http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/36434

Marathon international climate talks have ended with major polluters resisting calls to ramp up efforts to keep global warming at bay and negotiators postponing the regulation of global carbon markets until next year.

Key points:

• UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said he was "disappointed" by the meeting's outcome
• The final talks fell short of promising to enhance countries' pledges to cut planet-heating greenhouse gases next year
• There was no final agreement on regulation for international carbon markets, with the EU warning that weak rules sought by some countries would undermine the system

 

Those failures came even after organisers added two more days to the 12 days of scheduled talks in Madrid.

In the end, delegates from almost 200 nations endorsed a declaration to help poor countries that are suffering the effects of climate change, although they did not allocate any new funds to do so.

The final declaration called on the "urgent need" to cut planet-heating greenhouse gases in line with the goals of the landmark 2015 Paris climate change accord.

That fell far short of promising to enhance countries' pledges to cut planet-heating greenhouse gases next year, which developing countries and environmentalists had lobbied the delegates to achieve.

The Paris accord established the common goal of avoiding a temperature increase of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. 

So far, the world is on course for a 3 to 4-degree Celsius rise, with potentially dramatic consequences for many countries, including rising sea levels and fiercer storms.

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-16/un-climate-summit-ends-with-no-de...

 

 

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When the Fox Rupert Murdoch said, “…there are no climate change deniers around (in his papers) I can assure you,” Gus can assure you that there are plenty of climate denialists there, in his media… Last Sunday (15/12/19) Peta Credlin was in full flight once more against all people and politicians demanding "climate action now". 

First she invites us, "alarmists" (nearly 1,000 houses have burned down, please don't be alarmed), to “brush up on history”… 

"Prior to European settlement [invasion for some — but we won’t go there this instant], Aboriginal people would routinely set fire to the bush to keep down undergrowth and to create grazing for kangaroos and other games."

Yes, we have known this for a long time, but one should be aware that not “everywhere” was burnt in such Aboriginal practice. Some enlightened scientists would also argue that the practice changed the status of mixed forests to dry Sclerophyll and also induced, in part, the desertification of the country which was becoming drier nonetheless by the end of the previous ice age (natural climate change). Yet, some areas like the mountains west of Sydney were basically a mix of impenetrable low bush and tall trees except on the long-time used narrow pathways that helped Aborigines cross the mountains. Some forests were NEVER burnt on purpose. The evidence is the remnants of “dinosaurian vegetation” still surviving in some parts of the Blue Mountains. The last Wollemi pines patch would have long gone, had fire taken hold of this area in the last few million years. In Queensland, the rainforests were never burnt, otherwise they would have soon turned to become Sclerophyll bush.

So, Peta tells us with authority:

"It’s not climate change that has caused these bushfires. It’s a severe drought in much of Eastern Australia coupled with the reluctance of green-driven councils and government departments to allow hazard-reduction burns."

The first part of Peta’s argument is complete bullshit: The severe drought in much of Eastern Australia (and the rest of the country, including South Australia, Queensland, Northern Territory and Western Australia) is due in the greatest part to increasing "climate change", induced by global warming (global warming piggybacks on natural variations of climate change).

This was the projection from global warming experts more than 20 years ago. There will be more severe, longer and more frequent droughts in Australia. A warming of one degree extra in the atmosphere can dramatically change the local and broader climate conditions by raising the dew point, creating more severe storms by increasing the temperature differences and by inducing clear water vapour instead of clouds — leading to drought. Extremes become more extremes. As well the warming of the oceans can change weather patterns dramatically such as inducing more severe floods in Africa’s east coast and in the India subcontinent, while leaving Australia super-dry...

The second part of Peta’s argument is contentious. It is used by the right-wing boffins as a self-righteous way to pass the blame onto the Greenies, who of course cannot do anything right, nor allow tiny-weenie coal mining, that will enrich an Indian magnate (while we are told that many Indians are starving) on to be clear-felled lands, because of little birdies. Of course, Peta also defends the lying shifty deceiving Angus Taylor doing some creative accounting at the Madrid UN climate conference — accounting that would make a tax evasion specialist envious. 

