Fire in Australia Worst in history :: Worst storms in 10 years britain ::

Whats going on Birds falling out of the sky, whales getting lost dolphins getting lost, Is this connected as it all seems to be happening just recently?

not quite

Yes it was the worst in the case of death toll, but we have had some large bushfires for many years in our recorded history and who knows about before that.

Black Thursday bushfires in 1851. about 12 deaths and 1 million sheep; thousands of cattle dead

Red Tuesday bushfires 1898 , 260,000 ha burnt and 2,000 buildings destroyed

Black Friday bushfires 1939, 2,000,000 Hectares Burned and 3,700 buildings destroyed

1944 Bushfires, estimated 1 million ha burnt around 20 deaths and more than 500 houses destroyed.

So fire is not a new thing in Australia,
Many species of Australian native plants will not germinate unless a fire has first burnt the outer seed case.

www.smh.com.au...
i think its time for people to wake up and smell the coffee!!!

the recent fire storms in australia is far from normal even for australia. Its unprecidented

IT IS only a couple of years since scientists first told us we could expect a new order of fires in south-eastern Australia, fires of such ferocity they would engulf the towns in their path.

And here they are. The fires of Saturday were not "once in 1000 years" or even "once in 100 years" events, as our political leaders keep repeating. They were the face of climate change.

They were the result of the new conditions that climate change has caused: higher temperatures, giving us hotter days, combined with lower rainfall, giving us a drier landscape. Let's stop using the word "drought", with its implication that dry weather is the exception. The desiccation of the landscape here is the new reality. It is now our climate.

People are comparing last Saturday to Ash Wednesday and Black Friday. But this misses the point. We should be comparing these fires to the vast and devastating fires of 2002-03, which swept through 2 million hectares of forest in the south-east and raged uncontrollably for weeks. They have been quickly forgotten because, being mainly in parks, they did not involve a large loss of human life or property. But it is to this fire regime, the new fire regime of climate change, rather than to the regimes of 1983 or 1939, that the present fires belong.

Saturday's events showed us the terrifying face of climate change. The heat was devastating, even without the fire.

Wildlife carers reported many incidents of heat stress and death among native animals. This means that out in the bush, unreported, vast numbers of animals were suffering. We can all see the trees and other plants dying in our gardens and parks. Our local fauna and flora have not adapted to these extremes. With wildfire, heat death becomes a holocaust, for people, for animals and for plants.

The Government is wondering how to stimulate the economy. It is planning to give away much of the surplus from boom times in handouts. It has made the usual token allocations to climate change mitigation, allocations that will in no way deflect the coming holocaust.

The Prime Minister weeps on television at the tragedy of Saturday's events. He looks around uncomprehendingly, unable to find meaning. But there is meaning. This is climate change. This is what the scientists told us would happen. All the climatic events of the past 10 years have led inexorably to this. And this is just the beginning of something that will truly, if unaddressed, overwhelm us.

As the events of Saturday showed, the consequences of climate change will make the financial crisis look like a garden party.

Yet there is a synchronicity here that must not be missed. The extraordinary economic measures for which the financial crisis is calling provide a perfect opportunity to fund the energy revolution for which the crisis of climate change is calling. If the Government does not seize it, then the terrifying world into which we were plunged on Saturday will become the world we will have to inhabit.

Freya Mathews is honorary research fellow at the philosophy department of La Trobe University.


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I think climate change is not weather its happening or not rather what is causing it.

Co2 theory seems to be of debunked

Earths magnetic field theory seems to be catching fire its self just latly and seems more of a reality than 1 may of first thought.

reply to post by theflashor


How about we throw a few facts about rather than just spewing the Global warming mantra.

1. More and more people are moving into their bush change way of life, many have no idea how to protect their own properties
They build in a small clearing and have no fire break around their houses.

2. They let large trees grow close to the house allowing fire fuel to build up around residences and also fail to place leaf gutter guards in the roof gutters.

3. Local goverment laws prevent deliberate fire from being set as to thin out the fire fuel.
An area burt on a regular basis will not grow into a forrest fire.

4. any small fire which does start naturally is not allowed to burn out naturally and follow the nature of the land. they will dump water on the fire to stop it from burning the natural fire fuel and this will allow it to build up over the years.

5. we have taken so much water from the Murry Darling basin that the water table has dropped causing large areas to dry up and turn to salt.
This is not global warming, but rather poor water recource practices and very poor farming practices.

before the whole sky is falling scenario takes place, let us put everything in context and realize that we are responsible for the ferosity of the fires, not the global warming farce.

Btw who named this a once in a hundred year bush fire?

even Wikipedia shows 29 Notable bushfire events since 1851

reply to post by munkey66


So what about the "worse" ever floods in North Queensland that are happening right now? Got any past stats on that?

Originally posted by theflashor


They were the result of the new conditions that climate change has caused: higher temperatures, giving us hotter days, combined with lower rainfall, giving us a drier landscape. Let's stop using the word "drought", with its implication that dry weather is the exception. The desiccation of the landscape here is the new reality. It is now our climate.

Try a bit of research on the "Federation Drought" 1896 to about 1902. Not many left alive today to talk about it. But it was pretty bad when you consider that is covered half the continent (Australia). This had nothing to do with Climate Change....

Originally posted by WatchNLearn
reply to post by munkey66

 

So what about the "worse" ever floods in North Queensland that are happening right now? Got any past stats on that?

Try "Clermont, QLD 1916" 61 Dead. The worst in Australian history by death was Gundagai in New South Wales 1852 with a death toll of 89.

Clermont had nothing to do with climate change but to do with geography. They built on a flood plain. Nice and flat easy to build. Many cities around the world are built on flood plains.

Originally posted by WatchNLearn
reply to post by munkey66

 

So what about the "worse" ever floods in North Queensland that are happening right now? Got any past stats on that?

When you have people build roads and bridges as well as clear land, when they fill in swamps to make way for new developements you will inevitably cause some problems.
as soon as you build up in certain areas you effect the natural water flow.
we create dams and wiers, we make artificial water ways and expect nothing as a concequence?

I live in Cairns, in the past we had gutters along the road almost a foot depth in order to drain away the water fast, over the last 20 years we have had town planners coming from far and wide telling us what is best for the town.
Now we have gutters around 15cm deep as well as water gates to prevent crocodiles coming up the creeks.
Do you wonder why we are having floods?
the water can't get directed away.

we even had one idiot reporter telling us that global warming is what was causing one particular street to flood (called lake street due to it flooding since the town was established)
but he was still screaming global warming until someone pointed out to him that the tide was called a spring tide and was even published at what height it would be in the tidal book which is printed a year in advance.

But you can say that global warming is the fact that we have floods and droughts, some of us will laugh at you, others will laugh at me.

But there is one name for it and it's called the weather and it was neither you or I or even climate scientists who created it, but they will tell you all the doom and gloom you want to hear, because no one will pay attention to them when they tell you that they where mistaken and this is just another phase that the planet is going through.

Aren't the Victoria fires considered to be almost without a doubt arson????