Australia Is On So Much Fire, You Can See It From Orbit

Jeremy Lee writes "Temperatures in Australia this week hit the point where the Bureau of Meteorology had to invent a new color. And with heat and winds come Bushfires. So it's probably good that I made a real-time bushfire map with every known source of public data directly relating to fires in Australia, mostly because fire doesn't respect state borders." From space.

Comments

Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been looking for a full country version. This is awesome. Thanks.

Re:Thanks

[Jeremy Lee]

Thanks to you and everyone who looked at the map. The extensive slashdotting let me code some improvements :-)

Re:Thanks

[Dimitrii]

Would be good to have a an equivalent of http://www.geomac.gov/index.shtml

Re:Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not a fire, THIS is a fire!

Re:Thanks

[Thorfinn.au]

need to add the weather events to the map
Cat 4 cyclone off WA

BBQ

[Anonymous Coward]

Kangaroo BBQ? anyone?

Re:BBQ

[mush1se]

Sure what kind of BBQ sauce do you want me to bring?

Re:BBQ

[Anonymous Coward]

Something with a little kick to it.

Re:BBQ

[Anonymous Coward]

And hop to it!

Re: BBQ

[TheEffigy]

I think this was intended to be a joke, but actually kanga meat is available in most supermarkets here.

Re: BBQ

[nfras]

Yep, I had Kanga Bangas for dinner last night. Not as succulent (fatty) as regular sausages and with a stronger flavour but not bad all the same. Kangaroo burgers rock, and Kangaroo steak is great when done quite rare, but overcook it and it goes tougher than a pair of Chuck Norris's boots.
Kangaroo meat is also much better for you and the environment than beef. Kangaroos need to be culled in many parts of Australia due to rising population levels (there are considerably more kangaroos in Australia now than before white settlement, due to agriculture), the meat is very low in fat, and kangaroos fart far less than cows, so we don't get the methane output that cows produce. If you can get kangaroo meat, try it.

Re: BBQ

[Tagged_84]

They have a heap more protein too! I grab the kilo mince and make patties from them. Throw on an egg, beetroot, tomato and choice of condiment and it's a pretty good meal.

Re: BBQ

[Anonymous Coward]

"kangaroos fart far less than cows"

Actually they probably fart more than cows. Cow methane comes from burping.

Re: BBQ

[MrKaos]

Yeah - Kangaroo Bolegneise here.

1kg of beef + 1 kg of roo mince, fry it with onions in a big borma (pot) garlic, spices, 1.5 litres of pasta sauce mix, tripe tomato paste, a kilo of over ripe tomatos - takes an hour to cook and when frozen into container makes meals for a few weeks, joy

roo tail roast - just like any other roast - mega tasty, cook with potatoes, sweet potatoes

banga burgers rock, cookem, - joy

Who'd have thought those cute little bastards were so tasty.

Re: BBQ

[Hognoxious]

I thought it was common knowledge that if you're doing game or other lean meats in reconstituted fashion you need to add some fat. Generally about 10% bacon does the trick.

Not had 'roo steak many times (sometimes at restaurants but also at home) but I've liked it when I did. If you didn't know it was Skippy you'd probably just think it was a nice bit of beef. Could say the same about hoss too.

The smell, the horrible smell

[crazyjj]

Once you've smelled burning kangaroo mixed with the acrid stench of melted dune-buggy and dead mutant, you're never the same again. I can still hear the koalas screaming in my nightmares.

Re:The smell, the horrible smell

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Walk away. Just walk away. And live.

Re:The smell, the horrible smell

[Ol Biscuitbarrel]

Better install Verb Alert before it reaches your house, Bruce.

Re:The smell, the horrible smell

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me be the first to say F UCK you and your VerbAlert.

English Nazi

Re:The smell, the horrible smell

[Anonymous Coward]

Get over yourself. Watch Kinetic Typography http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7E-aoXLZGY

Re:The smell, the horrible smell

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you've smelled burning kangaroo mixed with the acrid stench of melted dune-buggy and dead mutant, you're never the same again. I can still hear the koalas screaming in my nightmares.

The worst part is the spiders. The horrible, horrible Australian spiders. You'd think the fire would finally rid us of the deadly, venomous pests, right? But then you hear their terrible hissing voices in every fire, all of them speaking in unison, repeating the first and only thing they have ever said, in a crude parody of human speech, "This can't stop us... you can't stop us... we will return... this can't stop us..."

Re:The smell, the horrible smell

[mcneely.mike]

Do you mean Bruce, or Bruce.... or maybe Bruce? Hurry man... I gots to know!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f_p0CgPeyA

Re:The smell, the horrible smell

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Yet it covers up the other smells...

Re:The smell, the horrible smell

[mcgrew]

Ahhh, they're used to it in California. Except the species are different is all.

But if you want gut wrenching stench, visit Decatur, IL, home of ADM (motto:"breadbasket to the world"). The whole city smells like a pile of rotting pig carcasses dumped on a pile of shit, covered with sugar and set on fire.

Someone should open a weight loss clinic there.

Re:The smell, the horrible smell

[Runaway1956]

But - what about the drop bears? Will the environment recover if the drop bears are killed off?

Re:The smell, the horrible smell

[Abreu]

My wife works a few blocks away from the main Grupo Modelo brewery (makers of Corona, which many of you like).

The stench of the brewing processes is unbearable at times...

Re:The smell, the horrible smell

[GumphMaster]

Not unlike the average Subway "restaurant" then... even out here in Australia.

Re:The smell, the horrible smell

[32771]

Oh my, I remember visiting some nature reserve around Canberra that got devastated in a firestorm 4 years before I went there. That sad lady behind the counter of the still empty but newly rebuilt nature reserve visitor centre showed me some book about the cleanup operation, just grisly all those burnt animals. She was almost in tears about it.

The deep space tracking station nearby was still Ok though, Mt. Stromlo observatory not so.

You know that this isn't funny at all, especially since this can happen way more often now in continental locations due to global warming.

 

Re:The smell, the horrible smell

[Anonymous Coward]

One does not just "Walk Away" from Australia - it's an Island, girt by sea and all that.

Re:The smell, the horrible smell

[mcgrew]

That's odd, the Budweiser brewery down in St Louis has no smell at all. Maybe the smell at the Corona brewery is the nastinaess that stays in Budweiser's beer?

Re:The smell, the horrible smell

[Hognoxious]

Yeah, but if you started from the middle it'd be a long time till you realized that.

If you didn't like, totally die, first.

Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

We're now using and at the start of sentences?

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[SJHillman]

Yes, because English teachers are the only ones against it. Everyone else understands that it's acceptable when used properly.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

And I don't think there is a proper use.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[cheaphomemadeacid]

Actually, this summary is pretty good. its concise, its not repeatin half the article its linking to. I'd prefer more summaries like this.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[crazyjj]

Greetings, time traveler from the 19th century. "And" has been an acceptable opening segue for some time now here in 2012. Also, we attempt to use gender-neutral language, which has made using the plural "they" and its variants as singular forms increasingly acceptable. In addition, the delineation between "effect" and "affect" seems to be fading in popular usage as well, as have traditional meanings of "irony" and "hacker" (a word which probably means something REALLY different to you).

Oh, and we have a cure or treatment for every venereal disease now! And we have a polio vaccine too!

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

You may need to move in better circles, its not 'used properly' at the start of the sentence. Everyone understands that 'and' is a conjunction. If you let simple things like this slide you'll end up with statesmen who can't spell potato, and no one wants to go there.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[telchine]

We're now using and at the start of sentences?

and why not?

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[inglorion_on_the_net]

yes. but it's ok.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[oodaloop]

But it's not technically allowed. But everyone does it.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[coinreturn]

Here, allow me to blow your mind:

"And" at the start of a sentence is not acceptable.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Coisiche]

Greetings, time traveler from the early 21st century. It's only 2013 now, maybe you should have gone for a longer journey than coming from 2012.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[i kan reed]

You seem to not understand the idea of colloquial grammar. "And" at the beginning of a sentence can communicate information that isn't necessarily directly dependent on the previous independent clause. It can, for example, represent the notion of building on a previous assertion in the same paragraph. And that is why colloquial grammar should be understood, and not edited for no better reason than "I say so".