One has to guess that many councils in areas of bushfires are led by the Nationals, and exclusively blaming the Greenies for not doing back-burning in winter months is beyond the pale. One has also to remember that some of the recent winter months were drier and warmer than usual, and that some back-burning ops went wild… Most likely, some of these “back-burned forests", also burned in the present bush/forest fires.

So, in conclusion, Peta thrusts out the old tired views that Australia is at the source of scarcely one percent of the world’s emissions (of CO2), demands that Australia’s invests in [the costly and let’s say DIRTY] nuclear energy (the only emission-free source of 27/7 power, she comments — which is a BIG furphy, as like all sources of energy, the component of complicated construction, say cement and stainless steel, and supply, say uranium, demands MAJOR CO2 producing emissions) discounting the nuclear waste which is a MAJOR  problem around the world. 

Peta finishes in a floury:

And second, it does not matter how much we do, it will never be enough for the climate change true believers…

Too right. 

We had a Carbon Price during the Labor years which effectively reduced the emissions of CO2 by nearly half of what they were, — and gave incentives for industries to turn to renewables — without impacting on the economy, but Peta's little Turd-protégé lying Abbott was hell-bent of killing off these efficient projects. 

Now we have the deceitful brigades led by Scumdingbuggeryouson and Rhodesscholarshittus Angus Taylor who are bullshitting with flying pig slogans and coal lumps in parliament still doing NOTHING — apart that Scumcrapsonic, in a luminous hypocritical flashlight, saw the wind changed and apologised for being on holidays while Australia was (and is) burning. 

So go Zali, Zali Steggall, go [Credlin "rightly" blames you for her Turdy’s discomfiture], fight la clever-moron Credlin with all the kindness of your teeth and nails on "climate change". 


Should you need more ammos, please read: 
http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33287


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And now, to that other Murdoch denialist, Peter Gleeson, who is more of a blamist/refusalist as he does not want to see, nor understand, the “present” scientific evidence. Compared to quantum mechanics, global warming sciences are simple on the level of  t = a + b - c...

So, cleverly, Gleeson introduces the "warmest year" in Australia — 1828… Here we need to investigate with Jo Nova (see: Jo Nova — fiction writer...), the specialist denialist that we already have mentioned on this site…:

Charles Sturt’s time: so hot that thermometers exploded. Was Australia’s hottest day in 1828? 53.9C!

Australia’s hottest day? Not 2010, but 1828 at a blistering 53.9 °C

Back before man-made climate change was frying Australia, when CO2 was around 300ppm, the continent savoured an ideal preindustrial climate, right? (This is the kind of climate we are spending $10bn per annum to get back too?). Note Nova is a denialist true and true, who hated Labor's "carbon price"...

We are told today’s climate has more records and more extremes than times gone by, but the few records we have from the early 1800’s are eye-popping.  Things were not just hotter, but so wildly hot it burst thermometers.  The earliest temperature records we have show that Australia was a land of shocking heatwaves and droughts, except for when it was bitterly cold or raging in flood.

In other words, nothing has changed, except possibly things might not be quite so hot now.
(Gus: in other words, things have changed and become more extreme due to global warming)


Silliggy (Lance Pidgeon) has been researching records from early explorers and from newspapers. What he has uncovered is fascinating. — Jo

Lance Pidgeon writes:


“EXTENSIVE FLOOD”, “AWFUL BUSH FIRES”, “PROLONGED DROUGHT“ AND “CHANGES OF CLIMATE“.


These Australian headlines from the 1800′s above describe extremes the early colonists faced. At the time the European explorers who were instructed and equipped to map the country and record the climate were frustrated by the only constant …change.

The heat was extreme – often hotter than 127F!


Like the other explorers Sturt was asked to record everything and in detail:


“You are likewise to note the nature of the climate, as to heat, cold, moisture, winds, rains, &c, and to keep a register of the temperature from Fahrenheit’s thermometer, as observed at two or three periods of each day.”


[From "Letter of Instructions" for his earlier expeditions from "His Excellency Lieutenant General Ralph Darling" Here]

The equipment provided was not always up to the task. On the equipment provided for one of his later expeditions he remarks:


“The thermometers sent from England, graduated to 127 degrees only, were too low for the temperature into which I went, and consequently useless at times, when the temperature in the shade exceeded that number of degrees” Charles Sturt. [From here].


