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Is Climate Change Affecting Bushfires?
TapeCutter writes "After the devastating firestorm in Australia, there has been a lot of speculation in the press about the role of climate change. For the 'pro' argument the BBC article points to research by the CSIRO. For the 'con' argument they quote David Packham of Monash university, who is not alone in thinking '...excluding prescribed burning and fuel management has led to the highest fuel concentrations we have ever had...' However, the DSE's 2008 annual report states; '[The DSE] achieved a planned burning program of more than 156,000 hectares, the best result for more than a decade. The planned burning of forest undergrowth is by far the most powerful management tool available...' I drove through Kilmore on the evening of the firestorm, and in my 50 years of living with fire I have never seen a smoke plume anything like it. It was reported to be 15 km high and creating its own lightning. There were also reports of car windscreens and engine blocks melting. So what was it that made such an unusual firestorm possible, and will it happen again?"
let's just wait for the findings of the Royal Commission before debating the merits of global warming vs green policy vs urban sprawl. The scale and ferocity of the firestorm has devestated entire communities. The sooner politics are removed from the debate the sooner the answers may be found. Neither side of the debate is immune from point scoring or spin. The fact remains that the indigenous Australians have used seasonal burning as a land mangement practise for thousands of years.The foolish guidelines allowing people to build combustable homes within heavily wooded areas without sensible conditions has led to the worst loss of life,both human & animal in the recorded history of the continent.To say the cause of this tradgedy is global warming is stupid
That's a nice theory, and it's a shame that it's wrong. The arid parts of Western Australia are home to chaparral, the same as Southern California, although some of the species are different. Chaparral is notoriously prone to fire when conditions are right, and many of the species regrow quickly after a blaze. The plants aren't intruders that have pushed out the "more fire resistant native plants," they are the native plants. If you want to live there, you need to learn to keep the brush cut back, plant a barrier of less fire-prone plants around you and build a house that's not going to catch fire quickly when (not if) there's a wild fire.
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"Fires like this are normal."
This is incorrect, fire is normal but this one was not (regardless of the death and destruction). There is a metric called the Fire Danger Index that is used to issue warnings and declare total fire ban days, it is calibrated on the 1939 fires having an index of 100, IIRC the ash wednesday fires that I also witnessed had an index of 70-120. The abnormal conditions for this fire saw the index in the unheard of range of 150-200.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"the vegetation left over from the wetter period before global warming will result in some spectacular fires"
Much of the bush in the area (indeed the entire state) has been burnt several times since our last "wet period" over a decade ago. In the summer of 2006-2007 Melbourne was blanketed in smoke for two months where as the normal situation might see smoke for a week or two.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The ever increasing severity of wildfires in Australia, North America, and elsewhere have nothing to do with any hypothetical climate change. It has everything to do with honest to Cowboy Neal human intervention.
Every year, dry areas with lots of vegetation catch fire. This is natural. Every year, humans that are stupid enough to build flammable houses in fire prone areas fight the fires and put them out. This is not natural. If the fire was let to burn out on its own, the thick and highly flammable undergrowth would turn into fertilizer for the larger, healthier, and more fire resistant plants that have historically survived such wildfires.
You, sir, haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about.
The state of Victoria has been in the grips of the worst drought in a century for the past 12 years, leaving the whole state tinder dry.
The day of Black Saturday the highest temperatures on record were observed in many parts of the state, and extremely hot, dry and high winds were blowing out of the semi-arid center of the country.
You didn't even have to RFTA, you just had to see from TFS that here in Australia we do control burns in the off season, fuel management is a critical part of fire management in this country, especially when you consider that many parts of the country have acclimatised to the fire-stick agriculture practiced by the aboriginal inhabitant of this country for over 40,000 years
If you seriously think that the already observed climatic changes are having no impact on the prevalence and severity of natural disasters around the globe you need to pull your head out of your arse and realise that's not coffee you've been smelling.
2. Oil is formed by compressing organic material for a long long time. This means that, prior to life, this CO2 was already in the atmosphere. Meaning, life formed under conditions of higher CO2!!!
Confusing wording, but there is bit of accurate information in it. Much of the world's petroleum is believed to have been formed during periods that were warmer than now, with higher levels of C02, perhaps as much as 2-3x higher or more. While possibly a paradise for some kinds of plants and algae, it should be mentioned that such periods were also accompanied by Anoxic Events and enormous waves of mass extinctions.
1. Water vapor levels aren't being artificially increased.
2. The CO2 absorbed by that organic material has been sequestered for millions of years. The climate required for our lovely little civilisation began a few thousand years ago and depends upon that sequestration.
3. Global temperatures are easily tracked back via examination of ice cores and other scientific methods, back long before thermometers and writing with which to record any observations made.
4. Global warming begets climate change, so functionally they are one and the same. Close observation of past events allows prediction of future events.
5. You have no clue and blindly parrot propaganda without consideration of facts or logic.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
Nope, you can't
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
I think one of the primary issues is we haven't let native Australian's burn the bush the way they always have in the cooler months of the year (say around May or June). I remember seeing something about this on the ABC that because the burning was being done in those cooler months the intensity of the fires were greatly reduced and the most volatile fuel was burnt.
This also had the effect of leaving the less volatile fuel in the ground, so the soil had a higher carbon content and was less prone to bushfires. Ironically, the Aborigines in question were being paid by a power company to do the burning because it offset the power plants carbon emissions.
