Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Bushfires

Senate Inquiry into Bushfires

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Greetings Everyone,

Below is the details and terms of reference for a Senate inquiry into Bushfires in Australia. This should compliment the gaps that will likely be left in the Royal Commission for the chronic state of the environment due to political nest feathering for green preferances. This green lunicy of using the environment as a political football has now killed people and destroyed large tracts of our environment.

I would urge people to put in a submission, as so far the Federal bushfire enquiry after 2003 was the best.

Regards Ralph Barraclough

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The Mathematics of Connectivity and Bushfires: A Note from David Ward

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HUNGARY has produced many outstanding mathematicians and physicists. Perhaps there is a connection with rampant violin playing.

One of these was Paul Erdös who was the twentieth century’s most prolific mathematician, with 1475 papers to his credit. He rivals Leonhard Euler, the Swiss genius of the eighteenth century. There is a worthwhile biography of Erdös called ‘The Man Who Loved Only Numbers’, by Paul Hoffman (1998).

On a recent thread at this blog (Wise Men Excluded from Bushfire Royal Commission), I raised the issue of fuel connectivity, and suggested that it helped to explain the uncontrollable spread of bushfires over large areas of Victoria a few months ago.

The tonnage of available fuel determines the intensity, and convection column strength, and the number of flying embers, but connectivity determines ground spread. Wind is important, but large fires, of course, create their own wind. It seems to me that the application of Occam’s Razor makes climate superfluous to the argument, beyond there being weather dry enough for a fire to burn. Given dry fuel, fierce fires can occur even at mild temperatures. Surely we have all lit a pot-belly stove on a winter’s day.

Although I doubt if he had ever seen a bushfire, or a gumtree, Erdös had useful ideas on connectivity in networks. With a Hungarian colleague, he published papers about ‘giant patches’. These form when random connections are made between a set of random points (Erdös and Renyi 1959, 1960).

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Bushfire Royal Commission to Focus on the Politically Possible

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EARLIER this year the suffering from the Victorian bushfires, and that video of the fire fighter giving a koala a drink of water in a burnt-out forest, captured the imagination of people around the world.

At the time some media outlets blamed the ferocity of the fires on global warming and this assessment was supported by some authorities at reputable institutions including Melbourne University, the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology. Others disagreed and claimed inadequate controlled burning as a key issue.

The Premier of Victoria promised a Royal Commission into the fires and preliminary hearings started this week.

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Wise Men Excluded from Bushfire Royal Commission

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WE were all appalled by the death and destruction that was the Victorian bushfires early this year.  On Black Saturday nearly 200 people died.   The number of koalas incinerated probably runs into the thousands, the number of native birds dead in the millions.  

A Royal Commission was established with the Victorian Government promising an inclusive process with the broadest possible terms of reference.  Preliminary hearings by that commission begin today in Melbourne, but already many experts with local knowledge and experience have been advised their tesimonies won’t be heard; that they will not be given leave to appear before the commission.

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Fire as a Threatening Process: A Note from Roger Underwood

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ABOUT two months ago I received a “heads-up” from a mate who works in Canberra that Environment Minister Peter Garratt was considering listing prescribed burning as a threatening process under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Act. At first I thought this was nonsense, but then I reflected on the attitudes towards prescribed burning that we hear constantly from some well-known academics and environmental groups, and it suddenly seemed highly likely. So I wrote a letter to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, seeking clarification. All of this was going at about the time of the catastrophic bushfires in Victoria.

I have now received a reply to my letter.  It was written by Ms Kerry Smith, an Assistant Secretary with the Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and Arts. Mr Rudd had forwarded my letter to the Minister for the Environment, who in turn forwarded it to his Department, where it eventually filtered down through the Department’s Approvals and Wildlife Division to its Wildlife Branch and thence to the Species Listing Section. 

I now realise that the situation is complex and has many ramifications, as demonstrated by the following advice from the Department:

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