
Australia wildfires: 500M animals and plants killed as glaciers turn black - dsr12
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/australia-wildfires-animals-plants-glaciers-sydney-koalas-nsw-a9267316.html
======
dgellow
The CO² impact, and active fires, are visible almost live on windy.com.

Both CO² and active fires layers: [https://www.windy.com/-CO-concentration-
cosc?cosc,-33.046,13...](https://www.windy.com/-CO-concentration-
cosc?cosc,-33.046,136.890,5,m:cCAakiI)

Heatmap of active fires: [https://www.windy.com/-Active-fires-
fires?fires,-33.046,136....](https://www.windy.com/-Active-fires-
fires?fires,-33.046,136.890,5,m:cCAakiI)

Crazy to see this.

(Central Africa also seems to have crazy fires, but I don't see any news on
this [https://www.windy.com/-Active-fires-
fires?fires,-2.592,19.24...](https://www.windy.com/-Active-fires-
fires?fires,-2.592,19.248,4))

~~~
Cthulhu_
Re: Africa, keep in mind that a lot of fires are natural and / or controlled;
natural fires should not be interfered with, because that'll cause a buildup
of shrubs and other easily flammable material that will only burn more and
harder the next year.

~~~
ehnto
In Australia, we normally have the resources to have controlled burns
throughout the year to reduce available fuel and keep the wild fires smaller
and controllable. The government chose to pull back funding for our fire
services, which resulted in reduced controlled burnoffs and an increase in the
amount of fuel available for fires in high risk areas.

Once the fires did kick off, we also had fewer appliances and equipment to
fight them. This is partly a natural disaster, partly a failure of a
civilization to protect itself.

~~~
yowlingcat
Interesting. From what I read about a while back, these wildfires didn't use
to be so bad when there were more resources allocated to controlled burnoffs.
Why did the government pull back funding?

~~~
candiodari
E.g. [https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-13/is-the-prescribed-
bur...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-13/is-the-prescribed-burn-window-
closing-in-australia/10236048)

[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)

There are 2 political arguments against "controlled burnoffs", and one much
more practical argument against them:

1) it damages the environment, destroys nature and ecological systems. it
kills animals and plants. Lots of them. It's bad for biodiversity.

Fire dept response: it does, but less than the fires that are prevented would.

2) Budget cuts.

3) controlled burning is normally done after winter (when firemen would have
to do them in the dark or make them smaller), but before the dry season gets
too dry and the risk of fires spreading too far becomes to great. This period
has become shorter and shorter in recent times, due to climate change.

------
lunchbreak
The actual study says 480 million animals _affected_ \- not killed. Classic
broken telephone - [https://thehill.com/policy/energy-
environment/476533-univers...](https://thehill.com/policy/energy-
environment/476533-university-study-as-many-as-480-million-animals-feared-
affected-by)

"That's not to say that the 480 million have all died as a consequence of the
fires because some things are going to be mobile — birds will fly away and
come back," Dickman added.

"Some reptiles, like lizards, would perhaps go underground," he continued.

~~~
inetknght
> _birds will fly away and come back_

Ever seen a bird fly away from your location only to see the fire move faster
than the bird?

> _Some reptiles, like lizards, would perhaps go underground_

How long's the ground on fire? What's the ambient temperature just half a
meter below ground during a fire? How much oxygen is preserved and for how
long? Those lizards are being cooked alive. Those that aren't will suffocate.

~~~
bobongo
> What's the ambient temperature just half a meter below ground during a fire?

