
Wildfires Are Raging Outside Every Major City in Australia - gscott
https://time.com/5753584/bushfires-australia-catastrophic-fire-alert/
======
BLKNSLVR
As a long term Australian, this is categorically the worst fire season
Australia has experienced.

Summer in Australia always comes with one or two big fires in at-risk rural
areas over the months from December to February.

Queensland and New South Wales were burning heavily by early December. And now
Victoria and South Australia have joined in as well and we're still only just
into the second month of three. It's unprecedented.

The one thing that may provide back handed comfort is that so much has burnt
that it will be a few years before enough 'fuel' is regrown for fires of this
scale to be possible again.

I'm wondering the unknowable tipping point at which the cost of rebuilding
from bushfires outweighs the costs of de-carbonising the economy. Part of the
problem with that is who / where the costs are borne / spread amongst.

~~~
spodek
> _the costs of de-carbonising the economy_

Global warming is important, but only one environmental problem, so important
to consider here, but not the only environmental issue.

Contributing to every environmental issue, including this one, is
overpopulation. Humans have altered every continent, reducing biodiversity,
introducing species that don't handle local climates as well, or too well and
displace existing ones, making extinct species, and so on. I'm no expert, but
the situation in Australia looks related to huge cities and lots of farms
supporting a much larger human population than had ever lived there reducing
biodiversity and resilience to fire, exacerbated by global warming.

People fear discussing overpopulation because they only know of China's policy
and eugenics, as did I until I learned of the successful, non-coercive
policies of Thailand, Iran, Mexico, etc that increased peace, prosperity, and
stability.

I first learned of successful noncoercive birthrate reducing policies through
Alan Weisman's excellent Countdown [https://www.amazon.com/Countdown-Last-
Best-Future-Earth/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/Countdown-Last-Best-Future-
Earth/dp/0316097756), and of the critical importance of population through
Limits to Growth [https://www.amazon.com/Limits-Growth-Donella-H-
Meadows/dp/19...](https://www.amazon.com/Limits-Growth-Donella-H-
Meadows/dp/193149858X).

Those examples show that we can peacefully and stably lower birth rate to
increase peace and prosperity and ease all other environmental problems.
Steady-state following de-growth works more successfully on a full finite
planet than pushing economic and population growth forever, which exacerbates
problems like these and increases their impact on humans and other wildlife.

~~~
deepersprout
> Contributing to every environmental issue, including this one, is
> overpopulation.

Citation needed. Why is 7.7 billion people a problem? IMHO earth as it is
today can accommodate 9 or 10 billion people without problems. (And like you,
I have no citation as well.)

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Define "without problems".

We currently utilise 50% -- the best, most fertile, productive 50% -- of the
earth's landmass. What remains is marginal land, scrub, forests, permafrost,
mountains, savannah, deserts etc, or is simply too hot or too cold for us to
live comfortably. We're mistreating land with over fertilisation and suffering
steady soil loss everywhere that's adopted post-war industrial agriculture.
Many of those bits of rubbish land, forests and wildlife preserves we're not
using are chopped up by pipelines, roads, rail affecting viability of the
species broken up and interfering with natural migration and regrowth.
Wildlife and wilderness has no chance.

We're clear cutting forest to make monoculture grazing land, or to plant
thousands of acres of uninterrupted soya, palm oil and other major crops. As
environmental awareness grows we're doing that at accelerated rate. Europe was
clearcut in liveable areas in the Middle Ages, yet we've shown little to no
sign of most noticing our colossal destructive impact. We just started
importing big trees and colonising.

Borneo has gone from essentially untouched in the 1980s to 50% cleared now.
Earth overshoot day puts us as needing 1.7 earths to sustain the current rate
of regrowable use (it only considers replaceable resources, not mining and
minerals). 10bn would push that up to over 2.

A sustainable population would probably be 1 or 2bn, if we want to allow a
little room for the unforeseen.

