Need for Peoples' Commission into bushfires & climate
Posted: Sun Aug 09, 2009 12:27 am
Need for a Peoples' Commission into Bushfires using Climate change activism
I am Posting this to NSF and other places in hope of raising some interest.
This post draws attention to the fact that the Climate Change movement has marshalled a lot of people who are potential activists but they seem to be chasing their tails on global abstractions and ignoring urgent tasks on the ground - notably to do with preventing deforestation, land-clearing, rehabilitating soil and soil cover - and preventing drying of forests by rehydrating them and protecting them and thus Victoria (and other parts of Australia) from increasing bushfire danger and the prospect of turning into lifeless ovens.
As some of you know by now, I edit and write at candobetter.org. Today I wrote that candobetter needs a writer who is actually attending and reporting on the Royal Commission into the Bushfires.
At the time of the bushfires in Victoria, a lot of people interacting on candobetter felt that the Royal Commission would be yet another media manipulation and we felt that perhaps the best way to deal with the problem would be to hold a Peoples' Commission outside (and film it) and discuss what really happened, notably which parts burned the most badly (i.e. the most cleared and managed forests) and how more burning off (loudly called for) ultimately meant total destruction.
The need to do this has not gone away.
Victoria already has climate change refugees huddled in tents and caravans in the harsh winter cold. You would think that Anti-Climate Change activists would seize on the danger of Victoria becoming an even worse furnace this summer and embrace the concept of rehydrating forests and using aircraft to immediately arrest fires at their ignition spots.
Is there anyone out there in NSF or anywhere who is tuned into this problem and active in the Anti-Climate Change movement?
Background to my above comments is cut and pasted below:
Commission - a token minimum to quell reactive public dissent
On August 8th, 2009 Tigerquoll says:
Brumby's Royal Commission is a political bandaid and distraction to pacify an understandably angry Victorian public, some of whom have lost everything from the fires. But it is hollow. It will seek and assign blame. It will suggest one size fits all solutions. Its terms of reference fail to require a scientific root causse analysis. It will not recommend funding to get what needs to prevent a reoccurrence. It will not commission a permanent investigative unit of bush arson criminologists.
Brumby will use it as a political tool that like the enquiries before it in Victorian and interstate will have done the token minimum to quell reactive public dissent.
There will be no investment into 'state-of-the-art' bushfire detection, no military speed respond and suppression with the best available airborne and ground resources.
Don't be silly. This would cost too much! It is all about maintaining the convenient status quo with a bit of rebranding, spin and throwing money at window dressing
Watch! As soon as the Commission's final report is released, Brumby’s government will pacify the crowd and announce this window dressing, then within days his governent's media spin machine will shift the public's attention on to some 'critically important' issue deliberately to assign the bushfire chapter to history. Perhaps Brumby could use his obscenely wasteful desal extravagance. he does have to think positively about the next election. Perhaps he may declare war on New South Wales. War has always served to distract the populous from the important issues of the day - look at George W!
In the end, the archaic and grossly under-resourced volunteer-dependent fire fighting agencies that we entrust to put out bushfires will push the propaganda that if the more the bush is burned it won't burn.
So thin the entire bush! Destroy all the thick undergrowth because it is dangerous 'fuel'. It is evil! It will mean that when a wildfire comes through there will be less to burn and so more manageable. Bugger flora not fire resistant, bugger the ground dwelling wildlife that depends on thick undergrowth for food, habitat, refuge and escape from feral predators.
But what do the firefighters know about native zoology? Squat!
Try finding a forest rich ecosystem exclude by fire! It will be home to species that are rare and threatened. Forest microclimates (relative hydration, coolness, age and thickness of trees and lack of flammability) are critical for certain species). Translate this into human terms. Try getting the average urban family to live in an exposed caravan under strong sunlight, poor insulation, in a windy area and measure their health and life expectancy and of their new born. If only government departments charged the conservation duties did this for wildlife?
The diversion of bushfire management attention and funding to prescribe burning is defeatist. It translates as - 'we the bushfire authorities confess we are not equipped to detect, respond and suppress ignitions to guarantee the safety of people, property or ecology from bushfires so the only option we have to offer improved safety is to destroy the bush - eliminate the 'fuel'.