He was able to acquire and take [beer] brewers thermometers. Which were used to measure the “in the sun” temperature and the ‘in the shade” temperatures that were too high for the precision ones. They were also used to estimate height above sea level from the boiling point of water.

Sturt offered his own analysis of some of the typical daily conditions from records in the colony at the time and his own observations.


The periodicity of the weather cycles did not escape his attention.

“The thermometer ranges during the summer months, that is, from September to March, from 36 degrees to 106 degrees of Fahrenheit, but the mean of the temperature during the above period is 70 degrees.”

http://joannenova.com.au/2012/07/charles-sturts-time-so-hot-that-thermom...

——————————————

Yes, Jo… And please, consider that the day before yesterday (19/12/19) a pub, in Whoopwhoopville as shown on Channel Seven, recorded 53.7 degrees Celsius in the shade, while the beer in the fridge was a cool 2.5! 

So there are "records" and official records. I have been to places in Australia where the temperature exceeded way passed 50 degrees Celsius on the gauge (54+) in the shade. Staying in the sun would have led to a quick death. Not a single green plant around. Desert. Salt. These places are killers. Lucky we had means to “escape” the destroying heat… Planning is essential. If your engine conks out, you’re dead. If you run out of fuel, you’re dead. If you run out of water, you’re dead. 

But as I say, there are "records" and official records. There is natural climate change that can induce such heat on special occasions and there is global warming that increases heat as a trend. 

Question: was Antarctica or the Arctic melting in 1828? We had no idea then... So, what had been the weather in Europe? Say, going back to 1816, a year known as (another — see 1258) Year Without a Summer, leading to severe climate effect on crops. This was the worst famine of 19th-century mainland Europe. In his painting Chichester Canal, 1828, Turner used brilliant colours possibly inspired by then atmospheric ash from the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia. 

Tambora's 1815 eruption was the largest in recorded human history. The explosion was heard on Sumatra island, more than 2,000 kilometres away. Heavy volcanic ash rains were observed as far away as Borneo, Sulawesi, Java and Maluku islands, and Tambora shrank from about 4,300 metres to 2,850 metres. The death toll was at least 71,000 people. The eruption caused global climate anomalies for the following years. Ah ah, we’re getting somewhere. 

These anomalies included massive heat bubbles and freezing conditions floating around the globe.

In America, winter 1828 was warm, while spring froze and killed crops. So there. Tambora’s impact was still being felt… As well, the method of recording temperatures by explorers were not as specifically calibrated as to be “official” records. In order for temperatures to be officially recorded, they need to be measured inside a special meteorological box, which the explorers did not have — thus their "records" cannot be "records".


I have a thermometer that I placed in my backyard to record 49 degrees Celsius in the shade, when the official heat for the area was 46.5. Mine isn’t a record, but the 46.5 is, at Mascot, Sydney. 
Global warming is real and anthropogenic.




Read from top. Oh and please note that despite Aboriginal people doing some "back-burning", there were “AWFUL BUSH FIRES” then...

In the late 19th century, Australia was struck by a heatwave so intense that 435 people were killed and hundreds more were sent fleeing for their lives.

Key points:

• Bourke, NSW, is recorded as hitting 48.9C three times in 1896, with a maximum temperature of 38C for over three weeks straight
• But climate scientists say the methods used to record temperature in 1896 were flawed and heatwaves today are hotter
• They say the high death toll in 1896 was due to the community being more vulnerable to heat events

 

The 1895-1896 heatwave during the Federation Drought holds the record as Australia's deadliest heatwave, closely followed by 2009, which recorded at least 432 heat-related deaths.

The town of Bourke lost at least 40 people — 1.6 per cent of its population — during the 1896 event, while Sydney authorities reported hospitals at breaking point and pedestrians collapsing in the streets.

Newspaper reports describe temperatures in Bourke reaching 48.9 degrees Celsius on three occasions, and the maximum temperature remaining above 38C for 24 consecutive days.

