Mood:
sharpTopic: wildfires
Who plays politics out of a guilty conscience over the Victorian bushfire disaster? As we always say 'the government is the government, .... is the government', and in this we include bipartisan opposition figures who support woodchipping of huge old wet forests.
Main candidates today would be Fran Bailey MP, on ABC RN radio this morning and Sophie Mirabella MP (nee Panopoulos) in the federal parliament Matter of Public Importance motion yesterday.
As per the pictures in the penultimate story we have giant trees in parts of Victoria even today in wet forest types that obviously have lived for centuries without fatal wildfires. Wet areas resistant to wildfire.
But over the last 50 years highly mechanised logging has changed the majority of those landscapes to dry schlerophyll eucalyptus. Same species but hundreds of thousands of hectares of dry hot dusty regrowth that builds up wildfire on extreme risk days.
The question Bailey and Mirabella need to answer is Do you support an audit of logging impact on the water cycle in regional landscapes over the last 50 years?
They never will - because the whispering in their hearts tells them it's one major root cause of bushfire intensity because ..... it's moisture levels that makes the difference between a safe day and a very, very, very ordinary day.
To get a sense of the specific mechanism of redneck logging tradition ripping miosture out of the water cycle converting wet to dry landscape refer diagrams here: Bushfire science
and the tab here wildfires re more recent profound scientific evidence of logging and wildfire problems by Australian Professor Lindenmeyer et al.
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Postscript: Will the egregious moderator at The Australian take our comment on this article today, rebutting this piece Black Saturday could happen again this month authored by "Max Rheese is secretary of the Victorian Lands Alliance, which includes the Australian Environment Foundation, Australian Motorcycle Trailriders Association, Australian Trail Horseriders Association, Mountain Cattlemen, Sporting Shooters Association of Australia, Victorian Association of Forest Industries, and the Victorian Game and Deerstalking Association."
Will The Oz block me today? Let's see? And yes I did pile burns, bushfire bunker etc this last winter and know the feeling of insecurity if not the horror.
This resource industry front refuse to address their own record of trashing huge old wet forest types, ripping moisture out of the ancient forests. Moisture which is the true difference between safety and a very, very, very ordinary day. Hundreds of thousands of hectares over the last 50 years have been converted to dry, dusty, regrowth schlerophyll eucalypt. Thanks for nothing. And that's best science talking, not just common sense.
As the good book says, look to the log in your own eye.
