The Natural Disaster Thread

Topic

Australia fires: A visual guide to the bushfire crisis

To Australians who lives their home and to those who lost their home, my condolences goes out to you all and animals who have tragically lost their lives, also well as brave firemen who risk their own lives to save the lives of others.

Replies

Andrew has posted about this online but this was absolutely preventable.

It’s our fucknut Prime Minister and his government that knocked back meeting after meeting and plea and pledge and proposal for the last 12 months.  Purely because it wasn’t seen as something that a Liberal government would do.

What’s worse is that you’ve got a contingent of fucking delusionals who are claiming that this is God’s justice for finding against Cardinal Pell in the first instance.  What’s worse is there’s every chance Pell will get acquitted and by then the climate will have cooled the fires will have settled and delusional moron “A” and “B” will think they were justified in their batshit claims.

Note that that image is pretty misleading, if well intentioned. More useful for context is probably this map:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/datablog/ng-interactive/2019/dec/07/how-big-are-the-fires-burning-on-the-east-coast-of-australia-interactive-map

Naturally most of the fires are in rural, regional, and remote areas – low population areas – but most Sydneysiders would have at least one holiday memory of a south coast or north coast trip, so we’re seeing the locations of fond memories going up in smoke. And that’s before we even get to the animals lost. It’s very sad, and now infuriating as there’s a whole online army of largely trolls trying to lay all blame on arsonists to downplay the role of climate change.

And the non-experts providing advice like “why don’t you carry out controlled burn-offs in winter to reduce the fuel load?” – hazard reduction burns are carried out whenever possible as often as possible, but since the fire season started in some parts of the country in July (Winter!), this hasn’t been possible.

I don’t know what to say except I’m glad you and Tim are okay. The air quality must be terrible. Fill your homes with lots of plants to reduce the pollutants.

It’s shameful what’s happening. Heartbreaking.

My shoe has more empathy than Morrison.

 

Anonymous wrote:

I’m glad you and Tim are okay.

seconded

Andrew wrote:

t’s very sad, and now infuriating as there’s a whole online army of largely trolls trying to lay all blame on arsonists to downplay the role of climate change.

When I first clicked on this thread, I thought that “Natural Disaster” is actually a bit of a misnomer. To some extent, this is a man-made disaster. And so will be many others to come.

You would hope that this development would lead to Australia – and all of us – doubling their sustainability efforts. Not that there’s a big chance of that actually happening.

Much of Puerto Rico still without power after worst earthquake in a century

Christian wrote:

Andrew wrote:

t’s very sad, and now infuriating as there’s a whole online army of largely trolls trying to lay all blame on arsonists to downplay the role of climate change.

When I first clicked on this thread, I thought that “Natural Disaster” is actually a bit of a misnomer. To some extent, this is a man-made disaster. And so will be many others to come.

You would hope that this development would lead to Australia – and all of us – doubling their sustainability efforts. Not that there’s a big chance of that actually happening.

To defend Australia a bit –

We want to. We want to be the best possible country we can.

It’s our government and the idiot boomers that voted for them that want us to be a racist shitbag burnt cinder of a human rights offending polluting nation – but with a budget surplus.

And that’s the common element – the Oz politicians deliberately fucking up for, what, some ideological bollocks?

Meanwhile you have Trump deliberately halving the aid to Puerto Rico because… Oh fuck it, it’s Trump, like he needs a reason.

It’s not even ideological.

There’s a belief that the economic argument plays well with Australians. Which is true: unfortunately ‘lower taxes ‘is usually enough to get a Liberal government elected.

There isn’t any greater economic ideological argument here though. The fiscal policy framework is non existent except for ‘deliver a budget surplus which basically manifests by not putting money into anything (except politicians wages).

We know, Tim.

I’ve met countless Aussies the last few years with similar sentiments. No need to defend that side of Australia to me. There’ll be a pushback the other way. There already is.

(Oops, That was aimed at your first pt.}

Anonymous wrote:

The fiscal policy framework is non existent except for ‘deliver a budget surplus which basically manifests by not putting money into anything (except politicians wages).

Do they at least manage to get a surplus though?

