More than 680 homes have been destroyed by bushfires in NSW this season, the Rural Fire Service (RFS) has confirmed.

Almost 250 houses have been damaged, while more than 2,000 outbuildings have been destroyed or damaged.

The updated totals come as three blazes burning north of Sydney this morning joined to create what has been dubbed a "mega blaze".

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-06/properties-destroyed-total-fire-b...

Please note: with global warming, this situation can ease for a little while and come back worse... Nature is nature with "fluctuations", but adding CO2 in the atmosphere is changing its levels of reactivity. The major present problem has been THE LACK OF WATER. No rain. This was predicted by Tim Flannery about ten years ago, but most shock jocks laughed at him as it rained for a few years until his prediction of 40 percent less rain is now coming to be. Summer could be a long one.

5:00 the sun has gone pink, the sky is murky orange and the air is suffocating...

Sydney air quality is crap... 

Sydney's air quality index (AQI) has reached as high as 11 times hazardous levels, due to bushfires on the city's outskirts.

• Dangerous smoke is choking Sydney particularly in Macquarie Park and Parramatta
• Many believe they have never before experienced such poor air quality in Sydney 
• The Bureau of Meteorology predicts a southerly change later will help dissipate the smoke

This level of air pollution means everyone, regardless of their health, should cut back on outdoor physical activity, NSW Health said.

The worst reading is currently at Macquarie Park in Sydney's north-west, which recorded air quality of 2,214 between 9.00am and 10.00am this morning.

Parramatta North has reached 2,024, with levels continuing to rise.

Any region with an AQI over 200 is considered "hazardous".

The high readings are largely due to poor visibility, although particle levels are also well into hazardous territory in several locations.

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-10/sydney-smoke-returns-to-worst-eve...

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NSW Environment Minister Matt Kean says "no one can deny" that climate change is to blame for the smoke haze choking Sydney as bushfires burn across NSW.

In the state government's strongest comments yet on the link between climate change and bushfires, Mr Kean said: "This is not normal and doing nothing is not a solution".

Mr Kean, who spoke at the Smart Energy Summit in Sydney on Tuesday as smoke blanketed the city, said the weather conditions were "exactly what the scientists have warned us would happen".

"Longer drier periods, resulting in more drought and bushfire," Mr Kean said. "If this is not a catalyst for change, then I don't know what is."

Read more:

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/this-is-not-normal-minister-urges-ac...

If NSW Environment Minister Matt Kean isn't booted out of his job soon, then the Libs (CONservatives) will find ways to shut him up... What was he doing at the Smart Energy Summit? Is he trying to rock the coal ship/boat and join Greta on the barricades? Is the the only sane person in that party (Libs — CONservatives) of gross idiots? We can see the angry smoke coming out Scum Dogshitson's ears (unless it's his arse that is on fire)...

But fear not... Scum Dogshitson will find a neat way to tell us that Matt Kean is expressing "his" own personal views, "not the official views of the government" or some similar shit, so popular with deranged psychos in this loony government...

NSW Environment Minister Matt Kean and his federal counterpart Sussan Ley have broken ranks with some Coalition colleagues and blamed Australia's devastating bushfires on climate change.

• Bushfires have so far destroyed more than 720 homes and 2.7 million hectares of land in NSW this season
• Six people have also been killed
• Mr Kean and Ms Ley are blaming climate change, but some of their Coalition colleagues don't agree

Speaking on Radio National this morning, Mr Kean, who is also the state's Energy Minister, used strong rhetoric to describe the blazes, that have so far destroyed more than 720 homes in NSW.

"We cannot deny that these fires have been going on for weeks and we need to address the causes of them," he said.

"We need to be doing our bit to make sure we mitigate or adapt to these more extreme weather events happening and we do our bit to abate carbon and reduce the impact of climate change."

His comments come after Prime Minister Scott Morrison was yesterday criticised on social media for announcing updates to his Government's religious discrimination bill in Sydney, as the city choked through air quality 12 times "hazardous levels" in some areas.

This morning, Ms Ley told ABC Radio Sydney: "The dryness of the vegetation, particularly in the north of NSW, and the reduced streamflow is creating unprecedented [conditions]."

