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Australian fires reach 'apocalyptic status'

#1
C C Offline
(Independent_ie) At least three dead, 'more bad news expected' as New South Wales hit by 'apocalyptic' fires

Australian bushfires: Thousands have been forced to leave their homes
https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/50358467

INTRO: Parts of Australia are experiencing serious bushfires and three people have died. Officials have confirmed that at least 150 homes in the state of New South Wales (NSW) have been destroyed. Thousands have had to leave their homes. Schools, bridges and power lines have also been destroyed as a result of the fires.


https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/lwZdAcw3oFU

- - -

Bushfire victims want Australia to know they are ‘suffering from climate change’
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national...te-change/

EXCERPT: Australia holds the potential to sit amongst the world’s renewable energy superpowers, but “unprecedented” bushfires across NSW reveal just how lacking the government’s climate change policy is. Days after thousands of scientists from across the globe declared humanity was facing a climate emergency, scores of bushfires tore through NSW, so far killing at least three people.

It appeared Prime Minister Scott Morrison wanted to steer clear of another climate debate, dodging the topic on Saturday as fears grew more people may have perished. But a local mayor, climate change policy expert, firefighter and resident whose family home was destroyed in the early-season fires have all told The New Daily they want climate change at the centre of the conversations about the deadly emergency.

Glen Innes Severn Council’s mayor, Carol Sparks, who lost her home, said: “There is no doubt about it, we are suffering from the effects of climate change and global warming. “The trees are dying and they are so dry and volatile,” Mr Sparks said. “We’ve got no water in our dams, no water in our rivers, no water in our creeks.” (MORE)
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#2
Syne Offline
(Nov 9, 2019 04:34 PM)C C Wrote: ...thousands of scientists from across the globe declared humanity was facing a climate emergency...

That's political, not scientific:

... impose carbon fees that are high enough to restrain the use of fossil fuels.
...Eat mostly plants and consume fewer animal products.
...Convert the economy’s reliance on carbon fuels. Shift goals away from the growth of gross domestic product and the pursuit of individual wealth.
...Stabilise global population, which is increasing by more than 200,000 people a day – but do so in a way that is socially and economically fair.

In there we have, vegetarianism/veganism, socialism, and abortion political goals. Not to mention the conflict of interest of many climate scientists seeking to fund their careers.
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#3
Yazata Offline
(Nov 9, 2019 04:34 PM)C C Wrote: ...thousands of scientists from across the globe declared humanity was facing a climate emergency...

The evidence that I've seen indicates that since the industrial revolution in the 19th century, the world as a whole has experienced a net temperature increase of about 1.6 degrees C.


[Image: HadCRUT4.png]
[Image: HadCRUT4.png]



That increase seems pretty small and doesn't seem to even remotely justify the "Extinction level event!!" rhetoric or the "Earth's on fire!!" hysteria that we so often hear.

It's also interesting to look at when these temperature increases appear to have occurred.

During the 19th century, Europe's "age of coal", temperatures seem to have remained pretty flat.

Then from maybe 1910 to 1940, we see an increase of about 0.5 degrees C. I'm just speculating, but assuming that it is anthropogenic, it might be associated with the introduction of the automobile.

Then from about 1940 to 1980, things seem to have been pretty flat again. Then a more dramatic increase of about 1.0 degrees C since 1980.

So what has happened since 1980 that might have driven the more rapid increase (in red on the graph above)? This was generally a period of deindustrialization in the Western world. Factories were closing everywhere and once thriving areas were turning into rust belts. (Britain once had world-class steel, shipbuilding, automobile and aircraft industries. Detroit used to be Motor City.) It was a time in which much stricter automobile emissions standards were introduced in the US and Europe.

Meanwhile, we see the rise of China and its rapid industrialization since 1980.

Yet most of the global warming activism never really addresses China. In the Paris Climate Accords, the West agreed to huge reductions in production of greenhouse gasses, while China didn't commit to any reduction at all. (They just agreed to try to reduce the size of their future increases.)

