A question about climate change/global warming.

I drove right through the southern highlands this spring. I’ve just been going through my photos from tumut through Adimanby to Cooma. This was on my insta from October.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B3-2gdQgO_x/?igshid=l83ev061fxdb

It’s all burnt out now. It will grow back, but only at the speed trees grow. I remember riding through kinglake when I first got to Australia in 2013, four years after black Saturday. A lot had grown back but there where still a lot of blackened stumps and bare patches. This will take decades ti recover.

Is this the driest/hottest part of the year or may there, god forbid, be worse weather to come?

December through March is generally the hottest, and the most prone to fires in the southeast part of the continent.

Auckland at 3:45pm today. This is no filter and with colour correction off. Australia is 2000km away. pic.twitter.com/57C5etBkkA

— kendra! join a communist party (@kendra_c__) January 5, 2020

A grim account of the absence of governmental involvement, during the collapse of communication infrastructure, stopping doctors from being able to get to injured or affected people.

Good luck, Australia! The rest of us are next.

Visualization of areas fires have been detected by satellite imaging, not current fires. Credit Anthony Hearsey - Creative Imaging
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ENhF2oAXYAAZ7uJ?format=jpg

detected over what time period?

5 December 2019 to 5 January 2020. Originally an instagram post

visualisation of the fires in Aus. This is made from data from NASA’s FIRMS (Satellite data regarding fires) between 05/12/19 - 05/01/20.
These are all the areas which have been affected by bushfires. Scale is a little exaggerated due to the render’s glow. Also note that not all the areas are still burning.

Here would be NASA's interactive rendering over the past 7 days.

From that NASA map it looks like Cambodia is burning up, too.

Melbourne smells of woodsmoke this morning.

This Australian Magpie has been hearing fire engines so often it has started to mimic the sound

Wildlife adjusting to the disaster we created is heartbreaking

This is second only to the time I saw gorillas cover their ears when they heard gunfire pic.twitter.com/Sl7kw4dTFq

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) January 5, 2020

Two new fires have just started in coal seams in the Blue Mountains', at Sydney's western edge, second largest town.

These fires are now travelling underground, as is typical for burning coal seams.

One in Centralia, Pennsylvania has been burning for 57 years. The entire town was condemned in 1992. Its population was 1,200 when the fire started; the population of Lithgow - not a mining town - is 22,000.



https://1v1d1e1lmiki1lgcvx32p49h8fe-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/scott-morrison-coal-joyce-aap-960x540.jpg

"This is coal! Don't be afraid! Don't be scared!

"It's coal, it was dug up by men and women who work and live in the electorates of those who sit opposite.

"There is no word for coal-phobia technically, Mr Speaker, but it is that malady that affects those opposite [the Labor party], and it is that malady that is affecting the towns and jobs and, indeed, this country, because of their pathological, ideological opposition to coal being an important part of our sustainable and more certain energy future."

not a mining town

(that is, Centralia was still a mining town; Lithgow grew as a railway location for coal and iron ore in the 19th century - hence the seams - and there is still a power station in the region, but mining hasn't been its core business for a century or so.)

the "get fucked, from Nelligan" guy is awesome.

Office buildings are being evacuated in Sydney because the fire alarms won't stop going off. the Prime Minister says it's "not the time" to discuss whether climate change is involved, is approving more coal mines, refuses to meet with firefighters or allot emergency services any emergency funding, but is pushing one piece of legislation today: to make it legal again to refuse employment or services to gay and trans people

― insecurity bear (sic), Tuesday, December 10, 2019 9:12 AM

This is the highway leading out of Canberra, the capital of Australia, to the south coast.

Don't worry, the politicians all went home for a few months earlier this month, after postponing the bill that allows you to verbally attack gay, trans, and brown people in the street, or deny them medical attention, or refuse to serve them in shops, or exclude them from jobs.

― insecurity bear (sic), Sunday, December 22, 2019 10:04 AM

(It also took Morrison hours to react when he found out that some of the bathrooms in Parliament House were allowed to be used by any gender, versus four months for bushfires spreading down the side of the continent.)

The footballer then sued the rugby organisation for $14 million dollars.

By the time the legislation was tabled, he was publicly saying that bushfires are God's punishment for gay marriage having been legalised earlier in the year.

The week of that top quoted post, he had received an "extremely pleas[ing]" settlement that left him "vindicated."

So do the Tory fuckers just like being on fire, at this point, in their heart of hearts

They aren't on fire you silly-billy, silby. It's poor people, who don't even OWN coal mines.

This radio talk bloke has been fired and suspended several times for groping and abusing female colleagues, and waving his dick around at a Christmas party, until they got tired of reprimanding him and let him carry on as long as his subordinates resign quietly instead of pressing complaints. He does NOT approve of Shakespearean words though!!!