"That's what climate science has told me and I completely agree with it."

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-11/matt-kean-blames-bushfires-on-cli...

Yes, apart from Ley and Kean, the idiots of the Liberal (CONservative) party would rather sink in their own shit than admit the science of global warming is CORRECT... When next year (2020) could be a bit more wet/humid than 2019, they will tell us that they were right, but by 2021, worse will come a-crescendo... By then, we will be on the way to about 5 degrees Celsius above average for 2100, with all the trauma that this will bring to the planet in such a short time... And Albanese has no clue either... Sad.

Global warming is real and Anthropogenic

Print this on a self-adhesive paper and stick it where it's not illegal...

Unpredictable winds, fire clouds that spawn lightning, and flames that leap over firebreaks are confounding efforts to fight the blaze, which is sweeping through southern Oregon.

A towering cloud of hot air, smoke and moisture that reached airliner heights and spawned lightning. Wind-driven fronts of flame that have stampeded across the landscape, often leapfrogging firebreaks. Even, possibly, a rare fire tornado.

The Bootleg Fire in Southern Oregon, spurred by months of drought and last month’s blistering heat wave, is the largest wildfire so far this year in the United States, having already burned more than 340,000 acres, or 530 square miles, of forest and grasslands.

And at a time when climate change is causing wildfires to be larger and more intense, it’s also one of the most extreme, so big and hot that it’s affecting winds and otherwise disrupting the atmosphere.

“The fire is so large and generating so much energy and extreme heat that it’s changing the weather,” said Marcus Kauffman, a spokesman for the state forestry department. “Normally the weather predicts what the fire will do. In this case, the fire is predicting what the weather will do.”

The Bootleg Fire has been burning for two weeks, and for most of that time it’s exhibited one or more forms of extreme fire behavior, leading to rapid changes in winds and other conditions that have caused flames to spread rapidly in the forest canopy, ignited whole stands of trees at once, and blown embers long distances, rapidly igniting spot fires elsewhere.

“It’s kind of an extreme, dangerous situation,” said Chuck Redman, a forecaster with the National Weather Service who has been at the fire command headquarters providing forecasts.

Fires so extreme that they generate their own weather confound firefighting efforts. The intensity and extreme heat can force wind to go around them, create clouds and sometimes even generate so-called fire tornadoes — swirling vortexes of heat, smoke and high wind.

The catastrophic Carr Fire near Redding, Calif., in July 2018 was one of those fires, burning through 130,000 acres, destroying more than 1,600 structures and leading to the deaths of at least eight people, some of which were attributed to a fire tornado with winds as high as 140 miles per hour that was captured on video.

Many wildfires grow rapidly in size, and the Bootleg Fire is no exception. In the first few days it grew by a few square miles or less, but in more recent days it has grown by 80 square miles or more. And nearly every day the erratic conditions have forced some of the nearly 2,200 firefighting personnel to retreat to safer locations, further hindering efforts to bring it under control. More than 75 homes and other structures have burned.

On Thursday night along its northern edge, the fire jumped over a line that had been treated with chemical retardant, forcing firefighters to back off. It was just the latest example of the fire overrunning a firebreak.

Read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/19/climate/bootleg-wildfire-weather.html

See also:

Read from top. Read updates on the number of houses destroyed in New South Wales.

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Residents of a Blue Mountains community that lost 12 houses in the Black Summer bushfires are pleading to be pork-barrelled after they unsuccessfully applied for a grant to secure their water supply, only to become the bewildered recipients of dance lessons.

Bilpin residents applied for a Bushfire Local Economic Recovery grant last year to pay for a pump for the creek, a bore for extra water, storage tanks and tar for a sealed parking area for NSW Fire and Rescue trucks to refill with water at the Kurrajong Heights Bowling Club, which is the town’s disaster staging area.

But the application was rejected after they attached an incorrect document to the form. Resident Kooryn Sheaves said the group rang Resilience NSW after they identified their error and asked if they could amend their application, but were told it was too late.

