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Satellite images show that Antarctic sea ice extent is up 35% and ice concentration is up 22% over 1979 (the first full year of satellite measurements) according to data recently released by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), University of Colorado (http://nsidc.org/).
Sea ice is not caused by snowfall but by colder sea and air temperatures - are these caused by small rises in atmospheric CO2?
No.
This is the *open* thread not the *mind so open Lank's brain fell out* thread.
Hi all, first time poster, recent (but enthralled) reader.
An open question. I run a sustainable snowboarding company and one of our big things is engaging otherwise indifferent skiers/boarders into the GW debate.
If you had to convince someone of the merits of GW (and especially its effect on snowlines) and you had to do it in a pretty simple manner, what arguments/facts/websites/graphs etc would you use to do so?
I'm writing an article on this, so am curious on other people's point of view.
Feel free to email me!
tm - at - heresysnowboarding.com
Thanks!
Lank has sea ice fail: http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images//daily_images/S_timeseries.png
Merits of global warming? Pretty cold of you considering very few areas will see benefits but many areas will suffer greatly. How many deaths is your business worth?
I sincerely hope I'm misreading you.
I believe he means the merits of the case for the existence of AGW.
Phew. Had me going there for a minute. I guess I've spent way too much time at right-wing anti-AGW sites.
BTW Tim, thanks for doing what you do.
Lank, where did you get that 35% number?
The average for the latest year (to January 2009) was 2% higher than 1979 and 4% above the average for 1979-2007.
In fact the maximum annual average over the satellite data period was only 10% higher than the minimum.
Did it hurt when you pulled that figure out of your butt?
Oh I get it, you got it from the global warming hoax web site and didn't bother checking? Shame on you, Lank, shame shame shame!
Well here you go - here's the link to the actual data.
So how can you get 35% out of that?
Hint - you can't. The GWH site is lying, it says sea ice extent for January 1979 was 4.3 million square kilometres, but it was actually 5.71 million square kilometres. They also say concentration (area) was 2.7m km2 but it was 3.4m.
Check your facts and you won't sound so ignorant.
Sorry, here's that link, Lank:
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Jan/N_01_area.txt
And for all months, if you want to pick all your cherries at one: ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135
Have fun.
I has cut-n-paste fail in my link. The underscores got translated as a font change (right before italics begin, and after where italics end).
Good find Gaz, on the source of this erroneous number.
Change of subject: Milton Freedman rocking the party that rocks the party.
Woops, that link for the antarctic should be
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Jan/S_01_area.txt
...and as t_p_hamilton has found, that link should end with
S underscore 01 underscore area.txt
The "S" is for southern.
Something simpler:
http://www.nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/daily.html
... from warmth???
If we all could vote on whether we wanted a warmer or colder climate (since stasis is not an option), how would you vote?
Oh, I'd vote for the sahara desert, because obviously being warmer it's more livable than rainy green western oregon.
(nanny doesn't deserve a more nuanced or detailed response, so don't waste your time)
Sorry ben, but self-interest doesn't make the world go around. Gravity does.
-
Uncle Miltie's science doesn't seem to be holding up too well to the old empirical test of time, does it?
As Krugman says; we're all Keynesians, now.
Except some thirty odd dinosaurs in the US Senate, perhaps?
As a long time American reader of Deltoid, I'd like offer my condolences to Tim and his fellow countrymen over the terrible tragedy that Australia has suffered this week. You're in my thoughts and prayers.
Yesterday's edition of [Australian Story](http://www.abc.net.au/austory/) on the ABC featured an interview of Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, the scientist who linked coral bleaching with warming of ocean waters. Ove is very forthright in his statements about AGW, and it is interesting to watch the part where Andrew Bolt tries to out-science Ove.
To see the entire program or to watch an extended conversation between Ove and Bolt, look on the Australian Story web page for 'The Heat Of The Moment' (09/02/2009). The online versions should be available to watch for a month.