------
yassam
As an Australian resident and now citizen for 20 years, I've been pretty angry
since that last federal election. So many people here are _still_ denying man-
made global warming, and that includes our own government, which stood in the
way of progress at COP25 [1].

Even now, in the midst of unprecedented heat, drought and fire that has
gripped this continent for months, if not years, "friends" of mine regularly
post the most ignorant climate denialist BS on FB.

[1] [https://reneweconomy.com.au/cop25-talks-labelled-lost-
opport...](https://reneweconomy.com.au/cop25-talks-labelled-lost-opportunity-
as-australia-burns-its-international-reputation-46894/)

~~~
crispinb
_So many people here are still denying man-made global warming_

That isn't really true beyond the margins. Polls show that a large majority of
Australians have accepted the science on climate collapse for two decades.

Australians know what's happening, but they believe their wealth can insulate
them personally from the consequences while they watch dusky foreigners die.
The last federal election contained an implied declaration of environmental
war on the Pacific island nations, with the tradeoffs very clearly spelled out
in the campaign.

Australia is a rogue nation of self-comforting nihilists, for whom Scott
Morrison is a very natural leader.

~~~
bjowen
“The margins” also unfortunately include the perpetually outraged Alan Jones,
and every policy pie his pudgy fingers poke.

+1 on your diagnosis of the cultural problem.

~~~
crispinb
Yes absolutely, of course. No-one can deny the outsized political significance
of those margins along many dimensions (marginal rural constituencies, the
Liberal/Nat/LNP right-wing factions, Alan Jones' grumpy gossiping old men,
perpetually outraged about anything done by anyone under 60, the Murdoch
press, etc).

I guess my point is that these extreme margins gain their power only because
of the nihilism of the skittish 'moderate' Australian majority, which knows
enough, and cares little about anything of significance.

~~~
yassam
Good analysis.

I've recently been reading The Australian online, and any time there's a
climate related article, there are literally 100s of comments almost all of
which are rabid climate deniers. It's stomach churning to read.

No idea how representative of general population, but my gut-feeling is that
it's a significant minority, e.g. 10-20%.

~~~
carl_sandland
Yeah it's depressing, but have you not noticed a change or shift in tone at
least in the media ? I'm hopeful this swings the focus back onto science and
mitigation, and away from the economy. Every time our PM says "we must balance
the environment with a healthy economy for all" I want to explode: what does
that even MEAN. Economic activity is a function of human activity and humans
need to like... breath?

I've been encouraged by some of the interviews and coverage with local
government officials, they seem to be really shocked into a truth: I wish we
could do better than a temporary 'concern' over the earth.

------
softgrow
I asked a firefighter when is the fire considered safe once it appears to have
stopped burning? The answer surprised me a bit. You need to have a 100m strip
around the fire where someone has raked or inspected inside every tree, under
every cow pat, bit of grass to make sure nothing is smouldering in that area.
This is a huge job as for the fire I enquired about (Cudlee Creek SA), the
perimeter is 180km and a fair bit of this is in rugged terrain. So a ton of
work.

~~~
mehrdadn
Honestly I'm surprised that's _sufficient_. To my knowledge you can even have
root fires burning underground for _months_. And I expect embers can travel in
the wind far longer distances than 100m. It's pretty impressive to me they can
do it with 100m of inspection, let alone how difficult that already is.

~~~
shakna
> And I expect embers can travel in the wind far longer distances than 100m.

Far, far more. Embers have been known to travel 10s of km. However, if that
happens after a fire has been reduced to smouldering, if it lights something,
that gets considered as a new fire.

------
pxi
It's been nice in Brisbane the past few weeks. I'm starting to feel "survivor
guilt". For the people saying we need less trees, please watch this:
[https://youtu.be/SIHIsSJ2Txk](https://youtu.be/SIHIsSJ2Txk)

------
benjaminsuch
Excuse my ignorance, can anyone explain to me what makes it so difficult to
extinguish the fire? (This question is not meant to be an ass) I tried to
google it, but couldn't find a proper answer. I'm just really curious.

