ABC discovers data (on facebook) showing wet rainforest has not burned once, ever, or at all, in “tens of millions” of years

This is striking new finding by ABC journalist Ann Arnold that for some reason has not yet been published in a science journal.

Some mystery remains, however as to which dataset could rule out any and all fires in the last 30,000,000 years, or indeed which dataset could prove that those forests and trees have existed in the same place continuously. We keenly await more details on the high resolution sedimentary pollen and missing ash deposit that could show that there were never fires, not one, especially during the Miocene when Antarctica thawed around 24 million years ago and stayed hot for ten million continuous years.

It’s all the more remarkable given that temperatures have varied in the Antarctic by 15 degrees Celcius over the same period, and for 20 million years out of the last 30, it was even hotter than today.

Scientists keenly look forward to seeing those error bars, though one critic, Dr Hyperbowlie suggested the p-values “might be greater than 1. ”

Bushfires devastate rare and enchanting wildlife as ‘permanently wet’ forests burn for first time

Ann Arnold, ABC, Saturday Extra

These forests have legendary fire retardant status. If only we could bottle it!

The rainforests along the spine of the Great Dividing Range, between the Hunter River and southern Queensland, are remnants of Gondwana, the ancient supercontinent that broke up about 180 million years ago.

Ahh. Not sediments, but sedimentary song. This is history according to 30 million year old birds:

“Listening to the dawn chorus in these forests is literally an acoustic window back in time,” ecologist Mark Graham tells RN’s Saturday Extra.

“It’s like listening to what the world sounded like in the time of the dinosaurs.”

The forests are mountaintop islands that have been “permanently wet” for tens of millions of years.

But now, these forests are being burnt for the first time.

“We are seeing fire going into these areas where fire is simply not meant to go,” says Mr Graham,

Which extraordinary scientist is Mr Graham? He’s a fire specialist with the Nature Conservation Council. which bills itself as “The voice of Nature in NSW”.

Warning, this kind of journalism kills ancient songbirds and enchanting frogs

The Albert’s Lyre Bird. The Rufous Scrub Bird. The Log Runner. The Tree Creeper. And, confusingly, the Cat Bird; a large, green rainforest bird that wails like a cat.

They are internationally renowned. Birders from around the world come to see and hear them.

“These are global strongholds of the most ancient birds on the planet,” Mr Graham says.

The billion dollar ABC, again, acts as the free publicity arm of every two-bit green NGO, repeating their press releases without a single question. That is, “on a good day”. On a bad day, the ABC picks up their profane facebook comments and calls it “science”.

Seriously, I’m quoting Ann Arnold as she pours liquid hydrogen on a media circus with fake factoids from facebook. You can’t make up satire like this:

He [Mark Graham] wants to present only the facts, and avoid fuelling a media and political circus around the fires.

But the marathon toll of anxiety, threat and loss is exhausting, as evidenced by a recent post he made on Facebook, at 2.30am:

“Friends. Shit is getting well-serious.

“I am at my place at the very top of the Bellinger Valley. Smoke has completely saturated everything for days now.

“Most of this evening I have heard the wind absolutely roaring on the escarpment above. These beasts are inexorably heading for Point Lookout and New England National Park — the biggest and healthiest chunk of Gondwana.

“There are no words that can describe the significance, enormity and horror of what now looks highly likely to happen … Rain, RAIN … RAIN …”

So much for the well funded ABC Science Unit. Ann was just one email away from specialist science communicators. Where was their apoplexy?

9.8 out of 10 based on 51 ratings

165 comments to ABC discovers data (on facebook) showing wet rainforest has not burned once, ever, or at all, in “tens of millions” of years

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      Peter Fitzroy

      This profile has been superseded by the 2019 version, which is available here

      But we are talking about Gondwana Refuge Rainforests.

      /data fail

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        OriginalSteve

        Patricia, all you had you do was politely point out there was a more recent version….. a missed opportunity….

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          Peter Fitzroy

          Did you follow his link? That was all there was. I included the correct link.

          But the point is we are discussing a particular type of rainforest, one that has a UNESCO tag. Not rainforests in general.

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            MudCrab

            If you go to the first link the literal first link in the article is this:

            This profile has been superseded by the 2019 version, which is available here.

            Where “Here” is a hyperlink.

            Peter? You are… most helpful. Your efforts to save readers an extra mouse click and then claim credit for it are to be noticed and remembered come performance and salary review time. Well done.

            As for your other comment, in this sub thread we are discussing rainforests. No other argument has been put forward in either direction. You have leap to the conclusion that Dennis was going to make a claim you disagreed with and automatically accused him of, quote, data fail.

            Helpful, Peter.

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              Peter Fitzroy

              Sorry Mudcrab – this is specifically about those Refuge forests, protected in part by Mark. This is part of the quote posted by Jo in the head of this thread “Most of this evening I have heard the wind absolutely roaring on the escarpment above. These beasts are inexorably heading for Point Lookout and New England National Park — the biggest and healthiest chunk of Gondwana.” my bold

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        R.B.

        This is facetious, Peter. Dennis’s first link has your link to a PDF with no evidence that I could find to support the no fires for 30 million years. Sort of utterly irrelevant whether its been updated or not, isn’t it.

        Like the French say “Go away or I shall taunt you once more”.

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        Brian the Engineer

        Gondwanda is a myth

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        Geoffrey Williams

        Gondwanna; 200 to 500 million years ago !!
        Stop waxing lyrical guys the world moves on !!
        GeoffW

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    Kalm Keith

    Perhaps they’re exaggerating.

    Perhaps they don’t care.

    Perhaps they’re arrogant.

    Perhaps Their use by date is up.

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      Latus Dextro

      Where’s Kinky?

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        KinkyKeith

        Fixed.

        Or now that I’m in Wellington, maybe that’s fuxed?

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          Latus Dextro

          LOL KK. The guest star appearance always appreciated.
          Thank your lucky stars you are not deep in the Green Mainland at 45°52’26.98″S, 170°30’13″E.

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            Kalm Keith

            My phone tells me very roughly it’s about 80 km North of Dunedin and East of Middlemarch.

            In the middle of nowhere.

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              Latus Dextro

              I understand that the GPS network has a built in error, for strategic and tactical reasons.

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                Graeme#4

                Used to, until some clever folks realised that by using fixed ground reference sites, they could remove the deliberate location jitter added to the GPS satellites. So the U.S. Military then gave up and removed the jitter, thus markedly improving location resolution. David M. would explain this better than I.

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    Latus Dextro

    This is history according to 30 million year old birds

    Never met a 30 million year old bird. Chance would be a fine thing. There are a few that act like it though, dementia and cerebral atrophy must be truly crippling Ann Arnold, but there’s always the steadfast employment by an ideological throw-back, the atavistim of a fossilised ABC locked into the Marxist mantra of 1848. Anyway, digression, the substance of a misspent youth, most distracting.

    So, a cursory view of continental drift demonstrates how much more temperate Australia was 30 million years ago. Its inexorable ride northward toward the equator since then is yet another one of those inconvenient truths not alluded to by the ABC.

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    Peter Fitzroy

    So Mark only has a bachelor degree, and is only working in his field of expertise. Not good enough! Certainly not for the ABC! What qualifications are required one might ask.

    As to ages of things – Platypus – 100 + millions of years ago, Acacia – around 20-30 million years ago. Interestingly it is thought that the reason that acacia got its chance is that it recovered from fire much more quickly that the original Gondwana Rainforest, which is now exists in pockets along the great dividing range. We live on a very stable isolated landmass as these dates show. Mind you, New Zealand buggered off around 100 million years ago, an event which started the uplift for the great dividing range.

    The fact that these are remnants of the original forest tells you a lot about the ecology of those areas, including the fire frequency.

    /hatchet job

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      el gordo

      They thought this one was extinct.

      ‘There’s a tree that once covered the whole of Australia, then dwindled to a dozen examples, and is now spread around the world. We call it the Wollemi pine (Wollemia nobilis), but you could call it the dinosaur tree.’

      The Conversation

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      el gordo

      ‘Acacias in Australia probably evolved their fire resistance about 20 million years ago when fossilised charcoal deposits show a large increase, indicating that fire was a factor even then.

      ‘With no major mountain ranges or rivers to prevent their spread, the wattles began to spread all over the continent as it dried and fires became more common. They began to form dry, open forests with species of the genera Allocasuarina, Eucalyptus and Callitris (cypress-pines).’ wiki

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        Peter Fitzroy

        not so much a fire resistance el gordo. Most acacia’s will burn very easily, and have some species even have an oil gland at the base of each leaf. more importantly Acacia’s are relatively short lived, but produce numerous long lived seeds, which will regenerate quickly after a fire. like most Australian plants Acacias have moved into a lot of ecological niches, resulting in a great diversity.

        But – Those species in the Gondwana rainforest ecology do you have any special response to fire, and are thus supplanted if a fire enters their remaining enclaves.

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      robert rosicka

      What’s stable about our continent Poiter ?

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        Peter Fitzroy

        100 million year old monotremes – all the marsupials – we have very stable continent.

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          robert rosicka

          You forgot the lungfish !
          I think isolation had more to do with it .

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            Peter Fitzroy

            An isolated volcano? – we do have the wallace line to thank for the isolation, and that includes new guinea. But without stability, you do get higher speciation as new niches are created to be exploited by evolution. We have a low speciation rate, mostly due to that stability. Mind you bin chickens are finding new niches, we may see a new species from them

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      Latus Dextro

      Read #5

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      R.B.

      Fires don’t destroy rainforests forever. As Jo has pointed out, if the puny global warming we have had since the Little Ice Age was causing fires, there were much warmer periods that should have cataclysmic in the past 30 million years.

      Please don’t encourage arsonists. The Brazilian police have arrested members of NGOs lighting Amazon fires and getting g paid by WWF tens of thousands for the pictures.

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      there are no animals alive today that were living 100million years ago

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      MudCrab

      As to ages of things – Platypus – 100 + millions of years ago

      Is this a typo?

      Or are you suggesting the platypus co-existed with dinosaurs?

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      Peter F said

      So Mark only has a bachelor degree, and is only working in his field of expertise. Not good enough! Certainly not for the ABC! What qualifications are required one might ask.

      You need to try harder PF. Graham “qualified”? — Making preposterous hyperbolic claims about the paleoclimate which are a gift for a satirist is obviously not “in his field of expertise”. And, as if we care — it’s only the ABC hypocrites who pretend that “expertise” is important. We mock Mark for his p=1 type ludicrous claims. Then we mock the ABC for their hypocritical incompetence, and parasitic self serving bias.

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    Ross

    OT But this emphasises how “serious” the UN hucksters are about doing something about their big worry. They are a sick joke !!

