Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Australia: Selling the Narrative
The famous dictum of Rahm Emanuel never to let a crisis go to waste is being applied with full force using the Australian wildfires. Much of the world now tacitly believes this ancient seasonal event is the result of climate change. The doctrinaire leftist Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) is leading the charge. In the US, NPR and the rest of the hive are dutifully selling the same narrative. Some facts they will ignore as inconvenient:
- Australia has suffered wildfires every dry season since before recorded history. Aboriginal peoples used controlled burning both to prevent larger fires and to keep an optimal distribution of open grassland, scrub brush and forest for hunting. That practice (which was highly precise) goes back centuries, maybe millennia, through periods of relative cold and relative warming. The notion that modern greenies who oppose all controlled burning are somehow more in tune with nature than the aborigines is simply stupid and probably also racist and Eurocentric.
- The worst Australian wildfire season in modern times was 1974, which was colder and wetter year than average. The amount of land affected was 10-20 times the current wildfire damage.
- There is no trend toward greater frequency and extent of Australian wildfires (unless one cherry-picks data and starts counting in 1975 — even then it is a very weak trend).
- There is no drying trend in Australia as predicted by the sacred Climate Models. There is instead a steady increase in average precipitation over the last 100 years.
- Globally, the frequency of and land affected by wildfires is declining, which should not be the case if there were a correlation with climate change.
In order to sell the climate change narrative, ABC has gone to some lengths to crush discussion of any causes other than climate change. For example, we are not allowed to consider that the failure to take preventive measures (i.e., firebreaks, brush removal, controlled burning) is ever a contributing factor. This ABC story of protestors successfully blocking preventive measures in Nowa Nowa this year has since been conveniently deleted. (For reference, Nowa Nowa is about 10 miles west of Wombat Creek, if that helps. That area was hammered by fires — maybe they should have done more prevention.)
Nobody believes that arson is the principal cause of the fires but it is a factor. We know about the 100 or so idiots who have been caught but the full extent is unknown. ABC lowballs an estimate of 1 percent, presumably based on the cases where the culprits have been caught.
The current political project is to hound government officials who have not bought into the myth that climate change is now the major cause of wildfires. To even question the premise of this political attack on non-lefty politicians is now itself a crime. Alinsky Rules 8 and 13 are in play.
The fires ten years ago were also bad. The year before, in a famous case, a rancher was fired $100,000 for building his own firebreak (on his own land) to protect his property. That was considered an environmental crime. When the fires came through, his was the only house left standing. You would think there was a lesson there.
The “proof” of climate change in the smoke clouds over Australia will be accepted forever by some and there really is no longer an accepted grownup media source or viable academic institution left to correct that error. That is depressing.
Source for much of the above and an outstanding detailed explanation by the invaluable Dr. Roy Spencer is available here.
Published in General
Incompetent politicians blame their mistakes on climate change. It is a catch all excuse and let’s them demand more power and bigger budgets. Thanks for the recap on this HOAX.
I could almost believe that many of the arsonists were producing the “proof” of climate change with government’s blessing. Maybe next year.
I thought that might be the case but the few arson cases I looked in news stories seem more like malignant morons than ideologues. The Aussie greenies appear to be more like the California protectors of the endangered K-rat–preserve the brush mini-ecosystem even though it is a certainty to make the fires worse–then blame climate change or the failure to sign the Paris Accord or magically ban fossil fuels or whatever.
OldB,
I will repeat a sentence from another comment on another post.
“When you decide that ideology is more important than engineering, stupidity is increased exponentially.”
This stupidity is costing trillions of GNP, millions of dead animals, and the human death toll keeps rising. There should be no hesitation in criticizing Greta Tunberg. In fact, she could use a good swift kick in the…
Regards,
Jim
Chairman of House Energy & Commerce Committee on his website last week:
Idiot.
LOL. And just 1 year ago….
‘Unprecedented’ flooding to hit northeast Australia
I’ve never kicked someone(or been kicked by someone) in the Regards before, @jamesgawron, but I’ll bet it hurts!😜
Regards,
Aardo🙂
I saw this quoted today (https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/01/12/breaking-the-bank-for-climate-emergencies/ )
“Emergencies” have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have eroded.” ― Friedrich von Hayek
I think this has a lot to do with what is going on now.
The propaganda is awesome. The WSJ had a front-page article describing the raging fires and how a sheep farmer returned to his farm to the charred remains of 50 of his sheep; those who survived with terrible burns had to be shot. It is a tragedy, but you can be sure that the climate change fanatics are delighted with how they think it supports their narrative. Right.
Wildfires started happening this decade. Slavery first appeared on the planet in 1619 in Virginia. Cancer never existed before there were commercial chemicals or processed sugar. Iran loved us before Trump came along. We have always been at war with East Asia.
And, of course, today being the warmest day of the week at -15F with a windchill of -33F doesn’t mean anything.
You are supposed to refer to Global Warming as “climate crisis”. Soon that will require upper case and an exclamation point.
I saw a couple of these signs in Hanover, NH in November.
Ah, well then clearly:
1. Climate change caused the steady increase in average precipitation.
2. Wetter years result in worse wildfires, as in 1974.
3. Ergo, climate change causes worse wildfires. Q.E.D.
And this on the stupidity of eco-fascist anti-clearing policy.
This is like so wrong. Logic, like math, is just another form of rape. It is climate change just because it is wrong not to believe that it is not climate change. #science