It's all about turning back the industrial revolution in the US and Europe.
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#4
billvon Offline
(Nov 9, 2019 09:45 PM)Yazata Wrote:
(Nov 9, 2019 04:34 PM)C C Wrote: ...thousands of scientists from across the globe declared humanity was facing a climate emergency...

The evidence that I've seen indicates that since the industrial revolution in the 19th century, the world as a whole has experienced a net temperature increase of about 1.6 degrees C.
That's about right.

Quote:That increase seems pretty small and doesn't seem to even remotely justify the "Extinction level event!!" rhetoric or the "Earth's on fire!!" hysteria that we so often hear.

Well, it is definitely a big part of the Holocene extinction.  But agreed, the Earth is not on fire.  Just parts of it.  And that HAS been exacerbated by the warmer climate.  (More drought, higher temperatures, lower relative humidity levels.)

Quote:Then from about 1940 to 1980, things seem to have been pretty flat again.

Yep.  That was due primarily to the high altitude areosols that all that coal burning was generating.  It had the effect of reflecting some of the light hitting the Earth.

Quote:So what has happened since 1980 that might have driven the more rapid increase (in red on the graph above)?

The primary drivers are CO2 and methane releases.  Here's a good graphic of the drivers:

[Image: ipcc_rad_forc_ar5.jpg]
[Image: ipcc_rad_forc_ar5.jpg]





Quote:Yet most of the global warming activism never really addresses China.

??? Much of the IPCC's work involves modeling carbon emissions from China, and the UN has been putting a huge amount of pressure on them.  And there's a lot of global warming activism IN China (at least when the government permits it.)  And there's a lot of people working there towards mitigating climate change.

=============
Tue 17 Sep 2019

The Guardian



Zhao Jiaxin and Howey Ou are trying to convince Beijing to take radical carbon-cutting action



One is a student engineer who became obsessed after watching an incendiary film about air pollution. The other is a 16-year-old who went on China’s first climate strike.



Zhao Jiaxin and Howey Ou are part of a small but growing minority of young Chinese determined to press their country towards more radical carbon-cutting action. The pair are also China’s sole winners of carbon neutral “green tickets” the UN is providing to 100 young people around the world.



China is the world’s leading carbon emitter. It generates 60% of its electricity from coal-fired power and coal consumption and carbon emissions have risen for two years in a row after a plateau between 2014 and 2016. Emissions are expected to rise again in the figures for this year.

. . .
The 16-year-old, who spends her spare time planting trees around her hometown, was nominated to travel to this week’s United Nations climate summit in New York by the youth activist group Earth Uprising and nearly had to back out of attending because her chaperone was worried she would not stick to the Chinese government script.
==============

Quote:It's all about turning back the industrial revolution in the US and Europe.

No, it's about changing our use of energy from carbon based to non carbon based.
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#5
Yazata Offline
Transitioning to actual news, here's a map from the NSW Rural Fire Service of where fires are in northeastern NSW towards the Queensland border. If you compare this map with the map of Australia in your atlas, you will see that this is a very large area, hundreds of miles. While it isn't densely urbanized, it does contain a number of fairly large coastal towns on the scale of the California towns recently hit by fire (Napa, Chico, Santa Rosa, Redding etc). The total population in this large area might be fairly large, on the scale of hundreds of thousands of people.

It looks like a disaster perhaps on the scale the California Wine Country fires of several years ago.

(Californians seeing this will get a distinct sense of deja-vu all over again.)


[Image: EJFh5rMUYAAfjC8?format=jpg&name=900x900]
[Image: EJFh5rMUYAAfjC8?format=jpg&name=900x900]



NSW Rural Fire Service on twitter:

https://twitter.com/nswrfs

It's pretty scary reading. They don't issue evacuation orders like Cal Fire does, they announce that it's 'Too Late to Leave, Take Shelter!' over and over.

More here:

https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/fire-informat...re-updates

Air service disrupted and airports closed because of smoke and low visibility

https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-up...b564427996
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#6
Yazata Offline
Here's a satellite photo taken by the European Space Agency's Copernicus Sentinel 3 satellite on 9:15 AM November 13 local Australia time (Nov 12, US time and UTC), showing the fires extending across several hundred miles between Sydney in the south to Brisbane in the north. A couple of places in the middle of that extent look really bad.