    #COP25 / CLIMATE #SCANDAL:

    @UNFCCC received $41.8Mill for 2018-19 budget to save the world. This is how @UN spent it:

    – $31.8M staff sal/trvl/ops
    – $4.1M in real climate prg

    Wonder how @GretaThunberg, @SpeakerPelosi or @LeoDiCaprio feel about this.

    h/t Sara Carter

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      Latus Dextro

      Well Ross, if it’s neo-Marxist Green, DEMon or Hollyweird feelings you’re after we’re all skrewed.
      If it’s truth you’re after, equally, we’re all skrewed. Truth is subjective these days.
      If it’s facts you’re after, we’re in with a chance.
      Let’s do truth.
      The UNEP were only ever focused on destroying the West. UNFCCC Figueres made it quite clear.
      Why the Con artists over at The Con, or the politicians, or the MSM don’t get this, is not surprising.
      They want the same thing.

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    It’s the latest GeeUpper script. We say something has happened before, they say not like this. We say like this, they say not exactly like this…

    Of course, rainforest burns in extreme conditions. In the past, nobody bothered with the distinctions, though rainforest was reported as burning in the Illawarra fires of 1968-9. If regular burn-offs aren’t occurring on the fringes then in a drought like the present fire can penetrate into normally lush forest.

    The worst documented conditions for drought globally were from 1875 to 1878. The whole middle of the world copped it. If something as grim as that can occur once it can come again. Instead of holding up the latest disaster to a candle and looking for distinctive features to prove a point about its exceptionalism we should be revising fire management based on what indigenous people were doing around the fringes of places like Dorrigo NP. The Gumbaynngirr, Dungutti and Biripi burned methodically NEAR the rainforest so of course it didn’t go up in smoke when extreme droughts occurred. They couldn’t afford to let the bush fill with rubbish. We think we can afford it. We can’t.

    Before humans arrived there may have been a different regime favouring different species. Now we have a fire regime and any attempt to revert to a pre-human regime is like relying on a lottery win for your retirement. You go a few decades without a burn. A hot spring day after a lush autumn but bone dry winter comes along…the nor’westerly gets up…then it really gets up…

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      PeterW

      Of course, rainforest burns in extreme conditions. In the past, nobody bothered with the distinctions, though rainforest was reported as burning in the Illawarra fires of 1968-9. If regular burn-offs aren’t occurring on the fringes then in a drought like the present fire
      can penetrate into normally lush forest.

      NAILED IT!

      It is our current fire-exclusion policy that creates the conditions for horizon-horizon fires in the periods when these wet pockets are dry enough to burn.

      I worked the 2003 fires – on the Western flank, not the Canberra side, and even from the air, the miles and miles of scorched mountains were appalling. Ridge after ridge of forest so severely affected that the canopy was not just blackened, but gone. We dropped into the Cabramurra airstrip and the soil had been reduced to what looked like beach-sand and ashes.

      I’m not advocating fuel management for shits and giggles, people!
      Don’t talk to me about burnt wildlife unless you are prepared to Do. Something. About. It….

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        OriginalSteve

        Id agree with you.

        It comes back to basically holding a blowtorch ( metaphorically speaking ) under govts rear end until it grows a spine and does its job e.g. regular hazard reduction burns and also tells the greenists to get lost – into the bargain.

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          One really lethal idea in the UN/globo agenda is “rewilding” across the globe. To the Fabian mind, you just leave wilderness be while confining smaller populations within “smart” cities…and “mother” nature will know what’s best. To the non-Fabian who lives around bush this is a recipe for fire and ferals on a terrifying scale.

          Of course they’ll talk of “science” and “management”. But once the economic imperative is gone there will be abandonment and indifference. In fact, they are already talking that way and the abandonment and indifference have already set in. Imagine a world of Bob Carr parks.

          Nature is a peevish stepmother at best. And we are her red-haired stepchildren.

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            OriginalSteve

            Doublespeak – lack of action to implement socialism masquerading as climate science, threatens international safety…..

            The unspoken bit apears to be sceptics are a security risk and need to be locked up….

            How very out of the Soviet play book…..and how desperate are they? The wheels are coming off the wagon, so the screeching is now at seagull fever pitch….

            Note what appears to be the attempt to make the UN the boss cocky in all this and bypass our national govt.

            https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-03/climage-change-international-security-risk/11714284

            “Action to address climate change has been left so late that any political response will likely become an international security issue — and could threaten democracy.
            That’s the view of Ole Wæver, a prominent international relations professor at the University of Copenhagen, who also says climate inaction could lead to armed conflict.

            “”At some point this whole climate debate is going to tip over,” he tells RN’s Late Night Live.

            “”The current way we talk about climate is one side and the other side. One side is those who want to do something, and the other is the deniers who say we shouldn’t do anything.”
            He believes that quite soon, another battle will replace it. Then, politicians that do ‘something’ will be challenged by critics demanding that policies actually add up to realistic solutions.

            “When decision-makers — after delaying for so long — suddenly try to find a shortcut to realistic action, climate change is likely to “be securitised”.

            “Professor Wæver, who first coined the term “securitisation”, says more abrupt change could potentially threaten democracy.

            “”The United Nations Security Council could, in principle, tomorrow decide that climate change is a threat to international peace and security,” he says.

            “”And then it’s within their competencies to decide ‘and you are doing this, you are doing this, you are doing this, this is how we deal with it’.”

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    David Maddison

    Don’t worry, the BoM will fabricate a suitable data set to fit the claim.

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    nb

    Let me teach you the ABC of disinformation…

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    You cannot have a high resolution record for 30 million years. If each year were just a 30th of an inch it would take a million inch core sample. Resolution is likely somewhere between a hundred and a thousand years, assuming no tectonic forces have ever mixed it, which they probably have. In short this is junk.

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      Peter Fitzroy

      ?And? this is the nonsense statement of the day.
      why stop at one year, why not 1 day?
      Australian plates are very stable.

      come on David, you normally do better than this

      30 million refers to the earliest fossils for that genera.

      [Alright gentlemen, what would you have me do? Right about now I think about banging heads together to see if any common sense falls out. But there doesn’t seem to be any. So Peter, grow a little thicker skin. Toorightmate, don’t bait anyone. Your alternative is to have me disappear your comments for a while. I do not care what you think of each other, I care about this blog. I am not a babysitter.] AZ

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        robert rosicka

        Tortoises all the way down hey Peter !

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        PeterW

        More green cheese.

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        If the res is 100 years only a fire that lasted 100 years would show up.

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          Peter Fitzroy

          Yes, but that is not what you are searching for, as you would know. You are looking for fossils.

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          Brian

          Not strictly true David. What reveals the presence of fire is fossilized charcoal remnants, so PF is accidentally correct on looking for fossils. Do such exist in the Australian rain forest? Indeed they do. Pollen in cores show that there was severe rain forest contraction during the Pleistocene glaciation and analysis of fossil charcoal indicates that the rain forest was also deeply dissected by fire-prone vegetation. The current rainforest partly re-established during the current interglacial. But the true Gondwanaland forest was dominated by the Wollemi Pine and similar species. Amazingly a few pines in a deep gorge survived fires and replacement by other species and reproduced, maintaining a tiny window into history.

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        toorightmate

        DRONGO,
        What is your “learned opinion” about the Australian plate moving North East significantly faster than the sea is rising (if in fact the sea is rising).

        [Alright gentlemen, what would you have me do? Right about now I think about banging heads together to see if any common sense falls out. But there doesn’t seem to be any. So Peter, grow a little thicker skin. Toorightmate, don’t bait anyone. Your alternative is to have me disappear your comments for a while. I do not care what you think of each other, I care about this blog. I am not a babysitter.] AZ

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    Dave

    WOW!
    That ABC report is wrong!

    No proof what so ever of burning of the Gondwana Refuge Rainforests anywhere?

    They’ve published lots of pictures of Eucalyptus forest that has burned!

    That photo is a SHAM!

    The article is a SHAM!

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      Peter Fitzroy

      There is more than one type of eucalyptus and for burning gondwana rainforest, look up the location of the Bees Nest file

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        beowulf

        Which extraordinary scientist is Mr Graham? He’s a fire specialist with the Nature Conservation Council.

        The Nature Conservation Council of NSW where Mark the Ecologist hangs out should more correctly be known as the Climate Change Cheer Squad of NSW.

        Here are some of their recent press releases:
        • Government must withdraw its dangerous anti-climate bill (the NSW Government should scrap plans to curtail the power of planning authorities to consider climate pollution when weighing up the merits of new coal and gas projects.)
        • NSW must follow Victoria’s lead and announce end date for native forest logging
        • Planning changes deny our biggest challenge – climate change
        • Government dam plans will add to the ecological crisis gripping our rivers
        • Regions on the threshold of a clean energy bonanza

        Strange how Mark’s version of Gondwanan rainforest stops at the Hunter River, when the NSW south coast supports some excellent patches of remnant rainforest, as do VIC and TAS.

        Strange too that the ABC didn’t consult the works of THE pre-eminent rainforest expert of eastern Australia — Alex Floyd.

        Floyd devotes no less than 7 ½ quarto pages to historical fires in NSW rainforests alone, and the responses of rainforest species to those alleged non-existent fires. Nowhere does he say that fires have never penetrated rainforests. (Floyd. A.G., Australian Rainforests in NSW, Vol 1, ISBN 0 949324 31 0, pp 69-76, which also happens to be co-published by the NSW NPWS)

        For instance the Terania Creek rainforest (NE NSW) — iconic sub-tropical rainforest — was severely burnt out in 980 AD, as evidenced by a charcoal layer of that date and trees no older than that date. It shows a fire periodicity of about 970 years.

        On the Upper Clarence River (NE NSW) a very fierce fire burnt 0.8km into the rainforest in 1915. Leaf-fall after that fire was so great that a second fire swept the area 2 weeks later. There are examples covering all rainforest classifications.

        I have also pointed out previously that certain recently reported rainforest fires were not rainforest fires at all — they were fires within rainforest reserves, but it was eucalypts that primarily burnt. Spurs of eucalypts extended into the reserves along ridgelines above the gullies containing the actual rainforest.

        If Mark the Ecologist is their fire specialist, then he needs to start gaining a basic understanding of fire in rainforest before he demonstrates his ignorance of the subject matter again.

        Rainforest fires are only new to those ignorant of our rainforest fire history.

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          Environment Skeptic

          Native forest, with or without weeds? …without weeds would be great!!….thanks!!
          You sure you would not like some of our latest inflammable weeds? perhaps some Lantana?

          https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/12/12/3387436.htm

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          PeterW

          I’ve participated in meetings at which the NCC representatives demonstrated that they didn’t have the slightest understanding of the relationship between fire and native species recruitment.

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          OriginalSteve

          Some of those press releases read like a socialist manifesto

          …Saul would be proud…..