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[datapharmer]

Oxford disagrees (about conjunctions, but you are spot on about potatoes): http://oxforddictionaries.com/words/conjunctions It is fine to start a sentence with and.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

And it was really amazing! I went to sleep in 2012 and I woke up in 2013!

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Abstrackt]

That's nothing. I slept through the end of the world a few weeks ago.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

Acceptable to who?

Some pedantic grammar nuts nobody gives a fuck about?

Ok. I shall continue to not give a fuck it upsets some people. AND the rest of the world will continue to communicate just fine.

Stuck on rules just because they are rules.. Is a sign of mental illness. You should get that checked before you shoot up a school or something.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Aaden42]

-1 for missing the apostrophe in the contraction for "it is" while engaging in Grammar Natzism.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[dfeifer]

Looks to me, as short as the second half is, like it was a typo and should have been a coma instead of a period. I would give the person some slack. Depending on how small the screen was that the entered the comment in you may not be able to tell the difference between a comma and a period.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

"And" has been an acceptable opening segue for some time now here in 2012. Also, we attempt to use gender-neutral language, which has made using the plural "they" and its variants as singular forms increasingly acceptable. In addition, the delineation between "effect" and "affect" seems to be fading in popular usage as well, as have traditional meanings of "irony" and "hacker"

What those usages all have in common is that those who are skilled at using the English language don't use them.

Clearly, we must always accommodate the most ignorant and unskilled (at their single native language!) among us. That will definitely raise the bar. In fact, let's do the same thing for cars. Someone might accidentally press the brake pedal when they intended to use the accelerator. That might make them feel bad. So let's make cars where both the brake and gas pedals accelerate the vehicle. It'll be great! Then the driver is never, ever told they did something wrong. We'll just keep moving the goalposts so that no one is ever mistaken.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[dkleinsc]

As a brilliant British writer once said, "This is the kind of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put."

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Aaden42]

You will not get me to use the plural pronouns to make gender neutral references. There are perfectly acceptable made-up words for gender neutral pronouns. If we're going to abandon traditional English, we might as well do it with new words rather than abuse the accepted meaning of existing ones.

Mr. Gordon Sumner may feel free to die in one of the aforementioned brush files. If I love someone, I will set her free. Or perhaps hir if I'm feeling especially androgynous at the time.

AND, there are FOUR lights!

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[RivenAleem]

Is saying "We are" when writing a question another symptom of the demise of the English language?

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[RivenAleem]

Aaaaaandddd Whooosh!

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

-1 for misspelling Nazism. It's Nazis all the way down.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

"Acceptable to whom?"

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

Says the guy who writes "its not 'used properly'". I think you mean it's. That's the problem with correcting people, throwing stones etc.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

Acceptable to whom?

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Coisiche]

That's a quiet life.

Everyone I know was awake for the rollover from 2012 to 2013. Most were consuming some sort of alcohol too.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, and we have a cure or treatment for every venereal disease now!

Including pregnancy?

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

"between "effect" and "affect" seems to be fading in popular usage as well"

No more than "then" and "than", "there/they're/their", or various other commonly confused words with different meanings. No, they aren't "fading in popular usage". They're just more confused than ever because more people tolerate sloppy writing. They are still distinct, and the need for them to remain distinct has not vanished. (Example: "It is better to be pissed off then pissed on" -- "Uh, I think you meant 'than'")

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[glsunder]

And you have a problem with this?

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[ByOhTek]

Yet you managed it.

It's a reasonable colloquialism. It basically indicates a strong tie of one sentence to the previous sentence. It is probably just a lazy way of avoiding run on sentances. And I think it does a great job at that!

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[ByOhTek]

No, it's not formally correct.

It's very much allowed, it just ceases to be formal English at that point. Most people do not communicate using formal English.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[phantomfive]

And yet it still makes horrid prose.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Should you put "and" in quotes or should we wait for the rest of the sentence?

I want to be a grammar nazi too. ;-)

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[pitchpipe]

Oh, and we have a cure or treatment for every venereal disease now!

Greetings time traveler from the 22nd century.

rather then argue with you id say your rite wen it cums to ppl dropping some real anachronistic and arcane usages of grammer speling is also real grate hear U definately have a point weve cum a long way!!! i think the affect of this has bin AWESOME!!!

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[mcneely.mike]

And only one statesman has!

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[ClickOnThis]

Looks to me, as short as the second half is, like it was a typo and should have been a coma instead of a period.

Oh, the irony. ;-)

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Dexter Herbivore]

I find it slightly ironic that you're talking about the demise of the English language when evolving use is a sure sign of a living language.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Sulphur]

You seem to not understand the idea of colloquial grammar. "And" at the beginning of a sentence can communicate information that isn't necessarily directly dependent on the previous independent clause. It can, for example, represent the notion of building on a previous assertion in the same paragraph. And that is why colloquial grammar should be understood, and not edited for no better reason than "I say so".

This is because they live in constant terror of comma splices or run on sentences. Bad grammar is a leading cause of slow painful death.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[ClickOnThis]

Mod parent up. You can affect an effect, but you can't effect an affect unless you're in the same business as Meryl Streep and Robert DeNiro.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[i kan reed]

I've re-read both our comments carefully, and I can't find a reasonable plural noun to which "they" might be a back-reference. Could you tell me who you mean?

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad writing is still harder to read than good writing. Rather than being a matter of style or preference, some of the conventions that are around are there for good reasons. For example, starting sentences with "and" generally means that your first sentence wasn't well formed; in TFS none of the sentences were well formed, resulting in a passage which was jarring to read and harder to understand than it should have been.

"They" is useful (and less of an abomination than "s/he"), but you're losing information. "One" sounds very formal, but it does exactly what "they" (singular) tries to do.

Effect and affect are so frequently confused that you're right; they are essentially interchangeable. There are a few edge cases however where they have different meanings, but mostly it's just a shibboleth indicating a reasonable level of education.

Irony has been clobbered because most USians don't understand the difference between irony, sarcasm and surrealism; I have no idea why. They are quite different concepts to anyone from this side of the pond.

The whole "hacker" thing is best left alone. It's perfectly linguistically acceptable for a group to identify themselves with a word that is used by outsiders to refer to something else (e.g. "American").

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[ClickOnThis]

I'm not an English teacher, but I think that starting a sentence with a conjunction is okay if it is used for rhetorical emphasis.

What surprises me is that nobody in this grammar-nazi thread has picked up on the dyslexic object phrase in the article's headline. I guess they're "on too much fire" about other trivialities.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course we could use the semicolon; which was designed to allow two related, but seperate, senatces to be joined.

Starting with an "and" is conversational and is only used by people who didn't realise they had more to say than they did.

There's no excuse for such lack of planning when writting.

P.S. I'm terrible when it comes to spelling and grammar in general. This doesn't mean I would choose to get rid of them, especially given the confusion saved when they're correctly used.

just try to help your uncle jack of a horse with out using the correct language

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[spaceyhackerlady]

We're now using and at the start of sentences?

Yup.

Face it: language changes. The English of Beowulf is a foreign language to modern speakers. Chaucer is heavy going. Hell, many people struggle with Shakespeare and Dickens.

Some changes I've seen in my own life. I'm 51.

Loss of distinction between adjectives and adverbs in spoken English, particularly "good" vs. "well".

Loss of "hw". "Whale" and "wail" are homonyms except in a few regional accents.

Singular "they" as a gender-neutral pronoun. I like this and use it myself.

Very few people use colons or semicolons in written English. Fewer still know how to use them correctly.

My grandparents were born from 1884 (paternal grandfather) to 1905 (maternal grandmother) and used the subjunctive mood. It was largely gone before I was born. It only survives in fossilized expressions like "so be it" and the song title "Let it be".

...laura

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

As was I, yet I still can't write 2013 when I write (or type) the date, dammit!

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

Educated people still use this and other grammatical flaws to identify less educated, less qualified people.

Yes, language evolves, don't be a grammar nazi, blah blah blah, but it still marks you as inferior, and will for some time.

I like to wait for early adopters to find the problems with new technology, and buy the perfected products a few years later. This is similar; I allow the early adopters of lazy, incorrect language to suffer the disadvantages. When some new usage is almost universally accepted, I'll start using it.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Jstlook]

That would be 'we are' [grammar] nazis all the way down.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent double plus good.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[http]

Methinks you are mistaking "acceptable" for "commonplace".

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's a big problem?

