Quoll Tracks: February 2009

Saturday, February 14, 2009

The Blame Game.

It was inevitable the blame game would start quickly and it was also inevitable that it would be "the greenies" who would be blamed for the tragic bushfires in Victoria, it was also inevitable that the armchair experts wouldn't identify which particular "greenies" they were nor would proof be offered as to what it was "the greenies" did. But all that doesn't matter but finding someone to blame and pointing the finger is all that really matters here, there's no point whatsoever letting the facts get in the way of rabble rousing.

I just posted the following on a forum I frequent and to save retyping I've shamelessly copied and pasted my own work, it will probably give you a better insight into things than perusing the daily fishwrappers:

Had a quick skim of this report: http://www.climateinstitute.org.au/imag ... report.pdf, one of the things which caught my eye is that a fire intensity of greater than 3500W/m2 is regarded as uncontrollable. A fuel load of roughly 500g/m2 under a Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI) of 100 put out this sort of energy. That's a very low fuel load conditions last weekend in Victoria led to a FFDI of 300, which is fairly unheard of (at least not in those areas anyway), under those conditions fire on a dry lawn is pretty well uncontrollable (and I have seen conditions like that). Unless you've got a completely scorched earth under those conditions any fire will be difficult, if not impossible to control.

Another factor is that many areas where the fires have burnt are dominated by Wet Schlerophyll Forest, what this means is that there's a Eucalypt overstory but the under and mid story are dominated by rainforest plants and while there is a lot of growth and vegetation in there it is generally too moist to burn in anything other than small patches. The only way to get it to burn is for it to dry out, on the rare occassions it does dry out the fuel load is very high which means that there will be a high intensity fire.

Hazard reduction is useful, however it only a reduction of the hazard and not an elimination of it, it's quite possible for an area to have a hazard reduction burn in winter or spring and still carry an intense fire later in the summer. This was the case of the January 1994 fires in Port Stephens, a fire started on the side of the road (probably from some idiot tossing out a ciggie butt) where the Water Board had carried out a hazard reduction the previous winter, the first tanker was there only minutes after it started, it was very low humidity, high winds and temperature in the high 30's. I was on the first truck there, under normal circumstances with the short time taken to get there and the low fuel load we'd have gotten in out in a few minutes.

Under the conditions of the time it quickly jumped the road into tall heath and it was off. A few days later when we thought we had the fire just about locked away we got our morning weather report predicting temperatures in the low-mid 40's, high westerly winds and humidity of 8% (I found out later humidity had gotten to zero), just after lunch it went off. Areas we thought we'd secured a couple of days beforehand (backburning, full mop ups) had the fire go through again, we heard the fire, we saw the fire, got choked by the smoke and the front had passed us, a very terrifying 30 seconds or so.

I would imagine there'd be worse stories to tell from the Victorian fires, if you want somewhere to be fully fireproof that's easy, concrete everything within a 2 kilometre radius and have no plants whatsoever in your garden, if you want to live in areas surrounded by bush then you have to accept that there is a good chance there will be fires and manage and plan accordingly. With the whole "tree change" thing there are many people moving into these areas with no experience of fires, no knowledge of the precautions needed. But unfortunatelly under extreme conditions, extreme things happen and sometimes no matter how well you prepare it may not be enough.

Friday, February 13, 2009

A response to "Catch the Fire Ministries" excreble media release.

A friend of mine tried to post a response to Danny Nalliah's media release blaming Victoria's abortion laws for being the cause of the bushfires. Unsurprisingly it wasn't published, so with his permission I'll post it here (Thanks Col.).

Indeed it is wise of God to allow the death of children to show indignation at the death of children. Then again there is a bit of history in this type of thinking:

Abortion:

Hosea 9:11-16 Hosea prays for God’s intervention. “Ephraim shall bring forth his children to the murderer. Give them, 0 Lord: what wilt thou give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts. . .Ephraim is smitten, their root is dried up, they shall bear no fruit: yea though they bring forth, yet will I slay even the beloved fruit of their womb.” Clearly Hosea desires that the people of Ephraim can no longer have children. God of course obeys by making all their unborn children miscarry. Is not terminating a pregnancy unnaturally “abortion”?