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          Peter Fitzroy

          According to unesco Mark is correct https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/368/
          Again you confuse rainforests with the Gondwana refuge rainforest.
          As to saying a qualified professional does not know what he is talking about, by offering supposed examples form unrelated biomes, is just trash talk.

          You are in line for the misuse of folklore award of the day

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            PeterW

            [sigh]

            Unfortunately, part of our problem is that professional managers and academics who have neither current on-ground experience nor skin in the game…… are being rewarded for being politically correct rather than achieving positive outcomes.

            These same qualified professionals have created the situation upon which we now comment.

            Equally qualified professionals who are not PC are being ignored, dismissed and vilified by Fitz et al.

            If support is required, I refer you to the reports of every Royal Commission into Australian bushfires for the last 80 years.

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              PeterW

              To borrow an old analogy….

              Qualified professionals built the Titanic. Amateurs built the Ark

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            • #
              Peter Fitzroy

              more assertions, and I’ve never vilified or dismissed any qualified professional, as you would know.

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                PeterW

                More dishonesty from you, Fitz.

                What you actually tried to do was appeal to authority, rather than outcomes.

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                PeterW

                ……and you have dismissed every qualified professional who has pointed out that the current weather is not unique and/or that the current fire situation is more than partially due to a failure to carry out hazard reduction at appropriate levels.

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            beowulf

            Folklore? Absolute drooling drivel from you Peter, as we have come to expect. When you have no genuine come-back you just dismiss facts.

            Your link is supposed to demonstrate what exactly? That document is only a world heritage listing, not a full accounting of all extant Gondwanan rainforest along the east coast. Can you not tell the difference? It gives as much weight to representative geological formations as it does to botany. So we have a world heritage listing of areas which have at least partially burnt in the past.

            Are you seriously claiming that Terania Creek Rf is not Gondwanan? Classic, iconic, complex, sub-tropical, megaphyll rainforest so beloved of the Nimbin hippies. Can you point me to where Nothofagus rainforest or Araucaria rainforest mentioned in the listing have been wiped out? No, you can’t, because they haven’t.

            As I said, Floyd gives examples of fire in ALL RAINFOREST CLASSIFICATIONS. I’ll put Floyd up against Mark the Activist any day.

            And again YOU conflate any convenient fire-impacted scrap of rainforest with actual Gondwanan rainforest refugia to support your stance. If you knew more about rainforest botany, you would know that the refugia are very limited in number and confined basically to mountains like Barrington Tops, Comboyne, Dorrigo, parts of Mt Warning caldera (such as Terania Creek which burnt 1,000 years ago), the Bunya Mountains, Mt Bartle Frere, Mt Bellenden Ker etc

            In the mind of a 3 year old every fire event is unprecedented.

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          glen Michel

          Well I can tell you that fires have entered rainforest from sclerophyll forest. There was a massive burn in the Nymboida recently that excoriated the valley landscape, along with rainforest pockets in the gullies. Lots of privet and Lantana added heat to the conflagration. Bloody experts with a political agenda p..s me off.

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    Bill in Oz

    Come on folks !
    It just the Australian Brainwashing Corporation
    Doing it’s stuff again.
    It’s a pain in the head and the bum
    But let’s be honest about this
    They never ever listen to us
    Nor check the ‘facts’
    Ideology rules their roost !
    Aren’t we fortunate to have minds that are open to the facts
    And so have the power to ignore the ABC ideocrats !

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    robert rosicka

    Being the ABC this will be on repeat for the brainwashing of radio and TV viewers , they’re preaching to the converted mostly .

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    How do we git ter bell the cat? Alack!

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    WXcycles

    As expected Greta and LaVagabonde have been forced to take a SSE to SE course, currently on 146 degrees @ 9.8 knots. Still going fast though but with the wind and waves more behind now. They are currently headed almost directly toward Lisbon Portugal, as I predicted about 5 days ago. They approached as close as 170nm to northern Spain before being pushed SE. The result is they are 201 nm from Lisbon and travelling more than 230 nm per day.

    Current location and likely destination port:
    https://www.windy.com/distance/boat/41.48,-11.63;38.67,-9.24?gust,38.823,-10.437,6

    They’ll go through worse wind and waves before they get to land so will probably slow down a bit, but will make land around sundown Tuesday Australian time, or early to mid-morning Tuesday, 3rd Dec, Madrid time.

    Congratulations Greta!

    And congratulations especially to the global petrochemical, metallurgy and digital electronics industries, which have made it possible for Greta and friends to cross the Atlantic ocean using free clean wind power without even felling part of a old-growth forest to do it! That’s quite an achievement, global corporate conglomerates rock!

    The science and engineering of the enlightenment in action.

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      el gordo

      There appears to be an Omega Block west of the UK, so the good ship Greta may end up in Africa.

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        WXcycles

        They’re pointing a bit north of Lisbon’s coast no doubt anticipating they could be pushed a little further south before getting to land. However the jetstream loop over them loses a lot of its steam during the next 12 to 18 hours.

        In about 12 hours they’ll be in much calmer conditions, with a sheltered off-shore NE wind which should flatten the waves out a bit. They could even head back towards NE Spain at that point instead of going to Lisbon.

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        WXcycles

        Have a look Gordo,

        It’s not an anomaly from a single run, nor even from a particular East Asia synoptic setup. The following images are from the latest run, and it’s getting faster and becoming clearer that this is the entire northern-hemisphere that’s affected by a steepening of mid-latitude pressure gradients.

        I’m splitting this in two comment to avoid the moderation waiting-room.

        6th Dec – Faster again, and 5,000 ft lower than ‘normal’ – 52 km faster than the record.

        https://i.ibb.co/LR0DRVc/1-2019-12-02-30-000-ft-NW-Pacific-410-km-per-hr.png

        6th Dec – Faster again, at 34,000 feet – 48 km faster than the record.

        https://i.ibb.co/gtw38GY/2-2019-12-02-34-000-ft-NW-Pacific-406-km-per-hr.png

        10th Dec – This much faster East-Asia jet is about to extend right across the Pacific.

        https://i.ibb.co/DwGppwr/3-2019-12-02-34-000-ft-Accross-Pacific.png

        11th Dec – It actually reaches the US west coast – 354km/h (4 km/h less than the current record).

        https://i.ibb.co/7Y8j4Yp/4-2019-12-02-34-000-ft-East-Pacific-354-km-per-hr.png

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        WXcycles

        3rd Dec – more evidence it’s global and present in multiple synoptic setups – 356 km/h (2 km/h less than current record).

        https://i.ibb.co/GM16Tqv/5-2019-12-02-34-000-ft-N-Atlantic-356-km-per-hr.png

        10th Dec – Eastern USA 355 km/h (3 km/h less than Feb 2019 record).

        https://i.ibb.co/H2cSN5y/6-2019-12-02-30-000-ft-Eastern-USA-355-km-per-hr.png

        11th Dec – North Atlantic – 356 km/h (2 km/h less than current record).

        https://i.ibb.co/3Tdb2jH/7-2019-12-02-30-000-ft-Canada-Atlantic-356-km-per-hr.png

        Record levels of Jetstream flow in two ocean basins, simultaneously – 356 km/h, both basins.

        https://i.ibb.co/QrcSyZc/8-2019-12-02-30-000-ft-Big-Picture-356-km-per-hr.png

        Either the Highs are getting higher, or the Lows are getting lower, or both.

        Cold core lows which are dropping in pressure are generally colder. While Highs that are higher are also generally colder, as they are formed by colder descending air which increases pressure.

        Stronger Lows generally pull more tropical air towards the pole (i.e. more cloud, fog, rain, snow, storms) in the mid-latitudes and poles. While stronger Highs tend to send colder air into the tropics in winter and cooler trade air flow in Summer

        (And if you’re in NSW or VIC, snow falls in Summer).

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        WXcycles

        Isobar compression on 6th Dec at 30,000 feet east Japan @ 410 km/h top speed.

        (Geo-potential Height)

        https://i.ibb.co/5Ygh6wq/9-2019-12-02-Geo-Potential-Isobar-Compression-30-000-ft-NW-Pacific-410-kmh.png

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          el gordo

          Doing a bit of reading, this from atmospheric scientist Angela Zalucha.

          ‘In the winter hemisphere, the pole is relatively cold (due to perpetual darkness), and so the difference in temperature is relatively large. Thus, the jet stream is faster in the winter. The technical term for this phenomenon is “thermal wind balance”.

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            WXcycles

            Notice that the fastest wind speeds are all at 30,000 feet, in both the Pacific and Atlantic Basins in the above, and the images are spread apart by 8 days. 5,000 feet lower than normal, i.e. almost certainly due to a colder, shallower troposphere than normal in the mid-latitudes, and that winter just barely began.

            How did it get so chilled outside of winter (or did it …)?

            At first I thought, “How can this model be doing this?” If the cooling were solar-cycle related at all, and it does not have solar flux or solar cycle activity as a basic input?

            Then I realized it doesn’t need a solar input to display one. This is because ECMWF runs its model four times a day, two of which are freely available to the public, one every 12 hours. To process the data at such a rapid rate ECMWF uses automated algos to harvest and input over 3.5 million pieces of near to real-time global data.

            And a part of that near to real-time data input is national and international ADS-B IFR civil aircraft transponder data that provides nearly continuous weather observations by aircraft sensors between >18,000 feet, up to as much as 60,000 feet of civil airspace. ADS-B beacon transmissions provide nearly continuous Outside Air Temp (OAT) data that is embedded in each automated transponder beacon broadcast. They also record pressure at flight altitude, and also the location and track, plus True Air Speed (TAS) and Ground Speed (GS). And from that detailed aircraft data a precise vector of jetstream at any location on its path can be precisely calculated and logged as an input to ECMWF. In fact an increasing number of civil VFR aircraft operating below 18,000 feet also have ADS-B transponders, and this will continue to grow.

            The collation of all global ADS-B data thus builds a near real-time and constantly evolving 3-D digital map of the global jetstream’s flow speed, altitude, location and detailed structures encountered.

            So *if* there is a solar-cycle effect impacting the atmosphere by cooling, then ECMWF will be fairly accurately digitally using and displaying its effect on the mid to upper troposphere, within every model run’s starting-conditions input.

            Most new-build aircraft in the Western world have ADS-B transponders fitted as standard in recent years. So the model gets very good sampling inputs, especially of the subtropical-jetstream flow regions, as airlines love to use the jetstream to reduce fuel costs and speed up transits. In fact an international organisation evaluates the jetstream location each model run and assigns the international routes airline aircraft can travel on each day, depending on which direction and altitudes they are traveling to take advantage of its location, speed and to avoid predicted and known strong turbulence areas.

            This ADSB is collated with virtually all global civil weather satellite, radiosonde, ground observations and radar data.

            So *if* there was a current solar effect upon the atmosphere the ECMWF WX model would be capturing and reflecting that effect in the output data and graphics of every run, regardless of not having a solar flux input (as would GFS, and regional ICON, NEMS and AROME models, etc. The result is the vastly improved weather model forecasting that we see.