Anyone who tells a PM to P off and F off for NO reason is feral. https://t.co/aCYArrwnB5

— Chris Smith (@chrissmithonair) January 4, 2020

If he ever started acting like a PM I’m might be inclined to stop telling him to fuck off.

As it is I’m going to tell him to fuck off a lot, especially on Friday outside the star library.

A shocking video of dead animals strewn across a roadside in New South Wales killed in the #AustralianBushfire .

At least 480 million mammals, birds and reptiles are likely to have died in the state alone since September. Devastating.

Credit: The 'new' Batlow Hotel pic.twitter.com/BaGFsMvfm6

— Patrick Greenfield (@pgreenfielduk) January 5, 2020

apocalyptic

― hot nuts (small) (bizarro gazzara), Tuesday, 31 December 2019 08:19 (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

i may have understated this

― hot nuts (small) (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 2 January 2020 21:09 (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

i may have understated my understatement

Apocalypse Next Week And The Week After That, lol we're all gonna die

The managed apocalypse is moving on a bit faster now

cool to see my posts are now so normalised that it takes a fellow Brit posting the same info to break through the apocalypto-recognition-meter :)

Reminder that (the firefighters) are still volunteers, without breathing masks, taking unpaid time off work

Except for the ones that are unemployed: they have had their benefits cut off because they have not been actively seeking work. (The dole has not been raised in 25 years, incidentally. Housing prices have roughly quadrupled in Sydney in that time.)

Good news for the ones with jobs: it's been announced that they will receive (unspecified) compensation for up to twenty days off work, after the fires are over. Four months of fires so far, with another three or four to come, is less than twenty days, right?

It's now been specified, and expanded: both unemployed and employed-but-fighting-fires-instead firefighters can apply for 13 weeks of Disaster Recovery Allowance.

The Disaster Recovery Allowance is the same amount as the dole, which has not been raised in 25 years.

It will also be taxed as income. A few years ago, the LNP government instituted a "robo-debt" administration system, where a broken algorithm will conclude that people on benefits were overpaid (usually if they were working but underemployed) and seize their bank accounts. Many people, especially chronically ill, have killed themselves after being robo-debt-ed, you might be surprised to hear! Firefighters will thus be eligible for $220 a week, in a few months, but about a hundred of it might be taxed, and if they return to work after the fires -- if the fires end -- then a known-to-be-faulty computer system might take the rest of their money too.

don't worry though, Scotty's got some good support behind him

Thanks for the call @realDonaldTrump and for your strong messages of sympathy, support and friendship for Australia during our terrible bushfire season. Thanks also to the American people for their many messages of support. Australia and the US are great mates. 🇺🇸 🇦🇺

— Scott Morrison (@ScottMorrisonMP) January 7, 2020

hope we can get the fires put out in time to send thousands of Australians to murder ppl in the middle east because a POTUS asks again

publicly saying that bushfires are God's punishment for gay marriage having been legalised earlier in the year.

Has he ever stopped and considered that maybe this is God's punishment for electing ScoMo?

The next week, he prepared charts proving that climate change is a "lie" and a "fraud," in order to wave them on a live televised weekly political panel discussion show. Due to "concern about the government's climate change position, [with MPs privately] arguing it was a weakness in the election campaign despite Mr Morrison's surprise win," Morrison barred him from appearing on broadcast TV*.

oh hey here he is on Good Morning Britain this morning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFvTrdOqdXo

note that while Morrison is now saying on TV that of course his goverment, long before he was the head of it, has always believed in the link between climate change and man-made blah blah blah

- Morrison personally intervened* to keep Kelly preselected for his seat
- Morrison personally nominated Kelly to appear on BBC Radio 4 to represent the government on Sunday, which is presumably where GNB picked up on him, if he wasn't personally recommended again
- Kelly was Chair of the LNP's Environment & Energy Committee, 2016-2019
- Kelly invited goons from the IPA to present to the government ahead of the Paris agreement
- Kelly set up a formal group for coal exporters to lobby parliament

Whatever lip service Scotty or LNP reps say now that they've finally realised the general populace have caught on, Craig Kelly still actively represents their position and intentions.

Kelly followed the above TV appearance by referring to Laura Tobin as an "ignorant Pommy weather girl."

Here are some of his greatest hits that made Morrison, weeks after becoming PM through a coup in 2018, leap to keep him in the government:
https://www.crikey.com.au/2018/10/25/why-did-scott-morrison-save-craig-kelly-from-preselection-defeat/

https://chaser.com.au/general-news/no-one-could-have-predicted-this-says-government-that-was-warned-about-this-in-1988-1993-1998-2001-2004-2009-2010-2011-2012-2013-2014-2015-2016-2017-2018-and-2019/

https://www.themonthly.com.au/sites/default/files/styles/blog_image/public/Scott_Morrison_07012020.jpg

absolutely demented posed photo from Scotty, atop this summary of the goverment's inaction over the last month or two

It looks like he has been impaled in his crotch by that table.