Also interesting to see was lastnight's edition of [Lateline](http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/) (9 Feb 09), where the signature of AGW upon the recent extreme weather events in Australia was discussed. I predict howls of derision from the Denialists, especially as David
Karoly was one of the interviewees.
I predict as well the mushrooming of a swath of claims that it is the fault of greenies and conservationists that the fires occured in the first place, with a posited basis on the Denialists' part that it the excess of reserves and National Parks that is the reason that the bushfires occurred at all. My first observation of this was whilst watching yesterday's evening news and [Wilson Tuckey](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_Tuckey) said as much - Tuckey's view that any tree that is not a target for an axe or chainsaw is a wasteful encumbrance is notorious, and he had the bad taste to repeat his ideology on the very day that the tragedy became apparent to the country and to the world.
And one last prediction: the AGW Denialists who haven't already learned of the difference between weather and climate will miraculously discover it now (except of course whilst considering the NH winter). For those that have not yet acquired this snippet of education, they could usefully consider the Australian Bureau of meteorology's [climate trends](http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/extreme_trendmaps.cgi) in learning about weather versus climate - as long, of course, as they are not as red/blue colour-blind as they are science-blind.
I just heard that the Northern Ireland Environment Minister has vetoed an ad campaign that encourages householders to save energy and money. Claims AGW is a fraud.
Its notable that NI is the one part of UK where religion interferes in politics.
It should be a resignation matter. We'll see.
Nanny, I guess that depends on where we are when the warmth comes, how persistent it is, how quickly it hits and what other effects come with it. Surely you don't believe that an increase in global mean temperature will do nothing but make your little corner of the world more livable in the winter do you?
> the campaign was contrary to his personal views.
I think I know where this is going: Mr. Wilson tries to shut down an advertising campaign because he personally doesn't like it. This, of course, just proves that the party being silenced is Mr. Wilson.
Because CO2 ad campaigns are the "Deutsch ist geil!" of Liberal Fascism.
GaryB, apparently you think that a cooling temperature would only bring us the joy of a white Christmas?
ben:
> GaryB, apparently you think that a cooling temperature would only bring us the joy of a white Christmas?
In your case specifically, I think a cooling temperature will just bring you another talking point.
nanny_govt_sucks said "If we all could vote on whether we wanted a warmer or colder climate (since stasis is not an option), how would you vote?"
I'm so sick of these denialist trolls. I know you shouldn't feed them, but honestly... You'd think that after this weekend, they would have all crawled away and died of shame. But no. How could anyone ask such a question after what's just happened? The question is ridiculous. We have a global warming crisis on our hands. I can imagine ngs comforting the people in Kinglake with "well it could have been a lot worse. Maybe you could have been hit with a blizzard". Sheesh...
After the events of the last two weeks in South-east Australia, which has (so far) caused the deaths of more than 170 people from fires alone, I would have thought the dangers of a warming climate would be pretty obvious.
ChrisC.
If you seek the opinion of the wise and learned Tim Curtin you will discover that warming is only good for plant growth, and that the additional CO2 is absolutely necessary to prevent a slide into productivity catastrophe.
That's according to Curtin.
Actually, in way way I agree with the denialists on one point: I think that the signature of AGW upon the February heatwave is probably not great. We're really only seeing the infant first steps of climate change sequelæ thus far.
It's in the future that we'll really start to appreciate what AGW really means...
ChrisC & Not Amused
The loss of life this past weekend has indeed been extremely tragic and obviously one feels for the victims and their families.
But is it not the case that many of the fires were started deliberately by other humans? Can this tragedy therefore really be laid at the door of global warming?
Dave Andrews... the fires may have been deliberately started, but the heat led to extremely dry conditions. GW may not have caused this, but it is a sign of things to come. It probably played a part in it though.
Come on, sceptics, lift your game!
