Jacob's Soap Box

22 February, 2009

Whilst the bushfires in Victoria are still burning, the worst ever in Australia, judging by, at least, the human casualties, and whilst firelighters from all other Australian states, New Zealand, Canada and the USA are here to help, out of ashes THEY come, they, the greenie loony eco-whacko, global warming scare mongers, pointing long fingers at us and saying: Yep! Definitely! Global warming! … I told you so! … [verbal diarrhoea continues].

By now we are used to the idea that, according to the eco-whackos, global warming is the source of all evils from natural disasters such as bushfires and floods to ingrown toenails.

True, southeast Australia suffered a sever scorcher at the time, one of the worst since recording started in Australia 122 year ago. Remember, when we say record we are talking about a record of the last 122 years, not the billion years history of the planet. Less so when we are talking about satellite data we talking about record going back to 1979, And in any event these recent scorchers were not record temperatures.

It was hot but as I understand it, summer temperatures usually are.

What is also true is that bushfires NEVER erupt unless the weather is hot and dry, surprise surprise, thus please cut out the crap about global warming. We know that there are no bushfire during snow storms.

However, the ferocity of these particular set of bushfires that took about 200 lives, destroyed more then 1,800 homes, left some 7,000 people homeless and wiped off a number settlements do have a “green” connection. You see, it was the green policies adopted by all level of government, federal, state and local, that paved the way and created the “ideal” conditions for such human, social and environmental destruction.

The problem is that FOR THE LAST 30 YEARS, with the sole exception of the state of Western Australia (capital Perth), environmental policies prevented bushfire hazard reduction such as clearing of trees near houses, clearing fallen branches, trees and other debris from the forest floor, trimming grass either mechanically or by allowing cattle and sheep to graze on it, in national parks and near houses.

(Hey Charley, get your cows off that grass, it is native vegetation.)

To bushfire it all means one thing, FUEL. The heat generated from the fire feeding on such environmentally friendly policies created such heat that firelighters could not get within 100 meter (about 300ft) from the fire to fight it, their protecting gear notwithstanding.

This time these bushfires were culmination of at least 30 years of dereliction of duty of care by the authorities in favour of electoral “care”, i.e. votes. Successive governments submitted to the Greens and their propaganda and put the environment above people’s safety. In fact the destruction to environment that was caused but the bushfires is a monument that such measures are not even eco- friendly.

For 30 years now, fire-fighting authorities could not obtain permits to back-burn during winter to reduce the fuel on the forests floor. They were also prevented from clearing fire trails and maintaining fire barriers. Even average Joe was not allowed to collect fallen branches from the floor of the forest as firewood or just to clear the area adjacent to his property because it disturbs the bio-diversity of a sustainable eco-system under the leaves. Save the planet! Aren’t you getting emotional yet?

Permits to build a houses are contingent on replacing the trees that are taken down in enable construction with species, number and location dictated by the greenocrats, IRRESPECTIVE OF FIRE HAZARD they pause.

Meaningless words such as sustainability, bio-diversity, eco-system, biosphere ruled the corridors of Greenophila. Grrenophiles talk about protecting all species of fauna and flora EXCEPT the most important specie on earth; we HUMANS are pests to the environment. Save the planet! Don’t you feel warm on the inside?

* * * * *

Liam Sheahan a resident of Reedy Creek, Victoria, has his house still standing despite the fact that no other house within a radius of 2 km ( 1.25 mile) survived the fire that engulfed the area. The reason is that in 2002 Mr. Sheahan disregarded the Council’s environmental protection laws and bulldozed 250 trees off his hilltop property as a fire protection safety measure. All hell broke loose.

The Council took him to court, Liam was fined $50,000 (and paid additional similar amount in legal costs) but his property is now still standing as a vindication for his action.

Says Mr. Sheahan:

The house is safe because we did all that ,… We have got proof right here. We are the only house standing in a two kilometre area.

Although we are yet to see the outcome of the foreshadowed inquiry or royal commission, you can already hear the sprouts of the spins yet to come about the government’s dereliction in duty of care as if the actual damage would have occurred in any event even had they exercised fire hazards reduction measures.

Bull dust! The truth of the matter is simple, had there been fire hazard reduction in place, the fire would have NEVER reached the temperatures it did.

Bushfire, or any fire for that matter, has tree elements in it, ignition, oxygen and fuel, otherwise known as the fire triangle. In a case of bushfire, the ignition may be deliberate (arson) or accidental, we cannot do much about either of the ignition types. Nor can we do anything about oxygen in the atmosphere which leaves fuel as the variable on which we have peridial control.

The fuel includes the trees, shrubs, grass, the undergrowth and the forest debris (branches leaves etc). We cannot eliminate the fuel altogether but we can reduce it. Reduced fuel means reduced fire temperatures thus giving the fire-fighters much better chances of control it and control it earlier, meaning less damage.

There is nothing new about it and for nearly 30 years post-bushfires inquiry after inquiry came up with similar findings. Piers Akerman writes in the (Sydney) Daily Telegraph of 16 February 2009 that:

Start with Judge Leonard Stretton’s 1939 inquiry into the Black Friday fires, fast forward to the 1984 review of the Ash Wednesday fires the previous year, the report on fire prevention by the Auditor-General in 1992, the CSIRO fire management paper prepared by Phil Cheney in 1994, the Victorian inquiry and the federal inquiry – A Nation Charred – in 2003 [in Canberra], and you will find that the principal problem constantly identified over the span of your life as a determinant in the ferocity of the fires is the level of fuel available.