~~~
BLKNSLVR
It's not like a barbecue fire that can be controlled with a garden hose. As
someone else in this thread has mentioned, one of the fire fronts is 180km
wide.

Edit: 180km perimeter

I think the article says that one of the fires has burnt an area the size of
the state of Rhode Island.

[https://www.abc.net.au/news/image/11838160-3x2-460x307.jpg](https://www.abc.net.au/news/image/11838160-3x2-460x307.jpg)

[https://www.abc.net.au/news/image/11834342-3x2-460x307.jpg](https://www.abc.net.au/news/image/11834342-3x2-460x307.jpg)

[https://www.google.com/search?q=Australian+bushfires](https://www.google.com/search?q=Australian+bushfires)

~~~
fhars
And that is just one fire. The total area burnt in New South Wales alone was
almost nine times larger than Rhode Island by 9 December.
[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-18/bushfires-burn-
area-b...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-18/bushfires-burn-area-bigger-
than-wales-a-result-of-record-spring/11810324)

------
seanwilson
If you live in Australia, what is this doing in terms of changing what people
think and do about climate change? Is it motivating personal changes in diet,
traveling and election voting choices?

If this nightmare scenario isn't enough to push people into taking action,
what will?

~~~
edflsafoiewq
What do you expect them to actually do? The entire CO2 output of Australia
could drop to zero with negligible effect on climate change.

~~~
eeh
If every country acted that way, we'd make no progress.

Every country needs to do its fair share, and Australia is not:
[http://theconversation.com/australia-hit-its-kyoto-target-
bu...](http://theconversation.com/australia-hit-its-kyoto-target-but-it-was-
more-a-three-inch-putt-than-a-hole-in-one-44731)

~~~
jamesbfb
Absolutely. Anthony Albanese (opposition leader for Labor here in Aus) said
exactly this today on ABC. Whilst there is negligible correlation between the
fires and our action (or inaction) to climate change as a country, the
rhetoric of “well, we output so little compared of other developed nations”
should not apply.

Oh, and our elected Prime Minister brought a lump of coal into parliament,
which says as much.

~~~
mceoin
Also important to recognize that Australia's carbon contribution is not solely
limited to domestic output but also our coal industry. Australia is the
largest exporter of coal in the world and this is not properly accounted for
in our emissions accounting. On a per-person basis, our output is among the
highest in the world and the inaction of others does not absolve us from
having a moral responsibility to clean up our own mess at the very least.

~~~
eeh
Counting exports would lead to double counting: once for the exporter, once
for the user.

All that matters is countries having fair targets, and meeting those targets.

Countries are free to meet their emissions reductions targets how they like,
including buying cheap coal from Australia, planes from US, and cars from
Germany.

~~~
apexalpha
It would double count emissions but it does mean that Australia could do more
than just eliminate their own emissions, they could limit other countries' as
well by stopping export.

~~~
eeh
Let's walk before we can run. It's difficulty enough to get countries to
reduce their own emissions. Asking them to compromise their exports to reduce
others' emissions is simply not viable at the moment.

~~~
mceoin
Why shouldn't a citizenry decide to limit exports of certain goods when it is
in their own interest to do so? We certainly do this with uranium already.
Likewise with weapons technology and all manner of harmful trade vectors.

Australia's coal industry provides few jobs, is heavily government subsidized
(either explicitly or through direct infrastructure funding), pays little to
no tax, and creates environmental harm that the majority of the electorate
disagree with.

[Sorry HN: I know I should be supporting this with annotations but am time
pressed today.]

~~~
eeh
One of Queensland's few industries is the coal industry, and so it grips on to
it. [https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/2018/jun/08/coal-...](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/2018/jun/08/coal-comfort-queensland-budget-to-benefit-from-surging-
mining-royalties)

Regional Queenslanders don't want to end up like the old coal mining towns of
the UK, which still have not recovered from the mine closures in 1980s.
[https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/aug/26/blighted-
coa...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/aug/26/blighted-coalfields-
village-life-pit-village-people-starving-horden-co-durham)

I'm not saying coal is morally defensible, but this is democracy in action.