How long do we have to wait before one of you explains the bushfires are really caused by undertree volcanoes?
Bernard J. @ 20, The Australian has made your wish come true.
How could anyone conceivably blame the recent bushfires on Global Warming? Let's see what one expert has to say:
Victoria bushfires stoked by green vote
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25031389-24636,00.ht…
"The third and only controllable factor in this deadly triangle is fuel: the dead leaves, pieces of bark and grass that become the gas that feeds the 50m high flames that roar through the bush with the sound of jet engines.
Fuels build up year after year at an approximate rate of one tonne a hectare a year, up to a maximum of about 30 tonnes a hectare. If the fuels exceed about eight tonnes a hectare, disastrous fires can and will occur. Every objective analysis of the dynamics of fuel and fire concludes that unless the fuels are maintained at near the levels that our indigenous stewards of the land achieved, then we will have unhealthy and unsafe forests that from time to time will generate disasters such as the one that erupted on saturday.
It has been a difficult lesson for me to accept that despite the severe damage to our forests and even a fatal fire in our nation's capital, the political decision has been to do nothing that will change the extreme threat to which our forests and rural lands are exposed. "
Hmmm... perhaps I should have been a little more clear.
No one event, no matter how severe, can be attributed directly to global warming. As Dave Andrew's says, many of the fires were deliberately lit. In addition to this, there are now many more people living in rural and semi-rural areas that back onto forest (such as Marysville) on the outskirts of cities like Sydney and Melbourne who are at greater risk to fires. The horrific loss of life and property on Saturday is directly attributable to these two factors, neither of which is related to climate change.
However, preceding the fires was an unprecedented heat-wave. Not only did maximum temperature records tumble (Melbourne's 46.4C on Saturday being the case in point), but the duration of the heat-wave not only broke, but smashed, long standing records (Mildura recorded 12 consecutive days above 40C, more than double the previous record). This event ocured almost a year after a previous heat-wave that was also unprecedented. See the BoM climate statesments here.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/special-statements.shtml
Combined with very dry period, this heat-wave left Victoria tinder dry and ready to burn. To say that environmental conditions did not contribute to the severity of the fires would be a stretch.
Could these extreme fire weather events be related to climate change? CSIRO, with the BoM and the Bushfire CRC have written and extremely detailed report on this topic, which can be downloaded here:
http://www.csiro.au/science/ps17j.html#3
They found that the number of days with very high or extreme Fire Danger Indicies (FDIs) would increase 4-25% by 2020 and by 15%-70% by 2050 under current projections of climate change in SE Australia.
Yanks aren't immune either: The government of California concluded in a 2005 report that the fire risk in California would increase by 10-40% by 2035 (depending on the SRES scenario they used in their model), with similar (but regionally varying) results in nearby states. The report can be downloaded here:
http://www.energy.ca.gov/2005publications/CEC-500-2005-190/CEC-500-2005…
There is a growing body of evidence the climate change will increase fire risk. The fires in Victoria last weekend serve as a reminder of the dangers that "warmer" conditions can bring. This is, I suppose, a more verbose repeating of my previous post.
As an aside, the Red Cross has a bushfire victims appeal running now. I realise in the current economic climate that people may not have alot of spare cash lying around, but if you do have some, I'm sure there are people who could really use some help:
www.redcross.org.au
na_gs has apparently been duped by reading ideological claptrap that sold him some goods like: 'warmin' never kilt no one' or some such bullsh--. It's amazing what the gullible will believe, as long as it maintains their worldview.
Nonetheless, condolences to the AUS fire victims. This sort of thing will have a higher likelihood of becoming more common in the future. And numbskulls will set their fires, making it worse. Man-made climate change will test our resilience, surely, and hopefully we will respond.
But, hey, A-Fraud took sterrrrroids, ever'body! Steroids! Fairness doctrine! Freedom Fries! Illegal immigrants! Socialism! Acorn! Aaaaaaalgooooooooooooore!
