A recent report from friends who suffered terrible losses of buildings, fences, pasture and cattle in the Coonabarabran fire commenced with the ominous and oft-repeated message: “a raging fire came out of the National Park straight for us”.
There is only one way to limit fire damage – reduce the fuel available.
Fuel load can be reduced in three ways – by grazing animals, by planned small “cool” fires, or by mechanical reduction with slashers, mulchers or dozers.
Australia’s grassland landscape was created and managed by generations of Aborigines who were masters at using man’s most useful tool – fire. Every explorer from Abel Tasman (1642) and Captain Cook (1770) onwards noted the smoke in the sky and the burnt trees whenever they landed. This burning created the open grassland landscapes that dominated pre-European Australia. Aborigines lit fires continually, mainly to keep their fires sticks alight. Their small patchwork fires caused no permanent damage to the environment and fortuitously created and maintained the healthy grasslands and open forests on which many animals and Aborigines depended.
There have been two major changes to the tree/grass balance since European settlement. In the fertile well-watered coastal strip, large areas of thick scrub and open forest were logged and cleared for timber, farms, towns, roads, schools and the domesticated grasses of suburban lawns. Most of those trees have been displaced by those people who now, in ignorance, are also destroying the grasslands and remaining open forests by locking up land and preventing any form of regrowth control. Having destroyed much of the coastal forests and scrubs, they are now destroying the open forests and grasslands.
Misguided tree lovers and green politicians have locked the gates on ever-increasing areas of land for trees, parks, heritage, wilderness, habitat, weekend retreats, carbon sequestration etc. Never before on this ancient continent has anyone tried to ban land use or limit bushfires on certain land. The short-sighted policy of surrounding their massive land-banks with fences, locked gates, fire bans and exclusion of livestock has created a new alien environment in Australia. They have created tinder boxes where the growth of woody weeds and the accumulation of dead vegetation in eucalypt re-growth create the perfect environment for fierce fires.
Once ignited by lightning, carelessness, or arson, the inevitable fire-storms incinerate the park trees and wildlife, and then invade the unfortunate neighbouring properties. Many of today’s locked-up areas were created to sequester carbon to fulfil Kyoto obligations. Who pays the carbon tax on the carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere by wild fires? The green bureaucracies and politicians are clearly mis-managing their huge land-bank. Aborigines and graziers did a far better job. There should be a moratorium on locking up any more land and a return to sustainable management for existing land holdings.
Seek a sustainable future! Wind, solar and biofuels will ensure an eco-friendly, climate-protecting, planet-saving, sustainable inheritance for our children. Or so we are told by activists and politicians intent on enacting new renewable energy standards, mandates and subsidies during a lame duck session.
It may be useful to address some basic issues, before going further down the road to Renewable Utopia. (more…)
Why do taxpayers have to subsidize this? Why do environmentalists give it a free pass?
By Ron Arnold
It uses tons of fossil fuels every day, emits a greenhouse gas that’s like CO2 on steroids, can’t do the job it’s made for, costs taxpayers exorbitant fees, and makes the federal government look mentally ill for giving it outrageous subsidies. It also chops up birds, bats and scenery with roads and monstrous 400-foot-tall machines. “It” is wind power, of course.
These harsh facts were condensed into a preliminary draft study of wind subsidies by researcher Teresa Platt, who circulated it to specialists for vetting. I obtained a copy of the extensively footnoted working draft, which gave chilling reality to the truth behind wind industry claims.
“Every year since the 1980s,” Platt’s study said, “the 5,000 turbines at NextEra’s Altamont Pass in California kill thousands of slow-reproducing red-tailed hawks, burrowing owls, kestrels, as well as iconic golden eagles, and bats.” The birds Platt mentions are raptors – birds of prey – particularly valued for their agricultural role in killing mice and other crop-damaging rodents. Eagles, both golden eagles and bald eagles, have long impressed Americans for their majesty, and the bald eagle was selected by our Founding Fathers as our national emblem.
I asked Bob Johns, spokesman for the American Bird Conservancy, about wind farm eagle mortality. He confirmed Platt’s study and told me the Altamont operation alone has killed more than 2,000 golden eagles. But that’s not all. “Nationwide, the wind industry kills thousands of golden eagles without prosecution,” Johns said, “while any other American citizen even possessing eagle parts such as feathers would face huge fines and prison time.”
Huge is right. Violate either the Migratory Bird Treaty Act or the Eagle Protection Act, and you could get fined up to $250,000 or get two years imprisonment.
Not a single wind farm operator has yet been prosecuted for killing birds, yet in 2009 ExxonMobil got whacked with a $600,000 fine for killing 85 common ducks and other birds that flew into uncovered tanks on its property. Other similarly outrageous revenge-style penalties have been assessed on oil companies by the viciously ideological anti-fossil fuel Obama administration. (more…)
Election Day – “Put every Labor/Green candidate last”
Our advice on how-to-vote for climate sceptics and against climate alarmists provoked a lot of feedback and comment, mostly positive.