The reality of Australia's management of the land is we have a lot to learn from Native Australian's, and that's a humility that goes beyond just saying 'Sorry'. Until we grasp that, as a nation, we will have more of these bushfires.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Thanks to the influence of the environmental lobby in Australia, we have situations like this:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/fined-for-illegal-clearing-family-now-feel-vindicated-20090211-84sw.html?page=-1
Summary: the Sheahan family of Victoria bulldozed a firebreak around their house to protect them in case of a catastrophic bushfire. Of course, anything that involves killing trees places you somewhere between "pedophile" and "war criminal" these days, so the family were taken to court by the local council, and ended up $100,000 poorer.
Then a catastrophic bushfire came along and the Sheahan's is now practically the only house left standing in the district.
No it hasn't. That period includes The Little Ice Age, which, among other things, froze out the Viking colony on the West Coast of Greenland as well making it impossible to grow grapes for wine in England. If you're basing your post on the Hockey Stick Graph, you need to be told that it's been repeatedly demonstrated to be an artifact of badly handled data, and thoroughly debunked.
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You have been misinformed:
1. This is simple high school science. Water vapour in the atmosphere is at it's "satuartion point" and is totally dependent on pressure and temprature, this is why you get dew drops forming in the desert overnight. Any amount of water vapour you pump into the atmosphere will fall out as liquid within days.
2. Coal is the biggest contributor to GHG, the carbon locked up in coal, oil, etc was never present in the atmosphere all at the same time (unless you want to go back before multi-cellular life appeared).
3. Opinion that is not supported by fact or mathematics.
4. The term "climate change" was introduced by skeptics who pointed out that the term "global warming" could be construed as biased.
If you would like to post a link that backs you up we would all be interested, as it stands you are simply trolling by parroting psuedo-skeptical talking points.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Here is a database of observed climate change impacts. Your facts are fundementally correct but your conclusion is not, nobody is arguing climate change was the sole cause and it is disingenous to accuse the GP of doing so.
As for the observed temprature change being too small to affect large scale environmental change this is a silly argument that is easily debunked by observing Artic sea ice, it's like saying a teaspoon of sugar in your tank can't possibly do any harm to your engine. The amount of energy required to lift the global temprature even one degree is staggering yet the main cause of that increase is an increase in CO2 mesured in parts per million. That trapped energy must go somewhere and it does so mainly in the form of kinetic energy (below a 5km ceiling).
The government may or may not be incompetent but you are ignoring the facts in my summary and you are also ignoring the fact that most of the state has already been (naturally) burnt in recent years, particulaly in the summer of 2006-2007.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I guess that you fail to consider that the "shitload" of CO2 (from all sources, including man-made) account for a tiny fraction of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. So if 0.5% constitutes a "shitload", what would you call the other 99.5%?
And since you brought up observations of Mars and Venus, perhaps you can explain how the recent warming trend has also been detected on Mars? That would lead the cause of warming to be something the planets have in common - the Sun. Empirical measurements show solar output higher, so wouldn't you think that the most likely explanation would be the most logical one, rather than simple-minded "explanations" of processes that we don't nearly understand?
First, the Earth's atmosphere consists of about 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1% argon, and trace other gases (including water of about 0.5% and CO2 of about 0.05%). Nitrogen is not a greenhouse gas, oxygen is not a greenhouse gas, and argon is not a greenhouse gas. Thus, of the 32 K greenhouse effect, CO2 plays a very important role. Water is the dominant greenhouse gas, but it primarily serves to amplify the effect of other greenhouse gases since warmer air can hold more water. Additionally, water isn't as significant as it may appear (having a tenfold higher concentration than CO2) because it will precipitate out at colder elevations. Thus, CO2 and methane are the primary greenhouse gases that are really driving the greenhouse effect (with their effect amplified by the water vapour).
Second, the possible effects of a slight increase in solar intensity have been noted. They are too small to account for the increase in atmospheric temperature if they exist. And even the largest potential effect could only account for about a quarter of the warming that has been observed.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
By the Bushfire CRC and the CSIRO:
http://www.bushfirecrc.com/research/downloads/climate-institute-report-september-2007.pdf
From the concluding remarks:
"In this study, the potential impact of climate change on southeast Australia is estimated. Simulations from two CSIRO climate models using two greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions scenarios are combined with historical weather observations to assess the changes to fire weather expected by 2020 and 2050. In general, fire weather conditions are expected to worsen. ...
The number of "extreme" fire danger days generally increases 5-25% for the low scenarios and 15-65% for the high scenarios. By 2050, the increases are generally 10-50% in the low scenarios and 100-300% for the high scenarios. The seasons are likely to become longer, starting
earlier in the year.
These results are placed in the context of the current climate and its tendencies. During the last several years in southeast Australia, including the 2006-07 season, particularly severe fire weather conditions have been observed. In many cases, the conditions far exceed the projections in the high scenarios of 2050. Are the models (or our methodology) too conservative or is some other factor at work?"
Add to this, the fact that the place is tinder dry precisely because of the preceding 12 years of extreme drought AND the cutbacks to brush clearing and back-burning ("green" policies are an excuse for councils and state governments spending less $$$ - just like every other service they've cut), and you've got the "perfect (fire) storm" conditions we had on Black Saturday.
Given that climate change isn't going away, and that all the models indicate SE Australia will get drier and hotter, and given that governments aren't going to be increasing spending in this area any time soon (OK - maybe they'll be shamed into doing something for a couple of years before the new programmes get cut back again), it is HIGHLY LIKELY that this sort of thing will become a frequent occurrence (say every 2-3 years somewhere in SA, VIC, NSW).
By the way, NASA have a fantastic pic showing how anomalous the heatwave leading up to Black Saturday was against recent summer averages:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=36900
Of course, while we were burning down south, the banana benders up north were setting new records for floods.