"Research from QUT shows that 'some kind of a disinformation campaign' is pushing the Twitter hashtag #ArsonEmergency. There is no arson emergency"

Trump is piling in to help spread it.

Australia and the US are great mates, I hear.

A few decades ago, teenager Shane Fitzsimmons saw his father die in a fire hazard reduction exercise gone wrong in Sydney's Ku-Ring-Gai Chase National Park.

Today, he's having to go on TV to refute the government's lies about fire hazard reduction, and attempt to scapegoat a party that has spent decades trying to save citizen's lives but has never held the balance of power in any legislative jurisdiction.

NSW RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons has dismissed Barnaby Joyce's claim that 'green caveats' stopped hazard reduction burns, leading to the bushfire crisis #AustraliaisBurning #AustralianBushfiresDisaster pic.twitter.com/4omWS0mcuE

— SBS News (@SBSNews) January 7, 2020

^ refute the government’s attempts to scapegoat etc etc

(the other day, Morrison’s office wasn’t actively calling journalists off-the-record to demand they report that the state governments have fucked up in every area of fire safety, nothing to do with the federal government at all)

wasn’t? was. fucken autocorrect

Scott Morrison took a holiday in Fiji a few months ago, requiring taxpayers to fund AFP bodyguards for himself and his family, and in Hawaii as fires spread across the country, again requiring tax-payer funded bodyguards.

The Emergency Services Minister for NSW took a holiday in France while a state of declared emergency existed in NSW.

The federal Defense Minister admitted (after avoiding the question twice) two days ago to taking a holiday in Bali over Christmas, while firefighters were pleading for defense forces to be called in to help them.

Here's Scott Morrison this morning, with the mayor of Kangaroo Island, urging foreign tourists that "Australia is still open" and that while 1/3 of Kangaroo Island "has obviously been decimated*, two-thirds is open for business."

@ScottMorrisonMP encourages people domestically and internationally to holiday in Australia. #AustralianFires #auspol pic.twitter.com/ukLRIvLl4N

— David Marler (@Qldaah) January 8, 2020

Please hold on to your seats before reading that in the hours after this, the South Australian Country Fire Services have identified a dozen or so new fires and issued multiple further evacuation orders.

Also, please don't die of shock that the organisation he joyously praises Belgian tourists for helping out are homophobic, terf, and widely reported as refusing assistance to black folk during the fire crisis.

* this numerically illiterate man, as well as being twice fired for hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud, was recently the Treasurer of the country.

Here's a photo from a water bomber on Kangaroo Island a week ago, when the fires were just getting started:

https://i.imgur.com/S6AuSt0.jpg

Scotty's grifter church is holding a "conference" at 21,000 capacity arenas in London and Sydney in a few months.

It's called "Breathe Again."

One of the promo taglines, a quote from Bishop T.D. Jakes, is "It's amazing how God can strike a match in Australian and the whole world catches on fire."

Speaking of Kangaroo Island.

There's a wildlife park on the island, run by a family, that has long had 150 species of native wildlife in protection, including a large population of koalas.

Over the last two decades, chlamydia has spread rampantly through koalas on the mainland, contracted through a virus in the same family as HIV. In some areas, 80% of koalas have died from this.

The koalas on Kangaroo Island had become regarded as the "insurance population" against extinction, as their isolation kept them protected against chlamydia. (Only one known mainland population was clear before the bushfires.)

As of four days ago, over half of this insurance population had died in the fires, and "many many more" were horrifically injured. The family that run the park have a GoFundMe running, and will be trying to find and rescue any remaining wild koalas once the fires have been extinguished:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-save-kangaroo-islands-koalas-and-wildlife

Scotty's grifter church is holding a "conference" at 21,000 capacity arenas in London and Sydney in a few months.

It's called "Breathe Again."

One of the promo taglines, a quote from Bishop T.D. Jakes, is "It's amazing how God can strike a match in Australian and the whole world catches on fire."

this lazy satire needs new writers

'some kind of a disinformation campaign' is pushing the Twitter hashtag #ArsonEmergency. There is no arson emergency"

stats from NSW:

https://i.imgur.com/blu3XUa.png

so the motives of these swivel-eyed fire-raising maniacs is presumed to be... what? destroying their own environment and killing half a billion living creatures in the name of environmental conservation?

Green Party activists promoting their Communist/socilist/liberal/gay agenda by making the climate change hoax real through the medium of interpretative dance and arson I think.

i'll be honest, i don't find that entirely convincing

look it makes a lot more sense than venal assholes letting it happen for the sake of personal financial profit, therefore the "venal assholes" explanation can't possibly be happening

Update from the New Zealand weather service:

Smoke & dust from the Australian bushfires has now travelled 11,000+ km across the South Pacific, moving into Chile 🔥

Over the next several days, no significant plumes are expected for NZ. pic.twitter.com/PlrHNui3m6

— NIWA Weather (@NiwaWeather) January 8, 2020