Oops, Mr Nunn didn't receive the BBC memo:

"Australia fires: Aboriginal planners say the bush 'needs to burn'
By Gary Nunn
Sydney"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-51043828

"For thousands of years, the Indigenous people of Australia set fire to the land.

Long before Australia was invaded and colonised by Europeans, fire management techniques - known as "cultural burns" - were being practised.

The cool-burning, knee-high blazes were designed to happen continuously and across the landscape.

The fires burn up fuel like kindling and leaf detritus, meaning a natural bushfire has less to devour.

Since Australia's fire crisis began last year, calls for better reintegration of this technique have grown louder. But it should have happened sooner, argues one Aboriginal knowledge expert.

"The bush needs to burn," says Shannon Foster.

She's a knowledge keeper for the D'harawal people - relaying information passed on by her elders - and an Aboriginal Knowledge lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS)....

..."Her Aboriginal elders in Sydney have been assessing the overgrown bush and extremely dry kindling for some time, warning that a huge fire is coming: "They compared it to a kid with unkempt hair, saying it needs nurturing."

But local authorities have forbidden them from cultural burning when they've asked for permission."

Jan 19, 2020 at 8:53 AM Mark Hodgson

The primitive culture and traditions of lying Climate Scientists, are exposed by the wisdom knowledge and experience of the indigenous population of Australia. It seems to be the same pattern of behaviour, based on deliberate ignorance and destruction of history, all over the World.

…actually responding to her arguments.

Except 'Jo Nova' has no arguments of her own, any more than 'Nova' is her real name. Here she has merely copy-pasted from an opinion piece by Roger Underwood in Quadrant. Underwood heads up the Bushfire Front, a lobbying group and is pushing a self-published book.

I look for scepticism, here I just find confirmation bias.

Phil, you'll really ought to be more appreciative. Mark has gone to the trouble of directing you to an easily accessible site (Jo Nova) where you will find the informed comments of Roger Underwood (who I suspect you had not heard of before) together with her evaluation of his views. Yet what do you do, - complain, calling it "confirmation bias". WTF do you do all day long when you quote others?

As for your criticism that Jo Nova has "no arguments", arguments that are valid may be acquired by others and spread. She did not claim them as her own, and gave a source for them.

As for those arguments, do you deal with them?: do you heck!!! A quick dash of ad hominems suffice (as is so common with you).

A particularly poor effort. F-

".. here I just find confirmation bias.
Jan 20, 2020 at 12:28 AM Phil Clarke"

Here you find evidence that explains you are wrong.

http://joannenova.com.au/2020/01/57-bushfire-inquiries-isnt-enough-we-need-one-more-for-leaders-to-hide-behind/

"Big Government strangles our ecosystems just like it strangles scientific research. Australia has had 57 bushfire inquiries since 1939. We knew what was coming and we knew how to stop it, and we’ve known for eighty years (and indigenous people for thousands). Instead we paid a garrison of gravy trainers to not-read-those-reports and to create the exact conditions we knew would turn into a pyroconvective catastrophe. State Premiers missed a major threat to their people, their industry, our environment. On top of the death and destruction toll, just one industry, tourism, is looking at a $4.5b loss. Heads must roll. If they were misled, then name the names.

Our institutions failed us: The CSIRO didn’t save us, the ABC didn’t. What’s the point of them? Academics and CRC’s could’ve warned the nation, but instead most experts and the “reporters” said renewable energy would prevent these fires, even though climate change has made no difference to rainfall or droughts, which are driven by ocean currents, and solar cycles, not carbon dioxide. Let’s promote those who got it right, and turn off the tap to those that didn’t. Who pays damages? Who gets sacked?

Just do it: less fuel, less rules, more roads, more dams. Read Viv Forbes."

But the 'arguments' are specious. First a straw man …

This, of course, is the beauty of the “blame it all on climate change” position. If climate change caused the bushfires, no individual can be pinned, not even those “fire chiefs” who were in charge during the entire time the current disaster was incubating and who now suddenly know what was the problem.

I reject the ‘blame it on climate change” position because it has two killer flaws: firstly, it ignores fuels, which are the main contributor to uncontrollable fires during a drought; secondly, it provides no practical solutions to the immediate problem. Both of these factors render the climate change argument utterly unsustainable, indeed ridiculous.