Best,
D
Thanks Bernard. Australian Story is repeated on ABC2 tonight at 8pm, so it can be watched then as well.
You'd think nags would have learnt that the Australian is not a reliable source of information but rather a reliable source of anti-Green propaganda. Read [this 2003 story](http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/01/29/1043804405591.html), for a balanced account of the issue.
Dano, why should it matter that extreme heat just killed a few Australians? If we enact climate regulation, that may well kill off TEH ECONOMI!!!!!!!!!!1
Also, in a perfect capitalist society, the arsonists wouldn't have set the fires, and the fires might not have happened. Conclusion: global warming is a hoax.
Shooting the messenger, Tim? It was an opinion piece. The source of information is David Packham, a bushfire scientist of 50 years.
OK, I'm reading...
Strawman.
> The source of information is David Packham, a bushfire scientist of 50 years.
According to The Australian.
How is this true statement a strawman?
I'm waiting with bated breath to be blown away by your exhaustive knowledge about fire management ...
jonno:
GW may have added 1 deg C average to the temperatures, i.e. instead of Melbourne's weather being a max of 46.4 deg C with a strong north-west wind followed by a sudden wind change, it might have been a max of 45.4 deg C with a strong north-west wind followed by a sudden wind change. So there would still have been horrendous conditions anyway but that extra degree doesn't really help.
Chris O'Neill:
An increase in the average temperature by 1 degree C can translate into a much higher increase in temperatures during the extreme events. Besides that south-east Australia is experiencing increasingly dry conditions. For example, I have read that doe to changed to evaporation and evapo-transpiration each 1 degrees temperature rise translates to a 40% decrease in water run-off in our catchments. Australia's fire scientists are describing and predicting significant increases in the number of high fire risk days.
Also, there are suggestions that increased CO2 is increasing the growth rates of undergrowth during times when moisture allows it.
Furthermore, recent research is suggesting that rainfall and conditions in southern Australia is strongly influenced by a phenomenon called the Indian Ocean Dipole which has been oscillating from neutral to it's positive phase over the last decade rather than from positive to negative. In its positive phase we get hotter drier weather. If this is a permanent new situation caused by the increased global temperature then we may be irreversibility stuck with the increased risk.
Na gs:
>How could anyone conceivably blame the recent bushfires on Global Warming? Let's see what one expert has to say...
How can you use the fires and heatwave as evidence that the fires are not due to global warming?
Your own skeptic 'colleagues' in the Northern Hemisphere (UK, USA etc.) have been using the opposite argument to claim that the snow and cold weather is evidence that global warming is a load of rubbish.
If you don't believe the fires are an indication of global warming, then please tell your confused colleagues in the Northern Hemisphere that snow in winter is also not an indicator of a global 'cooling' trend.
The other point i make is that i'm glad you used the term 'Global Warming'. Because maybe you will rethink the way that term is applied. What it means is that the mean/average GLOBAL temperatures are increasing. That means locally, you can have cold or hot weather, it means 'not a lot' when it comes to global warming.
Nanny.
Malcolm Gill's point is much more pertinent than you seem to give it credit for. Prescribed burning is simply not possible on a continent-wide scale for many reasons: the human and infrastructure resources are inadequate by orders of magnitude, the ecosystems are not all adapted to such regimes, and the timescales and temperatures of burns do not guarantee that 'fuel'-loads will be sufficiently reduced to avoid serious fires - especially when novel climatic circumstances, such as those seen last weekend, occur.
Another profoundly important point that seems to be missed by the intervention-at-all-costs approach is that frequent firing of Australian bush changes the vegetation structure and associations to favour pyrophilic species. Many plants are not only adapted to survive fire, but actively grow to encourage fire in order to ensure their regeneration. Indeed, from an evolutionary perspective, such a strategy ensures a competitive advantage over non-pyrophilic species (such as rainforest vegetation) in a climate where the temperature and hydrological parameters favour the firing that is characteristic of much of Australia.