As Australia endures a series of intense and record-breaking heatwaves this summer, the 1896 event is sometimes viewed as evidence that Australia has always experienced extraordinary heat, and that the effects of climate change are overblown.

But climate scientists say that is an oversimplification, and the heatwaves we experience today are significantly hotter than those in the past.

.....

The temperature recording methods used in 1896 were flawed

Methods of recording temperature were not standardised until the early 1900s, leading to inflated temperature readings before then.

The global standard for temperature measurement includes the use of a Stevenson screen, which is a white louvred box allowing ventilation and ensuring thermometers inside are never exposed to the sun. 

A Stevenson screen was not installed in Bourke until August 1908, meaning temperature readings from before that could be inflated by as much as 2C.

University of Melbourne climate researcher Linden Ashcroft said thermometers in Bourke were likely placed in sub-standard conditions in 1896.

"Some thermometers were under verandahs, or they were against stone buildings," she said.

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-21/1896-heatwave-killed-435-climate-...

 

Read from top.

 

 

Read:

1828...

no deniers, but plenty of denialists there...

 

 

There are 117 bushfires blazing at the moment in NSW alone. 

More than 600 homes have been lost. Countless animals have suffered horrible deaths. No significant rain is forecast for months. Towns west of the Divide are trucking in water to survive. Sydney itself is on water restrictions and the bushfire smoke is more hazardous than the air in New Delhi or Beijing.

As many as 30,000 wildfires are now burning on all continents except Antarctica. Regions as diverse and distant as Siberia, Amazonia, Indonesia and California are aflame.

Geologists have renamed the present era as the “Pyrocene”, the age of fire, taking over from the Holocene epoch which dated from the last Ice Age. Fires are increasing in prevalence and intensity everywhere, adding to the cascading list of interlocking environmental disasters.

People are clamouring for the Australian Government to take action. At first, the Prime Minister tried to avoid the whole issue, afraid of the obvious connection to the dreaded climate change. He finally grudgingly had to admit that it might be a factor. As for the severity of the bush fires, Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s response was to reminisce on his benign bush fire experiences as a boy and advise everybody to calm down.

At COP25, the annual United Nations climate change summit, Australia ignored the fires raging at home and instead argued to keep its sleight-of-hand credit offsets scheme in order to avoid meaningful action on climate change. Australia then joined with the U.S., Brazil and Saudi Arabia to scuttle attempts at establishing "carbon markets".

Why is Australia in league with these climate change pariahs anyway?  A hint might be a quick glance at who controls the media in both Australia and the U.S

: Rupert Murdoch.  In the U.S., his Fox News network has been relentlessly hammering away at the credibility of the wider media ecosystem for 20 years with a barrage of fake news. Fox News claims to be the “most watched basic cable network in America.” Since the election of Donald Trump, Murdoch can directly influence the President himself.

Murdoch has failed to gain an equivalent TV presence in Australia but has many other media outlets, including the Sydney Telegraph. 

Telegraph columnist Peta Credlin (who also appears on Murdoch’s Sky News) has been blasting those concerned about the present fire disaster. The headline in the December 15 issue read: “Alarmists need to brush up on history.” 

She wrote that:

All the so called leaders and self-appointed climate guardians blaming the current bushfires on climate change know little of our history-and even less about how indigenous people managed the land for tens of thousands of years. It’s not climate change that that has caused these bushfires.  It’s a severe drought in much of eastern Australia coupled with the reluctance of green-driven councils and government departments to allow hazard reduction burns.

It is interesting that Morrison also used the "don’t worry, it happened before” line. 

She goes on to say: 

It would be a lot easier to take the ‘climate change causes fires’ alarmists seriously if they were actually doing something themselves; or were demanding that we move to nuclear energy (the only emissions free source of 24/7 power).

It may be only a coincidence that many in the Coalition are actively pushing nuclear power like Ms Credlin advocates.

Could she something more than just an enthusiastic member of the Canberra echo chamber and perhaps channelling Murdoch to successive Liberal Governments?

Ms Credlin is also annoyed that the Climate Action Network’s 2020 Climate Change Performance Index rated Australia 'the world’s worst-performing country on climate change policy'.