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

Your Elizabethan is horrid. Verily, the king shall be enraged.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

If we're going to abandon traditional English, we might as well do it with new words rather than abuse the accepted meaning of existing ones.

If using 'they' was good enough for Shakespeare, it's good enough for me.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[theskipper]

I'm getting tired of the Nazi phrase. Let's cut to the chase and simply call it what it is: "Grammar Dick".

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Sulphur]

I've re-read both our comments carefully, and I can't find a reasonable plural noun to which "they" might be a back-reference. Could you tell me who you mean?

I could. And I meant those who use "And" at the beginning of a sentence.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[ByOhTek]

I'm not sure if it slipped your attention, but a lot of online communication, even if typed rather than vocal, tends to take the conversational form/tone.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[i kan reed]

Oh, well, then I find your position unreasonable.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[agrisea]

Meanwhile, down under is burning. Could you all topic drift back to that huge problem?

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

I think "nazi" is intended as an insult. Accordingly, it's a lot more inflammatory than simply calling someone a detective...

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

Your brilliant British writer is an idiot. A better phrasing that avoids a dangling preposition would be: "This is the kind of arrant pedantry with which I will not put up". "up" in this sentence is an adverb so there should be no objection to putting it at the end of the sentence.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[K. S. Kyosuke]

"And" has been an acceptable opening segue for some time now here in 2012. Also, we attempt to use gender-neutral language, which has made using the plural "they" and its variants as singular forms increasingly acceptable.

You will not get me to use the plural pronouns to make gender neutral references. There are perfectly acceptable made-up words for gender neutral pronouns.

In Indo-European languages, such as English, interrogative and indeterminate sentences are obligatorily masculine, which makes masculine interrogative, relative, and personal pronouns gender neutral (unmarked), and anything else would be marked. (As a Slavic speaker, I regularly laugh at the American and British attempts at such precisely directed language engineering: they very much remind me of your right-wing religious nut-heads trying to get *only certain parts* of science out of schools. "Science is fine, but don't teach evolutionary biology, that one part is wrong, the rest is right, of course.")

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[K. S. Kyosuke]

"And" at the start of a sentence is not acceptable.

And yet you wrote it right there!

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I know! A period takes a few days, while a coma may take years for a woman to recover from. What I don't understand is how the size of my screen with my ability to distinguish between the two. I usually just ask, and a lack of answer usually indicates coma.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

If we are going to nitpick, I do believe the final quotation mark should go after the period. Just sayin'.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[coinreturn]

Whooosh!

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[VortexCortex]

To your left you'll see the remains of Hitler. On the right here we have on display the remains of the last grammarian.

Much to the chagrin of the grammarians the cobbled together English language continued evolve. Not even the machine learning systems cared for the antiquated language bound communication style; They strove to understand what people meant regardless of how precise they were in saying it. Both races having been developed in much the same way, through evolution, realized a Universal truth that escaped the grammarians (though they could not escape the truth itself): All that can not adapt becomes extinct.

And that, class, is how we won the war against the Grammar Nazis. Now, let us momentarily link minds momentarily so we may more deeply contemplate the significance of this achievement.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

We could call them pedants, possibly even elide the - nts, maybe throw an -o on the end for ease of use.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

Woosh!

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[LordLucless]

It's got nothing to do with language changes. Starting sentences with "and" has been valid usage for centuries, formal or informal. An example off the top of my head - "And can it be", a hymn composed in the 16th century, where "and" isn't simply the first word of a sentence, but the first word of the entire piece, although it's not used as a conjunction in this context.

Starting sentences with "and" is a frequently mis-used construction, and primary school grammar teaches instruct their pupils to avoid it for that reason. The problem is, few people ever advance past grade school English, which is why people can't use colons or semi-colons properly either.

I have no problem with the evolution of language, but evolution should be progressive - as the language develops, it should become able to express more concepts. This is happening - we're constantly adding new words and new idiomatic expressions to the language - but it's also devolving, we're expressive ability is lost due to the increasing lack of speakers to appreciate grammatical precision and fine distinctions.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[dkleinsc]

Another old joke about this problem:
Visitor to Harvard: "Where's your library at?"
Harvard student: "This is Harvard. We don't end our sentences with a preposition."
Visitor; "Ok, where's your library at, jerk?"

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[bcrowell]

Greetings, time traveler from the 19th century. "And" has been an acceptable opening segue for some time now here in 2012.

It's been normal English-language usage since before English was a written language. "And therfore at the kynges court my brother Ech man for hymself." - Chaucer. "And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night." -- King James Bible, Luke 2:8

Also, we attempt to use gender-neutral language, which has made using the plural "they" and its variants as singular forms increasingly acceptable.

Generic "they" is also not a modern innovation. Generic "they" and generic "he" have coexisted ever since Old English's grammatical gender evolved into Middle English's natural gender. Generic "they" was used by Shakespeare and Austen.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[cas2000]

"They" has been used as a singular pronoun in English since at least the 15th century, and can easily be found in examples of all kinds of writing - including novels, plays, essays - ever since then. There has never been a time when they/their/them weren't used as singular pronouns.

It's about as "traditional" as it gets,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

The only reason it's controversial is because of reactionaries using bogus "it's not proper English" arguments as an excuse to refuse using gender-neutral terms, to mask their sexism - "I'm not sexist, I'm just a language pedant". Yeah, right.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

Rulz r cmpltly uslez. unli peedntz karz abt dem.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to be a grammar nazi too. ;-)

Nazi

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I had that issue, a liberal dose of miconozole fixed it.

Oh wait...

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[bzipitidoo]

Heretic!

English is perfect! There is no room for improvement! Mark Twain was wrong!

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[oatworm]

Yes, but they had abortions in the 19th century, too.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember another slashdot thread that was hijacked discussing this, I believe it comes down to a geographic differences, and whether the quoted statement would independently require a full stop.

Putting the full stop inside the quotes, "just because", looks silly to me.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[dontclapthrowmoney]

Loss of "hw". "Whale" and "wail" are homonyms except in a few regional accents.

Oblig. Family Guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TTvHTxHX-Y

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Waccoon]

I agree. However, remove the word "and" from the summary and it loses no information.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[jonaskoelker]

Better a grammar nazi than a nazi gra'ma ^_^

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a passive aggressive idiot.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

This reminds me of the guy who told me that "fewer" and "less" can be swapped, without exception. I disagree, which leads me to ask who is fewer right? He didn't respond to that one, for some reason.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Sigg3.net]

*sigh *

If only grammar discussions could put out great fires..

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

Contrary to popular belief, the use of the third person plural as a gender neutral pronoun has been part of English since at least, Early Modern, if not before. It's well documented, I don't have the links right now (for the same reason I am not logged in), but if you want proof now just pick up your nearest Jane Austen book. Yes, it has been looked down on by grammar nazis since it's inception, and I personally try not to use it where possible (although my preference is for the masculine as the gender neutral, simply for neatness), but it IS traditional.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[i kan reed]

To be fair, in this case, he's an unambiguously right, because what is in the quotation marks is a complete sentence. Pretty much every style guide tells you to then. My mistake.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Hognoxious]

What a load of garbage. At this moment in time "then" is not the same as "than", and given that substituting one for the other often gives a syntactically correct sentence with an entirely different meaning it's unlikely they ever will be. It follows that if you exchange them you aren't driving progress or invigorating the language or any other airy-fairy claptrap.

You're just wrong.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Dexter Herbivore]

Really? That's your argument? An example that has NOTHING to do with the example of the grammatical construct that's being discussed. At no point did I say that I agree with every modification of the English language, I was just indicating that a fixed language is a DEAD language.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no excuse for such lack of planning when writting.

Faggot.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. There's two styles, English and American.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_stop#Punctuation_styles_when_quoting

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Anonymous Coward]

it has been looked down on by grammar nazis since it's inception

Since it is inception? Retard.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Hognoxious]

I wasn't aware that they were in the same business.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Hognoxious]

Blake's (or is it Parry's?) "Jerusalem" opens with "And did those feet...". Several other lines begin with it.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Hognoxious]

You appear to be confusing the appearance of new words, which is all well and good when new things are invented or discovered, and sloppy usage, which serves no useful purpose.

Re:Demise of the English langauge

[Dexter Herbivore]

Verily thou doth speak truth.

My god ...

[0racle]

they've gone to plaid.

Re:My god ...

