
Australia faces rethink: prepares for long-term bushfires and air pollution - pugio
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/16/australia-faces-massive-rethink-to-prepare-for-long-term-bushfires-and-air-pollution
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thewizardofaus
A bit sensationalist. Eastern states don't do prescribed burn off for
bushland. Which has made a significant difference in these ongoing fires.

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marcus_holmes
Seen the same in the West. People build houses in the bush, then object to
burnoff (which keeps the fuel levels low) because it's unpleasant and smoky.
So fuel levels build up, and then their houses burn to the ground.

People forget that Australian bush forest _needs_ to burn. That either happens
with small fires frequently, or big fires infrequently. Those are the choices.
Not burning at all is effectively choosing a massive fire very infrequently.

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zozbot234
Why not just run regular logging operations if it's simply a matter of
removing potential "fuel" from that environment. Burning that off seems like
it might be a bit wasteful, compared to turning that biomass into a useful
resource.

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marcus_holmes
The trees drop huge amounts of bark, branches, leaves, etc, that don't rot
(because high heat and lack of humidity), and that have to burn. It's a very
different environment from Northern Hemisphere forests, there's no thick soft
layer of damp, rotting leaves. It's all just sitting there on the ground
waiting to burn. Bark peels off the trees in great sheets, falling to the
ground where it sits there until it burns. Leaves pile up in dry drifts,
waiting to burn.

You could chop the trees down, but that would leave you with no forest. It's
not just mature trees that drop fuel, even growing trees do this.

If you have a forest in Australia[0], it has to burn regularly. It's not like
Europe or America, where you can cheerfully build your house in the woods and
it's all very pretty. If you build your house in the bush, then you have to
cope with the fires.

Good to see the Guardian article talking about adaptation for once. One
possible answer is to create houses that won't burn, and that are sealed from
the heat and smoke.

[0] I gather that Tasmanian forest are less reliant on fire, so the situation
may be different there.

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GaurVimen
They will think long and hard and the solution will be coal and prayers.

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LilBytes
And glorious cricket according to ScoMo.

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aaron695
The current issue is introduced species in the past 200 years changing the
undergrowth, people fighting preventive burn-offs, tree changers moving to the
bush and social media making everything a crisis.

Bush fires are of course down across the world[1] and continues to decrease,
Australia is probably going down but it's hard to tell relative to death tolls
since data is mostly a few large incidents. It might just be hitting a local
maxima.

On a bright note education about airborne pollution is up and getting the
attention it deserves.

[1] [https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/did-2019-really-bring-us-
un...](https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/did-2019-really-bring-us-unusual-
number-wildfires)