Nobody that I am aware of is claiming climate change causes bush fires, this was always going to be a severe season and there are multiple factors that lead to the catastophic outcome . The argument is that the approximately 1C rise is average summer temperatures made the fires worse than they otherwise would have been. There's good evidence for this, summarised here. Underwood claims expertise, but here he attempts to reduce a complex problem to an oversimplified explanation. He is a lobbyist with a book to sell after all.

Then, as night follows day, the Greenie-bashing.

And what of the greenies and the ivory tower academics from Murdoch, Curtin and Wollongong universities? The anti-fuel reduction burning academics have no understanding of practical bushfire management. They are misguided, misinformed and, by my reckoning, dangerously mischievous.  But they have not been running the show. The premiers, ministers and senior public servants overseeing the land-management agencies could have, and should have, simply rejected the academics’ green ideology and its foolish precepts.

Only one thing lacking: a single valid example. But hey, this is just an opinion piece, facts are optional.
In reality, Australian Greens support responsible burning,the NSW Fire Service exceeded its target for area burned this year, and hazard reduction burning is not all that effective.

The leading proponent of the hazard reduction burns myth seems to be Barnaby Joyce. And despite numerous experts having debunked the claims, the Nationals MP is still appearing in the media propagating the idea that "green caveats" are leading to the blazes.

Former Fire and Rescue NSW commissioner Greg Mullins wrote in the Herald back in November that the conditions leading to these fires are part of an "established long-term trend driven by a warming, drying climate". And he emphasised that this is not part of a normal cycle.

"Warmer, drier conditions with higher fire danger are preventing agencies from conducting as much hazard reduction burning," the ex-top firefighter said. "Blaming 'greenies' for stopping these important measures is a familiar, populist, but basically untrue claim".

And Rural Fire Service commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons told the ABC just yesterday that while hazard reduction burns are not a "panacea", his department had met its hazard reduction targets in the lead up to the current season.

Read back and you will find I am largely just repeating myself.

Source: http://www.mondaq.com/australia/x/883046/Climate+Change/Debunking+the+myth+that+the+Greens+caused+the+bushfire+crisis+An+interview+with+MLC+David+Shoebridge

Read back and you will find I am largely just repeating myself.

Source: http://www.mondaq.com/australia/x/883046/Climate+Change/Debunking+the+myth+that+the+Greens+caused+the+bushfire+crisis+An+interview+with+MLC+David+Shoebridge

Jan 20, 2020 at 9:53 AM Phil Clarke

Same old lies, repeated again.

"It has surely now been established beyond any possible doubt the major role that poor fire hazard management has played in the severity of recent Australian bushfires, despite disinformation campaigns from the BBC/Guardian/Met Office.

Back in 2016, a Special Inquiry was held following the catastrophic Waroona bushfire, just south of Perth that year. Their report not only reemphasised the crucial role of controlled burning, but also gives an insight into the evolution of such practices in recent decades. "

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2020/01/22/learning-the-lessons-from-the-waroona-bushfires/

In NSW, the last decade has seen more than twice the amount of prescribed burning compared to the decade before and in all mapped records of prescribed burning across NSW national parks it's the highest decade

In fact NSW burned 106% of its target area in this season.

Burning is only one form of hazard reduction, there are others such as grazing, and reducing the fuel load is not a silver bullet, its more complex than that. Nonetheless, Homewood is wrong (again).

I am not aware of a formal metric and I suspect it would be hard to come up with one that was applicable to all conditions and vegetation types. Paul Homewood posts a report into a 2016 fire near Perth, which found a relationship between decreased area burned and average bushfire acreage increased, but it is not a linear relationship, and whether the conclusions can be applied across the country in NSW and Victoria (where most of the fires are/were this season) is moot. Besides which NSW has actually increased area burned in the recent decade.

Also, raw acreage burned may not tell you much, fuel reduction is focussed on areas where it will do the most good, so an acre burned near a town may be of more use than one in the bush. Also, the Fire Services can only burn when it is safe to do so; there have been several occasions of controlled burns becoming uncontrolled burns and damaging property and habitat. The time window for suitable conditions has shrunk due to (guess what?) increased temperatures.

Also, when fires become catastrophic, it tends to be wind strengths rather than fuel availability that is the controlling factor, fuel reduction measures mainly affect fuels at ground level and a crown fire just rips through everything in its path.

However, research has shown that as weather conditions get hotter, drier and windier, fuel reduction becomes less effective.

In "catastrophic" conditions, raging fires no longer need undergrowth to spread — they simply incinerate everything in their path, often becoming dangerous "crown fires" in the treetops.