[dkleinsc]

So you're saying Australia has been invaded by Scotsmen?

Re:My god ...

[Jason Levine]

If they have been, I bet they weren't True Scotsmen!

Re:My god ...

[Dr. Tom]

Came here for this.

Dark Helmet has box jellies in his shorts.

Re:My god ...

[Anonymous Coward]

next is the cover of Rush's seminal album

I blame global cooling

[Anonymous Coward]

The new ice age will soon be upon us.

Re:I blame global cooling

[fredrated]

Is this a drive-by post by a moron?

Re:I blame global cooling

[SJHillman]

To be fair, the new colors would fit best in the scale in the range well below freezing.

Re:I blame global cooling

[Anonymous Coward]

haven't you heard?

we have never had brush fires until the last few years

Re:I blame global cooling

[Coisiche]

I thought so too but then at 55 degrees north I probably see temperature gradient maps of sub-zero temperatures more often than an Australian does.

Re:I blame global cooling

[ssam]

think of them as negative kelvin (i.e. hotter than normal temperatures).

Re:I blame global cooling

[Anonymous Coward]

To continue with the color scheme they had been using they would have had to gone to ultraviolet (and as you know UV light is cancer causing :).

Invent?

[Coisiche]

Invent a new colour?

Is this some new mix of visible wavelengths that had never been encountered before?

Seems to me they just used an existing colour that had not previously been used on the temperature gradient maps.

Re:Invent?

[Dupple]

They had to invent a new colour, Australia wasn't visible from space before

Re:Invent?

[Anonymous Coward]

They would of assumed it was a new color but they'll be shocked to find that Apple owns the patent!

Re:Invent?

[SJHillman]

They even had to hire a Colo(u)r Invention Specialist. The CIS's job is to mix and match wavelengths in crazy new ways. In lieu of payment, he has been given an unlimited supply of hallucinogenic narcotics.

Re:Invent?

[Anonymous Coward]

Octarine? That could explain its invisibility from space, I suppose.

Re:Invent?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Invent a new colour?

Well, you can try to trademark it . . . the next insane level of Intellectual Property madness . . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_trademark

Re:Invent?

[mcgrew]

In lieu of payment, he has been given an unlimited supply of hallucinogenic narcotics.

Pedant alert: Narcotics are not hallucinogenic, and hallucinogens are not narcotic. They are completely different classes of drugs, as different as aspirin and Prozak.

Let me guess: you're a cop, or maybe a prosecutor? You're certainly not a chemist.

Re:Invent?

[SJHillman]

Or none of the above (whoah, imagine that).

How about we amend it to "hallucinogenics & narcotics"

Man, that could even pass for a typo.

Re:Invent?

[wolja]

They had to invent a new colour, Australia wasn't visible from space before

Yeah it's called 'suck on this denialist pink' for those non warming trends that push the temperature to 54C (~129F) and 'warmist purple' for a mere 50C (122F)

Purple Alert

[Anonymous Coward]

I suggest that we go to... Purple Alert.

Re:Purple Alert

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb.

Numbers from the article...

[Capt James McCarthy]

I'm sure the Global warmers/deniers will be all over the place. Either way, the article for those who didn't read it have the following stats:

Hottest national averages on record (before today).

1 January 7, 2013: 40.33 degrees
2 December 21, 1972: 40.17
3 December 20, 1972: 40.01
4 December 22, 1972: 39.82
5 January 1, 1973: 39.79
6 January 6, 2013: 39.71
7 December 17, 2002: 39.7
8 January 2, 1973: 39.65
9 January 3, 2013: 39.55
10 December 16, 2002: 39.54
11 December 30, 1972: 39.48
12 December 31, 1972: 39.43
13 January 27, 1936: 39.4
14 January 1, 1990: 39.39
15 January 4, 2013: 39.32
16 January 5, 2013: 39.26
17 January 2, 1990: 39.22
18 January 2, 2013: 39.21
19 December 18, 2002: 39.2
20 January 13, 1985: 38.98

So it would appear that 1972 and even 1973 were very hot years there. As well as it appears that 2013 will be as well. Finding cause in those two anomalies will be interesting. I don't think 1972 had as much CO2 in the air as we do now. Is the area of temp measurement too small to say either way was is the cause? I'm not a climatologist. But what I do know is it's hot.

Re:Numbers from the article...

[vlm]

Is that roughly the Canadian January experience if you swap C to F? I'm just south of Canada and its a balmy 40s day, when usually January is spent entirely below zero for the month. Not unheard of, but unusual to have a thaw in January. I'm thinking of selling my snowshoes after the last two years, which is too bad, because I really enjoy snowshoeing along hiking trails... well other than the snowmobiles trying to run everyone over. Its roughly like moving about 100 to 150 miles south.

Re:Numbers from the article...

[rolfwind]

So it would appear that 1972 and even 1973 were very hot years there. As well as it appears that 2013 will be as well. Finding cause in those two anomalies will be interesting.

Consistency. This last decade has it.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998.htm

Re:Numbers from the article...

[V!NCENT]

The explenation is very simple: we're moving away from an ice age. Yes; look at the north- and the south pole.

An ice age start when there's snow falling and water is freezing, and stays there (in whole or in part) untill the next winter.

The real question is not if there is global warming (there is, simply look at the available data; no need for extrapolating here), but how that global warming is going to affect the human species, in terms of habitablility, or not.

There are two outcomes:
1. It is habitable, or;
2. It is not habitable.

Then the next question, if not habitable:
1. Can we, and should we, adjust the climate? (dangerous), or;
2. Should we change our way of living, like engineering smal biospheres.

Re:Numbers from the article...

[Anonymous Coward]

The temeratures are peaking around 50-51C (122-124 F) in some areas. For comparison I believe you will find Death Valley still holds the record for the hottest temperature, at 56.7 C (134 F).

Re:Numbers from the article...

[ssam]

seeing a whole graph of temperature (or daily max, or daily mean or whatever) against time will always tell you much more about a trends than a list of its peaks can.

Re:Numbers from the article...

[Anonymous Coward]

The explenation is very simple:

Anyone who starts off saying "It's simple" about any sort of multi-variable problem deserves a punch in the mouth on general principles. Because nothing meaningful is going to follow anyway.

Re:Numbers from the article...

[Layzej]

Yesterday bumped Dec 20, 1972 out of third place and 1985 off the chart. Here's an updated list:

1. January 7, 2013: 40.33 degrees
2. December 21, 1972: 40.17
3. January 8, 2013: 40.11
4. December 20, 1972: 40.01
5. December 22, 1972: 39.82
6. January 1, 1973: 39.79
7. January 6, 2013: 39.71
8. December 17, 2002: 39.7
9. January 2, 1973: 39.65
10. January 3, 2013: 39.55
11. December 16, 2002: 39.54
12. December 30, 1972: 39.48
13. December 31, 1972: 39.43
14. January 27, 1936: 39.4
15. January 1, 1990: 39.39
16. January 4, 2013: 39.32
17. January 5, 2013: 39.26
18. January 2, 1990: 39.22
19. January 2, 2013: 39.21
20. December 18, 2002: 39.2

The good news is that it looks like it is starting to cool down. We will likely see a few more records broken before the end of the heat wave though.

Re:Numbers from the article...

[V!NCENT]

An ice age is not a multi-variable problem. Understanding how they came to be and changing the climate, however, is.

Since it is difficult in how it forms and goes away, I said it was dangerous to engineer a climate change, because it's a damn difficult multi-variable problem, and chances are we won't be able to predict the side effects of changing the delicate climate.

Yet I like to see anyone deny that we're still in an ice age, and how the ice is still melting more than there's water being frozen, anualy.

Re:Numbers from the article...

[SmarterThanMe]

{{citation needed}}

Re:Numbers from the article...

[Jetra]

I'm sure the Global warmers/deniers will be all over the place. Either way, the article for those who didn't read it have the following stats:

Hottest national averages on record (before today).

-Snipped-

So it would appear that 1972 and even 1973 were very hot years there. As well as it appears that 2013 will be as well. Finding cause in those two anomalies will be interesting. I don't think 1972 had as much CO2 in the air as we do now. Is the area of temp measurement too small to say either way was is the cause? I'm not a climatologist. But what I do know is it's hot.