'This can’t be based on what we are actually doing,'  she complained, sounding like a Morrison Government press release.

 

Read more:

https://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/rupert-murdoc...

 

 

Rea from top.

Never put a time limit on your doomsday predictions.

This rookie error has been the undoing of charlatans, cultists and false prophets through the ages, from Martin of Tours, who predicted that the world would end by 400, to Harold Camping, who claimed it would happen on Sept. 6, 1994.

The latest poor saps to join the oops club are the authorities in charge of Montana’s Glacier National Park. For years they’ve been warning on their visitor signs that their main attraction, the glaciers, would be “gone by 2020.” Instead, it’s those misleading signs that have had to go, because 2020 has now arrived and those pesky glaciers, all 29 of them, remain stubbornly unmelted by climate change.

 

Read more:

https://nypost.com/2020/01/10/the-telling-tale-of-glacier-national-parks...

 

The New York Post, one of Rupert's babies, is chuffed like a 15 year old girl on her first outing and discovers that boys like what they see... Until she gets raped... Global warming is like that. It's not the story of this glacier or another. I agree. Don't advertise your doomsday predictions. I did notherless predict sumpthin': 2032. This is when major climate shifts will happen when enough ice from the arctic and from the antarctic have melted, so that "global warming" isn't interfered any more by the "defrosting" in the kitchen — despite the defrosting going on by spilling water on the floor. According to Gus' calculations, there will be a sudden spike of temperature rise, leading to some ugly upset climatic conditions WORLDWIDE.

And between me, you and a snake in a drainpipe, whether this happens in 2027 or in 3042 is not an issue...

It's not a problem for me... I'll be either dead or in a old people's home for memory losses...

 

Read from top.

In an editorial on Saturday, the Weekend Australian defended the News Corp paper’s climate coverage in response to criticism that it had underplayed the bushfire crisis and chosen to highlight concerns about arsonists and hazard reduction rather than explain the climate change drivers of the horrendous season.

The editorial said: “In our coverage, the Australian’s journalists report facts about how to tackle bushfires and about how to deal with the impact of climate change. Second, we host debates reflecting the political division that exists in Australia about how to address climate change without destroying our economy.”

It said its coverage of the bushfires had been “wilfully and ineptly misrepresented by the New York Times and Guardian Australia as climate denial”.

The Australian newspaper’s editorials, like its news stories, accept the basic premise that humans cause climate change and that action should be taken. The newspaper also covers diligently the news around the climate policy debate and the implications of climate change for business.

But its defence of its bushfire coverage ignores its prolonged willingness to expose readers to a regular diet of misrepresentations on climate change science on its opinion page, as well as outright denial of the breadth of science linking fossil fuel burning to dangerous climate change.

In November, as the bushfire crisis was unfolding, News Corp’s executive chairman, Rupert Murdoch, told his annual general meeting: “There are no climate change deniers around, I can assure you.”

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jan/15/the-australian-says-it-acc...

 

 

Thank you, thank you, The Australian and Mr Rupert Murdoch. But the troops at the Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Telegraph have not got the memo yet... Please tell Peta, Piers and Miranda to pay attention. Sure climate change policies should not destroy the Australian economy, but if you do not have policies that reduce CO2 emissions to zero, global warming will destroy the Australian economy anyway — as we've just seen about $6 (or more) billions of "the Australian economy" go up in smoke. The Australian economy just need some smart retooling. Are we so lazy that we can only dig holes in the ground and sell the stuff?

 

So please pass on the info about global warming. I dare you to print in the corner of your papers, Dear Rupert, this little banner. I know you wont.

 

Billionaire George Soros has unveiled a new ambitious project: creating a global university network that would save the world from climate change and rescue democracy itself from ‘dictators’ like US President Donald Trump.

The 89-year-old grey eminence of liberal globalism announced “the most important project of my life” on Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Describing the current state of the world as dire, with the strongest powers “in the hands of would-be or actual dictators,” Soros said he would put forth $1 billion towards the creation of the Open Society University Network, revolving around his own Central European University (CEU).

