Recently, a troubling narrative has emerged that native forest logging in Australia contributes significantly to increased bushfire risk. Some academics championed this idea, purporting to follow the scientific method, but often their work lacks scientific rigour. These claims have misled the public, skewing the debate around forest management, fire prevention, and the ecological role of logging.
Between 1967-75, Hobart endured a series of catastrophic events. It all started with the Black Tuesday fires in February 1967 that claimed 62 lives. Several other tragedies followed that to Hobartians, seemed like they would never end. August 1969 saw the disappearance of Lucille Butterworth, October 1973 the Blythe Star was wrecked off southern Tasmanian waters with three men drowning and seven survivors spending eight days adrift in a lifeboat, and the Mt St Canice boiler explosion in September 1974 that took eight lives.
It began as a deep distant rumbling, like the stirring of some gargantuan subterranean beast.
It was unsettling at first, ominous, something you felt in your guts more than you heard with your ears, an eerie subsonic vibration that seemed to rise from the bowels of Hades.
As the she-devil crept closer, the wailing began.
“The fundamentals of science are you do not tamper with the original evidence. That has happened with our temperature record, where the past has been cooled and it makes it look as if we’re warming. That is fraud.” Ian Plimer
“BOM are right often enough to be considered, but wrong often enough not to be relied upon.
“They are farming us of our money, not farming the wind or solar.”
“Queensland will be covered in glass and steel to meet ambitious renewable energy targets”
In a previous post, I wrote about the mad scramble by federal and state governments to force a rapid transition to renewable energy despite insurmountable engineering constraints, costs blowouts by a factor of 20 from $78 billion to $1.5 trillion in 2030 and $9 trillion by 2050, and the refusal of our federal minister, Chris Bowen to face up to reality, even after a relentless stream of delays to major renewable projects hits the news each month.
Introduction
This month marks the 55th anniversary of the worst fires experienced in the Bellinger Valley since European settlement. The late spring and early summer of 1968 was one of the worst fire seasons experienced in New South Wales. Spring was exceptionally dry in coastal areas, with Sydney only receiving 29.5 mm for the season, easily the driest on record.
“Sadly, our climate and energy policy remains in the grip of an intelligentsia that lacks the wisdom to recognise the boundaries of its own ignorance”. Nick Cater
“…destroying the landscape with inferior technologies that cost more and do not achieve the desired policy aim of Net Zero is insane”.
“The greens are like goldfish. No matter how much you feed them, they always want more.”
The Terania Creek forest blockade
Interest in Whian Whian and Goonimbar State Forests by locals was first raised in a letter in July 1974 to the Forestry Commission of New South Wales (FCNSW) about their plans to log at the head of Terania Creek.… Read more
Because the forestry profession is far from simple and the work highly variable, I have tried to describe what a forester does by outlining the development of the profession in Australia. In Part 1, I outlined the broad principles of forestry and the development of the forestry profession up until WWII.… Read more
“But there is a sad symbolism in the tragedy of the burning bush capital, for Canberra was not merely sited in the political middle ground between Sydney and Melbourne but in an environmental middle ground between two Australia’s: that of the bush and that of the metropolis. When slammed together, the matter and anti-matter of Australian ecology are likely to explode.… Read more
