California Fires: Opportunism, Arson and a Lack of Hurricanes

Not much talk about the lack of hurricanes so far for 2009. I heard a blurb on the Weather Channel talking about the deep troughing in the Eastern US that was linked to lack of tropical systems in June 2009, but now that El Nino is in full force, the wind shear is sure to keep the 2009 Hurricane season fairly quiet.

So much for the global warming gloom and doom. Oh and by the way what about global temperatures not showing any significant warming since the turn of the century. In fact except for 1998 when we experienced a very strong El Nino, 1999 and 2000 were cooler and since then global temperatures have shown no significant upward trend. I wonder why this is, but of course the global warming crowd will dismiss this and say that a decade or so of decreasing or stable temperatures is not significant and they chalk it up to natural cycles.
Funny how they have an excuse for everything, is'nt that what the skeptics of global warming are saying that the ocean currents, PDO, AMO, sun irradiance, etc all the natural cycles are causing global temperature changes. Funny how they try to explain away global warming, but the fact is that it is just a theory, just like the hundreds of theories that have gone by the way side. The fact is that there is too much unknown and uncertainties to know the real cause of global warming or of lately global neutral temperatures. How about the climate models, we can barely accurately predict weather beyond 5 days let alone 10 to 100 years with climate models, what a joke. They know very little about the role of clouds and water vapor which have a much stronger effect on the greenhouse effect.

Peter: Re lack of experienced “bushmen”, I had a wider view of the rural industries that have declined in numbers post WW2. For instance telecommunications suffered a downsizing of some 80 -120,000 in the late 80’s, many of them technical types from the regions who regularly tracked through the country. Also there was a great deal of mechanisation in agriculture, local councils and forestry, the traditional source of emergency volunteers.

Crisgo: I won’t have time to research details of CFA losses round the hills in the 60’s. I am quite vague on some details like dates however I did see a note on web re the Dandenong Ranges that claimed most illegal fires were lit on total fire ban days. That fits completely with what we saw then.

I lived and worked east of town for a decade or so from 1964. The fires that forced inquiries blew towards Melbourne from the Basin, Olinda areas and the marshalling centre for the emergency volunteer call up was Boronia. I got through police roadblocks late in the day with a wagon load of hand tools.

How we got to be at the Hobart and Lara bushfire scene hours after those events is a mystery but I took slides of the bush on the Mt Wellington slopes. Back in Victoria, I worked on the MMBW major urban expansion program that fixed water shortages in the hills etc. Infrastructure and communications became the new focus everywhere including Tasmania.

Gavin,

"Much of the forest country is now too dry most of the year to hit it with large scale hazard reduction programs in remote areas. Also we don’t have enough experienced bushmen to do it all over on time."

The first part of your quote is utter rubbish and displays a lack of fire management experience. Indeed it is bordering on the utterings of many state and federal bureaucrats in its absurdity and self serving nature.

The second part of your quote re: a lack of experienced bushmen is in all probability the key to it all. the removal of forests from production management to conservationmanaagement across the country over the past 20 years has indeed resulted in a marked decline in experienced bushmen, be they foresters, or other forestry workers. The loss of local knowledge and in field workers resulting from that transfer of management is higlighted each and every fire season.