Increasing the frequency of burns can enhance the competitive increase of flammable plant species, and the concurrent decrease of less flammable species. In the long term this might even lead in some contexts to a paradoxically enhanced risk of wildfire when the confluence of fire-promoting factors occurs.
Prescribed firing is a very useful tool, but it is not a panacea. It is simply naïvety to think this, and it is almost an irresponsibility to promote it dissociated from context - without any accompanying caveats whatsoever, it is definitely an irresponsible act to do so.
I find it ironic that some of the most ardent supporters of the indigenous firestick practices are folk who have no time for aboriginal culture in any other context. Perhaps 'hypocritical' is a better word...
Whatever the reality, one must keep in mind that firestick ecology is only a metastable state - like the plates spinning on sticks, it requires constant intervention for success. Such a scenario is not possible, over time and space on a continental scale, as the pre-eminent strategy for minimising the loss of human life to wildfire. Additionally, it is a bit rich to assume that pre-European Australia was somehow bushfire-free simply because the aboriginal population used firestick ecology to regenerate their marsupial 'pastures'.
Note too that 'managed' forest and plantations in Victoria burned just as fiercely as did 'natural' bush - the Wilson Tuckey theory of 'forest management' is a (calculated?) diversion from a much more appropriate integrated forest management strategy.
Bushfire response plans require a hefty degree of common sense and preparedness, and an understanding that there is no one answer to every possible circumstance. My own rural property is surrounded by bush and steep hillsides with only one route in and out, and I have spent a night watching 30m high flames roar around me on three sides, so I have an idea of the horror that is a wildfire.
My precaution and my neighbours' was to build an earth-covered bunker between our places, to which we could all have fled within 15 seconds.
Fortunately we have not had to use it yet (although the kids love it), but it is there if required. It is a straightforward part of being prepared, especially so because sooner or later, somewhere or other in Australia, these terrible blazes will occur again. I hope that many more people in fire-prone areas consider such a pro-active solution - the folk who live in the tornado-prone parts of the States have done so for decades, and it really puzzles me that Australians have been so slow to take up such a defence.
I dread the thought though that the "leave early or stay and fight" policy of most state fire services is altered to one of compulsory across-the-board evacuation. As many victims of the current fires have noted, the rapidity of spread is such that a wildfire of this magnitude can start from a spark from power-lines, power-tools, a carelessly discarded cigarette butt (or, horribly, by arson) and roar along at a speed faster than a motor vehicle can achieve in the circumstances. In the time taken to report such an ignition, and to distribute an evacuation order, all that might well be achieved is to have the roads congested with panicking people just as the firefront approaches. The tragic consequence of people so trapped in vehicles was painfully repeated again and again in Victoria.
With some mandated enhancements of the current policy I believe that much more protection of life and property can be achieved, even given the changes that will come with anthopogenic global warming, but media-promoted scare tactics are not likely to be a part of the answer.
Bernard: Well said. I live in the Otway Ranges, which as you probably know has miraculously been spared this year and for the past few decades. But we know that when this place catches light, it is likely to all go up.
The institution of an ecologically based mosaic style fire regime here and elsewhere will take vastly more resources than in currently devoted through the Department of Sustainability and Environment. The government needs to get real about the costs of intelligently managing this risk.
But I note that on in the Eyre Peninsular fires of a couple of years ago, houses were lost and people died who were surrounded by little more than stubble paddocks. When there are howling winds in extreme temperatures nothing will stop fires in these conditions. I heard that the Eyre Peninsular fire crossed almost bare sheep paddocks, flashing across scattered desiccated sheep dung.
