticed ABC is using Morgan Stanley & JP Morgan for a lot of their financial reporting, so i wonder if the presenter got a talking to later & the audio was removed.

    previous $12 billion in fines for being naughty since 2007. great choice for financial reporting, ABC:

    22 Oct: Time Mag: Too-Big-To-Fail
    Inside JP Morgan’s Mind-Boggling $13 Billion Fine
    Slicing up the Fines
    http://business.time.com/2013/10/22/inside-jp-morgans-mind-boggling-13-billion-fine/

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    pat

    lots of detail in here for TonyfromOz:

    21 Oct: Reuters: ‘War on Coal’ May be Good Fight for Some Manufacturers
    But between now and 2040, the country will need to build 340,000 megawatts of generating capacity, or the equivalent of 15 of China’s massive Three Gorges Dam, to meet growing demand from consumers and replace retiring plants, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
    No matter what the Supreme Court decides, given the concerns about carbon and its link to climate-changing greenhouse gases, as well as the high cost, long lead times and unease associated with nuclear power, industry experts say the future belongs to natural gas-fired power plants…
    Some of the winners in this new landscape are more obvious than others. Ann Duignan, an analyst with JP Morgan, said the shift away from coal will “be a big plus” for traditional gas turbine suppliers such as General Electric and Siemens…
    http://www.moneynews.com/Markets/coal-gas-energy-fight/2013/10/21/id/532164

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      Safetyguy66

      In one of my last exchanges with the my former windfarm employers propaganda department, they put it to me that I was to stop questioning in social media, the likelihood of Australia installing another massive amount of renewables by 2020 (don’t even know where they got their numbers). But I did the calculations and it turned out we would need to see about 1500 turbines a year going up between now and 2020 to achieve the number they were touting.

      Anyone who has read my posts on this forum knows I said some time ago that the years 2010-2012 would see the most wind turbines installed in a similar period in Australia’s history, no matter how far forward you want to bet. So far I reckon Im looking a lot better with that prediction than I was when I made it in 2010. This is proof enough for me that renewables are a political power source not an energy power source. The market will decide which way to go for the foreseeable future, if they choose win or solar as the best direction, I will be the first one to come on this forum and publically eat my hat.

      http://ramblingsdc.net/Australia/WindPower.html

      The new Government has basically (as predicted) ground the entire wind circus to a halt. Im glad I made the money I did and had the enjoyment of working in a truly enjoyable industry when I did, but Im also glad that the industry will now have to be exposed to market forces. Can I predict that when decisions are made over the next decade (assuming 2 terms of a coalition Govt.) that gas will be the most installed power source for base load generation and go for 2 from 2?

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        MemoryVault

        Can I predict that when decisions are made over the next decade (assuming 2 terms of a coalition Govt.) that gas will be the most installed power source for base load generation and go for 2 from 2?

        No.

        There is NO gas.

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    A C Osborn

    For a country with such a histroy of bush fires how many fire fighting “Tankers” do the Government own and use?
    I know they have a lot of helicopters and “light” fixed wing aircraft, but what about the heavies?

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    policycritic

    The Canadian Parks department were hellbent on never chopping a tree in the national parks. Jasper and Banff in the Canadian Rockies were the worse. You could be fined $10,000 for chopping down a tree on your property.

    The forest was dense. The animals–elk, bear– could not get through the thick underbrush, so they walked the roads. The smell of pine was so fragrant that it lulled you to sleep for two days when you went up there. It was a beautiful smell.

    Then the monster US fires of around 2000 happened. Tens of millions of acres burned across Wyoming, Idaho, northern Nevada, Southern Oregon and northern California. Raging fires. They couldn’t put them out. The CAN park ranger who told me this story said that the damage was so significant, they called a meeting of the Canadian and US governments to figure out what they could do. The fires they had in the Rockies were so significant that they, too, didn’t know how to handle it.

    The forests were mainly pine forests, ponderosas, evergreens, and some kind of spruce that I don’t remember. The Americans described it to the Canadians as gasoline, it was as if gasoline had been poured on the parks from the heavens. Two or three years after the CAN park rangers got back home, someone discovered 18″ x 24″ photos taken of Jasper National Park in the 1890s locked away in a vault. They didn’t recognize the areas at first. It took them a week to identify what they were looking at.

    One of the areas was, at that time, dense with 200 ft trees. In the photo, it was a mile long and wide savannah. In another photo, the ground around the trees had been raked “down to the dirt.” No junipers, no ground cover, no rings around the base of the pines. The spacing between the trees was six to ten feet wide, wide enough for a buck to walk through with his girlfriends without trapping his rack on a branch, and all the lower branches had been removed up to at least 10 feet high.

    The rangers were dumbfounded. Who did this? The photos showed that they did this right up to the tree line along the mountain range, which each section being in different states of repair, as if it were a rotating process. They located old diaries from the Ministry of the Interior, and whatever they call their department that takes care of Indian history. This was on purpose. The Indian tribes managed the forest.

    To cut this short, it was an earthquake. The rangers realized that pine sap boils at 66 C. When it does, the tree trunks explode and shoot their embers up to 1/2 mile away passing the fire along the range. They changed their tune immediately. They asked lumber companies to come in and take the pine and offending spruce away for free throughout the Rocky Mountains. They kept the fir and the good spruce and some others because a mature fir can make it through a forest fire. They instituted rules to remove juniper, rough stuff to get rid of. No pine trees within 20 ft of a house or cottage, and absolutely nothing ringing the bottom of the tree. The ranger called that “gasoline.” He said it lights up and starts burning the tree above it. They told cottage owners to take the space between the trees down to the dirt so that new shoots could come up to feed the park animals.