I'm not going to point out the obvious fact that they're out of order because it's a conspiracy to disprove global warming. However, I just want to ask, can we just have a giant, 10 year study of several locations among the map from Antarctica to Chile, seeing if cars or power plants may or may not have an adverse affect on weather? I'm getting tired of hearing this story, but I also know that there might be SOMETHING man-made affecting our weather.

Consider the fact there the industrial revolution happened a hundred years ago, back then there was no control of pollution until fairly recently. Today, there are a few tens of millions of cars on the road, about half of that are semis, half of that are trains, with a few thousand coal plants, several hundred thousand oil rigs, and several dozen places where garbage burning is done (rough numbers yes, but I think these are fairly close), you're going to give me a straight face and say that man has absolutely nothing to do with affecting the temperature of Earth by a single degree?

Re:Numbers from the article...

[Capt James McCarthy]

seeing a whole graph of temperature (or daily max, or daily mean or whatever) against time will always tell you much more about a trends than a list of its peaks can.

"Hottest national averages on record (before today)."

Re:Numbers from the article...

[sg_oneill]

Cars/factories/whatever wont do a damn thing to the places hitting mid/high 40c temps in australia.

These are in places where your next door neighbor is 200kms away, and a drive to the nearest store requires a day, emergency CB radio and 3 days backup water supply just in case the car breaks down over the potholed dirt roads. A

Re:Numbers from the article...

[gamanimatron]

However, I just want to ask, can we just have a giant, 10 year study of several locations among the map from Antarctica to Chile, seeing if cars or power plants may or may not have an adverse affect on weather? I'm getting tired of hearing this story, but I also know that there might be SOMETHING man-made affecting our weather.

I don't think that would help. If I understand the theory correctly, it's that high atmospheric CO2 is affecting our climate by trapping more energy in the system, and localized weather events (such as a heat wave in Australia or a less-than-usually-cold snap in Antarctica) are expected to reflect that change in an average, aggregate sort of way.

Of course, it's just a theory, and one that has a number of dubious advantages:

• * it's easy to model with our (comparitively) crude systems.
• * it appeals to our inner guilt over raping the planet.
• * it's extremely difficult to disprove (see crude systems above).

On the other hand, lots of really smart people seem to agree that it beats out a hotter sun, too much pavement, some other natural or manmade aerosol, God's wrath, "natural" climate change, whatever that might be, and angry space bunnies as a cause for the planet changing its average temperature.

Re:Numbers from the article...

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, lots of really smart people seem to agree that it beats out a hotter sun, too much pavement, some other natural or manmade aerosol, God's wrath, "natural" climate change, whatever that might be, and angry space bunnies as a cause for the planet changing its average temperature.

I think your right. Our CO2 emissions have had such a great effect they even affect Mars And Neptune as well. We really need to do something about our CO2 emissions affecting Mars, because it obviously can't be the sun because of your and your expert's opinions.

Of course I assumed you made it all up and decided to do a quick check myself and almost instantly found factual scientific evidence disproving your claims. Of course by using actual facts and scientific evidence I am anti-science according to the AWG movement, which is really the problem.

Re:Numbers from the article...

[Jetra]

Except emissions fly up into the air and get moved around the earth by the jet streams. What you are referring to is localized which has crap effect on the world, but does majorly affect the ozone layer

Re:Numbers from the article...

[LordLucless]

"Hottest national averages on record (before today)."

Re:Numbers from the article...

[Anonymous Coward]

To take a climatological point of view it's worth noting that half of the dates in your list have occurred since the year 2000 and 7 of the 20 dates you list have been since the start of this year.

Re:Numbers from the article...

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically speaking, we are still pretty much in an ice age, as an ice age is defined as an age where there is solid ice somewhere on the surface of the planet. While greenland might actually be green in a few years, antartica will still have land ice for much of the forseeable future. The term "ice age" in colloquial use refers to a period of glaciation. That's what we are currently, indeed, not in.

Re:Numbers from the article...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a pretty big assumption to believe the reasons for temperature change on Mars and Neptune are the same as the reasons for temperature change here on Earth. It falls into the correlation is causation trap. As far as it being because of the Sun, if that's true then it has to be some characteristic of the Sun that we are currently unable to measure because none of the things we can measure have changed enough to account for the temperature changes.

On So Much Fire?

[Apharmd]

I think that could be phrased better.

Re:On So Much Fire?

[belthize]

Phrasing it worse would certainly take a bit of effort. I had to read it 3 times before shaking my head and moving on to the comments.

Re:On So Much Fire?

[Qzukk]

Clearly, Australia has ALL THE FIRE.

Re:On So Much Fire?

[belthize]

Cheeky bastards. Why couldn't they just install really bright street lights if they wanted to be visible from space.

I have to admit I'm a bit surprised that Australia wasn't visible from space till it caught fire. I thought Africa was the dark continent.

Re:On So Much Fire?

[mark-t]

Indeed. I mentally stumbled over that phrase as well. The problem is that the submitter split the adjectival phrase "on fire", a similar type of grammatical error as the more widely recognized "splitting infinitives".

Properly, it should read "So much of Australia is on fire", although even that phrasing implies that there ought to be some sort of following idea which satisfies qualitatively "how much" is being referred to. Colloquially, however, the follow up phrase is not strictly required, the implication generally being in such a case that the speaker feels that they cannot adequately describe it with mere words.

Re:On So Much Fire?

[mark-t]

D'oh! Of all times to hit submit too soon, in a grammar nazi post! Yes, I recognized that the submitter followed up the though with " you can see it from orbit" but I was trying to address how the phrase "so much" can be used an neglected to acknowledge the submitter did that.

Re:On So Much Fire?

[P-niiice]

Austrailia is on a whole lot of fire.

Re:On So Much Fire?

[Meyaht]

Australia blaze visible from space.

Good News!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Australia is pleased and proud to announce that the number of horrid and lethally venomous creatures per hectare has reached historic lows!

Re:Good News!

[vlm]

Gotta be a Washington DC joke in there somewhere.

Re:Good News!

[redneckmother]

Gotta be a Washington DC joke in there somewhere.

All the Jokes ARE in Washington DC?

Re:Good News!

[Anonymous Coward]

Washington DC has so much funny, you can see it from orbit.

Re:Good News!

[Jeremy Lee]

Perhaps, but now even the trees have found a way to kill us. That's not progress!

Re:Good News!

[Anonymous Coward]

hate to think what all this forced evolution is going to do to the drop bears !

Re:Good News!

[Catbeller]

But the number of mutant fireproof spiders now climbing.

Re:Good News!

[mjwx]

Australia is pleased and proud to announce that the number of horrid and lethally venomous creatures per hectare has reached historic lows!

Actually it's up.

There are record numbers of snake being caught in the city of Adelaide.

Fire and snakes, A gentle reminder that everything on this continent is trying to kill you.

Re:Good News!

[Scoldog]

My cousin had a brown snake in his yard yesterday, and he lives in the western suburbs of Sydney, which is fairly suburbanized. Thankfully, his two sons were OK as the dog managed to kill it, but not before copping a dose of venom. They had to put the dog down last night because of this.

This is BAD

[Gablar]

Of course this has nothing to do with the fact that the north pole melted to record small levels this years. This is an isolated incident of freak weather, as was Sandy.

Re:This is BAD

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure thing, but then I can say India and China disagree. So since I've pointed out hundered dieing from cold and coldest winter in China in decades I guess thats proof that AWG doesn't exist, as least by your logic.

Re:This is BAD

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, you're right! Before Al Gore told us that we're supposed to be afraid, fire didn't even exist and there certainly were no hurricanes!

Re: This is BAD

[skitchen8]

You do of course realize that is the logic that is used to deny global warming right? Weather is an incredibly complex thing; you cannot simply point at individual disasters and say global warming. You can't even really point to frequency either, the numbers vary so widely on number of occurrences throughout history that trends are hard to come by, other than cyclical Niña and Niño periods which are fairly well understood. Don't get me wrong, global warming is a huge threat to our ways of life, but saying it causes Sandy and causes wildfires gives the anti-science crowd fodder for the years those anomalies don't happen. Fear mongering never helps, what people need to point out are the easy to see trends in oceans rising and ice melting, things that are occurring at a definable pace and aren't subject to the seemingly random whims of the weather. Our best weather forecasting gives us about 50% certainty ten days out, we can model the oceans rising much more accurately over a much larger time period and posit the causes much more easily. People are dumb: if you tell them the world is warming up and it ends up colder at their house next year they're pretty convinced you were wrong. Look on the Facebook page of your local NWS office, or local meteorologist, and look at how often people accuse them of making things up when the computer models don't end up verifying; they don't think about how hard it is to forecast weather (my favorite thing is to show long term radar loops of hurricanes forming off the coast of Africa to demonstrate how hard it is to understand the weather between there and the Florida coast a few weeks later) they just assume nobody knows what they are doing.