That would put them above the UK and US who don’t put money into anything but still manage to keep increasing their debt.

No, because after literally withholding aid from the treasurery to assist the rural fire services for two months, the Prime Ministers Government has released a couple of billion in aid.

Which is fine, except:

1. We needed it in November

2. The excuse provided was “we’ll let the NSW state government deal with it and we don’t want to step on their toes”.

3. The NSW RFS and NSW SES (State Emergency Services) literally said this needed to be dealt with at a federal level and was clearly a national emergency.

4. There was absolutely no reason to withhold funding except that it jeopardizes the Liberal party being able to say they keep their (only) campaign promise.

5. People are dead,  towns have been destroyed and species made extinct, all for the sake of the Government retaining some vague idea of political capital.

6. Scott Morrison is a turd.

7. They didn’t even TELL the RFS they were aiding them in advance, they just made a fucking AD, to try to backpedall a bit and now there’s confusion as to how the aid will be supplied and to whom which is a logistical nightmare to the response teams.

 

garjones wrote:

That would put them above the UK and US who don’t put money into anything but still manage to keep increasing their debt.

Also, I kind of want to focus on the gravity of this and not concede to the point of the US and UK being ineptly governed also.

There was a response to Katrina and the Californian Fires. It was soft and overshadowed by Trump but there was a response.  I have to believe that the UK would have done something too, if, for example there had been widespread floods or devastating storms for months.

We didn’t. We largely left it to FUCKIMG VOLUNTEERS until people complained and the Government realised they were jeopardizing their next election.

To be honest I was off on a completely different tangent of wider fiscal policy rather than the disaster response, which by all account is a pile of shit.

Probably best for the politics thread though.

Yes, we’ve strayed a bit into politics too much.

The air quality on some days has been the worst in the world – but that just makes me feel worse for New Delhi and Lahore who normally top the charts without a catastrophic series of fires to blame.

For what it’s worth I haven’t really noticed the smell of smoke in Sydney even when the air’s visibly thick with it. And I use a Ventolin puffer before bed every night anyway but the smoke hasn’t made my breathing any worse.

I’m only liking posts here because I don’t know how to “stick the kettle on and listen” via text.

A photo of people who think the Goverment is a jerkface

 

 

So say we all.

Anonymous wrote:

What’s worse is that you’ve got a contingent of fucking delusionals who are claiming that this is God’s justice for finding against Cardinal Pell in the first instance.  What’s worse is there’s every chance Pell will get acquitted and by then the climate will have cooled the fires will have settled and delusional moron “A” and “B” will think they were justified in their batshit claims.

There are a bunch of batty Catholics out there. I’ve watched stuff on youtube by some “trad cath” guys who think they’re the real Catholics and lambasting all the liberal corruption and degeneracy going on in the Vatican. They’re some grade A weirdos.

Yeah.

I have a lot to do with certain religious organisations because they own a lot of property.

I’ll never be able to shake the feeling that they’re more about business then people or even god.

I’m not religious but holy hell are some of those institutions nuanced.

Ha yes the I have no problem with Catholics in general, all religions have their crazies, but the Catholic church is very complicated organization wise.

 

When I was in Vienna I stayed in a guesthouse of the Teutonic order, which seemed kinda cool. It was really just a b&b. I read a bit about it later on, the funny thing is they have all this real estate, but there are just a few hundred members of the order worldwide and the organization has a huge debt, like hundreds of millions.

Interesting.

Another example:

A googlable church was given a lot of land when Australia was settled.

They now own significant real estate in every capital city and lease to various property deveopers/shopping centres for 99 years at a time.

It’s a chief reason Waltons (buggest corporate in America, or at least was) could never crack Australia.

 

Trinity Church in Manhattan owns $6Billion in real estate, dating back to when Queen Anne deeded 215 acres of Manhattan to the church in 1705. Most of that property was sold off over the centuries, but they still own 14 acres of prime real estate. Tim, you should give them a call. 

More than one billion animals killed in Australian fires

After more than a billion perished in the flames, Australian animals face the threat of extinction as death tolls from the fires mounts.

There is a good radio show in the UK called “More Or Less” that analyses the use of statistics and figures in the media and delves into how reliable they actually are.