Numbers 5:11-21 The description of a bizarre, brutal and abusive ritual to be performed on a wife SUSPECTED of adultery. This is considered to be an induced abortion to rid a woman of another man’s child.

Numbers 31:17 (Moses) “Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every women that hath known man by lying with him.” In other words: women that might be pregnant, which clearly is abortion for the fetus.

Hosea 13:16 God promises to dash to pieces the infants of Samaria and the “their women with child shall be ripped up”. Once again this god kills the unborn, including their pregnant mothers.

2 Kings 15:16 God allows the pregnant women of Tappuah (aka Tiphsah) to be “ripped open”. And the Christians have the audacity to say god is pro-life. How and the hell is it that Christians can read passages where God allows pregnant women to be murdered, yet still claim abortion is wrong?

Infanticide:

1 Samuel 15:3 God commands the death of helpless "suckling" infants. This literally means that the children god killed were still nursing.

Psalms 135:8 & 136:10 Here god is praised for slaughtering little babies.

Psalms 137:9 Here god commands that infants should be “dashed upon the rocks”.

The murdering of children:

Leviticus 20:9 “For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him.”

Judges 11:30-40 Jephthah killed his young daughter (his only child) by burning her alive as a burnt sacrifice to the lord for he commanded it.

Psalms 137:8-9 Prayer/song of vengeance “0 daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.”

2 Kings 6:28-29 “And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow. So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him: and she hath hid her son.”

Deuteronomy 21:18-21 “If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.”

Judges 19:24-29 “Behold, here is my daughter a maiden, and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you: but unto this man do not so vile a thing. But the men would not hearken to him: so the man took his concubine, and brought her forth unto them; and they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her go. Then came the woman in the dawning of the day, and fell down at the door of the man’s house where her lord was, till it was light. And her lord rose up in the morning, and opened the doors of the house, and went out to go his way: and behold, the woman his concubine was fallen down at the door of the house, and her hands were upon the threshold. And he said unto her, Up, and let us be going. But none answered. Then the man took her up upon an ass, and the man rose up, and gat him unto his place. And when he was come into his house, he took a knife, and laid hold on his concubine, and divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts of Israel.” To put it very bluntly this poor, young lady was murdered by her mate for being raped.

Exodus 12:29 God killed, intentionally, every first-born child of every family in Egypt, simply because he was upset at the Pharaoh. And god caused the Pharaoh’s actions in the first place. Since when is it appropriate to murder children for their ruler’s forced action?

Exodus 20:9-10 God commands death for cursing out ones parents Joshua 8 God commanded the deaths of 12,000 men, women, and children of Ai. They were all slain in the ambush that was planned by god.

2 Kings 2:23-24 The prophet Elisha, was being picked on by some young boys from the city because of his bald head. The prophet turned around and cursed them in the Lords name. Then, two female bears came out of the woods and killed forty-two of them. You would think that God could understand that sometimes the youthful make childish jokes. Calling someone “bald head” is far from being worthy of death.

Leviticus 26:30 “And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.”

1 Samuel 15:11-18 God repents of having made Saul king since Saul refused to carry out God’s commandments (i.e., Saul refused to murder all the innocent women and children.) At least god realizes what an immoral, murderous pig he is on this one.

I Kings 16:34 Laying the foundation for a city using your firstborn child and using your youngest son to set up the gates.

Isaiah 13:15-18 If God can find you, he will “thrust you through,” smash your children “to pieces” before your eyes, and rape your wife.

Jeremiah 11:22-23 God will kill the young men in war and starve their children to death.

Jeremiah 19:7-9 God will make parents eat their own children, and friends eat each other.

Lamentations 2:20-22 God gets angry and mercilessly torments and kills everyone, young and old. He even causes women to eat their children.