Note that Pierce Akerman is talking only about the state of Victoria and the ACT, There were similar outcomes from inquiries in all other states of which Western Australia is the only one exercising an effective fire hazard reduction schems. He continues:

Each of the inquiries I have mentioned made note of the fuel levels with your predecessor, Judge Stretton, noting: “The amount of (controlled) burning which was done was ridiculously inadequate,” in 1984, the level of reduction burning was found to be “too low”, in 1992, the “failure” of the Victorian Department of Conservation and Environment to meet its fuel-reduction targets was found to have made the forests “more susceptible” to fires, and this story is repeated in various forms right through 2003 and, without pre-empting your findings, remains the case today.

The Victorian Government, and local councils, have ignored all the warnings.

Alan Mull is a former farmer and a former fire brigade captain and an environmental activist who knows the bush. In the same Telegraph’s article Mr Mull summarises the history:

Aborigines used to start fires on the ridge lines as they came down after feasting on bogong moths every year …

When the forests were commercially logged and under the control of the old Forestry Commission, the forestry workers did the same thing.

But the [Victorian] state government since the days of (former Labor premiers) John Cain and Joan Kirner have allowed green ideologues to take over. The forests have been locked up, the fire trails have been closed, they are full of weeds and feral animals. The state has failed in its duty of care. Our national parks and reserves are now national disasters, whether burnt or not.’

[Square brackets, emphasis & highlight provided]

Hardly rocket science.

* * * * *

Suppose a group of terrorist of a certain Abrahamic Religion (Shshshsh, Victoria has anti defamation laws) entered Australia, murdered 200 people with countless injuries and blow up 1800 house, can you imagine the outcries?

Further suppose that the perpetrators of such massacre are caught. We can all apply out innovative skills as what punishment we would inflict on such terrorists. I can just hear the calls for retrospective application of the death penalty, how crude.

My question is simple, what is the difference between people who pull triggers or blow fuses that kill 200 innocent victims and those who caused these people to be incinerated by bushfire? No difference, they are all murderers!

The fires were not predictable, they were predicted. David Packham, himself a veteran academic on the issue writes in The Australian of 10 February, 2009 that:

Every objective analysis of the dynamics of fuel and fire concludes that unless the fuels are maintained at near the levels that our indigenous stewards of the land achieved, then we will have unhealthy and unsafe forests that from time to time will generate disasters such as the one that erupted on Saturday.

It has been a difficult lesson for me to accept that despite the severe damage to our forests and even a fatal fire in our nation’s capital [Canberra in 2003], the political decision has been to do nothing that will change the extreme threat to which our forests and rural lands are exposed.

The decision to ignore the threat has been encouraged by some shocking pseudo-science from a few academics who use arguments that may have a place in political discourse but should have no place in managing our environment and protecting it and us from the bushfire threat.

Does anyone out here still really believes that environmentalism is about the environment? It is not! It is not about the environment and it is not about people, in fact theses morons, the eco-whacko, could not care less if we human, the cause of all evil, burn to ashes in bushfires or freeze to death for lack of power to heat our homes. With humans the planet is a better place to their way of thinking

It is not accident the green movement as a whole rose out of the ruins of the Soviet communism. Also, it is not accident that all the liberals are environmentalists and all environmentalists are liberals. Therefore the two are interchangeable. I often say that the Greenies are like watermelon, green on the outside and red on the inside.

(Note: The term “liberal” does not include or denote supporters of the Australian Liberal Party who are, in essence, conservatives. Confusing, I know.)

Total control is a pre-requisite to a successful socialism and environmentalism is the tool to achieve control.

Environmentalism is not about green trees, clean air, clean water or pretty flowers, environmentalism is all about social engineering, it is all about control, controlling us all.

It is also all about power and money, not about welfare, or about social justice or the poor the sick or the weak. Social engineering is about setting unattainable goals to ensure perpetual source for power and money as the goal is never achieved.

Rather then target air and water pollution, that are achievable, socialists talk about global warming. We as humans have as much hope as changing the climate as to stop the earth rotating by turning our back sides eastward and release our bodily gases in unison.

Whilst the northern hemisphere experience one its coldest winter in generations, and down under we have the mildest summer in years, the recent heat waves notwithstanding, the eco-whackos scare campaign about global warming ratchet up as temperatures outside plummet.

If you wish to question the science behind global warming the climate alarmists will tell you that the science has settled, nothing to discuss further. Excuse me sir, but if the science is settled why are we still spending obscene amounts of money on “climate change research?”

Just look at the “stimulus”, yes yours, whichever country you are in, your government allocated vast sums to “climate change”, talking about spending money on something we can have for free! We sure can use that money for …for what? … I know! How about teaching kids to read and write instead of watching Al Gore’s docoganda?

Still Al Gore, Kevin 747 and, as we speak, Hillary Clinton circle the globe in private jets (Charley, is there a hybrid version for 747?) trooping world stages for “talks” about this that and the other AND climate change. Couldn’t they just give exchange Skype ID’s and “talk” till their heart content. These guys and goyls could not arrange a piss-up in a pub yet they pretend that they can rearrange the climate on earth.

Hey Charley, how much carbon dioxide was released into the atmosphere during the recent bushfires? How about using lawn mowers engines in lawn mowers that cut down of “native grass” instead of putting them into cars?

* * * * *

We will have yet another bushfire inquiry in which those who perpetrated the disaster will appears with a solicitor on one side a box of Kleenex on the other, swearing that public safety is paramount on their mind. Nothing is furthest from the truth, once more the arsonist turns up as a firemen.

Tags: bushfire, Environmentalism, fire hazard reduction

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 at 4:03 am and is filed under Australia, Environmentalism, Global Warming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.