Re:This is BAD

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me for being late, I find that my phone doesn't support Slashdot very well.

This weather incident is neither isolated, nor even really that freakish.

Australia is practically famous for having crazy bush fires. We've been having them for years. If anyone thinks this is unique, they clearly can't remember anything over 5 years ago.

As for this summer being extremely hot, I remember at least 2 or 3 summers that have been this bad in the past 15 years. It's nothing unique, just a natural part of the weather cycle around here.

headline

[DarkOx]

You know must of us English speakers, both in the USA and else were would have written "So Much of Australia is on Fire" for a headline. "Australia Is On So Much Fire" Sounds like George Lucas is posting now.

Re:headline

[Anonymous Coward]

No two Australian states are not on fire.

Re:headline

[seyyah]

You know must of us English speakers, both in the USA and else were would have written "So Much of Australia is on Fire" for a headline. "Australia Is On So Much Fire" Sounds like George Lucas is posting now.

Most of us English speakers would have written:
"You know most of us English speakers, both in the USA and elsewhere, would have written "So Much of Australia is on Fire" for a headline.

Re:headline

[Baloroth]

You know must of us English speakers, both in the USA and else were would have written "So Much of Australia is on Fire" for a headline. "Australia Is On So Much Fire" Sounds like George Lucas is posting now.

That's the joke. It's a joke. the awkward structure makes the headline more humorous by highlighting the absurdity of the situation involved.

Re:headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot editors have so much lack of grammar, you can see it from a mile away.

Re:headline

[dunkelfalke]

Well, at least there's no "would of" in gp's post.

Re:headline

[AmiMoJo]

Because there were mistakes in his post so much I'm assuming it was a parody of the headline.

Could this be the new "all your base" meme? The headline has so much wrong it just might be. I hope not though, I'm so much sick to death of it.

Re:headline

[sootman]

No, it's fine -- ever since Friends popularized phrases like "That is so not fair", it's a perfectly acceptable construction.

Re:headline

[Anonymous Coward]

on the contrary, those of us well versed in the English language would have written:
"I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don't have maps and, uh, I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over HERE in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our children."

Re:headline

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Most of us English speakers would have written:
"You know most of us English speakers, both in the USA and elsewhere, would have written "So Much of Australia is on Fire" for a headline."

Muphry's law strikes again (closing quotation mark).

Re:headline

[Walter White]

It would of had it been funnier.

Re:headline

[Reziac]

Yeah, I saw the headline and wondered what was on the barbie... roast Australians??

Re:headline

[Hognoxious]

ever since Friends popularized phrases like "That is so not fair"

The equivalent of that would be "so [much] on fire". That's only slightly horrible compared to the headline.

To get that, you'd have to start with ""that is on so much unfairness", or something like that.

Plus 50?

[dugjohnson]

What's the big deal? It's 54 degrees here in Texas right now...what? metric? we don't do metric here in Texas. How much is that in 'merican? Wow, that IS hot. Never mind.

Re:Plus 50?

[redneckmother]

What's the big deal? It's 54 degrees here in Texas right now...what? metric? we don't do metric here in Texas. How much is that in 'merican? Wow, that IS hot. Never mind.

That's "hotter'n hell" in Texican.

Re:Plus 50?

[SourceFrog]

That'd be about 129F.

This is what happens when you disarm.

[Anonymous Coward]

If only Australia had not implemented their weapons ban, patriotic citizens could defend themselves against the tyrannical fire department.

Re:This is what happens when you disarm.

[Anonymous Coward]

Too soon

Deep Purple?

[Frohboy]

To be fair, one of the "new colours" should be used to indicate Smoke on the Water.

Re:Deep Purple?

[jfengel]

It appears that they are using it instead for Fire in the Sky.

Re:Deep Purple?

[Anonymous Coward]

Such as if some stupid with a flare gun, burned the place to the ground?

Burning.

[Anonymous Coward]

Water. Earth. Fire. Air. Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.

Re:Burning.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what you get when you ridicule the guy who got stuck with Heart. He leaves and now you've got no Heart.

Self-Solving Problem

[Greyfox]

Eventually all the vegetation will burn off and then there won't be any fuel for fires anymore! Problem solved!

I suspect next summer is going to be another bad year for fires in the USA. Seems like the entire goddamn west burned down last year. The sky was brown all summer. We cleared the layer of smoke in a plane, and the blue of the sky came as quite a shock. I'd actually forgotten the sky was supposed to look like that. I didn't want to descend back into the sludge, either. It was the first time in a couple of months that I'd had a breath of fresh air.

Re:Self-Solving Problem

[ssam]

i look forward to this vegetation free world were i can be safe from forest fires.

Re:Self-Solving Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Or burning off *all* the vegetation will release further amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere (instead of trapping it in rotted down organic matter when the plant dies), leading to increased greenhouse effect, increasing climate change, more freak weather events, even more bushfires... so it could also become a vicious cycle too. Sure the fire'll extinguish itself, but it'll contribute to more too.

Re:Self-Solving Problem

[jonadab]

> The sky was brown all summer. We cleared
> the layer of smoke in a plane, and the blue
> of the sky came as quite a shock. I'd actually
> forgotten the sky was supposed to look like that.

Oh, I know what you mean. When I was in second grade, we moved to northeastern Ohio and lived there for five years. There were no brushfires (indeed, I'm not even sure that's possible in this climate; the only time it ever gets dry enough is when it's below zero out), but where we lived the word "overcast" wasn't a short-term weather condition; it was just the climate.

When I was in seventh grade, we moved to western Michigan. We arrived after dark, but when I woke up the next morning, I went and found my camera and took pictures, because the sky was actually factually *blue*, and I wasn't sure people would believe me if they didn't see it for themselves.

I'd been thinking of the notion that the sky is blue as a sort of weird cultural symbolic thing, like how young children are taught to draw the sun with a dozen or so lines ("rays of light") going out from it in all directions, or the way storybook pictures always depict rivers in blue and white instead of brown, or the Valentine-card "heart shape" that is not in fact shaped anything like a heart at all. Everyone knows the sky is actually a dull gray color. Yet here it was actually *blue* (well, cyan -- close enough). I took pictures, so I could show people later. Only, by the time I got that roll of film developed, I'd figured out that the sky in western Michigan is like that pretty often. After about three years I was nearly used to it, and then we moved back to Ohio. (However, I'm in central Ohio now, and it's not overcast as much here as in northeastern Ohio.)

Re:Self-Solving Problem

[LordLucless]

At least part of the problem is that our Australian Green party doesn't believe in backburning, and actively try and prevent it. The CSIRO (Australia's main scientific institute) recommended that 10% of public land be burned annually to clear fuel (dread brush and the like that accumulates quickly in Australia's hot, dry climate). The public policy produced by that report dropped the recommendation to 5%. Tasmania, in which the Greens hold the balance of power, burned 1%.

Re:Self-Solving Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that the Australian bush is well adapted to fire, and will grow back bushier than before - within a couple of years there'll be just as much dry vegetation debris as there was this year.

Re:Self-Solving Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The weird thing is that while most of the west had a horrible fire season it seemed rather quite here in So. Cal. And I'd know, I'm one of those idiots with a huge house on top a brush filled mountain you always see on TV (and laugh at).

Re:Self-Solving Problem

[Hognoxious]

Dread brush? Are the plants all tangled together in strands?

Re:Self-Solving Problem

[LordLucless]

brush (noun):
1. A dense growth of bushes or shrubs
2. Land covered by such a growth
3. Cut or broken branches

Learn English before criticising others' use of it.

Re:Self-Solving Problem

[Hognoxious]

Fascinating. However I don't see the relevance to a hair "style" favoured by Rastafarians, burnt-out futurists and people who juggle in the street. Or were you implying that said vegetation is terrifying?

I suggest you follow your own advice if you want to avoid a future full of epic failure.