Fire can actually go down and spread underground.

~~~
inetknght
I know. It's why I asked @lunchbreak

------
Zenst
Wonder what the Butterfly effect of this will be. We all know the chaos theory
butterfly effect of if a butterfly flaps its wings, well. Certainly less chaos
at play with a large fire on this scale and its global impact.

Which makes you wish Gerry Anderson's vision of International Rescue was real.
Alas we still have a legacy response World with a focus upon combat armies
over medical/disaster response armies.

Climate change affects us all and I can't recall a year without some disaster
of fire/flooding/eruptions or other weather/climate related effect of extreme
that indirectly affects us all. The climate does not know about country
borders, and any solution equally needs to be a borderless appraoch by all.

I know we have the UN, but its remit is so broad in many respects and the
political beuracracy that entails, slows and distracts from issues like this
that any response is never timely or as you would expect.

Imagine if globally we didn't have country pride and ego's in the way when it
came to dealing with such disasters. After all, whilst this is a fire in
Australia, the effects will in various forms, be felt by all across the globe.
Alas not as directly accountable as people like and hard to measure, but it
will have an impact.

After all, if a butterfly wing flap can cause a storm across the other side of
the globe - then I'd say a fire the size of a small country is going to have a
much larger impact and with less chaotic uncertainty about it.

Sad thing is, if the climate was a weapon owned by one country, you can bet
the rest of the World would of got its act together. After all, we have NATO
for dealing with a far lower threat, indeed, if firefighting had a military
sized budget - there would be no fires.

------
edhelas
To stay under +2°C in 2100 we need to reduce our CO² emission to ~2T/year of
CO² per human. We are at 15T/year in the US and ~10T/year at the OECD. We are
currently aiming at +4°C or more.

Doind a Paris-NewYork (one way) is 1.3T of CO² emitted.

The effort that we all have to do is huge. And we need to to it NOW (CO² stay
~2 century in the atmosphere, everything emitted only add-up).

We can't do business as usual, that's over.

Let's talk, let's act.

~~~
macspoofing
>We can't do business as usual, that's over.

The alternative is what? Contract GDP in every nation until carbon emissions
are below target? You think people will allow you to go through something
larger a great depression in order to meet climate targets? Did you not see
the shitshow that happened in Chile and France when those governments tried to
hike gasoline taxes by a small amount?

There is very little we can do over the next few decades to curb emissions.
Solar and wind are not viable replacements for coal and natural gas (and are
disastrous for the environment due to the requirement for exotic minerals and
land-use requirements). Nuclear power is, but the environmental movement is
actively blocking re-investment, and we're so far behind that it would take
decades to jump-start the industry. Outside of energy generation, freight (sea
and air), as well as air travel have no obvious non-fossil fuel alternatives.
There are also thousands of petroleum products that don't have obvious
alternatives either.

OK... so let's act. What do you do?

~~~
Accipitriform
> Nuclear power is, but the environmental movement is actively blocking re-
> investment, and we're so far behind that it would take decades to jump-start
> the industry.

That isn't true. With desire and enough money, we could be churning out small
modular reactors (SMRs) by the thousands. ThorCon, Nuscale, Terrapower and
many others have designs.

In fact, that's my recommendation for the conservatives/populists. Take
climate change away as an issue by promoting the only workable plan - a
massive shift to nuclear power generation along with "renewables".

Even if global warming isn't an emergency, clean air is a good thing, and so
is cheap, plentiful power.

------
smohnot
For those specifically worried about the 500 million animals dead in the
wildfire, note that we kill 3 billion land animals and fish a DAY for meat
([https://sentientmedia.org/how-many-animals-are-killed-for-
fo...](https://sentientmedia.org/how-many-animals-are-killed-for-food-every-
day/)). Of course there are many many other terrible things about this
wildfire (including the fact that we may have endangered some species)