------
Khaine
There has been a lack of leadership in Australia for at least a generation.
Since Rudd took office, politicians have been driven by polls and the media.

The current government is no exception. We need to do more to protect
Australia's environment, including from climate change. We are letting the
Great Barrier Reef wither away, and our land is burning.

The lack of leadership is particularly frustrating. Instead of developing and
growing new sustainable industries that will be around when the world has de-
carbonised the government is doubling down on coal. It is utter madness. We
have lacked a cohesive energy policy for over a decade due to climate change
being a political issue where sides have been divided. Its hard to believe,
but in 2007 the collation under John Howard took a carbon emissions policy to
the election. We have regressed in policy from that point.

Ultimately, a lot of the blame for all of this sits with the Greens. If they
had been so blinded by purity and supported Rudd's carbon pollution reduction
scheme. It would have been in place, and like the GST been settled. Instead
they allowed it to become a political football. That plus Gillard's ineptness
with the carbon tax has made this a toxic debate.

Talk is cheap, and the only thing that will change it is writing to your
representative and letting them know. I strongly urge you to respectfully
write to your MP and let them know they need to do better.

------
jaimex2
The real tragedy here is the amount of wildlife and livestock gone. The toll
is estimated at about half a billion animals so far.

------
foxhop
I'm curious how all the permaculture farms and homesteads are faring. Are
these alternative landscapes surviving or maybe thriving dispite the droughts
and fires?

Could the country promote or even mandate permaculture style landworks?

~~~
pjc50
Permaculture also burns. Most of what's on fire is naturally growing
eucalyptus and brush.

------
emrehan
Let’s see how is this going to influence Australia’s opinion on their coal
powered cheap electricity.

~~~
duk3luk3
What are you comparing Australia's electricity to to call it cheap?

~~~
taneq
Our wholesale power prices are actually quite low. Residential power is
expensive because rooftop solar is putting the economics of maintaining the
grid into a death spiral.

~~~
phs318u
Please support your claim with some evidence. I worked in the contestable
electricity distribution business for 8 years from 2001 to 2009 and I can
assure that your claim is complete bollocks.

~~~
bjowen
[https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2014/july/1404136800/jes...](https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2014/july/1404136800/jess-
hill/power-corrupts)

~~~
phs318u
Exactly. I worked at Powercor and Citipower - two distribution licenses but
one parent company that ran a shared-everything operation across the two. We
cost a bit more than one company to run but we’re able to recoup as if we were
two wholly independent operations. The whole contestable distribution market
was/is a huge scam.

------
tempsy
I heard that earlier efforts in the year to do controlled burns were protested
against by activists and thus paused and could’ve contributed to the extent of
the fires now.

~~~
Intermernet
This is misinformation happily spread by the Australian media, who are hand in
hand with the fossil fuel and forestry lobbiests. The Australian green party
has supported hazard reduction burning for many years. The activists you
mention have had pretty much zero influence on what hazard reduction has been
done. The current government cut the budget for the fire service so
drastically that they lost about 60% of the qualified staff who were in charge
of planning hazard reduction burns. We have areas the size of Tasmania that
are the responsibility of 1 hazard reduction expert. The areas that are
burning are not areas that the activists you mentioned were active. Some of
the fires in September and October were likely caused by hazard reduction
burning.

Basically, hazard reduction burning is a viable technique when the fire season
lasts 3 or 4 months. This fire season is looking like it will last for 6 to 7
months, which leaves very little time to plan and execute hazard reduction.

You are probably not taking into account the size of the areas that require
hazard reduction management, and the low (now even lower) number of people who
are responsible for it.

In short, environmental activists (and, mostly, arsonists) are a bogeyman
created by people trying to divert attention away from the real problems.

The main real problems are:

Due to forestry the water cycle on the western side of the great dividing
range (and other mountains in Australia) has been disrupted and areas that
usually receive rain have had declining rain or no rain in the past decade.

Global patterns such as El Nino have been disrupted leading to less
precipitation and one of the worst droughts in Australian history.

Average temperatures across the continent have been setting new records for
the past decade, with 2019 being the hottest year on record, and about 3 weeks
ago we had the hottest day on record Australia wide.

Serious budget cuts to the organisations who are responsible for hazard
reduction in fire prone areas.

It's basically the perfect storm of climate change and government ineptitude.

But, according to our glorious leader, we should not worry, stay calm and
watch the cricket.

Seriously, you couldn't make this shit up if you tried.