And to demonstrate how fire control can go wrong, throughout southern Victoria, fire brigades using herbicide have converted hundreds of kilometers of roadside from relatively low fuel-load native grass and herblands to massive fuel-load shoulder-high thickets of Phalaris grass and other introduced pasture and weed species. If our fire reduction strategies promote the colonisation of our forests with such species we will have a situation where bushland carries massive fuel-loads even in the first year after a reduction burn.
I'm now convinced that we need to push for a huge construction project to build fire-proof concrete bunkers in every at-risk community and beside every fire-prone home.
Good luck and well done on the bunker. If a fire gets started here on a hot windy day, I'm out of here. For that matter, next time it gets hot and windy, I'm just going to leave in advance. Having seen what has happened the other side of Melbourne, I'm never going to tempt fate again. At least not until we get a bunker built here in our scary beautiful little patch of paradise.
From [bravenewclimate](http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/02/10/heatwave-update-and-open-letter-t… "bravenewclimate") :
> Given that this was the hottest day on record on top of the driest start to a year on record on top of the longest driest drought on record on top of the hottest drought on record the implications are clear...
> It is clear to me that climate change is now becoming such a strong contributor to these hitherto unimaginable events that the language starts to change from one of "climate change increased the chances of an event" to "without climate change this event could not have occured".
I enjoyed Bernard's & Craig's comments just above.
If I can add to the points, it is hard to do prescribed burns in the WUI (is Australia calling it BUI?) because you burn homes that way, in addition to invasives making ground fire problematic. And Eucalypts are high in oils and resins, and lend themselves to hot fires.
Simplistic, quick solutions to a condition that took a century to get to rarely - if ever - work the way we want them to. "Greenies" and their ideas didn't cause this fire situation, but man surely did.
Best,
D
So true, which is why here in the american west (and I'm sure australia) agencies have learned that prescribed burns need to be studied and well-planned before action is taken.
There are huge tracts of forest here that are either too overgrown, or have too many insect-killed trees, or are too dry from extended drought, for anyone with even minimal knowledge of fire ecology to imagine that prescribed burning is even *close* to a "panacea".
Yet, it is a valuable tool - when applicable.
Who said it was?
Cold burning helps reduce the risk of disastrous fires. I hope we can all agree on that.
Prescribed burning. Homo S "Sapiens" and fire... pffff...
Darn, whattabout harvesting the wood for fuel etc.?
Prescribed burning. Homo S "Sapiens" and fire... pffff...
Darn, whattabout harvesting the wood for fuel etc.?
Cold burning helps reduce the risk of disastrous fires.
H*ll yeah, it does. When I'm close to frostbite, the last thing I think of is forest fire.
Oh, wait: cold fires are set before the onset of dry season. This has nothing to do with anything, as my comment in 49 already covered this.
Best,
D
Well, no, not always, one of the major reasons for not using prescribed burning is that in many circumstances you can't count on being able to contain a burn that's large enough to do any good.
Resilience Science has a couple of thoughtful posts about the fires from an ecological perspective. Note the causation is complex, and implicit solutions are too.
Best,
D
Craig and Bernard, thank you for your well-informed comments. For all the discussion of prescribed burning, there is one major caveat: however pressing the need for burning,however well documented the fire history, only weather and aspect permit. In the SH winter, shaded south facing slopes can be too damp to burn even during drought, while northerly aspects are often too dry for a safe burn. Conditions suitable for safe controlled burns have been increasingly hard to find in south-eastern Australia. Firefighters died in a controlled burn in Sydney in the winter of 2000, through a mixture of poor practise and inexperience. Significantly, the area had been earmarked for burning five years previously, and had been rolled over until conditions and logistics allowed. And in the following year wildfires affected much of the area.
I'd hazard a guess that immediate pre-conditions to the Victorian fires would have greatly blunted the effect of hypothetical controlled burns in the previous spring. Leaf drop during the warm and intensely dry preceding six weeks would have been enormous.
"..one of the major reasons for not using prescribed burning is that in many circumstances you can't count on being able to contain a burn that's large enough to do any good."