            So we don’t have to think of the model as simply a dumb system disconnected from solar flux effect inputs (I just wanted to clarify that aspect).

            The other aspect to get clear is that the higher speeds are *relative* to the standing dynamic pressure gradient’s steepness rise, not to the absolute temperature drop itself (if any). i.e. the jetstream’s acceleration responds to the *relative* temperature gradient difference between the hot an cold *range*, and not to colder temperatures per-sec.

            For instance, during November the absolute temperature of the mid-latitude and mid-troposphere does not need to be as cold as they are in deep-winter in order to generate a wind speed that’s actually even faster than occurs in a cold mid-winter period. All that’s need is a wider spread of temperatures, and thus pressures, during November, and it does not matter what those absolute temps are to get the acceleration. The faster winds can be due to higher temperature than normal that widens the range between the high-temp and low-temp. As long as the relative spread between high and low is significantly wider, there will be higher wind acceleration.

            However, the 5,000 ft lower altitude of the strongest winds is a bit of a give away that this acceleration is due to excess early pre-winter cooling of the high mid-latitude mid troposphere. Conversely, if this were due to a higher temperature excursion in the troposphere there would be deeper convection and the highest winds would be seen at 39,000 feet within the model, and not at 30,000 ft.

            So this will not be due to higher temperatures in the mid-latitude troposphere increasing the temperature gradient, and thus accelerating the jetstream.

            Which implies a few things.

            (1) This, when combined with widespread reported colder snowier conditions, and a much earlier winter onset, implies the faster jetstream flow is a global cooling signal, and that models could in fact be displaying solar-cycle activity related atmospheric cumulative effects, such as cooling (if such an effect is present).

            (2) It implies Highs are probably getting a bit higher and surface winds colder. The ~5,000 ft lower troposphere above the sub-tropical jetstream likewise implies the pressure of Highs should have risen (throughout their altitude range) and the near surface outflow winds should get a bit cooler and windier. Trade-winds should expand and become more persistent, even in Summer.

            (3) It implies the winter hemisphere’s Lows will have on average dropped in pressure some (through-out their resulting compressed lower altitude range) and risen in wind speeds, implying they’ll drag more tropical air with them into the mid-latitudes and polar region. Thus producing more cloud and higher snowfalls, which non-melted snow in summer is what grows glaciers and icecaps. i.e. Lows will become ‘stormier’, windier and snowier.

            (4) Frontal related activity should intensify.

            (5) Atmospheric turbulence should have increased with the wind-speeds (passenger aircraft actively avoid such areas so ADS-B would not log this but radiosondes on weather balloons could pick up an increase in turbulence).

            Finally, a lot gets claimed and written about the jetstream which attributes all sorts of surface weather events to jetstream conditions. Much of it is baseless and illogical, mostly nonsense. As the relative temperature difference example described above illustrates, the jetstream’s behavior, location and speed is much more complicated. It’s implicitly relative in its’ behaviors, there are no absolute behaviors, and thus it’s difficult to understand and diagnose why it does certain things. It’s a 3-D quasi-predictable linear and turbulent fluid system which frankly often does unexpected things. Models are the best tool for visualizing and understanding why it does what it does because a human brain isn’t up to it. So when people make specific claims about it, I’m skeptical, and automatically discount any mass-media claims or WX event attributions to it. Most can not be logically linked in the ways claimed.

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              WXcycles

              The latest run shows Jet stream speed continues to rise, as we get further into December, especially over the western Atlantic US-Canadian coast. The USA jetstream speed record set in Feb 2019 (358 km/h) should be broken in about one week at both 34,000 ft (by 3 km/h) but especially at 30,000 feet (by 18 km/h), as forecast.

              11th Dec – Eastern Canada 34,000 ft 361 km/h, or 3 km/h above the Feb 2019 record.

              https://i.ibb.co/85S63HN/a-2019-12-03-E-Canada-34-000-ft-361-kmh-3-kmh-above-Feb-2019-record.png

              11th Dec – 2019-12-03 E Canada 30,000 ft 376 kmh (18 kmh above Feb 2019 record)

              https://i.ibb.co/ZKKtzmr/b-2019-12-03-E-Canada-30-000-ft-376-kmh-18-kmh-above-Feb-2019-record.png

              Which is confirming this is due to unusual early winter cooling, across the entire northern-hemisphere low-arctic and high low-Mid-latitudes.

              Here’s the cause of that:

              3rd Dec 2019 – NE Russia Deep Cold (today)

              https://i.ibb.co/B6K46n5/c-2019-12-03-3rd-Dec-2019-NE-Russia-Deep-Cold.png

              10th Dec 2019 – NE North America Deep-Cold (one week from now)

              https://i.ibb.co/PhrJDk3/d-2019-12-03-10th-Dec-2019-NE-North-America-Deep-Cold.png


              What I see:
              The pattern starts with surface level deep-cold appearing, which gets colder and spreads out regionally (in November in Russia’s case) and presumably extends into the mid-level troposphere as it does this. Which then produces a deeper mid-level low to the SE of the deep cold area, within the high mid-latitude troposphere.

              Then the jetstream finally accelerates, a few days later, as the deepening low’s pressure gradient begins to interact with the mid-latitude High, to the south or south east of the deepened Low.

              It’s clear in this case that the deep-cold at the surface and above it is deepening the low SE of the cold, and increasing the pressure gradient to the high, SE of that, and accelerating the intervening jetstream speed soon after, as the intervening isobar gradation between High and Low compress closer together.

              So then, what’s triggering the formation of the deep-cold at the surface, in November in Russia?

              The answer appears to be that a large persistent strong High with apparently colder than usual sinking air parked itself over that part of NE Russia for weeks which built into very early November surface coldness, which building cold then triggered the mid-level low SE of it to deepen, then the Jetstream to strengthen.

              So what caused the early and colder than normal arctic blocked-high and sinking air within it cooling the surface?

              I don’t know. But I’m guessing the tropopause above it was a lot lower than normal, for that latitude and time of year. The stratosphere is closer to the ground than probably in decades (a sign of slackening convection uplift, due to a general polar cooling-off).

              If the air is colder and sinking more then there’s the mechanism needed to get more sea ice formation and better ice-pack preservation during Summer, which would be rendered shorter than recent years.

              In which case:

              (1) And unknown source of upper-level polar air cooling caused a persistent blocking high and sinking very cold air.

              (2) Triggering the surface near to the arctic circle to cool and cold area to spread out regionally.

              (3) Which triggered high mid-latitude mid-level cooling, and a Low to deepen more than normal.

              (4) Which accelerates the Jetstream speed – more so in coming of days.

              (5) Which combined serves to push cooler air toward the tropics, including via Meridional flows and cooler trade-winds.

              The ocean was largely not involved which this, except for its effective absence, as in this November NE Russia arctic blocking-High case, the colder air developed over a preexisting high-albedo ice-pack and involved early significant snow covering the land.

              So my question now is, what is causing the polar tropopause region to cool and sink (i.e. the sky is in fact falling), because it has apparently caused the high mid-latitude tropopause to sink by about 5,000 feet, as well.

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                el gordo

                I’m speechless.

                Do you think it possible that a meridional jet stream is created by blocking?

                As I mentioned previously, the subtropical ridge in the southern hemisphere appeared to collapse in late July 2017 and that was the beginning of blocking. Climate changed rapidly and I need to join the dots as to how that happened.

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                el gordo

                In the 1950s thru to the early 1970s, Huber Lamb recognised blocking as a cooling signal.

                ‘These variations, perhaps more than any underlying trend to a warmer or colder climate, create difficulties for the planning age in which we live. They may be associated with the increased meridionality of the general wind circulation, the greater frequency of blocking, of stationary high and low pressure systems, giving prolonged northerly winds in one longitude and southerly winds in another longitude sector in middle latitudes.

                ‘Over both hemispheres there has been more blocking in these years… The most remarkable feature seems to be the an intensification of the cyclonic activity in high latitudes near 70-90N, all around the northern polar region. And this presumably has to do with the almost equally remarkable cooling of the Arctic since the 1950’s, which has meant an increase in the thermal gradient between high and middle latitudes.’

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              • #
                WXcycles

                Do you think it possible that a meridional jet stream is created by blocking?

                I’m not sure of anything as it’s a fluid. I tend to think of blocking-highs as an artifact of seasonal ocean surface temp patterns creating a regional wind field setup that favors a High sticking around, or else regressing and recharging, then crossing once again to get stuck in about the same place once more by the seasonal regional wind field, held in place by the ocean’s thermal patterns, which don’t change quickly during a season, or even between successive years.

                For instance, last summer Mozambique was hit by two devastating (but rare) Cat-3 to Cat-4 cyclones in quick succession. During that same Summer numerous major cyclones went past Madagascar just to its east, and a couple swiped it. But this current (early) Summer a similar ocean pattern and regional wind-field continues to be in effect. So during the past week, a Cat-4 has been variously forecast for northern Mozambique, the Mozambique Channel and now Madagascar. Here’s the latest forecast for a Cat-4 strike.

                https://on.windy.com/330as

                This re-occurs because the ocean seasonal thermal driven winds drove the storms in that direction, and are still doing so (they normally just go pole-wards and dissipate and join the Roaring-40s as subtropical-lows). And the seasonal steering-wings doing that are upper-level winds. In other words, the cyclone paths are affected by a combo of the standing seasonal regional ocean thermal patterns, plus the jetstream’s global wind-path vagary inputs.

                But a cold pre-winter polar blocking-high that sits for weeks over an ice-pack, and chills everything for thousands of kilometers all around it? There may be several mechanisms for stalling or impeding a High’s movement. I’m guessing this High’s location may also have been held in place by what standing pattern were occurring above it.

                What does this do to jetstream zonal or meridional flow modes? All I know Gordo is math-models predict jetstream flow incomparably better than my brain can.

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                WXcycles

                ” … which has meant an increase in the thermal gradient between high and middle latitudes.”

                Yup, that conclusion is inescapable, cooling produces this, and amplifies all mid-latitude wind-speeds as an artifact of it. But what cools the polar upper tropopause to trigger it? I’m guessing the answer is above that High.

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              • #
                Ross

                If you guys have not already seen it , this video by Piers Corbyn might add to your debate. The bit on jetstreams starts at about 7 minutes

                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXe6r-ediOs&list=PLXx6sNYNiueuxx2D_1f4s_KxK_2xbGa3M&index=2

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    • #
      WXcycles

      Greta and Co now sailing over shallow mid-continental margin 39 nm from the first marina docking opportunity at the entrance to Lisbon’s Harbor, still doing a fast 9.1 knots. They will be docked within 5 hours.

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        WXcycles

        Oh, forgot to add, that will be a sunny but chilly dawn, around 8 AM in Spain, so pretty happy pictures will ensue.