    Dr. Evans calls it “fuel load.” The word ‘gasoline’ made a lot of sense to the people charged with the expense of removing 15,000 pounds of trees from around their property, and the threat that Parks Canada would not make an effort to save their property if a forest fire happened unless they complied.
    http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/jasper-national-park-forest-fire-7-years-in-the-planning-1.1307834

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    policycritic

    AP just reported: “MILITARY EXERCISE SPARKED BIG AUSTRALIAN WILDFIRE”
    http://bigstory.ap.org/article/homes-evacuated-wind-fans-wildfires-near-sydney

    SYDNEY (AP) — A military training exercise ignited the largest of the wildfires that have ravaged Australia’s most populous state over the past week, investigators said Wednesday.

    More than 100 fires have killed one man and destroyed more than 200 homes in New South Wales state since Thursday.

    Fire investigators found that a massive fire near the city of Lithgow, west of Sydney, began Oct. 16 at a nearby Defense Department training area, and that the blaze “was started as a result of live ordnance exercises” at the army range, the Rural Fire Service said in a statement.

    The fire has burned 47,000 hectares (180 square miles) and destroyed several houses, but no injuries or deaths have been reported in the blaze. It was downgraded from the highest emergency category on Wednesday.

    The Defense Department declined to comment on the investigators’ findings, but had earlier confirmed that an explosive ordnance training exercise was conducted Oct. 16. The Defense Department was also investigating any link between the exercise and the fire.

    The revelation drew anger from Mark Greenhill, mayor of the community of Blue Mountains, which has been ravaged by several of the fires over the past week.

    “I would have hoped on a day like that — which was a dry day, a hot day, with the winds — the Australian military would have known it wouldn’t be a good time to be igniting,” Greenhill told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

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    […] is no groupthink at the ABC because they put forward all the views from every side of Greenness: Keep reading  → (JoAnn […]

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    Justin Jefferson

    Look there’s no doubt that the ABC’s bias is blatant and disgraceful, and should not be tolerated.

    The ABC is one of, if not the biggest single vector of non-stop collectivist, coercionist, big-government propaganda and lies in Australia.

    Getting rid of the ABC would be one of the single most important steps forward that we could take towards making Australia a freer country.

    *If* the left-wing propaganda junkies were willing to pay for it themselves, then that would at least be something to be said for it. But of course they don’t even have that excuse. If it exist without forcing people who disagree with them to pay for it, then obviously it’s not justified. And if it could, then obviously public funding is not necessary or justified.

    Anyway you look at it, there’s simple no reason why the taxpayers should be funding a broadcasting service. How can it possibly avoid having a conflict of interest with the population at large?

    Everyone please note the only party whose policy is to get rid of the ABC is the recently-elected Liberal Democratic Party: .

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      policycritic

      @Justin Jefferson,

      Anyway you look at it, there’s simple no reason why the taxpayers should be funding a broadcasting service. How can it possibly avoid having a conflict of interest with the population at large?

      On the contrary, that’s who should be funding one. A “conflict of interest with the population at large” would only arise when the broadcaster lied to the people paying for it, or adopted points-of-view that reflected private interests within the broadcast station. I’m assuming Australians own their airwaves the way Americans own theirs (since 1934).

      Who would you rather have dictate what you got to hear, or be exposed to? Advertisers, or your fellow citizens? If the latter, both our countries need a public broadcasting system fully funded by the federal government and mandated by law to be fully independent, and that means free to criticize the party in power. In the US, we have rich donors to our supposedly ‘public’ broadcasting system who can shut down any topic, and skew findings their way. That same group of rich donors fought to keep the US ‘public’ broadcasting system from being a fully federally funded serving the people it would report to.

      You, as I was and many others are now, have been duped.

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    I am struck by a lack of critical analysis of the fundamental assumptions in the AGW discussion.

    We generally seem to accept the notion that humans are adding CO2 to the atmosphere at an alarming rate and this will result in the atmosphere “filling up” with our CO2 emissions. Built on this presumption, we have all sorts of dire predictions including the concept of “global warming” followed by “climate change”.

    The science controlling levels of CO2 in the atmosphere is well known by gas chemists, and has been since William Henry recorded his thesis in 1803. This is known as Henry’s Law (HL) and I have developed some lecture notes covering the subject, available at http://www.bosmin.com/HenrysLaw.pdf

    It is worth noting that the most recent IPCC report does not refer to HL even once in the whole 2,216 pages. The previous reports are similarly deficient.

    HL tells us that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is 100% controlled by the average temperature of the sea. The latest warming scare runs along the lines that AGW is warming the sea – because of increasing levels of our CO2 in the atmosphere. This cannot happen because the sea has to heat first before the atmospheric level of CO2 rises.

    We can confidently conclude that humans have NO possible influence on CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, because we do not directly influence sea temperature, and hence there can be no dire consequences from human CO2 emissions – which are simply absorbed and recycled by the sea along with the much larger quantity of naturally produced CO2.

    I find it truly frightening to ponder the huge ramifications society is enduring through a simple misinterpretation of the available science. You have eloquently described many of the ramifications in your various reports. There is an urgent need to educate people to the basic science facts.

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