Monday, December 23, 2019

Animal sympathy will save us?

First, a couple of tweets:

To be honest, it's hard to be sure it really is a koala, and not (say) a backpack - but it does look the right shape; and honestly, who ever knew until relatively recently that wild koalas, who normally do not interact with us all, could be so charmingly trusting of humans when fires are around?

Next:  poor cockatoos:

  
Apart from being woken up by them screeching at 4.45 am in a Brisbane summer, how can you possibly dislike these smart, clean looking birds?  That they should fall out of trees due to heat stress is...distressing.

It's obvious from the internet, but also confirmed by my daughter, that the impact of fires and heat on wildfire can cause more sympathy and upset than seeing dozens of burnt out houses, or hearing about someone who died in their car escaping a fire.

You can say that we shouldn't be like that, really.  But it's human nature to perceive animals (or at least, the more charming variety that we can empathise with and like seeing outside our window) as helpless victims, whereas humans take the risk of bush living and know what they might be getting into.     

So I'm not going to get too concerned about any arguments that (I would bet) some Right wing types are probably making somewhere about misplaced sympathy:  anything that leads to more political pressure to take meaningful action to limit emissions and hence limit the worst case scenario in terms of climate change is a good thing. 


8 comments:

GMB said...

Where is the CO2-warming signal?

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-content/sotc/national/2013/jan/v321/oct-anomalies-new.gif

GMB said...

Your emissions theory for fires isn't working that well is it? Ice growth in December in Antarctica. We expect ice growth in the Arctic in December. But Antarctica? The hot temperatures in December are clearly not indicative of a general warming once BOM fakery is disregarded.

https://realclimatescience.com/2019/12/tough-times-for-climate-alarmists-2/

GMB said...

Harry Clarke is always talking about wildlife corridors. In Britain there are all these caveats on land giving access to people who like to walk in nature.

The idiots response to animals suffering in wildfires is to want to restrict emissions. But land corridors and putting the fires out quickly is an Athenian response. The problem of leftist irrationality is a serious problem. Seems that Professor Quiggin is lurching back in that direction whereas Harry Clarke is on the more realistic side of the fence.

I saw a firefighter talking about the massive amounts of time it takes to refill their trucks and those water holding devices that the helicopters drag around. National rehydration of the land would help with this. It starts with swales. But maybe 7 years after the swales go in, you have saturated the soil and it may be time to start putting in the ponds and dams. Ponds and dams everywhere could lead to very fast turnaround times when it comes to fire trucks.

John said...

Ponds and dams everywhere could lead to very fast turnaround times when it comes to fire trucks.

There has to be some kind of water storage in the relevant areas. The planes and helicopters are far too slow. At present I working on a different idea: fuel air\thermobaric bombs at the fire front. I mentioned this to a German fire fighter a few months ago and he told me that some chap in California has tried using conventional bombs but I think fuel air bombs have a big advantage in that these are exploded in the air: no crater, less damage, and soak up a huge amount of oxygen. The problem is the right aircraft and co-ordination with water bombing. Not just one fuel air but a strategic set of them along the front but of course ground personnel need to be a long way off before you set those things off. They are banned as a weapon because they are so devastating.

GMB said...

Very interesting. Red Adair used to put out oil fires with explosions. They would have all this water pouring down just to get the temperature low enough to where they could get in close to plant the bomb. Back then he was famous for his high salary since his team were the only people who could do it. Whereas now people have high earnings simply by having a link to the cheap ponzi money spigot.

Steve said...

Good grief, John. I suppose in theory they might work, for a certain length of the firefront; but obviously, there would be potential for something to go wrong and have it ignite close enough to the ground to light tree tops ahead of the firefront. That would really impress the locals...

All has a whiff of "let's try atomic bombs on a newly forming hurricane" about it...

John said...

Good grief, John. I suppose in theory they might work, for a certain length of the firefront; but obviously, there would be potential for something to go wrong and have it ignite close enough to the ground to light tree tops ahead of the firefront. That would really impress the locals...

All has a whiff of "let's try atomic bombs on a newly forming hurricane" about it...


Sweden and Germany have already experimented with conventional weapons but only very recently. There are different types of Fuel air bombs and of course there are risks but the process can simulated on a computer and at least tried. What we're doing now is insufficient, hence Sweden and the USA trying this using military aircraft. For Aus the ideal aircraft would have been the F111 because of long range, very good payload(you want more than one bomb), designed for low level flight down to 200 ft, and the navigator\weapons can do the bombing and contact with the ground crews. The F 18 has less than half the range, less than 1/4 the payload capacity, and one pilot and is designed to fly above 20,000 ft.

The problems you mention can be avoided. This is not hard to simulate on a computer. The explosion is high in the air, at least 200 feet but you want the bomb dropped from say 1,000 feet not 20,000 feet for accuracy and yes an F111 has an outstanding highest egress speed. The trick is co-ordination, you drop the bombs to kill the energy at the front, then immediately have the water bombers and fire retardant bombers come in. The ground personnel can tackle any spot fires emerging from the bomb itself but as I said I think that can be minimised.

We have to try something different. Fire control strategies are looking rather old and tired in modern times.

GMB said...

If the land is hydrated the trees are more resistant to this sort of thing, water sources will be closer by, and you can have a line of trees chosen specifically for fire breaks. So we can design the land for fires to be easily controllable. But only a moron would think that opposing hydrocarbons would constitute fire control. The exact opposite of the truth since you need hydro-carbon power to fight fires. You aren't going to fight fires with more subsidies to the Chinese communists in return for solar panels.

We have a serious dumb left problem in this country.