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    pat

    organisers of the truck convoy to Canberra re the Murray Darlin Basin Plan have just been on Credlin and Bolt. got nowhere with the govt. “environmental flows” rule. one organiser said they are staying in Canberra, even through a freezing night tonight, to further put their case to the govt.

    in the first of two interviews with one convoy organiser, Carly Marriott, on Alan Jones/2GB this morning, she said the National Farmers’ Federation was now on their side. audio is not in the following, but would be on the full show. the audio with Marriott below is the follow-up interview:

    AUDIO: 2 Dec: 2GB: Alan Jones Show: #CanThePlan: Thousands of farmers ‘Convoy to Canberra’ in drought protest
    The river has plenty of water but drought-ravaged farmers are being forced to watch it flow past due to the Commonwealth’s water management plan.
    One of the organisers of the Convoy to Canberra, Carly Marriott, says the government is already starting to listen.
    “Things are going really well, we’ve had a win! We’re going to be talking to Sussan Ley and David Littleproud later today,” she told Alan Jones.
    “These guys are going to listen to us. We’re not going home empty-handed and we’re not going home without water.”
    UPDATE:
    Carly has updated Steve Price on the enormous turnout.
    “I would say there’s probably a couple of thousand people on the ground and easily two hundred trucks circling Federation Mall at Parliament House.
    AUDIO: 5min12sec
    https://www.2gb.com/cantheplan-thousands-of-farmers-convoy-to-canberra-in-drought-protest/

    AUDIO: 10min38sec: 2 Dec: ABC Breakfast: Failing water policies: Angry farmers head to Canberra
    Presenter: Hamish Macdonald
    A convoy of angry farmers is heading for Canberra this morning on a mission to convince the Federal Government that current water management in the Murray Darling Basin is failing communities, irrigators and the environment.
    ***However, the National Farmers Federation has distanced itself from the group and its call for the Murray Darling Basin Plan to be scrapped.
    Guest: Shelley Scoullar, former rice farmer
    https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/angry-farmers-head-to-canberra/11755220

    1 Dec: NFF: Statement by National Farmers Federation President Fiona Simson on Murray Darling Basin Plan
    The National Farmers Federation shares many of the concerns being expressed by farmers rallying in Canberra tomorrow in relation to the Murray Darling Basin Plan.
    We have continued to advocate, increasingly stridently, for changes and reforms to the way the Plan is being implemented and welcome the support from farmers also seeking to improve the Plan.
    In this context we have continued to demand the Murray Darling Basin Ministerial Council take serious steps to implement the recommendations of the Productivity Commission’s five-yearly review of the Plan. The time for real action on these measures is past due. The NFF has a clear policy development process in place – it is by farmers for farmers and that policy seeks to get the Plan fixed now…
    The NFF recently visited farmers in the southern basin. We heard a range of concerns that included, but were not limited to, scrapping the Plan. The overwhelming consensus from those we spoke to was that the Plan needed to be fixed and fixed now. The NFF is in emphatic agreement with this view…
    https://www.nff.org.au/read/6663/statement-nff-president-fiona-simson-on.html?utm_source=miragenews&utm_medium=miragenews&utm_campaign=news

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      pat

      not listening again, but heard a bit this morning. almonds were mentioned and I thought Glyde said something to the effect that the plan was geared towards value-added farming:

      AUDIO: 10min03sec: 2 Dec: ABC Breakfast: Is the Murray Darling Basin plan failing the environment and our farmers?
      Presenter: Hamish Macdonald
      Phillip Glyde is Chief Executive of the Murray Darling Basin Authority and he’s responded to Shelley Scoullar’s complaints about the Basin Plan…
      https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/is-the-murray-darling-basin-plan-failing-the-environment/11755222

      MDBA: Phillip Glyde: A member of the Australian Public Service since 1980, Phillip has worked on natural resource management, industry and environmental policies in a number of Australian government departments including Prime Minister and Cabinet, Environment and Resources and Energy.
      Phillip has also spent some time working overseas including with the Environment Directorate of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris and the Cabinet Office and the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the United Kingdom.
      https://www.mdba.gov.au/about-us/governance/authority

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        pat

        Glyde recently:

        25 Oct: ABC: Murray-Darling Basin Authority chief apologises for public release of dam satellite images
        ABC Rural By national rural reporter Kath Sullivan
        The authority said the images were not proof of any illegal activity, but that it had referred the matter to the state watchdog, the Natural Resources Access Regulator.
        Under questioning at Senate Estimates on Friday, MDBA chief executive Phillip Glyde said it never intended to release the report with that level of detail and personal information.

        “I’d like to take the opportunity to apologise on behalf of the MDBA for the hurt, inconvenience and the suspicion that has been cast on those owners of land and property that were identified in great detail, and regret the publication of that report,” he said…
        “We made the mistake of releasing the fine detail of where these storages were, which enabled people who had knowledge of the region to get Google Maps and line the two things up.”…

        Mr Glyde said the report had been removed from its website and replaced with a version that de-identified the properties…
        Irrigator groups were angered by the release of the satellite images, which included a showground, an effluent plant, a racecourse and a pond in a park.
        It prompted the Federal Government to open an investigation to be headed by interim Murray-Darling Inspector-General Mick Keelty.
        Mr Keelty will look at what led to the release of the report, the MDBA’s response to the release, and the adequacy of the authority to manage the release of compliance and enforcement.
        The report is due back at the end of November.
        https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-25/murray-darling-apology-for-release-of-dam-satellite-images/11640672

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    pat

    Ita says no climate activist group will get up at theirABC. really?

    great guest, ABC. Gabbatiss is ex-UK Independent, & has worked for BBC. can barely understand him. carbon trading.

    AUDIO: 6min57sec: 2 Dec: ABC Breakfast: World leaders gather for UN climate conference
    Guest: Josh Gabbatiss, climate and energy policy journalist, Carbon Brief
    https://www.abc.net.au/radionationa

    AUDIO: 12min53sec: 2 Dec: ABC Breakfast: Malcolm Turnbull wants Australians to ‘get loud’ about climate change
    The Morrison Government will be pulling out all the stops this week to try and pass the medevac repeal bill and end the parliamentary year on a high…
    But in another distraction for the Government, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has used a private Liberal event to urge party moderates to start speaking out on climate change which he calls a “fundamental existential” issue for the world.
    Guest: Simon Birmingham, Trade Minister
    https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/malcolm-turnbull-wants-australians-to-get-loud/11755226

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      WXcycles

      ” … former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has used a private Liberal event to urge party moderates to start speaking out on climate change which he calls a “fundamental existential” issue for the world. …”

      Mal carrying Investment Banker’s water to scam and fleece the public some more.

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        toorightmate

        Settle down – you are talking about the architect of the Murray-Darling scheme (or is that “scam”?).
        Jennifer Marohasey has forgotten more about the Murray-Darling than that [snip] ever knew.

        [snip]

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        • #
          OriginalSteve

          Useful idiots cone in all shapes and sizes….

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          Dennis

          Murray Darling Plan was legislated by the Gillard Labor Government.

          Howard Minister Turnbull was first to become involved in water management and he claimed water was too cheap, after the IPCC Kyoto Agreement was signed.

          However all levels of government are cooperating, water is a state responsibility but federal signed the Kyoto Agreement and other UN Treaties.

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        Another Ian

        Kahlil Gibran “Thoughts and Meditations’ chapter “The Silver-Plated Turd”?

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    WXcycles

    Typhoon Kummuri did finally get its act together this afternoon, and went into a very rapid intensification phase. It was Cat-1 at noon today but is a Cat-3, 6-hours later. The storm is moving towards the north central Philippines fast but the latest ECMWF forecast run (released minutes ago) still shows it reaching low-end Cat-5 as the eyewall comes ashore. Maybe, maybe not, but at this rate it should reach into Cat-4. The outer bands just started to reach land and it should be crossing land during the next 36 hours.

    Take note, this is staggering weather model performance, considering the low which formed Typhoon Kummuri did not even exist within the area east of Guam, where it originated, when the initial prediction a Cat-5 would hit in the same location and date. That prediction was made from nothing around 8 days back – think about that. The ECMWF model in particular is incredibly accurate and reliable at providing ample early-warning of major events, which you can’t otherwise see coming in any other way. I’ve seen this stunning level of predictive power and accuracy from ECMWF many times now, so believe the hype, it works. We’re living in a very fortunate time as weather tools like this will save uncountable lives and property during the coming decades.

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      toorightmate

      I have been watching the progress of this for a few days.
      Does anyone have any clues as to how such an intensive Low form in the Northern Hemisphere this time of the year?

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        WXcycles

        It’s not out of the norm, Philippines gets hit by Typhoons all year round. As long as there’s warm enough water, high humidity, favorable low shear, tropical waves triggering low swirls, they will form and grow. Most of the time the turn poleward, or just fall apart as they ingest drier air off a cold Asian landmass. This one kept going west and didn’t suck in drier air surging into the Pacific from China. Cat-5 Typhoon Haiyan hit in November in 2013.

        Kummuri was upgraded to low-end Saffir-Simpson Cat-4 about an hour before the eyewall made landfall – eye is about 2/3 over land right now. They were very lucky it didn’t get wound-up to a Cat-5 yesterday.