~~~
akvadrako
In summary, you are saying that controlled burns were reduced and they would
have helped, it's just that the protests against them weren't significant?

Also seems like the Australian media supported the protestors:

[http://joannenova.com.au/2020/01/abc-deleting-facebook-
posts...](http://joannenova.com.au/2020/01/abc-deleting-facebook-posts-on-how-
protesters-stop-prescribed-burns-more-worried-about-climate-change-than-
wildfires/)

~~~
bjowen
That’s a claim you should not read uncritically, given where it is published —
the site is a “climate skeptic” page, and the claim it is trying to advance is
that the national broadcaster is being manipulated, or at the centre of a vast
left-wing conspiracy, that has inexplicably ruined the country, despite having
apparently not convinced its audience to vote for a left-wing party.

Here’s the thing: the reportage of the protest was on a local-news Facebook
page maintained by the national broadcaster and was not reported more widely
at the time (September 2019). You can find the post cached, it doesn’t read as
being in favour or opposition to the protest. But it did contain the names and
faces of the (two) protesters.

The planned burn zone is in the one of the current fire-affected areas -
although probably not the massive ones you’ve been reading about, 500 miles
away.

The article posted asks whether the area of the planned burn “has now been
completed by Mother Nature” alongside screen grabs of the cached article, and
you can see the tenor of the comments section what sorts of feelings that
provokes.

It’s pretty reasonable to assume that the post was deleted to protect two
protesters from harassment.

~~~
akvadrako
Protecting the protesters could certainly be one of the reasons to take it
down. But that shows they are sympathetic to their cause, when really they did
a horrible thing.

I don’t think that makes the article less on point.

~~~
Intermernet
Hang on, what "horrible thing" did they do?

------
JetBen
"Throw another shrimp on the barbie", he said. "No worries, mate. It'll be
fine", he said...

FYI - I'm an Aussie born and bred, and part of our culture is to laugh at
ourselves, even during the hard times. That's how Australians stay so
resilient through hardship.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
"It'll be fine"? Not "She'll be right"?

~~~
JetBen
Ha! I already got downvoted for my culturally appropriate joke. If I'd said
"She'll be right", I probably would have gotten banned from HN.... again.