 

Soros revealed that the CEU has already partnered up with Bard College in the US and a network of European social science schools called CIVICA, which includes the London School of Economics and the Paris Institute of Political Studies, also known as Sciences Po. He is seeking to expand the network into something “truly global” in the coming years.

The announcement came as part of Soros’ meandering speech to the gathering of global elites, which painted a dire picture of the world in the hands of “would-be or actual dictators” – he singled out Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping and India’s Narendra Modi by name – and paragons of “open society” such as the European Union being defeated by the UK decision to vote in a pro-Brexit government.

Soros described Trump as a “con man and the ultimate narcissist who wants the world to revolve around him,” accusing the US leader of wanting to “impose his alternative reality not only on his followers but on reality itself.” Just moments later, however, he praised Trump’s hard-line China policy and lamented that it does not go far enough.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/479034-george-soros-education-dictators/

 

May Soros be praised for his turnips...

 

Read from top...

We know that News Corp is responsible for much of the climate denial published in the Australian media – no matter what Rupert Murdoch claimed– but now we have some hard data to put it in context.

First the good news. Reporting on bushfires is now far more likely to mention climate change, a study by Monash University has found.

The report from the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub, found that 49% of the media coverage of the recent bushfires mentioned climate change, compared with 5% of reports about Black Saturday in 2009.

The researchers analysed 1% of articles between 1 September and 31 January and found only 5% of overall coverage featured climate denialism, down from 21% in 2009.

But it was News Corp publications that represented 59% of all the denialist discussion of climate change. The former Fairfax papers, now owned by Nine Entertainment, made up 19% of denialism.

The coverage of protests by school children and Extinction Rebellion showed that, of the 2% of articles that criticised the actions of the protesters, a whopping 84% appeared in News Corp.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/mar/06/news-corp-finds-someone-to...

 

Read from top.

See also: blaming others for their crime... 

Campbell Reid came armed with facts and figures to defend the Murdoch empire from accusations of climate denialism.

News Corp’s corporate affairs executive was part of a Judith Neilson Institute editors panel on constructive journalism when he was asked by moderator Fran Kelly if the Australian had overplayed the role of arson in the bushfires.

In early January the Oz published a story, “Firebugs fuelling crisis as arson arrest toll hits 183”, which was seized on by the London Sun and Fox News and tweeted in America by Donald Trump Jr as the real cause of the fires.

The former editor of the Daily Telegraph and the Australian said News Corp had published 3,500 stories about the bushfires, had assigned 150 reporters, and only 3% of the coverage was about arson.

“We never overplayed the arson story,” Reid said. “In the middle of the bushfire crisis, armed with some information, 3% is hardly a crime against journalism.”

Asked about James Murdoch’s criticism of his father’s outlets for climate denialism, Reid said the Murdoch heir was misinformed.

“James, like everybody else, was commenting on what other people were saying about what we were saying, not what he was consuming for himself,” Reid said.

“All of the people who people say are News Corporation’s climate deniers were on holiday during that period, so what we were doing during that period was covering the fires.” 

The Australian did run comprehensive reporting of the bushfire crisis, but it also ran things like this editorial, which denounced “loony claims [Scott Morrison’s] government has abandoned national leadership during the bushfire crisis and that ‘Australia is burning’, climate change is causing it and we can fix it by slashing our emissions now.”

“We don’t live in a media democracy but in a social media democracy,” Reid said.

“People don’t comment on what we say, they comment on what other people say we said; and so other people said we overplayed the arson story. And people then commented on the fact that we overplayed the arson story.”

Holt St ‘delinquent’

One of Murdoch’s outlets did a spectacular job of presenting the facts about climate change and fire this week.

In partnership with the Judith Neilson Institute and the Australian Science Media Centre, the media group’s most popular website, news.com.au, launched a comprehensive series called Time is Now, which explored the impacts of climate change in Australia.

The Time is Now project was not entirely surprising for those who are familiar with news.com.au, which, until recently when it was knocked off by the ABC, was the most read news site in the country, according to Neilsen data. The online-only masthead has a vastly younger audience than the Australian, and is more likely to publish progressive views. It also has a good record on climate reporting, and on Friday the editor, Lisa Muxworthy, announced she had hired experienced political reporter Samantha Maiden as national political editor, replacing Malcolm Farr.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/mar/13/we-didnt-start-the-fire-ne...