This was the most dramatic response:
Best Election Advice, Edgecliffe NSW
Lots of small parties wrote to tell us how much they opposed the war on carbon and the futile attempts to use taxes to change our climate. We were told that Rise Up Australia Party and Palmer United Party are opposed to all the carbon tax/trading stuff. Good – support their candidates if you like their other policies. Also Cori Bernardi is worth supporting. Our concern with many small parties is that they may have preference deals with the ALP/greens (Palmer votes could end up with Greens, Katter votes could end up with ALP, and even our favoured Climate Sceptics have preferenced Labor above LNP in half of the states, because of the silly utterings of Greg Hunt and his Direct Action Dreams).
There are two ways to handle this Senate election. The lazy way is just vote LNP 1 above the line. That should ensure the defeat of the ALP/Green coalition. But to really vote against the climate alarmists, be selective and vote below the line, numbering all squares. Start with all the sceptic parties you know and vote for their candidates in order. Then vote LNP (this is most important to ensure your vote does not cascade down and accidentally elect an ALP/Green candidate). Then fill out all the other squares in any order PUTTING THE GREENS LAST. We have no other changes to previous advice. If you cannot be bothered taking some time to work it out, vote 1 above the line for the LNP.
We recommend this useful tool for the thinking voter. Decide your priorities and it will show you how to vote: https://www.clueyvoter.com/
Keywords: Put greens last, how-to-vote, Labor, Greens, LNP, no-carbon-tax-party, coal saves forests, CCS, green energy failures, after the ball, Taxing Air, Cost/benefit climate policies 50/1.
Canberra breeds many white elephants, but now they are breeding a gigantic new breed of pachyderm in Australia’s Snowy Mountains – a Green Elephant. Grandly named “Snowy 2.0 Hydro-Electric”, it has the compulsory green skin, but it is just another big white elephant under a thick layer of green paint.
Snowy 2.0 plans a hugely expensive complex of dams, tunnels, pumps, pipes, generators, roads and powerlines. Water will be pumped up-hill using grid power in times of low demand, and then released when needed to recover some of that energy. To call it “hydro-electric” is a fraud – it will not store one extra litre of water and will be a net consumer of electric power. It is a giant electric storage battery to be recharged using grid power.
The Carbon Sense Coalition today called on the Australian and New Zealand governments to boycott the UN Global Warming talkfest planned for Durban later this year.
The Chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, said that there was nothing useful left to discuss, so tax payers should be spared the costs.
“There are only two legitimate topics to debate in Durban – the science of global warming or the politics of the Kyoto agreement.
“Government climate mercenaries tell us at every opportunity ‘The science of global warming is settled’. They refuse to debate climate realists. Thus, according to them, there is no science to debate at Durban.
“The politics of Kyoto alarmism is equally settled. No one outside the Green Empire in UK, Europe and the Anzacs will renew Kyoto.
“Developing economies in Africa, India and China are never going to agree to carbon taxes and rationing that damage the aspirations of their millions many who still lack electricity. Others such as PNG, Indonesia and Brazil will participate only to the extent needed to rip off the gullible Green Empire by selling ephemeral ‘carbon credits’ to them.
“Thus the Kyoto deal is dead and there is nothing there to discuss in Durban.
“Almost every western government is guilty of massive overspending. Australia and New Zealand should reduce government waste by sending NO ONE to the pointless party in Durban.”
Viv Forbes is Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition which opposes waste of resources, opposes pollution, and promotes the rational and sustainable use of carbon energy and carbon food.www.carbon-sense.com
What a great headline in a weekend newspaper, The rush is on for sky money. The comparison between ETS and the cargo cultists of PNG couldn’t be more apt. Mani bilong skai is already attracting the shysters and get-rich-quick merchants, for the lie is big and the suckers are many (‘Would you like to trade this splendid piece of thin air for some of those old dollars?’). Those old dollars won’t be worth much if ETS becomes law.
As we watch the disturbing daily images of a dry Darling River, parched Menindee Lakes, millions of dead fish, and outback towns without drinkable water, both bush and city are screaming – Why?
Who is responsible they ask? Name the scapegoats and brand them criminals is demanded.
Any lesser response would be shameful, but some reactions, while understandable, are not rational.
Before we look more closely at why and how these unacceptable events have occurred, we need to put to rest some misconceptions about this river and recent claims made by some aboriginal people that the Darling was previously a “Mighty River” that always flowed.
It wasn’t. After discovery by English explorers Stuart and Hume in 1828, history kept at Menindee tells us it was bone dry there at least 48 times up to 1960 – something that no doubt also happened for hundreds of years before.
The paddle steamer NILE on the dry bed of the Darling River, near Bourke, about 1898. From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository (more…)
For at least a decade we have been told by the UN/IPCC, by most government media and officials, by many politicians, and by the Green “charities” and their media friends that “the science is settled”. We are lectured by Hollywood stars, failed politicians and billionaire speculators that anyone who opposes the World War on Carbon Dioxide is ignorant, mischievous or supporting some hidden vested interest. We endure calls for an end to free speech for climate sceptics, smearing with derogatory terms like “denier”, and even aggressive punishments like dismissal and legal action against sceptics for speaking out. The new low is the use of anti-racketeer legislation against sceptics: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/08/29/rico-charges-against-climate-deniers-a-case-of-goose-and-gander/
We notice the sudden and unexplained denial of pre-booked sceptic conference facilities and the steadfast refusal of alarmists to debate facts and issues.
Why are they so afraid of words? Surely this is a sign that their facts are shonky and their arguments are feeble? They fear they are losing the confidence of the public. (more…)
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