Australian Politics
CSIRO study proves climate change driving Australia’s 800% boom in bushfires
This is a childish level of logic. There is no doubt that weather changes impact fires but PROVING that the weather changes are due to global warming shows no awarenes of the scientific and philosophical requirements for proving anything. As David Hume pointed out, you have to show constant conjunction between two things to substantiate a claim of causation and there is NO constant conjunction between any meteorological phenonena. Weak probabilities are all we have.
And there is no recognition below that Greenie restrictions on good forest management have increased the risk and severity of fires. There IS constant conjunction between restrictions on backburning and the severity of fires in the area
I have read the academic article concerned ("Multi-decadal increase of forest burned area in Australia is linked to climate change") and it goes to great length to prove what was in no doubt -- that fires have been on the increase in recent years
Of greater interest is what they found to correlate with fire incidence and severity. Their contribution there is assertions plus some desultory modelling. And the data they put into modelling is of the low quality that we have come to expect of modelling in this area. Let me quote their look at preventive burning:
We found no changes in the mean annual area of prescribed burning over the past 32 years, although we have no information on how successful those burns were in reducing fuel loads. However, given the lack of trend and the fact that on average, only 1% of forests are subject to fuel reduction burns every year, it is very likely that fuel management had no effect on the observed multi-decadal increasing trend in the burned area of forest fires
They correlate "prescribed" burning and admit that such figures tell us nothing. What is prescribed and what Greenies allow to happen are two different things. Their figures are clearly rubbish, as are their conclusions
But here is the clincher. I quote:
"The research also found Australia is bucking an international trend of decreasing fire activity"
If nobody else is getting the trend, how come it is due to global warming? Can you have global warming in one country? Is it global or is it not? Yet another logical failure in this pathetic study.
Climate change is the dominant factor causing the increased size of bushfires in Australia’s forests, according to a landmark study that found the average annual area burned had grown by 800 per cent in the past 32 years.
The peer-reviewed research by the national science agency, CSIRO — published in the prestigious science journal, Nature — reveals evidence showing changes in weather due to global warming were the driving force behind the boom in Australia’s bushfires.
Lead author and CSIRO chief climate research scientist Pep Canadell said the study established the correlation between the Forest Fire Danger Index – which measures weather-related vegetation dryness, air temperature, wind speed and humidity – and the rise in area of forest burned since the 1930s.
“It’s so tight, it’s so strong that clearly when we have these big fire events, they’re run by the climate and the weather,” Dr Canadell said.
The bushfire royal commission identified climate change as a key risk to ongoing bushfire catastrophe but did not make recommendations about reducing greenhouse emissions to curb the threat.
The CSIRO report found other factors have an impact on the extent and intensity of bushfires such as the amount of vegetation or fuel load in a forest, the time elapsed since the last fire, and hazard reduction burning. But Dr Canadell said the study showed the link between weather and climate conditions and the size of bushfires was so tight, it was clear these factors far outweighed all other fire drivers.
“Almost regardless of what we do the overall extent of the fire, really, is dictated by those climate conditions,” he said.
Climate scientists have found climate change is exacerbating the key fire risk factors identified by CSIRO’s study, with south-eastern Australia becoming hotter, drier and, in a particularly worrying trend, more prone to high wind on extremely hot and dry summer days.
The weather system that drove a blast furnace’s worth of westerly wind across NSW and Victoria’s forests, sparking some of the worst fires of the Black Summer in 2019-20, will be up to four times more likely to occur under forecast levels of global warming.
“All the various climate trends, which are so important, are all on the rise and they’re all connected to various degrees with anthropogenic climate change,” Dr Canadell said.
The study shows fires are becoming bigger and more common even when the Black Summer is not factored in. When the first half of the study period, from 1988 to 2001, is compared to the period between 2002 and 2018, the average annual forest burned area in Australia increased 350 per cent. That figured ramps up to 800 per cent when the fires of 2019-20, which burnt more than 24 million hectares of land, are included.
Mega-fires, which burn more than 1 million hectares, have “markedly” increased with three of the four recorded from 1930 occurring since 2000, while the gap between big blazes has had a “rapid decrease”, the study says.
Last year, the bushfire royal commission reported fuel-load management through hazard reduction burning “may have no appreciable effect under extreme conditions” that typically cause loss of life and property.
The CSIRO findings bolster that conclusion and call into question calls for native forest logging to be used as a bushfire management tool.
“This is happening regardless of anything that we might or might not do to try to stop the fires,” Dr Canadell said.
The increased frequency of bushfires is giving the bush less and less time to recover, which is changing ecosystems and threatening the survival of many plants and animals that are struggling to adapt to the pace of change and loss of habitat.
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Melbourne's anti-vaxxers have started placing Nazi-themed stickers around city. Stickers show Star of David, image of Adolf Hitler and a syringe with messaging
So using Nazi imgery is a very clear way of emphasizing that government tyranny can be a very bad thing. I think the handling of the coronavirus by methods copied from Communist China will go down in history as one of the great medical disasters
Melbourne's anti-vaxxers have started placing stickers around the city controversially comparing themselves to Jews in the Holocaust as they continue to protest against mandatory vaccinations.
The stickers, which have been spotted around the Victorian capital in recent weeks, show three images - the Star of David, Adolf Hitler and a syringe.
'What's the difference between vaccine papers and a yellow star? 82 years. We are increasingly living under National Socialiam. Stop medical apartheid,' the message reads.
The stickers have caused outrage in the Jewish community, with community leaders calling for the government to take a stand against the propaganda.
They have been placed on walls, street signs and crossings around the city, usually in areas of high foot traffic.
The Chairman of the Anti-Defamation Commission said the comparison between anti-vaxxers and slaughtered Jews was 'hateful and cruel'.