------
marliechiller
is there any way of harnessing all of that out of control heat energy to try
and salvage at least some good from the situation?

~~~
Nasrudith
Technically yes but not practically because the temperature differential is
what is needed and well as considerable logistical and engineering issues of
making something which uses it large enough to deal with a moving and raging
fire - let alone not interfering with fightint efforts or being accused of
arson to not pay for fuel.

Nobody has used Centralia, PA as a generator despite the long burning
underground coal fire - it has also been moving underground in a regular
pattern.

------
maddog3356
At

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21934288](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21934288)

from user voldacar is:

> Could you repost your original post (now flagged) so I and others can see
> your argument?

From

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21933963](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21933963)

here is the original post:

For

"1/ The looming climate crisis will be to this century what the two world wars
were to the previous one. It will require countries and institutions to re-
allocate capital from other endeavors to fight against a warming planet. This
is the decade we will begin to see this re-allocation of capital. We will see
carbon taxed like the vice that it is in most countries around the world this
decade, including in the US. We will see real estate values collapse in some
of the most affected regions and we will see real estate values increase in
regions that benefit from the warming climate. We will see massive capital
investments made in protecting critical regions and infrastructure. We will
see nuclear power make a resurgence around the world, particularly smaller
reactors that are easier to build and safer to operate. We will see installed
solar power worldwide go from ~650GW currently to over 20,000GW by the end of
this decade. All of these things and many more will cause the capital markets
to focus on and fund the climate issue to the detriment of many other
sectors."

there is an accurate one word summary -- nonsense. With two or more words,
even worse than nonsense.

It's time to drive a stake through the heart of this climate change alarmism.
We can do a good job just in this little post.

In simple terms, there is no serious evidence that CO2 from human activities
at anything like probable concentrations will have any significant effect on
the temperature or climate of the earth.

Yes, CO2 is a _greenhouse gas_ , but it is a long logical path from there to
any claims of a significant effect.

We need just two steps:

(1) History.

There is NOTHING in the climate history from the present back to about 1
million years ago that supports the idea that anything like realistic
concentrations of CO2 from human activities will have any significant effect
on temperatures.

(i) For the ice core records going back ~1 million years, yes, both
temperatures and CO2 concentrations went both up and down. BUT, if we just
look carefully at the big graph in Al Gore's movie, with high irony, that
graph totally destroys his claims from that graph: He misread the graph. The
main point is that there is an 800 year delay; CO2 concentrations changed 800
years AFTER the temperature changes, from whatever cause.

Specifically: (a) When temperatures started increasing, from whatever cause,
CO2 concentrations were LOW, not high. (b) About 800 years later CO2
concentrations were HIGH, from increased biological activity from the higher
temperatures. (c) When temperatures started to fall, from whatever cause, CO2
concentrations were still HIGH, not low. (d) The high CO2 concentrations did
not keep the temperatures from falling. (e) Once the temperatures fell, about
800 years later so did CO2 concentrations. Net, CO2 did not cause the higher
temperatures or keep the higher temperatures from falling.

(ii) In the last 2000 years we had the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice
Age, and there is no suggestion that CO2 concentration changes caused either.

(iii) Starting in the 1940s and through about 1970, we actually had some
significant cooling, but in those years CO2 from human activities -- WWII,
pulling of the Great Depression, and the economic boom after WWII --
increased. So, we got COOLING, not warming, with the additional CO2 from human
activities.

Net, there is NO data from the historical record that supports the claim that
higher CO2 will cause higher temperatures.

(2) Yes, CO2 is a <i>greenhouse</i> gas. The absorption spectrum is at

[https://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?Spec=C124389&Index=0&...](https://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?Spec=C124389&Index=0&Type=IR&Large=on)

So, CO2 absorbs in three narrow bands, one for each of bending, stretching,
and twisting of the molecule, out in the infrared.

No, Tom Friedman of the NYT: CO2 does not absorb sunlight, and anyone can
confirm this by looking at a source of CO2, e.g., exhaling or the bubbles from
soda pop, and simply observing that the CO2 is not visible and does not cast a
shadow.

So, the theory has been that the CO2 warms the planet. Then there has been

ALARMIST CLAIM: Extra CO2 from current human activities will soon cause
significant extra warming and, thus, "climate change", a "climate crisis",
etc.

Since the historical record can't support the ALARMIST CLAIM, we have to rely