~~~
nradov
We also kill billions of animals a day for plants. Harvesting crops kills a
lot of insects, small mammals, and reptiles. Most of them are so small that
farmers never even notice, but those animals are dead all the same. So if you
want to criticize meat eating then you'll have to find a better reason than
just number of animal deaths.

~~~
hamax
Most crops are consumed by livestock, not humans. So by eating crops directly
you save more animals than just the ones you don't consume.

------
hilbert42
The Australian bush has always burned periodically—full stop! It always
has—full stop!

Whether in recent years the risk of bushfires has increased or not because of
global warming is essentially irrelevant to the argument. In fact, the recent
bushfires in mainly Eastern Australia are long overdue (which goes contrary to
the global warming argument—no, don't put words in my mouth by suggesting that
I'm a denier, I'm just stating a fact).

First, let me say that I do have some understanding and experience in such
matters: decades ago when I was a young kid in primary school I stood on a
hill overlooking the township of Leura in the Blue Mountains of NSW and
watched a raging bushfire tear through the township burning down over 100
houses in about an hour. It is hard to describe or paraphrase neither the
emotion that I felt then nor the experience I gained from witnessing the
conflagration. Living in a bushfire-prone area, I've seen many fires like it
over the decades.

It taught me a salient lesson about how truly dangerous and idiosyncratic
bushfires can be—unpredictably, brick houses would often burn down whilst
weatherboard ones would often be spared, and the fires would often
unexpectedly gobble up ones out in the open whilst leaving houses with many
trees and undergrowth in their yards or nearby.

Second, I've had to fight bush fires to save property, it's hot, horrible and
extremely dangerous work.

The key issues are these:

\- It can take many decades for a truly major bushfire to reoccur in a given
location. For example, the recent fires in the Jamison Valley in the Blue
Mountains of NSW burned through bushland that has not seen a major fire for
over 50 years. Over such a long time, the undergrowth becomes thick, it's a
tinderbox just waiting to ignite, and on the first truly hot day or lightning
strike off it goes.

\- Fire fighting in national parks miles from houses and other property is
usually a waste of time (as I've just witnessed in the Jamison Valley where
the water bombing was essentially useless (the fires progressed unhindered
into more uninhabited national parkland despite ongoing efforts) and the cost
of the fire-fighting helicopters was enormous for essentially nought effect).
Fire fighting efforts would be more effective if they concentrated on
protecting townships and populated areas. Nevertheless, gung-ho fire fighters
have to be seen doing something even if it is useless.

\- Unfortunately, as truly major fires only repeat every 50 or 60 years, these
fire fighters don't have a firsthand memory of past events—simply: corporate
memory of past fires is lost from one major fire to another and thus it
usually results in stuff-ups which can be serious, loss of live etc. as we've
tragically seen again in the recent Australian bushfires. (Remember, loss of
life in bushfires in Australia is tragically common.)

\- Residents in fire-prone areas often have short memories, they grow trees in
inappropriate places and the tree-hugging councils make things worse as they
will not take action to remove a dangerous fire situation. For example, near
Echo Point in the popular tourist area of Katoomba (near where the fire was
burning in the Jamison Valley) only a few weeks ago I personally witnessed the
terrible situation of weeds and undergrowth right near housing and population
centres that should have been removed by the Council. After all, fires are
nothing new to that area but Council has done SFA about removing the fire
threat.

\- If fire fighting is overly successful in national parks and reserves, it
can make the situation much worse for when the big one comes _[which it
inevitably will]_ as the fire will be much more intense. Instead of just
burning the leaves of the trees it'll also kill them—great 400-year+ trees
that have survived many a previous fire are now gone forever! It's damn stupid
to do this!

\- For those of you not in Australia who think I've lost my senses by saying
this, you need to keep in mind what I said at the beginning—the Australian
bush _must burn periodically to survive_. The seeds of many trees, Banksia for
instance, only germinate after a fire has opened their seedpods. The aim
should be to allow this to happen on a natural cycle whilst still protecting
life and property. Unfortunately, the Australian people are like ostriches
with their heads in the sand, decade after decade they continue to fuck-up
fire management to the nth degree and they do so at the risk to life and
property.

Finally let me note that Californians are not much better. Why they have let
the Australian eucalypt, which burn like incendiary torches due to being full
of inflammable eucalypt oil, overrun their state simply defies any reasonable
logic that I can think of. Moreover, eucalypts, like many introduced species,
grow like weeds in California (when I first went there both the size and the
leafiness of the eucalypts amazed me). Unlike Australia where the eucalypt is
native, Californians have a choice. It seems to me they ought to eradicate
them, if for no other reason than in the interests of safety.

------
sitkack
Should use drones to harvest the meat ASAP.

~~~
sitkack
This is the most ethical choice, the animals are already dead and treated much
better than factory farms. Their flesh will rot in the fields, it should feed
people and not bacteria.

------
hydgv
>Nature Conservation Council ecologist Mark Graham told parliament: “[Koalas]
really have no capacity to move fast enough to get away [from the flames].

Seems like natural selection to me

lol someone was so irked by this small dose of truth that he proceeded to
downvote all of my past comments

