I mean, I think this story was under-reported, if anything:
An elderly woman has died in Canberra tonight after she went into respiratory distress when exiting the plane to the tarmac which was filled with dense smoke from the bushfires.Maybe there will be subsequent reports detailing properly the number of hospital admissions and increased mortality (one disturbing thing is that they say poor air quality and SIDS has a clear connection, making parents of newly born babies freak out with worry.)
The New Daily has confirmed the Canberra woman was on a Qantas plane arriving from Brisbane.
She was alive when she left the plane but relatives believe she went into respiratory distress after disembarking. ACT police and ambulance were called to the airport to assist.
But apart from that, it's the galleries and public buildings that are staying closed; the flights cancelled; the terrible images of smoke obscuring all views being spread across the globe. You can imagine it having a terrible effect on summer tourism for some years to come.
It's part of what makes Right wing excuse making about how we've always had bushfires seem especially pathetic.
3 comments:
One of our leading fire experts contends that the fuel buildup has been greater than anything in the history of this continent during human habitation.
Thats really the alpha and omega of this story dopey.
We have to anticipate that our CO2 levels will one day be 700 ppm. Now people dispute this. One fellow at Catallaxy tried to say that they will top out at 500 ppm. Maybe. Maybe. His truncated case as to why we would tap out at 500 wasn't very clear. But I'm choosing 700 ppm because thats where the levels SHOULD BE. We should bring back the garden of eden. The God of the Jews evicted us from the garden of Eden. But nowhere did he say we could not make our own garden anew.
So clearly if we have CO2 levels at 700 parts per million we need more methodologies than merely pre-emptive burning to control fuel levels. If we rely on burning alone that means we are breathing in smoke all of autumn and every winter every year forever. Thats not good.
So we need land hydration, planned grazing, burning, setting up a new demand for firewood. We need wood scavenging all year long. We need to be able to throw the wood in with the coal. We need to get our act together in so many ways.
On the right there is the one best method fallacy going on. Well the burning is the best thing right now. But looking forward we need a suite of remedies.
Err,
Reducing fuel build up depends on resources, money, ability to control the hazed reduction and of course all the smoke generated.
If you are the midst of the second 1 in a 100 year drought you can have hazard reduction until the cows come home it doesn't make a difference because of the dryness, soaring temperatures ( which of course those idiots from catallaxy deny) and strong winds mean HUGE bushfires anywhere everywhere.
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