on the theory based on the absorption spectrum of CO2 and computation.

Well the computations were done by dozens of teams, and the results are
summarized in

[http://www.energyadvocate.com/gc1.jpg](http://www.energyadvocate.com/gc1.jpg)

Net, as in this graph, nearly all the computations predicted rapid,
significant increases in temperatures soon. Well the time of predicted
increases came and went with no sign of anything like the predicted increases.

In science, when predictions are made and found to be false, we junk the
science.

No doubt, the failures in that graph are some of the worst in all the history
of science. GOOD science, e.g., the hunt for and finding the Higgs boson at
the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), the observations that confirmed the
predictions of black holes, many other confirmed predictions of special and
general relativity, the A-bomb, the H-bomb, the design of the Hubble
telescope, to the quantum mechanics in semi-conductors that are the core of
current digital electronics, the science was just rock solid.

We are just awash in super solid science, and the global warming computations
in that graph are just a humiliation of anything scientific and just sick.

So, for the ALARMIST CLAIM, there is no scientific support.

For more there is the video documentary _The Great Global Warming Swindle_ at

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg)

there see (A) the remarks of MIT Professor R. Lindzen on (i) why any warming
we might be getting now cannot be from CO2 and (ii) the huge pile of money
that didn't just buy off the climate scientists but HIRED the climate
alarmists pretending to be climate scientists, maybe 10 times more alarmists
than real scientists.

Also that documentary argues that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice
Age were caused by variations in the rates of sun spots. More sun spots
increase the solar wind which, from more links in a causal chain, in the end
slows cloud formation and has a net warming effect.

So, since both (1) history from ~1 million years ago to the present and (2)
the computations based on CO2 being a greenhouse gas fail to support the
ALARMIST CLAIM, we have no scientific support or even meaningful evidence for
the ALARMIST CLAIM or the proposed very expensive reductions in carbon, etc.

In this case and quite generally, if we are willing to go forward with big,
expensive changes without good evidence, then we leave ourselves open to some
of the worst mistakes in all of civilization.

One current example of such mistakes is killing off the rhinoceroses to get
their horns for use in Chinese medicine.

For another such mistake, there is from page 76 of

Susan Milbrath, _Star Gods of the Maya: Astronomy in Art, Folklore, and
Calendars (The Linda Schele Series in Maya and Pre-Columbian Studies),_
ISBN-13 978-0292752269, University of Texas Press, 2000.

with

"Indeed, blood sacrifice is required for the sun to move, according to Aztec
cosmology (Durian 1971:179; Sahaguin 1950 \- 1982, 7:8)."

That is the Mayan charlatans killed people to pour their blood on a rock to
keep the sun moving across the sky. No doubt the sun actually did keep moving
across the sky.

If we go forward with the Green New Deal, the Paris Accords, carbon taxes,
etc. we are making a mistake as irrational as in the Chinese medicine and the
Mayans.

Warning: It appears that now the sun is entering the part of the 11 year or so
sunspot cycle with fewer sun spots. So, we are in line for a few years of
cooling.

So, don't believe a claim of the global warming alarmists that their efforts
caused the cooling.

At this point, continuing with entertaining the ALARMIST CLAIM is just
nonsense, expensive nonsense.

------
jrziviani
Why aren't Europe, Greta, Hollywood artists screaming their head off just like
they did at Brazil/Amazon Forest on June?

~~~
pjc50
The rainforest doesn't naturally burn down (clue is in the name "rain" forest)
- it's being destroyed tree by tree by human action.

The Australian forest is much thinner and does experience some natural
burning, but this one is much bigger due to climate change.

Also, both of these are bad.

~~~
jrziviani
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_season](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_season)
...and check out the references.

------
fs2
It's sad to see how these fires are automatically linked to climate change.
Until the mid 2000's Australia burned down small patches of forests to prevent
large disasters like these we have now. But that changed when burning down
forests (mind you to prevent larger forest fires in the future) were deemed
too bad for the environment.

So now the policies and fire prevention techniques changed (for the worse) and
exactly what many firefighters predicted has happened: mass fires covering the
east coast. It doesn't matter how much the climate changed when the whole part
about prevention has been screwed up.

~~~
voltagex_
[https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/12/is-
th...](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/12/is-there-really-
a-green-conspiracy-to-stop-bushfire-hazard-reduction)

~~~
BLKNSLVR
Thanks for the link, someone staying with us was saying exactly what this
article is debunking. I've sent it to them, but I'm expecting an 'unchanged
opinion' type response.

~~~
voltagex_
No worries. The last thing Australia needs is bad info at the moment.