[Image: index.php?action=dlattach;topic=3667.0;a...4411;image]
[Image: index.php?action=dlattach;topic=3667.0;a...4411;image]

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#7
Yazata Offline
The United States and Australia have a close cooperative relationship regarding firefighting, and particularly firefighting aviation. It helps that we are in opposite hemispheres, so that our winter is their summer. So the large American fire-bombers that are seen fighting fires here in the American West typically spend their northern hemisphere winters down in Australia doing similar work there during the southern hemisphere summer. And given the large size and low population density of Australia, aerial firefighting is arguably of greater importance there.

Here's a November 13 report on two additional heavy air tankers being deployed from the US to New South Wales.

https://fireaviation.com/2019/11/13/two-...ing-fleet/

Despite having a much smaller population than the US (~24 million, about 60% of California and less than Texas) bush fires are a constant danger in continent-sized Australia (about the size of America's lower-48) and they maintain a huge firefighting organization. The New South Wales Rural Fire Service is the world's largest firefighting organization with ~ 74,000 members. (An army!) Most of these are volunteers with day jobs. Many are local firefighters that are called up for these big conflagrations. (CalFire is similar, mostly local city and county firefighters that get called up by the state for big forest fires.)

Firefighting aviation for the entire country is coordinated by a single organization formed in 2003, the National Aerial Firefighting Centre.

http://www.nafc.org.au/

They say, "In Australia, individual States and Territories are responsible for the management of bushfires and a range of other emergencies, and for most land management. State and Territory governments and the Australian government have recognised the importance of collaboration and cooperation in aerial firefighting and have established the National Aerial Firefighting Centre to support and facilitate collaboration across Australia.

The National Aerial Firefighting Centre facilitates the coordination and procurement of a fleet of highly specialized firefighting aircraft that are readily available for use by State and Territory emergency service and land management agencies across Australia.

This national aircraft fleet complements aerial firefighting resources that are arranged directly by the States and Territories. Some services in the national aerial firefighting fleet receive funding support from the Australian Government as well as State and Territory government funding.

NAFC also plays a key role in ensuring the sharing of aerial firefighting resources between emergency service and land management agencies throughout Australia, and in the development of national protocols and systems for aerial firefighting.

The 2018-19 National Aerial Firefighting Fleet comprises approximately 143 contracted aircraft primarily made up of types listed here. These aircraft, contracted by NAFC on behalf of State and Territory governments, are supplemented by additional state owned, and state contracted aircraft and other aircraft hired to meet peak demand across Australia. In total more than 500 aircraft, provided by over 200 operators, are available for firefighting across Australia."


It's big. Some of the contracted aircraft are the large American retardant bombers. I believe that many of Australia's agricultural spraying aircraft have a secondary firefighting role as well and can be called up. There are also many helicopters belonging to many different operators than can be called up for spotting, evacuating people, transporting people to hospitals and similar tasks.

https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/...t+v002.pdf

Fireaviation.com reports that there are currently 63 fixed wing fire-bombers, 45 fire-bombing helicopters and 51 other aircraft operating on these Australian fires.

It can be dangerous work. Here's an Australian water-bomber helicopter that crashed on Wednesday. The injured pilot was evacuated to a hospital where he's in stable condition.


[Image: HelicopterDown.jpg?resize=1024%2C656&ssl=1]
[Image: HelicopterDown.jpg?resize=1024%2C656&ssl=1]



Here's what appears to be an agricultural aircraft type engaged in firefighting work


[Image: EJYJrkYVUAA2B4L?format=jpg]
[Image: EJYJrkYVUAA2B4L?format=jpg]

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#8
Yazata Offline
Here's something kind of positive: A planeload of American firefighters arriving at Sydney Intl. Airport to help fight the Australian wildfires, receiving a spontaneous round of applause from the Australians.

https://twitter.com/RFSCommissioner/stat...8721368065

The US and Australia have strong firefighting agreements and often help each other. There were Australians here helping with the California fires in recent years.
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