Affect global temperatures?

[sl4shd0rk]

I wonder if this will create enough particulate in the atmosphere to reduce global temperatures.

Re:Affect global temperatures?

[jandrese]

Yes. Now if you were to ask if it measurably reduced global temperatures that is probably a different answer.

Re:Affect global temperatures?

[ssam]

depends on the balance with soot settling on icecaps and making them absorb more light.

Re:Affect global temperatures?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since a large amount of the gases released by burning the vegetation will be CO2, it's more likely to increase it.

Re:Affect global temperatures?

[Anonymous Coward]

Temporarily, maybe.

For the next century of expected increasing average temperature, no. But I suppose we could burn more of Australia again next year and even more the year after that, thus solving the problem once and for all.

Re:Affect global temperatures?

[Jason Levine]

It is possible, but if it did it would be a temporary effect that would only mask the problem. Eventually, the particles would settle out of the atmosphere and the climate would heat up extremely fast. Maintaining particulates in the air wouldn't be a viable option either as this would just be creating pollution on a massive scale to fight global warming. This would be the "releasing thousands of snakes to fight a lizard problem and then releasing thousands of gorillas to take care of the snakes" plan. Except there wouldn't be a winter to kill off the gorillas.

Re:Affect global temperatures?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if this will create enough particulate in the atmosphere to reduce global temperatures.

Let's burn Australia to reduce global warming.

You know, as an experiment.

Re:Affect global temperatures?

[jonadab]

The other option is to spray a bunch of water vapor into the upper atmosphere. This would create a greenhouse effect and melt the poles (because water is a MUCH more effective greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide), but it would also use up a bunch of water and thus counteract the rise in sea level. Results: no more ice caps plus no more desertification (in fact, the deserts would probably start to shrink) adds up to more usable land. It would be murder on the apple crop, but then again we'd be able to grow mangoes and bananas and whatnot pretty much anywhere in the world. The biggest downside would probably be that we'd have to run the AC year round instead of just 4-5 months. But new buildings could be built with just central AC (no furnace).

Re:Affect global temperatures?

[Anonymous Coward]

When Kuwait was on fire in 1991, that didn't make a difference. I doubt this will be a lot different.

Re:Affect global temperatures?

[Triklyn]

are you trolling? sounds like a horrendous idea, you know how much water is in the poles?

Re:Affect global temperatures?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need winter.

The wildfires will kill off the gorillas! It's foolproof!

Re:Affect global temperatures?

[SourceFrog]

Dark particulate matter decreases albedo.

Re:Affect global temperatures?

[Anonymous Coward]

That wouldn't work. The excess water vapor wouldn't stay in the atmosphere long enough to make a difference and besides, melting all of the polar ice would raise sea levels by over 70 meters (over 200 feet).

Re:Affect global temperatures?

[Sigg3.net]

Well, I for one, welcome our 1000 snakes and 1000 gorillas releasing overlords!

Re:Affect global temperatures?

[Hognoxious]

you know how much water is in the poles?

Not much, there wasn't room after all the beer and vodka.

Midnight Oil are prophets!

[Anonymous Coward]

How can we sleep while our beds are burning?

View from Space

[Tofof]

The summary somehow leaves out anything related to the headline - the view of the fires from space. Didn't even bother linking to the relevant NY Times article. Okay then.

For the real good stuff, though, check out the high res images in the Universe Today coverage, which showcases several of the images directly from Cmdr Hadfield's twitter feed.

Re:View from Space

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh well done. Link to a website that requires registration to view. Fuck you you fucking shit filled fucktard. I hope you die a, well, fire. Burn baby! Prepare for the fires that await you in the afterlife.

Re:View from Space

[harmic]

From that second link

• Officials say more than 130 fires, many uncontained, are burning in the heavily populated New South Wales state

Heavily Populated? Say What? NSW might have the highest population of any state in Aus but it is also massive ... population density is only 9 people per sq. KM.

Well you know Austrialians

[3seas]

everything is BIG... and its started with BEER...

Re:Well you know Austrialians

[jonadab]

> everything is BIG

Australia, eh? I thought that was Texas. (Even the _vowels_ are all long in Tayksas.)

Re:Well you know Austrialians

[F1re]

Texas is *in* Australia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas,_Queensland

*Sigh* Pedants...

[John Pfeiffer]

I can't believe I'm reading comments complaining about the grammar of the post title. It's a perfectly hilarious bit of hyperbole, and I enjoyed it. "Man, Australia is on so freakin' much fire right now!"

These people must have already run out of stupid IRC arguments and stuff to downvote on Reddit and imgur for today...

Re:*Sigh* Pedants...

[wonkey_monkey]

I'm just annoyed that there's no link to actual images of the fires from orbit, like these ones.

Besides which...

Australia Is On So Much Fire, You Can See It From Orbit

Can't you usually see it from orbit when it's not in fire, too?

Re:*Sigh* Pedants...

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot posters are so pedantic, you can it on the internet.

The worst part?

[DarthVain]

Ice Cube, and not just for the irony.

Whoop-dee-doo

[mothlos]

FROM SPAAAACE! Is the sort of thing which is apparently supposed to sound impressive, but rarely is. The ability to 'see' something from orbit is about as precise and interesting as saying that you can 'see' a shrub from a couple miles away while standing on the hill in Kansas, which is not much at all.

While I'm at it when something 'makes its own weather' it is about equally as impressive.

Australian Rails

[JazzHarper]

Fire Storms!
No train in New South Wales may move.
No train may enter New South Wales.
No rail building in the area.

Deep purple has been invented!

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't wait to tell my former art teacher.

Re:Deep purple has been invented!

[hotdiggity]

Re:Deep purple has been invented!

That particular colour cannot be used to indicate bushfires. I believe it's been reserved for smoke on the water only.

Re:Deep purple has been invented!

[c0lo]

Re:Deep purple has been invented!

That particular colour cannot be used to indicate bushfires. I believe it's been reserved for smoke on the water only.

Not only, for fire in the sky as well.

Re:Deep purple has been invented!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a shame you missed the even funnier rejoined to that same comment "It appears that they are using it instead for Fire in the Sky."

Our temperature scale goes up to 54

[qzjul]

It's not 50. You see, most charts, you know, will be capped at 50. You're at 50 here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on 50 on your chart. Where can you go from there? Where?

I don't know.

Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?

Put it up to 54.

54. Exactly. 4 Hotter.

In Africa?

[Anathem]

One of the fires is in Africa....?

Re:In Africa?

[Anathem]

Correction to my own post: In the ocean, off the coast of Africa

Re:In Africa?

[Jeremy Lee]

Thanks for noticing that... turns out the co-ordinates of that particular spot are 0,0 which do correspond to the lat and long provided for that GeoRSS feed entry. (ie: entirely missing)

The next interesting question is, should the code (a) remove the dot and advice entirely, (b) center the dot in WA, despite being no-where near the 'real' place, or (c) leave it at the 0,0 position where at least everyone can see it.

because disasters of this scale never happened?

[Shivetya]

Let me guess, droughts and similar in various parts of the world have never happened before. Really, do you guys ever think twice before declaring doom and gloom and how "THIS DISASTER PROVES BEYOND ANY DOUBT" really looks silly.

Sorry, we have been here before, seen it before, and will see it again. I am quite sure environmental issues faced by previous generations were just as end of world as some are today, replete with fools going "SEE SEE SEE".

About Sandy, there were some big ones in the 50s... the difference is that people hype things now rather than take care of the people affected.

Karma to burn...

Re:because disasters of this scale never happened?

[Dr. Evil]

"THIS DISASTER PROVES BEYOND ANY DOUBT"

It seems that the only way to prove beyond any doubt that global warming is an issue, is to run a full scale simulation through the course. Which is good, because we have one.

It's bad because we're part of that simulation.

Re:because disasters of this scale never happened?

[Anonymous Coward]

How dare you not subscribe to the Slashdot groupthink?

Please stop disrupting the beautiful harmonies of our wonderful echo chamber.

Re:because disasters of this scale never happened?

[fatphil]

Theorem: In a time-independent stochastic system, extremal events occur less and less frequently over time.

Input: We're seeing no fewer extremal data points than before, typically more.

Conclusion: Therefore we are not in a time-independent stochastic system. I.e. something is changing over time.