I agree with you that if the Royal Commission is seeking the root cause of the problem, then it ought to identify which areas indeed were prescribed burnt and assess whether this provided any benefit over those areas that were not.
One problem is the dominant media attention being given to Dr Kevin Tolhurst who is leading a self-perpetuating lobbying effort for massive broad scale prescribed burning as the only panacea for mitigating bushfire risk. He is probably the most dangerous threatening process facing Victorian wildlife and may be the catalyst for accelerated local extinctions of our disappearing wildlife.
flammability important as well as cause of ignition because ...
On August 8th, 2009 Sheila Newman says:
Hi Tigerquoll,
I don't doubt the validity of your approach. The ignition is very important yes.
BUT so is the fact that the thick old growth forest hardly burned compared to the managed and thinned forests.
This forest thickness and age is important because the people who want to do 'controlled burns' on more and more land are basing their approach on the opposite and erroneous assumption that managed forest burned less than natural forest including old growth.
Where I came in on the whole fire thing was to report on information that came to me from people in the Department of Sustainability and the CFA who could not publish it because of fear of losing their jobs and incurring very harsh treatment. So I wrote what they told me in these articles here:
https://candobetter.org/node/1066
and
https://candobetter.org/node/1069
plus a couple of others of my own.
I would also suggest that the thickness and naturalness of forests is important in their relative hydration, coolness, age and thickness of trees and lack of flammability.
I repeat that I don't doubt the validity of your insistence on recognition of causes of ignition.
But when you write, "Prior lead up prescribed burning may have been effective in low gauge localised bushfires, but given the extremes and the wide distances covered by multiple fires, it is likely that any amount of prescribed burning would have made no difference to the devastation. This should be up to the Commission to assess and conclude."
Most land burned was interfered with - thinned, managed, and criss-crossed with fire tracks, in my understanding - and it burned faster, much, much faster than the old growth forest. So that quantity of area had to impact in the equation. I don't believe that, even in those extreme temperatures, if the whole place had been thick old growth, it would have burned at that rate - going by what I had reported to me and which formed the substance of my articles.
You also say, "This should be up to the Commission to assess and conclude." Yes. I have so little confidence in the Victorian Government to take truth rather than favorite-expert opinion into account. It's depressing. I hope someone out there is following the Enquiry and can tell us.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
I am Posting this to NSF and other places in hope of raising some interest.
This post draws attention to the fact that the Climate Change movement has marshalled a lot of people who are potential activists but they seem to be chasing their tails on global abstractions and ignoring urgent tasks on the ground - notably to do with preventing deforestation, land-clearing, rehabilitating soil and soil cover - and preventing drying of forests by rehydrating them and protecting them and thus Victoria (and other parts of Australia) from increasing bushfire danger and the prospect of turning into lifeless ovens.
As some of you know by now, I edit and write at candobetter.org. Today I wrote that candobetter needs a writer who is actually attending and reporting on the Royal Commission into the Bushfires.
At the time of the bushfires in Victoria, a lot of people interacting on candobetter felt that the Royal Commission would be yet another media manipulation and we felt that perhaps the best way to deal with the problem would be to hold a Peoples' Commission outside (and film it) and discuss what really happened, notably which parts burned the most badly (i.e. the most cleared and managed forests) and how more burning off (loudly called for) ultimately meant total destruction.
The need to do this has not gone away.
Victoria already has climate change refugees huddled in tents and caravans in the harsh winter cold. You would think that Anti-Climate Change activists would seize on the danger of Victoria becoming an even worse furnace this summer and embrace the concept of rehydrating forests and using aircraft to immediately arrest fires at their ignition spots.
Is there anyone out there in NSF or anywhere who is tuned into this problem and active in the Anti-Climate Change movement?
Background to my above comments is cut and pasted below:
Commission - a token minimum to quell reactive public dissent
On August 8th, 2009 Tigerquoll says:
Brumby's Royal Commission is a political bandaid and distraction to pacify an understandably angry Victorian public, some of whom have lost everything from the fires. But it is hollow. It will seek and assign blame. It will suggest one size fits all solutions. Its terms of reference fail to require a scientific root causse analysis. It will not recommend funding to get what needs to prevent a reoccurrence. It will not commission a permanent investigative unit of bush arson criminologists.
Brumby will use it as a political tool that like the enquiries before it in Victorian and interstate will have done the token minimum to quell reactive public dissent.