Correct. Evidence:
http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/fire/SummaryOfTheCoronersFindings14De…
It's not a trivial issue.
However this CSIRO study http://www.publish.csiro.au/paper/WF02042.htm suggests it's definitely not a panacea:
"The best results of prescribed fire application are likely to be attained in heterogeneous landscapes and in climates where the likelihood of extreme weather conditions is low."
That would seem to rule out most of Australia and at least most of those areas destroyed by the recent fires.
It also supprots raig Allen's obbsevations above. ("When there are howling winds in extreme temperatures nothing will stop fires in these conditions. I heard that the Eyre Peninsular fire crossed almost bare sheep paddocks, flashing across scattered desiccated sheep dung.")
I remember from my youth in western NSW the big grass fires - no trees for miles but they were still monsters. A couple of years ago heard someone describes a wall of flame roaring across a paddock that was to all intents and purposes barren.
In any case you'd be doing a heck of a lot of burning: "Fuel accumulation rate frequently limits prescribed fire effectiveness to a short post-treatment period (2â4 years)." says the CSIRO study.
Doing that across the whole country would be incredibly costly.
Just from a pure cost-benefit basis, it would seem likely that better building codes, clearing around buildings, fire-proof bunkers and simialr measures would turn out to be a heck of a lot cheaper than the cost of a constant hazard reduction burning and the things that can go wrong.
There's obviously room for it, but as I said before, not a panacea.
The opportunities to do fuel reduction burning become very limited in ongoing dry conditions, especially in rough terrain where containment (building fire breaks) is difficult. Around here the old style practice was to light it and expect overnight cooling and dew to put it out, but serious fires have resulted from such burns that don't self extinguish, the fires meandering along in inaccessable gullies for many weeks only to be fanned into strong fires. Such fires often aren't considered dangerous until they already are, the people lighting them and managing them thinking they are doing everyone a favour by allowing them to keep burning, even past the point where chances to extinguish them have gone. Whether deliberate, accidental or lightning, expecting the weather to do the job of containment is increasingly chancy. The Canberra fires might have been extinguished but people on the ground thought they would self extinguish - the fire was reducing fuel loads in the meantime - but the weather changed and opportunity to contain the fires was lost. Relying on cool weather and overnight condensation to do the job is going to be an increasingly dangerous course in a warming Australia.
Burning off is an essential tool but it's management has to be improved.
And now,Miranda Devine brings the full weight of her penetrating insight to the subject...take a bow,Miranda.
lolwut? Michael Tobis's university is inviting global warming inactivist S. Fred "THIRD WORLD KLEPTOCRATS!" Singer to give a talk.
Heartland cites Rush Limbaugh as a news source.
If Rush Limbaugh told me the sun rose in the east, I'd check an astronomy textbook.
http://www.geocities.com/bpl1960/Limbaugh.html
[I see Christopher Booker is conforming to 'Deltoids Law' of AGW Denialists / Creationists](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/4550448…)
For a touch of Booker antidote (re the Darwin angle), see SAMIZDAT.
I definitely meant the merits of the GW position, i.e., GW is here, it's affecting us now, what do we do.
We just did a bushfire fundraiser/company launch in Austria and I was shocked at the indifference amongst some of them to GW and its effect on snow lines. Really need to draw a strong link between GW and how it will affect those people. I think for many people it seems like a thing scientists talk about occuring "in the future" and they won't see it. People need to have something affect them in order to act.
That launch was originally an enviro fundraiser for a local conservation project in Fiss, but as soon as we changed it to a Bushfire fundraiser, the response was huge (we raised AUD1600 on the night).
So being able to link clearly and without hyperbole between GW and how it affects those people...that's what I need. Something viral, something immediate, something believable.
Obviously I have a very niche/core focus but that's for a very good reason (there're also many good people taking this to a wide audience, i.e. this one, Tamino, Greenfyre, Climateprogress etc etc).