Bushfire sense in Australia
Australia is a land of deserts, droughts, floods, bushfires, flammable forests and fire-prone grasslands. These conditions have developed since the start of the Holocene Warm Era, about twelve thousand years ago.
All previous Australian bushies, both black and white, have recognized the key principle of fire management in Australia: you can have many small, managed "cool" fires in early spring or a few unplanned, disastrous "hot" fires, consuming a heavy fuel load in hot dry winds in late spring. (Arsonists have other priorities and light their fires at these most dangerous times.)
Every generation of Australians sees its fire disasters, and the worst ones get names — "Black Thursday" in 1851; "Black Friday" in 1939; "Ash Wednesday" in 1983; and the worst to date, "Black Saturday" in 2009. Not even an armada of expensive water bombers will stop these bushfires — at that stage, fire can only be prevented or contained by fire.
Good fire management disappeared as rural voters were outvoted by the green leafy suburbs. Urban greens thought we could prevent all fires and encourage wildlife by locking up more parks and encouraging fire-loving, oil-containing eucalypts and flammable weeds close to towns and dwellings. (Many native plants require fire to burst open their rock-hard seed pods.) Graham Lloyd of the Australian notes that even the Hippies of Nimbin blame greens for "the incendiary state of the Australian bush."
Even more stupid are those who think politicians can control or abolish droughts and bushfires by banning the use of coal and oil in a futile attempt to lower global temperature. The sun, the oceans, and recurring El Niño droughts will dwarf all efforts of puny politicians.
We need good fire and forest management and prosecution of arsonists, not costly climate distractions.
Viv Forbes has science and financial qualifications and long experience in mining, farming, weather cycles, bushfires, and politics in Australia. He was an active member of the Mt. Walker bush fire brigade for about 25 years. He remembers the terrible Millennium drought, and he and his wife fought bushfires of those days on their property at Rosevale. He now has no vested interests in any black or green energy industries except as a consumer.
Some Reading:
Journalism's Ashes:
https://quadrant.org.au/journalism-amid-the-ashes/
Fire and folly:

https://quadrant.org.au/fire-and-folly/
Bushfire policy:
http://carbon-sense.com/index.php?s=bushfire&Submit=Go
https://saltbushclub.com/category/bushfires/
"We saw either smoke by day or fires by night."
–James Cook as he sailed past eastern Australia in 1770
"In the whole country (Australia) I scarcely saw a place without the mark of a fire."
–Charles Darwin, 1836
FOLLOW US ON
Recent Articles
- The Truth About Trump’s Tariff Revisions … It’s All About 'The Art of the Deal'
- Remember, MAGA: This is No Time to Go Wobbly
- The Hill of Lies
- Trump’s Tariff Play: The Art of the Economic Reset
- Tax Cuts (and Tariffs) Need Not Be Paid For
- Tune Out the Media for What Matters
- Trump’s Tariffs Tackle Clinton’s China Carnage
- The Fruits of Trump’s Audacious Policies
- Will Trump’s Tariff Ambition Strangle MAGA in the Cradle?
- Navarro Tariffs are Too High
Blog Posts
- A majority of self-identified leftists think political assassination is a societal good
- One Democrat has an idea for winning: a new ‘Contract with America’
- Kash Patel promotes an FBI agent who called J6 patriots and moms at school board meetings ‘terrorists’
- Tariffs threaten to put the nail in the ‘green’ energy coffin
- U.K. man fired for saying terrorists who murdered 1,200 Israelis are 'violent and disgusting'
- Abolish the Bar: The root of our corrupt and lawless judiciary
- Ignore Bill Ackman’s concerns; Trump’s economic plans are genius
- A brief history of the stock market
- Top Colorado statehouse Democrat calls abortion good fiscal policy
- Wake up call for UK energy planners
- Protests for Dummies
- Maybe it's time to clean up the 25th
- Rage as a way of life
- An interesting challenge on tariff logic from former Reagan budget director, David Stockman
- Billionaire heiress Rep. Sara Jacobs makes a fool of herself in bid to defund DOGE