There will be no investment into 'state-of-the-art' bushfire detection, no military speed respond and suppression with the best available airborne and ground resources.
Don't be silly. This would cost too much! It is all about maintaining the convenient status quo with a bit of rebranding, spin and throwing money at window dressing
Watch! As soon as the Commission's final report is released, Brumby’s government will pacify the crowd and announce this window dressing, then within days his governent's media spin machine will shift the public's attention on to some 'critically important' issue deliberately to assign the bushfire chapter to history. Perhaps Brumby could use his obscenely wasteful desal extravagance. he does have to think positively about the next election. Perhaps he may declare war on New South Wales. War has always served to distract the populous from the important issues of the day - look at George W!
In the end, the archaic and grossly under-resourced volunteer-dependent fire fighting agencies that we entrust to put out bushfires will push the propaganda that if the more the bush is burned it won't burn.
So thin the entire bush! Destroy all the thick undergrowth because it is dangerous 'fuel'. It is evil! It will mean that when a wildfire comes through there will be less to burn and so more manageable. Bugger flora not fire resistant, bugger the ground dwelling wildlife that depends on thick undergrowth for food, habitat, refuge and escape from feral predators.
But what do the firefighters know about native zoology? Squat!
Try finding a forest rich ecosystem exclude by fire! It will be home to species that are rare and threatened. Forest microclimates (relative hydration, coolness, age and thickness of trees and lack of flammability) are critical for certain species). Translate this into human terms. Try getting the average urban family to live in an exposed caravan under strong sunlight, poor insulation, in a windy area and measure their health and life expectancy and of their new born. If only government departments charged the conservation duties did this for wildlife?
The diversion of bushfire management attention and funding to prescribe burning is defeatist. It translates as - 'we the bushfire authorities confess we are not equipped to detect, respond and suppress ignitions to guarantee the safety of people, property or ecology from bushfires so the only option we have to offer improved safety is to destroy the bush - eliminate the 'fuel'.
I agree with you that if the Royal Commission is seeking the root cause of the problem, then it ought to identify which areas indeed were prescribed burnt and assess whether this provided any benefit over those areas that were not.
One problem is the dominant media attention being given to Dr Kevin Tolhurst who is leading a self-perpetuating lobbying effort for massive broad scale prescribed burning as the only panacea for mitigating bushfire risk. He is probably the most dangerous threatening process facing Victorian wildlife and may be the catalyst for accelerated local extinctions of our disappearing wildlife.
flammability important as well as cause of ignition because ...
On August 8th, 2009 Sheila Newman says:
Hi Tigerquoll,
I don't doubt the validity of your approach. The ignition is very important yes.
BUT so is the fact that the thick old growth forest hardly burned compared to the managed and thinned forests.
This forest thickness and age is important because the people who want to do 'controlled burns' on more and more land are basing their approach on the opposite and erroneous assumption that managed forest burned less than natural forest including old growth.
Where I came in on the whole fire thing was to report on information that came to me from people in the Department of Sustainability and the CFA who could not publish it because of fear of losing their jobs and incurring very harsh treatment. So I wrote what they told me in these articles here:
https://candobetter.org/node/1066
and
https://candobetter.org/node/1069
plus a couple of others of my own.
I would also suggest that the thickness and naturalness of forests is important in their relative hydration, coolness, age and thickness of trees and lack of flammability.
I repeat that I don't doubt the validity of your insistence on recognition of causes of ignition.
But when you write, "Prior lead up prescribed burning may have been effective in low gauge localised bushfires, but given the extremes and the wide distances covered by multiple fires, it is likely that any amount of prescribed burning would have made no difference to the devastation. This should be up to the Commission to assess and conclude."
Most land burned was interfered with - thinned, managed, and criss-crossed with fire tracks, in my understanding - and it burned faster, much, much faster than the old growth forest. So that quantity of area had to impact in the equation. I don't believe that, even in those extreme temperatures, if the whole place had been thick old growth, it would have burned at that rate - going by what I had reported to me and which formed the substance of my articles.
You also say, "This should be up to the Commission to assess and conclude." Yes. I have so little confidence in the Victorian Government to take truth rather than favorite-expert opinion into account. It's depressing. I hope someone out there is following the Enquiry and can tell us.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page