Last night they did a piece on that exact figure (about the number of animals killed in the Australian fires) – it was interesting as it showed how uncertain the figure is, given that it’s based on certain assumptions about death rates and relatively small-scale studies that have been extrapolated more broadly to reach the figure.

Not that there isn’t a loss of animal life on a huge scale, but I’m always a bit suspicious of these big round headline figures.

That  comment would probably go down like a lead balloon at the protests.

I’m not disputing the loss of life or trying to downplay it, I’m just saying that I find the workings behind these figures interesting from a journalistic point of view.

The show is very much about where these big headline numbers come from and how reliable the data is that they’re based on. It’s not an attempt to discredit it so much as explain exactly what assumptions it’s based on.

Here is the episode if anyone is interested.

It is interesting but it’s a pretty clinical approach and it highlights to me that you’re over the other side of the pond and are not mired in the day to day of this.  Lots of people are running on pure emotion on this thing and the data takes a back-seat to that, because the magnitude is real even if it’s not quantifiable yet.

This hearkens back to Andrew and Max’s first posts where it was pointed out that we dont have a clear map of the situation yet. The gravity is real though, and Andrew and I are lucky because we’re not affected as much as some folk have been.

This is also routine to an extent for Australia. This one is a much larger scale but we do have bushfires every year at this time. Every year. Every year. Every year. Every year. Every year. Every year and still our Government turned its back on providing early funding despite all the warning signs.

Ok, I can recognise that and I apologise if I seemed cold or unfeeling about it. That wasn’t my intention, but I can see how it read that way.

I just happened to hear that radio show last night and my mind went there when JR posted the link.

Hopefully it goes without saying – but I’ll say it anyway – that everyone’s sympathies are with Australia at the moment. Even though we’re geographically removed we’re still seeing a lot of coverage here and I can’t imagine what those people (and animals) affected are going through.

The sympathy really should not be directed at Andrew and me as we’re not affected.  As Andrew said the air is pretty visibly a different colour and there has been a thousandfold increase in people wearing masks over the mouth, but it’s not that bad in inner city sydney.  There was a few weeks in early December where it was pretty bad and one day where I had to work from home because it made my sinuses flare up, but aside from that we’re fine.

There have been townships destroyed though.  Firies are coming across bodies burnt to a cinder in the street like something from War of the Worlds.  Koalas are scrambling up trees to escape flames because they’re just following their biological instinct only to suffocate from the smoke at the top of the trees.  The fires are large – millions of hectares – and everything we know so far tells us it’s bigger in scale than Black Tuesday, Black Friday, Black Saturday, Black Sunday, Miracmachi and Peshtigo – so that probably makes it the biggest bushfire in history. As far as I can work out it’s actually the biggest wildfire in modern history and it’s at least twice, possibly three times bigger than the Manitoba fires.

Sympathy should definitely go to those affected but not Australians at large.  There’s significant Australians who enabled this, who voted the government in, and who continue to deny the affects of climate change.  Those people should be demonised, not sympathised.

njerry wrote:

Trinity Church in Manhattan owns $6Billion in real estate, dating back to when Queen Anne deeded 215 acres of Manhattan to the church in 1705. Most of that property was sold off over the centuries, but they still own 14 acres of prime real estate. Tim, you should give them a call. 

There was (maybe still is) a TV show in the UK where they reveal unclaimed inheritances. In one they went into a Welshman called Robert Edwards who was given 77 acres of that Manhattan land by Queen Anne and leased it to Trinity Church for 99 years.

A lot of the fact here is hotly disputed, they know land Edwards owned is now under their control but while old 3rd party accounts of the deal exist any documentation proving the existence of the lease has not been found. There was a whole industry built up of people trying to prove they were heirs and their claim but New York changed their statute of limitations so it would have to be claimed within 15 years of the expiration  of the lease, so anyone trying now would be about 200 years too slow.

Our former Prime Minister on climate change.

Bear in mind he is from the same right party as the current one and essentially ousted in a coup (he stepped down during).

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/12/scott-morrison-cant-afford-to-waste-the-bushfire-crisis-when-australia-urgently-needs-its-own-green-new-deal