'To hijack the Holocaust, in which six million Jews and millions of others were slaughtered and burned, to suggest that Hitler's Final Solution is comparable to lifesaving vaccination efforts is to trivialise and downplay humanity's most immense tragedy,' Dr Dvir Abramovich said.
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New Australian laws to unmask anonymous online trolls and make tech giants pay
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced he is set to introduce new internet safety legislation as a way to allow 'real world rules' to exist in the digital world.
If the companies refuse or are unable to identify who made the defamatory comments, then they will have to pay the defamation costs.
Announcing the measures on Sunday, Mr Morrison said the internet should not be a “wild west where bots and bigots and trolls” can harm people without consequence.
He said women and children were the people most affected by anonymous bullying and defamatory abuse online and there needed to be a “quick and fast way” for people to raise these issues with the platforms and get it taken down.
“Free speech is not being allowed to cowardly hide in your basement and sledge … and harass people anonymously and seek to destroy their lives,” Mr Morrison said. “That is cowardice — and there is no place for that in this country.”
Mr Morrison said the online giants needed to be held accountable for the world they had created, to ensure there was a “quick and easy” method for users to address harassment.
“They have created the space, and they need to make it safe, and if they won’t, we will make them laws such as this, and I will campaign for these all around the world as I have done on so many other occasions with Australia taking the lead.”
Social media giants will also have to establish online customer shopfronts in Australia to make sure they comply with orders as part of the measures.
The centrepiece crackdown on online trolls will be a change to the law to make it clear social media providers are responsible for payouts arising from defamatory comments on their platform where the troll cannot be identified.
The measures will force social media companies, such as Twitter and Facebook, to create a complaints scheme which will allow victims to know if comments were made in Australia and, if so, to obtain the contact details of the poster, with their consent.
If that is unsuccessful, a complainant will also be able to seek a new form of court order, to be called an “End-user Information Disclosure Order”, which will allow a social media company to unmask trolls without consent.
Mr Morrison said the government would seek test cases because it was aware that most litigants in defamation cases against social media giants will be outgunned financially.
He said the government was prepared to intervene in defamation disputes involving social media companies to support victims and make it clear to the courts how it thinks the Commonwealth legislation should be applied.
The laws were first flagged by Mr Morrison at last month’s G20 summit in Rome, where he proposed a new round of coordinated action to protect people online.
Australia and other countries have joined forces at previous G20 summits to impose tougher rules on digital companies, including an agreement in Osaka two years ago when France backed a push to halt the spread of violent terrorism online after the Christchurch attacks.
Attorney-General Michaelia Cash said the measures would also “bring clarity” to the High Court decision in September when it dismissed an appeal by some of Australia’s biggest media outlets including The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian, finding they are the publishers of third-party comments on their Facebook pages.
The court found that, by running the Facebook pages, the media groups participated in communicating any defamatory material in the case of former Northern Territory detainee Dylan Voller which were posted by third parties and were therefore responsible for the comments.
“Social media services, they need to step up and they need to understand that they have a responsibility in this regard, and that is why this important step, providing clarity to all Australians, but in particular to social media companies - you will be deemed to be publisher,” she said.
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‘Grotesque, leftwing back-scratching’: failed Senate inquiry into ABC leaves Coalition enraged
A coalition of Labor and Green senators managed to head off an inquiry into the ABC complaints process – which was labelled “politically motivated” by ABC chair Ita Buttrose – but the manoeuvre left some Liberal senators apoplectic.
Queensland senator James McGrath described the 11th hour block as a “grotesque, leftwing, back-scratching orgy of flatulent arrogance from the ABC and those on the left” and called for the ABC to be broken up and Triple J to be sold off.
Related: Senate inquiry into ABC suspended after Labor and Greens motion gets cross-bench support
The deputy whip’s personal attack on the prime minister’s captain’s pick for ABC chair was unprecedented, seemingly more personal than Michael Kroger’s spray in June, when the former Victorian Liberal powerbroker said Buttrose was a “hopeless failure” and should resign.
“This ABC who sneers at us is led by an arrogant chair who sees the ABC as a country apart from Australia,” McGrath told the Senate. “And that is quite sad. The inevitable result of decades of free rein, of grossly excessive budgets and diminished accountability, is that we’ve ended up with an inner-city hive of woke workers, hiring woke friends to do their woke work in their quest to ‘wokify’ the world.
“But in conjunction with the first-night crowd, the chair of the ABC and her fellow first-nighters are at the opera, chinking their champagne glasses, sneering at middle Australia and at those who believe in a pluralistic, diverse media market.”
The decision by the Senate to delay the inquiry was a win for Buttrose who had called a week ago on the upper house to act to “defend the independence of the ABC”.
The government inquiry was sprung on the ABC days after the ABC’s complaints division told Fox News it had not upheld any of the complaints made in a lengthy submission about a Four Corners program on the News Corp broadcaster aired in August.
The ABC, which returns to Senate estimates on Monday, declined to comment.
An issues paper by the ABC’s independent review of its complaints handling is due to be released on Friday, and it will call for public submissions.
Professor John McMillan, a former commonwealth and NSW ombudsman and one of the co-reviewers, said a story in the Australian claiming the aborted parliamentary inquiry had put pressure on the external inquiry to call for public submissions was wrong.
“It is incorrect to suggest that the independent inquiry into ABC complaint handling I am conducting with Jim Carroll has only recently decided to invite public submissions,” McMillan said on Friday. “A public inquiry and submission process was planned from day one.
“A standard inquiry practice is to invite public submissions following initial consultations and preparation of an issues paper. That practice has been followed in this inquiry. An issues paper will shortly be released.”
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
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