Canberra-based environmental scientist Cormac Farrell, who specialises in bushfire protection, says fuel reduction works well in milder conditions when blazes are mainly driven by the availability of fuel.
In catastrophic conditions, the wind becomes the driving factor more than anything else and the fuel load is less important.

We've had plenty of reports in the recent emergency of the fires just racing through areas that had had hazard reduction burns. There was very little effect from having hazard reduction burns being done.

Really, given the extent of these fires that are going on at the moment, hazard reduction burning is unlikely to have had a major impact,

We have seen so many ignitions, so many fires merging, and fires burning over fuels that are as young as a few months old right up to old fuels and burning in similar ways. So it's unlikely that more hazard reduction burns would have reduced the extent or the impact of these fires.

- Melbourne University Associate Professor Trent Penman

Under catastrophic conditions I don't think hazard reduction burns would have made a huge difference, to be honest,"

"And that's why the focus has been very much on the two-pronged approach — we have to adapt to the new reality of the changed climate we're in, and we also have to do what we can to try and stop changing the climate."

There's no evidence that fuel reduction was significantly reduced due to 'Green' influences, and no evidence that more controlled burns would have made the fires any less catastrophic.

All quotes from here.

Jan 23, 2020 at 1:40 PM tomo

All the evidence confirms that the more stuff there is to burn, the bigger the fire(s) will be.
The levels of denial being spouted have reached 11.

Hopefully the skill and expertise required to carry out controlled burns has not been stamped out by the Green Blob. The stupidity that has stamped out controlled burns needs to be neutered to prevent reproducing the same results.

In terms of some form of method of measurement, indigenous populations all over the world will have their accumulated knowledge, normally based on the number and length of growing seasons, and the nature of fuel load that WILL accumulate annually, even if it requires one month plus of warm dry weather to guarantee combustion. (In the UK autumn leaves tend to fall under damp cold conditions and rot before any drought the following year)

To save the Environment from being incinerated by Green Blob environmentalists, it would be safer for Australians to instigate forest spraying, with Agent Orange

Jan 23, 2020 at 3:26 PM Radical Rodent
The high levels of denial seem to be coming from those with backsides most likely to be fired out of taxpayer funding. At least they haven't lost their houses and livelihoods yet, but as a means of taxing Greens to pay for the damage they have caused, it would seem to be a fair and reasonable approach.

They have made so many false accusations already, Court proceedings could be lively.

This appendix summarises the available information on major bushfire events in each state and territory as far back as records allow. There are many inconsistencies and gaps in the available information because there are no nationally agreed criteria for defining a ‘significant fire year’ or a ‘major fire event’.

As already noted, the figures for 1974 included extensive savannah fires, which predominantly occurred in WA and NT - large desert areas, these were grassfires and not really comparable with the swathes of eucalypt forest burning in NSW, VIC, TAS, and SA. Grass fires do not typically cause widespread damage and are usually left to burn themselves out.

The 1974/75 fires had almost no impact and much of the damage was found by satellite after the fact

Source

Apples/Oranges.

Apples/Oranges.

Jan 23, 2020 at 4:32 PM Phil Clarke

Your suppliers are rotten.

Straw man, these include the usual scrub/brush fires. See table here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Australian_bushfire_season#Overview

(quote: 'includes scrub fire')

The Northern Territories just had a completely average fire season, WA lost 5.4m acres and 1 home, as opposed to 70m acres in 1974 (according to your self-described 'inconsistent' table).

You're trying to equate the scrub/grassland fires in the vast semi-desert and desert regions with the forest fires in the Eucalypt forests of the heavily populated East and South East. Apples/Oranges.

Jan 23, 2020 at 7:09 PM Phil Clarke

Now you are building strawmen out of apples and Oranges in order that your denial can continue.

Means, method and motive to create the conditions for large bushfires have been demonstrated. Some of them may even have been started by the Green Blob.

Tamino, eh? His blog is biased alarmist, and censors critical skeptics, but we got him good once upon a time back in the day over Mann's fiddling. Jean called 'garbage', and so it was.
=========================================

Like a faded pop band reminiscing on their one nearly hit song from the last decade, its Cooling Kim!

Somebody will now admonish you for attacking the message rather than dealing with the message.

Or not ;-)

Choose your own interpretation of what Phil means. Perhaps he was tres fatigue at 2.52am.

Perhaps he was tres fatigue at 2.52am.

Jan 24, 2020 at 7:34 AM AK

No Australian intelligence available either