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    pat

    AUDIO: 5min36sec: 2 Dec: ABC Breakfast: Health Report with Norman Swan
    Presenter: Hamish Macdonald
    Bushfires continue to burn on the New South Wales’ south coast and in Victoria’s East Gippsland, raising concerns for people suffering from asthma and breathing problems.
    A new study has found that exposure to fine particles increases the risk of hospital admissions for a wide range of medical conditions.
    Guest: Dr Norman Swan, The Health Report
    https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/health-report-with-norman-swan/11755232

    Swan and Macdonald don’t bother to identify the study/health effects, about which Swan says has resulted in 95 million hospital admissions – can’t recall him saying over what time frame:

    SCIMEX: Poor air quality could be sending us to hospital for some unexpected reasons
    Publicly released: Thu 28 Nov 2019
    Short term exposure to poor quality air – like that currently blanketing Sydney – is associated with several newly identified causes of hospital admissions, say international researchers, who add that the exposure levels can even be below international air quality guidelines. The particulate matter in the air is known as PM2.5, and the researchers suggest that, in the US, for every 0.001 part-per-million of PM2.5 was associated with an 2,050 extra hospital admissions, 12,216 days in hospital, and close to $46 million AUD in care costs for diseases that weren’t previously associated with PM2.5 such as sepsis, kidney failure, urinary tract and skin infections. The team suggests that the World Health Organisation air quality guidelines need revising…
    Organisation/s: Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health, Boston, USA.
    Funder: This study was supported by National Institute of Health (NIH) grants P30 ES000002, R01 ES024332-01A1, R01 ES026217, R01 ES028033, and R21 ES024012; NIH/National Cancer Institute (NCI) grant R35 CA197449; Health Effects Institute (HEI) grant 4953- RFA14-3/16-4; and United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) grants RD-83587201-0 and RD-83479801…

    ***A research team at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health analysed more than 95 million Medicare hospital insurance claims for adults aged 65 or older in the United States from 2000 to 2012…

    “Our knowledge of the health effects of PM is still lacking in many areas,” say researchers at the University of Southampton in a linked editorial.
    However, they explain that these newly associated diseases represent around a third (31-38%) of the total PM2.5 associated effect, suggesting that current figures for PM2.5 associated illness “might be considerable underestimates.”
    They call for more research to uncover new disease associations and explore potential causative mechanisms. “Clearly, there is still much to learn, but we should not mistake knowledge gaps for paucity of evidence,” they write. “The sooner we act, the sooner the world’s population will reap the benefits.”
    https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/air-pollution-could-be-sending-us-to-the-ed

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    pat

    29 Oct: NYT: Rising Seas Will Erase More Cities by 2050, New Research Shows
    By Denise Lu and Christopher Flavelle
    Rising seas could affect three times more people by 2050 than previously thought, according to new research, threatening to all but erase some of the world’s great coastal cities…
    The new research shows that some 150 million people are now living on land that will be below the high-tide line by midcentury…
    Southern Vietnam could all but disappear…

    Much of Ho Chi Minh City, the nation’s economic center, would disappear with it, according to the research, which was produced by Climate Central, a science organization based in New Jersey, and published in the journal Nature Communications (LINK). The projections don’t account for future population growth or land lost to coastal erosion…READ ON
    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/29/climate/coastal-cities-underwater.html

    Humans have learned to live with rising tides – Bjorn Lomborg
    The Australian – 24 Nov 2019
    The New York Times published a terrifying map showing that southern Vietnam will “all but disappear” because it will be “underwater at high tide”. It told readers, “more than 20 million people in Vietnam, almost one-quarter of the population, live on land that will be inundated”…

    link from the following for full article (PDF)

    ClimateScience.org.nz: LOMBORG – HUMANS HAVE LEARNED TO LIVE WITH RISING TIDES
    The Australian – 25 Nov 2019
    Professor Bjorn Lomborg writes in “The Australian” newspaper: “Alarming media stories that twist the facts about rising sea levels are dangerous because they scare people unnecessarily and push policymakers towards excessively expensive measures to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The real solution is to lift the world’s poorest out of poverty and protect them with simple infrastructure.”
    ***DOWNLOAD.pdf
    https://www.climatescience.org.nz/

    more from Lomborg on the article here:

    TWEET: Bjorn Lomborg
    New York Times ran a sensational story on how many places will soon be underwater
    Unfortunately, it misuses data to conclude disaster, creating unreasonable fear…
    3 Nov 2019
    https://twitter.com/bjornlomborg/status/1191021851004342272?lang=en

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    • #
      pat

      NYT article states:
      “according to the research, which was produced by Climate Central”

      WUWT articles involving “Climate Central” – not positive
      https://wattsupwiththat.com/tag/climate-central/

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      Richard Ilfeld

      I wanted to be terrified, but I realized that the Netherlands were below sea level 400 years ago, and they’ve somehow
      managed to cope.
      T-Shirt time:
      “You are Loud!”
      “We are working!”
      “If you can’t help…”
      “You are biodegradable!”

      They can say whatever they want because, I suppose, they are better than we are.
      I can too, cause I’m an old fart and really don’t care any more.

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    pat

    only today did I realise who were the “tipping points” authors, besides Will Steffen:

    27 Nov: Nature: Climate tipping points — too risky to bet against
    The growing threat of abrupt and irreversible climate changes must compel political and economic action on emissions
    Authors: Timothy M. Lenton, Johan Rockström, Owen Gaffney, Stefan Rahmstorf, Katherine Richardson, Will Steffen & Hans Joachim Schellnhuber
    https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03595-0

    what a team! RenewEconomy believes them!

    28 Nov: RenewEconomy: Tipping points leading to ‘Hothouse Earth’ already “active”, scientists warn
    by Michael Mazengarb
    A group of the world’s leading climate scientists warn that many climate change ‘tipping points’ are already active and rapid and irreversible changes to the Earth’s climate may be unavoidable unless urgent action is taken on climate change…

    “Currently we are seeing much higher risk, and we are rapidly running out of time to respond,” co-author and emeritus professor at the Australian National University Will Steffen says.
    “All nations need to recognise the seriousness of the situation and go well beyond their Paris Agreement pledges to cut emissions.”…
    “As soon as one or two climate dominoes are knocked over, they push Earth towards others,” Steffen says.
    “We fear that it may become impossible to stop the whole row of dominoes from tumbling over, forming a cascade that could threaten the existence of human civilisations.”…
    The scientists say that the observation of active tipping-points would justify a global declaration of a climate change emergency…

    Earlier in the month, a group of 11,000 scientists called for a declaration of a climate change emergency, saying that the world was on the path to “untold human suffering” caused by climate change unless stronger action was taken to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.
    https://reneweconomy.com.au/tipping-points-leading-to-hothouse-earth-already-active-scientists-warn-90919/

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    pat

    CARTOON: 3 Dec: Feeding the Fat Green Pigs Published by the Saltbush Club
    https://blog.alor.org/index.php/feeding-the-fat-green-pigs-published-by-the-saltbush-club

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    Travis T. Jones

    Turns out emitting a trace gas CO2 is a truly lousy way of killing the rainbow lorikeet, causing them to become extinct …

    Rainbow lorikeet numbers ‘explode’ in Tasmania, posing threat to fruit and native birds

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-30/explosion-of-rainbow-lorikeets-pests-unwelcome-in-tasmania/11716842

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      Brian the Engineer

      Probably an explosion of fruit from the extra “trace gas” in the atmosphere. Aren’t Rainbow Lorikeets native birds in any case?

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    pat

    PIC: MichaelSmithNews: National Smart Energy Summit 2019: 10 Dec 2019, Hilton, Sydney
    https://michaelsmithnews.typepad.com/.a/6a0177444b0c2e970d0240a4a3fc9e200c-800wi

    3 Dec: SBS: Malcolm Turnbull: Climate needs ‘loud Australians’
    Liberal Party members need to be “loud Australians” on climate change, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull says.
    Mr Turnbull told a private function of moderate factional allies the government’s current climate policies were incoherent, The Daily Telegraph reports.
    “It was hard not to read it as a dig at (Prime Minister Scott) Morrison,” one attendee told the tabloid on Monday…

    Mr Turnbull also warned the party against pursuing authoritarian populism, as seen in the United States with Donald Trump and the United Kingdom with Boris Johnson…

    In the audience were senior government minister’s Simon Birmingham and Paul Fletcher, as well as ***Arthur Sinodinos, the soon-to-be ambassador to the US.
    https://www.sbs.com.au/news/malcolm-turnbull-climate-needs-loud-australians

    2 Dec: Daily Mail: Bitter dumped PM Malcolm Turnbull goes rogue in an extraordinary speech slamming right-wing Liberals as ‘threatening democracy’ and claiming Donald Trump wants to ‘destroy’ the U.S.
    •He said right-wing ‘populist authoritarianism … really threatens our democracy’
    •Mr Turnbull said Donald Trump sought to ‘tear at every, single’ US institution
    •Australia’s next ambassador to the US Arthur Sinodinos was in the audience
    •He also took a dig at his successor Scott Morrison’s ‘quiet Australians’ phrase
    By Stephen Johnson
    ‘Donald Trump is seeking to tear at every, single institution in the United States,’ he said of the world leader he had last year visited at the White House in Washington…

    With his autobiography just months away, Mr Turnbull said that President Trump appealed to reactionary elements within the conservative side of politics.
    ‘I mean Donald Trump, who is their hero, is not a conservative. That is not what conservativism is,’ he said on Thursday night during a 29-minute speech, obtained in full by Daily Mail Australia.

    Awkwardly, Australia’s next ambassador to the United States, Arthur Sinodinos, was in the audience and was even a speaker at this function.
    More than 200 guests paid $75 for tickets to the Sydney Harbour event last Thursday, which featured a who’s who of cabinet ministers and lobbyists linked to the Liberal Party.
    A witness told Daily Mail Australia of seeing the multi-millionaire former prime minister arrive in a Sydney Harbour water taxi, from his nearby Point Piper mansion, with his wife Lucy and their daughter Daisy.

    ‘What we are faced with at the moment on the right of politics, so called, is essentially a form of populist authoritarianism, which is utterly intolerant of diversity, is utterly intolerant of alternative views,’ he said.
    ‘And it really threatens our democracy. It is important to call it out.’…

    Lobbyist Michael Photios, a powerbroker within the Liberal Party’s moderate faction in NSW, was also there.
    The invitation-only event was organised by Liberal Forum, the organisation wing of the party’s moderate faction.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7744585/Former-prime-minister-Malcolm-Turnbull-accuses-Donald-Trump-destroying-United-States.html

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      pat

      30 Nov: Forbes: Americans Ignore Doomsaying Narrative And Keep Buying Cars
      by Dale Buss
      Karl Brauer, executive publisher of Autotrader and Kelly Blue Book: “The market continues to do better than expected, with an increasing number of these sales represented by high-profit trucks and SUVs. That means high profits and strong financials for many large automakers.”…

      This turn of events is remarkable for a number of reasons, but one of them is that the market’s continued strength seems to represent a collective decision by American consumers to ignore the chattering classes in the news media who have been telling them for months that the U.S. economy was about to slide into recession. There may have been political motives for commentators to cast the economy in dire terms, but for a few months their general point was that a downturn, rather soon, was inevitable…

      But as in the economy as a whole, American consumers appear largely to have ignored their online news digests and evening TV-news broadcasts and watched their own pocketbooks instead. Not only does U.S. employment continue at record rates, with rising wages to boot, but the ripple effects for working populations continue to be felt in historic ways. For example, employment of women is at a record high, and the unemployment rates among blacks and Hispanics are at lows for at least a half-century.