Note - I agree with you and I would *not* count Sandy as being a datapoint for extreme weather. It had lucky/unlucky, depending on your perspective, landfall, that's all. There's no reason not to expect real hurricanes (Sandy was a TS), to make landfall in the same place in the future. Hopefully fewer people have their generators in their basements next time.

Re:because disasters of this scale never happened?

[SourceFrog]

Which part of "record heat" don't you understand? It's called a "record" because it (an Australian heatwave of this intensity) has in fact never happened before.

Citation Required

[ThatsNotPudding]

Oh, and we have a cure or treatment for every venereal disease now!

Really?? I'm only asking for a friend.

Satellite imagery of wildfires is so 1990.

[Remus Shepherd]

Seeing wildfires from space is not unusual. All wildfires are visible from space, and we have several monitoring programs going on right now that use satellite imagery to track wildfire appearance and growth.

The most dramatic imagery I remember doing was the Rodeo-Chediski wildfires in 2002, which burned half a million acres (compared to the 50,000 acres burning in Australia so far, although they might get larger.) There are also a few good pics from the Alaskan wildfires in 2004, which burned 6.6 million acres. That was such a large-scale disaster that it was almost too big for the satellites to view; smoke obscured almost the entire state.

The bad news for Australia is that the climate is getting hotter. The good news is that there ain't a whole lot in central Australia to burn.

Re:Satellite imagery of wildfires is so 1990.

[GumphMaster]

Just for the record, the land burnt or burning in the current outbreak is 368,940 hectares (~911,670 acres) in the State of New South Wales (with a few just over State borders) where most of the fires are concentrated. The largest single fire is approx 177,000 hectares (437,000 acres). (Source: http://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/feeds/majorIncidents.xml at 2013-01-09T21:10Z)

There does not appear to be "a whole lot in central Australia to burn" but what is present, not forests but grassland, is tinder dry and burns routinely and for extended periods. The last few years have seen abnormally high rainfall in large parts of the interior (result of cyclones) which has made the fuel load higher than usual. Take a look at the NASA Black Marble imagery: almost all light not on the coastal fringe is the result of a fire in this compound imagery (22 days in 2012). http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/NPP/news/aus-fires.html

Re:Satellite imagery of wildfires is so 1990.

[nfras]

It's not central Australia that's the issue. Have a look at some of the images from the Black Saturday fires in Victoria, Australia in 2009. 1.1 million acres burned and 173 people died. Victoria is Australia's most densley-populated state. Melbourne's temperature reached over 46C, (115 F).
If you have a look here you will see the cloud of smoke from the fires, the land mass on the right of the picture is New Zealand, and the cloud is covering most of the South Island. Entire towns were virtually destroyed by the fires. So the issue isn't just central Australia, it's the populated areas.

Re:Satellite imagery of wildfires is so 1990.

[aphelion_rock]

There is a better real time bushfire map provided by Geoscience Australia:

http://sentinel.ga.gov.au/acres/sentinel/index.shtml

Broadband page:

http://sentinel.ga.gov.au/acres/sentinel/disclaimer_B.shtml

I am told by a fiend that this is is quite sensitive and will pick up a good size bonfire if you make one big enough ( my BBQ didn't quite make it).

Of course you can

[linear a]

Quote: Australia Is On So Much Fire, You Can See It From Orbit Of course you can see Australia from orbit! It's big. What would be impressive would be if there was so much smoke from fires that you could not see it from orbit.

Real Time Map?

[Anonymous Coward]

Real Time Map?

doesn't have 90% of the fires.....

try http://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/dsp_content.cfm?cat_id=683

and stop pushing your shitty web site

Fortunately

[Anonymous Coward]

every known source of public data directly relating to fires in Australia, mostly because fire doesn't respect state borders.

Fortunately, fire does respect country borders in Australia. The fires of Australia are polite and diplomatically respectable kinds of fires in that way. Or they just have a flaming fear of Australian customs officers.

Not everywhere

[Futurepower(R)]

I notice that things are still okay in West Wyalong.

Impressive map.

Disasters at this frequency never happened

[Anonymous Coward]

fify

Small clarification to the linked Mashable article

[kNIGits]

Quote from the linked Mashable article:

with temperatures hitting 107 degrees Fahrenheit in some areas

That's 41C, and not entirely accurate. The island-state of Tasmania, the coldest (on average) place in Australia, reached 41C. Some areas on the mainland have reached 49C, which is 120F. My home in central NSW (six hours west of Sydney) was 40-42C for 4-5 days, with high winds for the last couple. Bushfires were burning several kilometers from my home, with over a hundred firefighters fighting to contain them. Emergency vehicle sirens have been common, and I've received SMS messages from the Rural Fire Service warning about how close the fires are.

Thankfully a cool change appeared yesterday, but there are still many fires burning around the country and temperatures are expected to increase again tomorrow.

As an aside, why won't Slashdot let me post the degree symbol (alt-248)?

Sweet Map

[thebeige]

Thats so awesome The CFA pissed me off because their map was just Vic. Great Work.

We already have such a map

[Anonymous Coward]

The Australian government already has an online map of bush fires based on temperature information from NASA satellites.
http://sentinel.ga.gov.au/acres/sentinel/index.shtml

Brown sludge in the sky

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not from bush fires, that's your regulation layer of pollution that is normally present over all large areas where cars are driven.

Re:Small clarification to the linked Mashable arti

[Scoldog]

There was a town in the centre of NSW yesterday that had to shut down it's petrol station because the petrol had vaporized and couldn't be pumped from the tank into the cars. Wish I could find the link.

Re:Small clarification to the linked Mashable arti

[Anonymous Coward]

[news.com.au]
[time.com]

Myth

[Anonymous Coward]

No-one's ever seen a drop bear. Well, no-one's ever seen one and lived to tell the tale :-)

the astronaut thought someone was bar-be-queing

[MrKaos]

and said oh lord jezuz its a fiire

Satellite image is not related to current events

[Seahawk]

That picture is composed of images taken in april and october of 2012. It has absolutely no relation to the fires currently going on.

http://spaceinfo.com.au/2013/01/05/why-was-australia-lit-up-like-christmas-tree/

Re:Small clarification to the linked Mashable arti

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool change my arse, the heat just moved somewhere else, doing a big anti clockwise circle across the country.

Rolling Stone and "The End of Australia"

[cundare]

Interesting piece ran last year in Rolling Stone about the horrific climate-change problems that have been devastating Australia, and that include sci-fi-magnitude giant brushfires. The precept of the article was that, because global climate change will have its earliest effects on regions that already have extreme climates, Australia is the first inhabited continent to experience catastrophic effects of climate change. I believed about 90% of the piece and that 90% was a real jaw-dropper. See: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/climate-change-and-the-end-of-australia-20111003,

Fair-use excerpt: ""Australia is the canary in the coal mine," says David Karoly, a top climate researcher at the University of Melbourne. "What is happening in Australia now is similar to what we can expect to see in other places in the future." As Yasi bears down on the coast, the massive storm seems to embody the not-quite-conscious fears of Australians that their country may be doomed by global warming. This year's disasters, in fact, are only the latest installment in an ongoing series of climate-related crises. In 2009, wildfires in Australia torched more than a million acres and killed 173 people. The Murray-Darling Basin, which serves as the country's breadbasket, has suffered a decades-long drought, and what water is left is becoming increasingly salty and unusable, raising the question of whether Australia, long a major food exporter, will be able to feed itself in the coming decades. The oceans are getting warmer and more acidic, leading to the all-but-certain death of the Great Barrier Reef within 40 years. Homes along the Gold Coast are being swept away, koala bears face extinction in the wild, and farmers, their crops shriveled by drought, are shooting themselves in despair.

Hmm, TV is incorrect

[Dabido]

On Perth (Australia) TV I remember seeing a 52 degrees C recorded earlier this year (or late last year) when watching the weather report on TV, but looking it up from the WA Bureau of Meteorology doesn't have it listed. I can remember seeing a number of temperatures listed over 50 degrees C from the middle of WA before, but they are obviously unofficial ones that the TV likes to report. Max. temp. I can find for WA was 50.5 recorded in 1998 (which would have put them in the now purple colour range). No bush fires in WA on that map! Hope it stays that way indefinitely.

It could be worse

[Hognoxious]

Remember that last year the place was on fire and flooded at the same time. Bugger me if that ain't blue ruin, mate!