Should we find the front pages of The Australian?...

 

Read from top

Nice twist: "All of the people who people say are News Corporation’s climate deniers were on holiday during that period..."

Disastrous summer backburns devastated a village south of Sydney, scorched hundreds of square kilometres of the Blue Mountains and destroyed at least 50 homes during the last fire season, according to internal investigations by the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS).

Key points:

• Backburns around Balmoral and Bilpin in NSW are being scrutinised by the RFS
• Increasingly extreme fire seasons in Australia mean backburning is becoming riskier
• RFS Commissioner Rob Rogers says backburning is one of the few options available to control large fires

The RFS has released details of two separate internal investigations to the ABC which blame mapping errors, communications breakdowns and unforeseen weather conditions for the failed backburns in the Blue Mountains and Southern Highlands.

The backburns led to fires that destroyed much of the village of Balmoral, south of Sydney, and destroyed more than 20 properties in the Blue Mountains towns of Bilpin and Mount Wilson.

The ABC has learned the NSW bushfire inquiry is examining whether backburning should be limited as a result of the cases — because of the higher risk of disaster during Australia's increasingly extreme fire seasons.

The inquiry is posing a dilemma for new RFS Commissioner Rob Rogers, who describes backburns as a risky but essential strategy.

"For this last fire season, there were more than 1,000 backburns put in. Of that, 4 per cent got out of containment," he said.

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-10/backburns-at-balmoral-and-bilpin-caused-damage/12334842

 

 

Read from top.

Hazard reduction blunder claims half of North Head

Aerial photographs show for the first time the extent of damage to North Head bushland by a hazard reduction burn that jumped containment lines on the weekend.

Around 50 firefighters battled the blaze in Sydney Harbour National Park on Saturday after it got away from them when the weather changed.

Manly local Andrew Kelly took the photos on Saturday afternoon using a drone, showing how close the fire came to buildings.

Mr Kelly estimated 50 per cent of North Head's bushland had been destroyed.

 

 

 

 

Read more:   https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-20/sydney-news-north-head-fire-photographs-show-extent-of-damage/12783618

 

Note: The NSW government spent 40 years to regenerate the bush on North Head and eliminate vermins and weeds... PFFUITTTT... Read from top.

 

The crew of an Australian Army helicopter that sparked a massive bushfire in Namadgi National Park did not pass on crucial details about the fire's location to authorities for 45 minutes, costing emergency services precious time as they raced to extinguish the fire before it ravaged the ACT's south.

 

Key points:

• The fire was sparked by the tail light on a Defence helicopter and fanned by its propeller
• The damaged aircraft flew 40 kilometres back to Canberra Airport without telling authorities where the fire started
• Radio logs show fire crews scrambled to locate the fire, lacking the crucial information from Defence

 

The fire was started by the helicopter's landing light in late January, as the Army crew set down for a break in the remote Orroral Valley.

When the blaze threatened to consume the aircraft, the crew took to the skies — only to watch as their helicopter downdraught fanned the flames into what would become a formidable firestorm.

But internal Defence reports on the incident, released to the ABC under Freedom of Information laws, show the helicopter's pilot did not radio the coordinates in the time it took to return to Fairbairn air base at Canberra Airport.

That lack of information sowed confusion as ACT fire crews were dispatched to different parts of the park in a desperate scramble to locate and extinguish the blaze.

In the coming hours and days, the Orroral Valley fire grew into an inferno that ripped through the ACT national park — and then across the border in NSW, where it destroyed homes.

 

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-30/defence-caused-orroral-valley-fire-didnt-tell-authorities-where/12933306

 

Apooopologies to the Murdoch media for not believing their reports that the bushfires were arson or lit by person(s) unknown. Most of the fires were the result of lighting strikes mind you, but this one was a sad case of army crap. They said it was started by one of the chopper lights, but would it be possible they stopped for a smoke? And a cigarette butt... Who knows... We've got to believe it was the chopper 1 million lumen landing light or the 100 lumen tail light. Yes.