      Other economic indicators also personalize the impact of prosperity for consumers and further belie what they have been hearing in the news, including a continued record run for the stock market, which enriches 401(k)s, and recent cuts in interest rates…
      https://www.forbes.com/sites/dalebuss/2019/11/30/americans-ignore-doomsaying-narrative-and-keep-buying-cars/

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    pat

    2 Dec: ABC: ‘Heatwave’ conditions set for north Queensland as ‘hotter than average’ summer begins
    By George Roberts
    Despite rain falling across parts of the state overnight, blazes flaring at Narangba and Woodgate this afternoon have reminded Queenslanders of this summer’s elevated fire danger.
    The fires came as the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) warned of a return of hot, dry weather and a severe fire danger this week, with temperatures are expected to climb above 40 degrees Celsius in southern parts of Queensland…

    ‘Firefighters up against it’
    Bureau of Meteorology forecaster David Crock said the weather conditions forecast for summer would be testing for firefighters.
    “Anywhere in the south-east it feels a bit like an oven. It’s very hot and very dry winds. It’s a bit more like the heat you see in southern Australia,” Mr Crock said.
    Unrelenting high overnight temperatures in north Queensland are also set to trigger the bureau’s “heatwave” warning there, but the south will be spared, with temperatures expected to cool during the night…
    “That combination of hot, dry and windy weather is the worst fire weather that we see,” Mr Crock said…

    “It won’t be quite as hot as the heatwave we saw late last year, where Cairns saw temperatures well over 40 degrees for three or four days in a row, but still hot enough through the day and the night to trigger our heatwave sort-of threshold,” Mr Crock said.
    “So that hot air mass will linger, over really most of Queensland for the next few days, initially in the tropics and then moving gradually down the coast.
    “Centres along the east tropical coast will see temperatures very much in the high 30’s today and for the next several days. That includes, Cooktown, Cairns, Townsville — all the way down to Rockhampton and Mackay as well.”…

    “The climate outlook for summer suggests temperatures will very likely be above average, which is what we’re seeing pretty much every month these days,” he said.
    He said the summer was expected to be hotter than average but that has been the case every year for about a decade.
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-02/queensland-summer-weather-hotter-than-average/11756892

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      Another Ian

      Pat

      To get “average summer conditions” didn’t there have to be some “hotter than average summer conditions” as well as some “colder than average ones”?

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        Maptram

        Agreed. Near where I live at Mangalore Airport the mean December maximum temperature is 27.2°C. The first two days have been 14.0°C and 18.3°C so there will have to be some hot days to get to the mean.

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    Furiously curious

    In the last week I’ve done a trip around, and into the Mt Nardi fire ground, Northern NSW. Basically the fire stayed up in the eucalypt forests on top of the escarpments, apart from the North east corner, down into Doon Doon, and the North face of Mt Nardi. Terania creek is basically untouched, fire feel off cliffs at a couple of points, and reached the creek, but very minor. I did see a couple of big burnt trees ( like match sticks ) poking up in the rain forest, so there must have been fire there at some stage. Maybe lightning? To get right up into the headwaters, you’d need a drone, to see the situation.There were a couple of places where it burnt halfway down from the tops. They had a real fight at Tuntable Falls, but they look to have held it within 20m of many houses. And maybe that was back burn? A couple of other places where it was in the valleys close to houses, also probably back burns. Nowhere did I see a road crossed, even down in Doon Doon, or up in Qland a couple of weeks ago. Down in Huonbrook/Wanganui gorge, it didn’t seem to touch much rain forest. Once again didn’t cross a road, so maybe some of it was back burn? I reckon the wind exposed tops got blasted, and I havent been to Repentance Creek, under Minion Falls, which I hear was bad. That will be interesting, as that is rain forest, close under the falls
    So really we are lucky up here, where the rain forested valleys are fairly sheltered, unlike further South, where the rolling country allows the wind to blast across unhindered. And we’ve just had a couple of inches of rain, over most of that area. This area there is no way possible to clear the undergrowth, It is just too rugged, and prolific, and normally too wet.
    So maybe some places rain forest has burnt, but not much up here, and we were very dry. Now the place is ridiculously green, it’s stunning how quickly the dry grass has turned green.

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    thingadonta

    Tertiary volcanism stretching from Queensland to Victoria. Canobolas, Mt Warning, Nandewar and numerous others are stratovolcanos, with lava tens of metres thick in many former valleys. Soot fragments of destroyed forests from these eruptions. But no fires. Drier conditions during recent Ice Ages. Still no fires. Birds and feathers had not evolved yet when Gondwana broke up, meaning no birdsong either. More likely pesky raptors eating small mammal like rodents for dinner.

    At the breakup of Gondwana, the landmass here was close to the poles, meaning the wet ‘forests’ were likely not even there-the land being smothered in ice. ‘Permanently frozen’ would be a better description at the time of breakup. Historical records of extensive fires. Indigenous groups regularly practising fire stick farming. But no fires. Lightning strikes. No fires. Global wildfires with the bolide that struck at the end of the Cretaceous. Still no fires.

    None of this means anything to the fairy tale of ‘ permanently wet remnant mountaintop retreats of Gondwana’ . Blah blah blah.

    ‘Permanently stupid NCC’ would be more accurate.

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      Brian

      At the time of the breakup the poles including what became Antarctica and Australia were ice free. In fact they have been for the great majority of the Earth’s existence. Australia separated from Antarctica 30 million years ago and began moving north but global temperatures only fell sufficiently to begin glaciation of the Antarctic 25 million years ago. This is confirmed by the fact that Wollomi pine fossils have been dated back 90 million years but the tree survives in a range of -5 to 45 degrees Celsius. Most of the human race does not seem to understand that the current climate is an anomaly and we are currently hovering not far above glaciation. In addition there were more, hotter fires in the Cretaceous because the atmospheric oxygen content was around 36%. The drop to today’s 20.9% has been caused to a great degree by a cooling environment and of course lately CO2 emissions lock up one oxygen atom for every two carbon.

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    robert rosicka

    OT , but I must have been asleep when the ABC let this slip through the censorship process .
    Apparently a lot of peer reviewed papers are shonky .

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-26/swinburne-university-researcher-has-30-papers-retracted/11641136

    Of course the field of climate science not mentioned .

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    WXcycles

    We keenly await more details on the high resolution sedimentary pollen and missing ash deposit that could show that there were never fires, not one, especially during the Miocene when Antarctica thawed around 24 million years ago and stayed hot for ten million continuous years.

    There are none Jo, sedimentary diagenesis destroys the whole lot during burial, compaction by overburden, plus leaching and mineral cementing processes.

    They have no means to backup such laughable crackpot claims.

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    There is a bright spot in the Southern Hemisphere, where according to Climate Pseudoscience 1/9 of humanity destroys ozone the other 8/9 are incapable of even denting. Brazilian matches typically feature a pine tree icon which if flipped over serves as a ship icon. Enter the DiCaprio brand TITANIC Matches avatar, the Ecological National Socialist instrument of social wokeness choice for demonstrating how evil laissez-faire CO2 makes the jungles disappear. Here is the image:
    http://www.chargeonline.com.br/php/charges/rapha%20Baggas.jpg

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    John of Cloverdale, WA

    I cannot wait for Media Watch’s Paul Barry to expose Ann for stretching the truth, just a little.

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    Drapetomania

    “Friends.Shit is getting well serious.
    I am at my place at the very top of the (switches story now) Jameson valley blue Mts.
    Smoke has saturated everything for days.”

    All true..
    Anyway..who would have thought a forest which has millions of tons of dead wood..which has had fires go through it for hundreds of thousands of years..would ever burn again from lightning strikes. Or arsonists?
    Who could have known that building more houses in the forest could increase the chance of the houses burning down?
    Who would have known that near zero burns up here near houses in winter could cause problems one day..?
    Who could have predicated that building codes based on aesthetics which do not allow true concrete houses impervious to fire could cause a problem.?
    Who would have predicated that forcing home owners to spend more money where fires went through the last fire storm we had here..by making them spend big $$$ on stuff that slows the fires burning the house down by a few minutes..would have been meaningless?
    Thank god the local citizens really care when they leave their fossil fuel powered houses, hop into their fossil fuel powered cars..go to the local oval and march around the oval with their climate change banners..
    Welcome to the decline…

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    PeterW

    I wrote, earlier in this thread, of witnessing first-hand the devastation caused by the 2003 fires.

    One thing I didn’t mention but which relates to this thread, is the level of “panic” in the NPWS when they realised that they may well have lost a large proportion of the world’s Corroboree Frogs.

    Like Fitz’ lake, the peat bogs in which said frogs lived were unusually dry…. a black firebreak around them a few km wide might have let us protect them. Lower fuel levels across the landscape would have given us more opportunity to get the damned fires out before the weather turned lethal.

    We haven’t learned.

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    Paul

    I have been involved in forests for more than 55 years. Including bushfire fighting and vegetation management.
    The rainforest on Bolaro Mountain west of Batemans Bay burnt in 1981.
    Substantial areas of Rainforest in Tasmania burnt in the early 1500s during the 23 year drought.
    Aboriginal burning had tremendous impact on reducing the extent of Dry Rainforest, particular on the western slopes of NSW.
    Look at the work done by Alex Floyd, Roger Underwood and Neil Chenney to name a few experts in their field.
    This is a strategy to take discussions from the real issue – lack of hazard reduction burning (aerially and from the ground) and the lack of maintenance of fire trial network established in the 1960s to 1990s.
    Fine fuel loads in excess of 15 tonnes per hectare was the norm. Now it is 30 tonnes plus per hectare. Frontal attack is impossible under any weather conditions.

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    pat

    2 Dec: NY Mag: In Appeal to Hard Left, Bloomberg Praises Chinese Communism
    By Eric Levitz
    In a recent interview (LINK) with PBS — which recirculated on social media on Sunday — the former New York mayor signaled that he intends to run in the “unrepentant Stalinist” lane of the Democratic primary. Asked by Firing Line’s Margaret Hoover about how the U.S. can get China and India to be good partners in the fight against climate change, Bloomberg argued that the Chinese Communist Party was ecologically friendly, democratically accountable, and invulnerable to the threat of revolution…

    Hoover: And they’re still burning coal.
    Bloomberg: Yes, they are, but they’re now moving plants away from the cities. The Communisty Party wants to stay in power in China, and they listen to the public. When the public says I can’t breathe the air, Xi Jinping is not a dictator; he has to satisfy his constituents or he’s not going to survive.

    Hoover: He’s not a dictator?
    Bloomberg: No, he has a constituency to answer to.

    Hoover: He doesn’t have a vote. He doesn’t have a democracy. He’s not held accountable by voters.
    Bloomberg: If his advisers gave him —
    Hoover: Is the check on him just a revolution?
    Bloomberg: You’re not going to have a revolution. No government survives without the will of the majority of its people…

    But it is unclear why Bloomberg thinks “They’re now moving [coal] plants away from the cities” qualifies as evidence of China’s commitment to combating climate change. If a coal plant spews C02 in the middle of a forest and no one (with political power) is around to complain about it, it still makes Earth warmer…
    In the coming years, it plans to add about as much new coal-power capacity as currently exists in the entire European Union…

    Donald Trump has tried to paint his Democratic opponents as cosseted coastal elites who are in bed with China, exert undue influence over the mainstream media, and want to tell working-class Americans how to live. If Democrats somehow nominate Bloomberg, Trump’s ideal foil will be made of money instead of straw.
    http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/michael-bloomberg-china-pbs-climate-xi-dictator.html

    VIDEO: 30 Nov: Townhall: WATCH: Bloomberg Makes a Really Dumb Case for Taxing the Poor
    by Beth Baumann
    One of the Democrats’ main talking points is always about how they plan to tax the rich so the poor “get their fair share,” so the rich “pay their fair share.”…
    Billionaire Michael Bloomberg, however, took a very different approach to the subject. During the International Monetary Fund’s 2018 Spring Meeting he actually argued that taxing the poor is a good thing.

