Australia's Bushfire Blunder

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the horrible fires in Australia can be partly attributed to global warming. It’s a legitimate storyline, which many in the media have picked up on.

By and large, these stories have been measured, with the appropriate caveats. (See here and here for two good examples.)

The brutal heat wave that preceded the fires (which Tom Yulsman graphically lays out here), combined with an epic drought, and high winds, set the stage for a tragic disaster that may have been initially caused by arsonists.

Still, in this insightful analysis published on the Forest History Society’s blog, environmental historian Stephen Pyne cautions against fixating on global warming or arson as the agents of destruction:

Both are reasons, and both are also potential misdirections.  Global warming might magnify outbreaks, but it means a change in degree, not in kind; and its effects must still be absorbed by the combustible cover.  Arson can put fire in the worst place at the worst time, but its power depends on ignition’s capacity to spread and on flame to destroy susceptible buildings.

Australia, says Pyne, knows this well. The country “developed many key concepts of fire ecology and models of bushfire behavior.  It pioneered landscape-scale prescribed burning as a method of bushfire management.”

In recent years, however, this knowledge has not been put into practice. Australia, Pyne writes,

seems to be abandoning its historic solutions for precisely the kind of telegenic suppression operations and political theater that have failed elsewhere.  Even when controlled burning is accepted “in principle,” there always seems a reason not to burn in this place or at this time.  The burning gets outsourced to lightning, accident, and arson.

Or global warming.

2 Responses to “Australia's Bushfire Blunder”

  1. […] also sit in the urban/wildland interface to dramatize concerns about global warming. Steven Pyne warned against this kind of “misdirection” after the Australia wildfires. So it is with the […]

  2. Alexander Harvey says:

    My this is a quite little corner of the web.
    Now why am I thinking of dharma, beats, phlebitis, and bums.
    Are the fire lookouts still manned?
    I thouht fire management was stuff we knew and understood. Eventually it burns, or so it seems. The lands get dry and it is just so much tinder under an unforgiving sun, I have seen the sadness of the blackened stumps and burned out communities where  forgotten Spain meets Portugal. For sure the heat is to blame as is the dry. They grow Euchalyptus there but also firs and pines, The native cork oak is made for fire so it is hardly a novelty that stuff burns. The cork oak brushes off the flames, it stands and soon fresh leaves fill its canopy. To own one is to marry it for they are protected heritage and with the holm oak they are the essence of the de hesa. Who will manage them when the last of the shepherds are gone?
    Alex

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