    “[Some] say, well, ‘taxes are regressive.’ But in this case, yes they are, that’s the good thing about them because the problem is in people that don’t have a lot of money,” Bloomberg said. “And so higher taxes should have a bigger impact on their behavior and how they deal with themselves.”
    “So I listen to people saying, ‘Oh, we don’t want to tax the poor.’ Well, we want the poor to live longer so that they can get an education and enjoy life and that’s why you do want to do exactly what a lot of people say you don’t want to do,” he explained. “The question is: do you want to pander to those people or do you want to get them to live longer?”

    The former New York City mayor used the example of raising taxes on “full sugary drinks” as a means of getting people to drink less of things, like soda and juice…
    https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bethbaumann/2019/11/30/huh-bloomberg-believes-taxing-the-poor-helps-them-live-longer-n2557259

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    robert rosicka

    The ABC are bringing out the big guns in scaremongering with this one .

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-03/climage-change-international-security-risk/11714284

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      Kalm Keith

      How much is it costing the Australian taxpayers, US, to host this visiting Professor?

      If only those funding him could enjoy similar work “placements” for a bit of RnR in say New York or Paris.

      KK

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      Dennis

      Maybe remind him that climate changing from around 130,000 years ago resulting in much drier conditions here, and vegetation that suited the drier conditions and fires, resulted in the land of drought, flooding rains and regular bushfires, natural events and fuel reduction burns by humans?

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    Serp

    Lord spare us! 16 of 135 posts are by Peter Fitzroy making this thread virtually unreadable.

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    KinkyKeith

    I have been asked to detail my objection to the continued presence of the current main intruder.

    Basically I see the unwillingness or inability to assess content of intruder posters as the issue. A marked absence of content or actual debate.

    Obviously the moderators cannot read every post but in a situation where forty regular contributors to the blog give a Red cross for one comment, that’s a statement.

    Another point of view from just above;

    ” Reply,

    Lord spare us! 16 of 135 posts are by Peter Fitzroy making this thread virtually unreadable.”

    Possibly an “unreadable” thread is one where there has been a breakdown of free speech.

    For the intruder this is Mission Accomplished.

    KK

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    Maptram

    Yesterday, at Mangalore Airport the maximum observed temperature was 16.6°C at 2.22 pm. The maximum temperature recorded in the Climate Data Online site was 18.3°C. The difference must be caused by climate change that we keep hearing about.

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    PeterS

    The left are mastering the Orwellian technique of applying memory holes to subvert the truth. It won’t be too long before they start applying the next stage in their endeavour to cull the population. See:
    The Killing Fields & Greenpeace’s Greta Thunberg

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    pat

    AUDIO: 7min3sec: 3 Dec: ABC PM: Australia’s refusal to address climate factors baffles Pacific leaders
    By Linda Mottram on PM
    A top Pacific climate official says the region can’t understand why, in the face of overwhelming science, Australia isn’t doing more to exit coal and rein in carbon emissions.
    Wayne King is the Cook Islands director of climate change – and he says even coal-dependent Poland is doing more to plan a transition to less polluting energy options than Australia.

    Wayne King is in Madrid with other Pacific representatives for two weeks of vital UN climate talks on implementing the 20-15 Paris agreement and securing bigger carbon reductions from the almost 200 signatory states.
    https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/pm/australias-refusal-to-address-climate-factors-baffles-pacific/11762910

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    pat

    only 51 leaders are in attendance, so most are probably from the group of small island states!

    2 Dec: BBC: Climate change: COP25 island nation in ‘fight to death’
    By Matt McGrath
    Powerful swells averaging 5m (16ft) washed across the capital of the Marshall Islands, Majuro, last week.
    But President Hilda Heine said the Pacific nation had been fighting rising tides even before last week’s disaster…

    Spain then stepped in to host the event, which will see 29,000 attendees over the two weeks of talks…
    Ms Heine is not alone in the view that small nations like the Marshall Islands face an imminent existential threat. At the Madrid summit, ambassador Lois Young, from the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which represents low-lying coastal countries and small island nations, launched a rebuke to the world’s big polluters.
    “We are disappointed by inadequate action by developed countries and outraged by the dithering and retreat of one of the most culpable polluters from the Paris Agreement,” she said.
    “In the midst of a climate emergency, retreat and inaction are tantamount to sanctioning ecocide. They reflect profound failure to honour collective global commitment to protect the most vulnerable.
    “With our very existence at stake, COP 25 must demonstrate unprecedented ambition to avert ecocide.”…

    Some 50 world leaders are expected to attend the meeting in the Spanish capital – but US President Donald Trump will not be among them…

    Met Office predicts 2014-23 will be the warmest decade for 150 years CHART…
    https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50614518

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    pat

    2 Dec: VOA: Reuters: Don’t Fiddle While the Planet Burns, UN Chief Warns Climate Summit
    “Do we really want to be remembered as the generation that buried its head in the sand, that fiddled while the planet burned?” Guterres told the opening session of the two-week gathering, held in a hangar-like conference center in the Spanish capital.
    “One is the path of surrender, where we have sleepwalked past the point of no return,” he said. “The other option is the path of hope. A path of resolve, of sustainable solutions.”…

    Mark Montegriffo, a journalism student, had traveled from London to join several dozen protesters with the Extinction Rebellion movement who gathered outside the venue to demand bolder action by the officials cloistered inside.
    “It would take a radical transformation, but it starts on the streets, it starts here,” the 22-year-old said…
    While a fast-growing youth-led climate activist movement is pressuring leaders to act, U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to begin withdrawing from the accord last month has cast a shadow over the latest round of negotiations.

    Nevertheless, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is leading impeachment proceedings against Trump in Washington, appeared at the talks on Monday with assurances that Congress was committed to ambitious climate action.
    “By coming here we want to say to everyone we are still in, the United States is still in,” Pelosi told reporters at the talks, flanked by Democratic Congressional representatives…

    “No one can independently pull out of this challenge,” Sanchez told delegates. “There is no wall high enough to protect any country from this challenge, however powerful they are.”
    https://www.voanews.com/science-health/dont-fiddle-while-planet-burns-un-chief-warns-climate-summit

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    pat

    there’s COP stuff throughout, with a few other non-related segments.
    best bits:

    listen from 26min03 to 35min35sec.
    OS Presenter in Madrid with Matt McGrath. no leaders there. emergency/crisis? questions from BBC listeners.
    ***at 34min caller from South Africa, PhD student in International Relations – is it true climate change a fraud? OS presenter says she and McGrath are both laughing at this question. McGrath responds.

    41min40sec to the end: OS presenter in Madrid with a number of protesters, incl German family, with children, on the road for a year. emergency/crisis.

    AUDIO: 52min59sec: Dec: BBC OS: Live from COP25: Climate summit starts in Madrid
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w172wrvxgxfmpdy

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    pat

    ABC TV Q&A – next week should be Tony Jones’s final program.

    Coming Up: Monday, 9th December | Q&A 2019 Finale
    Malcolm Turnbull, Former Prime Minister of Australia
    Anthony Albanese, Opposition Leader
    Sisonke Msimang, Author
    Patricia Turner, CEO of National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation
    Brian Schmidt, Nobel laureate and Vice-Chancellor, ANU

    2 Dec: Q&A Pacific
    Panellists:
    Enele Sopoaga, Former Prime Minister of Tuvalu
    Alex Hawke, Minister for International Development and the Pacific ETC
    Here are the questions our panel faced this week. You can discuss their answers on the Q&A Facebook Page.
    RISING WATERS (1:45)
    Virginia Pewamu asked: What will happen to the people of small Pacific Island countries once their islands are gone by the effects of sea level rise?…

    CLIMATE & AUSTRALIA (9:03)
    Liz Sims asked: My question is for Alex Hawke – as an expatriate Australian living in the Pacific I witness everyday the impact of climate change on our Pacific neighbours. As one of the leaders in the Pacific why isn’t the Australian government taking stronger action on climate change?

    CLIMATE REFUGEES (19:23)
    Peni Hausia Havea asked: We in the Pacific are facing the prospect of forced relocations of villages and homes and even becoming climate change refugees. New Zealand already has a plan for this – how is the Australian government planning to help people in the Pacific in this situation?…ETC

    TRANSCRIPT
    https://www.abc.net.au/qanda/2019-02-12/11730632

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    robert rosicka

    Ian Plimer has messed with the ABC’s Paul Barry’s (media watch) head .
    Plimer correctly stated there was next to no Carbon pollution because if there was you’d see it because carbon is black .
    Barry hitout with a rant not knowing the difference between Carbon and Carbon Dioxide and when called out last week by Andrew Bolt he went into overdrive again saying a report by ten scientists rubbished Plimer claim .
    Turns out none of the scientists in the report he mentioned actually rebuked Plimers claim as Barry reported on his show .

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      Appeal to authority the antithesis of science methodology. Doesn’t matter who says it, how important he/she/they be, if it doesn’t conform to observation, yr theory, opinion, feeling is wro-o-ong.

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    pat

    2 Dec: ABC Media Watch: The Australian defends Plimer
    Climate scientists slam Ian Plimer for a “biased” & “inaccurate” op-ed on carbon emissions but the paper says he is an ‘important voice in the mix’…
    PAUL BARRY: The website Climate Feedback asked 10 climate scientists in Australia, Britain, the US and Germany to review the Plimer piece, and we reckon they scored it around one out of 10.
    In their words….READ ALL

    And in today’s paper, former editor in chief Chris Mitchell accused the ABC, including Media Watch, of being the “real climate deniers”.
    Yes, really.
    https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/plimer/11758240

    as Paul Barry doesn’t bother to include a link to the Climate Feedback article, here it is. Andrew Bolt on Sky tonite said there’s no debunking of anything Plimer wrote, but I haven’t read it as yet:

    Climate Feedback: Ian Plimer op-ed in The Australian again presents long list of false claims about climate
    Analysis of “Let’s not pollute minds with carbon fears”
    Published in The Australian, by Ian Plimer on 22 Nov. 2019
    https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/ian-plimer-op-ed-in-the-australian-again-presents-long-list-of-false-claims-about-climate/

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    Phill

    Nearly all Australasian flora, except the remnant rainforests, are not only fire tolerant but in many cases require fire to regenerate. This includes the Eucalyptus, Acacia, Banksia and many others. Clearly these evolved in the presence of fire.

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