So they were dismayed to learn recently that a community group from the unburnt side of the mountains had been granted $300,000 to provide dance lessons in their town, through a separate process - the Bushfire Community Recovery and Resilience Fund (BCRRF).

Peppercorn Inc, a not-for-profit agency of the Hawkesbury City Council, is providing the classes in Bilpin, Wiseman’s Ferry, Richmond and Colo Heights, to foster connection and build community resilience.

Ms Sheaves said the project did not appear to have met the funding application guidelines which stipulate that grants will not be delivered to projects that supplement the core business of the lead organisation, and nobody in the community had asked for them.

“The community was absolutely horrified to be landed with these dance lessons,” she said.

“It’s important that we look after our mental health, but to do that we need community-driven responses. We desperately need roadside water storage at our disaster management areas to make us more resilient in bushfires.”

Documents obtained by Bilpin residents under Government Information (Public Access) laws show that a panel of Resilience NSW officers determined in February that the dance classes were “meritorious” but could not be funded under the BCRRF. However, Resilience NSW later went on to award Peppercorn the highest amount payable under that scheme.

READ MORE:

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/bushfire-affected-community-asks-for-water-storage-gets-dance-lessons-20211205-p59ew2.html

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France has evacuated more than 14,000 people threatened by wildfires in the south-west, as fires also spread in Spain, Croatia and Greece.

Authorities in France's Gironde, a popular tourist region, have evacuated guards from campsites - the tourists left earlier. Fires have spread in the Teste-de-Buch and Landiras areas.

In southern Spain, more than 3,200 people fled fires in the Mijas hills, though later some were able to return.

Portugal's fires are contained for now.

However, the Portuguese government says 659 people have died - mostly elderly - from the heat over the past week.

The Mijas fires in Spain are not far from Málaga, a popular tourist area. Elsewhere in Spain, wildfires have broken out in the provinces of Castilla y León, Galicia and Extremadura.

Ellen McCurdy, living in the Málaga area, told Reuters: "We just grabbed a few essentials and just ran really, and by that stage everybody along the street was on the move... there were a lot of ambulances and fire engines."

READ MORE:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62196045

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SEE ALSO:

https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/40542

https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/43283

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By Bill Gabbert | The Energy Mix

Immune cells that normally protect against inflammation and infections can be altered by wildfire smoke to promote inflammation.

A long list of diseases are associated with inflammation, Wildfire Today reports. And studies have shown that healthy individuals as well as people with pre-existing conditions are affected by the very small PM2.5 particles produced by wildfire smoke.

In late October, Wildfire Today published the following excerpts from a post by Tori Rodriguez, first published in Pulmonology Advisor. It covers the effects of smoke on humans and suggests what could be done to mitigate the potential damage. One idea is for fire and local officials to plan for the effects of smoke as well as the dangers of flames when they’re working on wildfire evacuation guidelines.

With wildfires increasing and the health issues that result, Rodriguez wrote, there is a real and growing need for clinicians to educate at-risk patients, according to Jennifer Stowell, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in the department of environmental health at the Boston University School of Public Health and co-author of a recent study on the health effects of wildfires.“For clinicians, education of patients is paramount, especially for those with already compromised health,” said Stowell.

Healthy individuals may also experience health consequences from wildfires, according to Angela Haczku, MD, PhD, professor of medicine at the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine and director of the UC Davis Lung Center. “During the 2020 California wildfire season, my team conducted a study on healthy individuals and found alarmingly increased numbers of abnormal, activated immune cells in the peripheral blood,” she explained. “These cells are normally responsible for protecting against inflammation and infections, but when altered by inhalation of wildfire smoke, they become the ones promoting inflammation.”

The vast majority of recent U.S. wildfires have been concentrated in western states, including Washington (218 fires), California (153 fires), Montana (141 fires), and Utah (130 fires).Estimates show that more than 70,000 wildfires have burned an average of seven million acres in the U.S. per year since 2000.

In addition to this geographic damage, a sizeable body of research has detailed the negative human health effects resulting from exposure to wildfire smoke:

• In a study published in June 2022, Heaney et al found that “smoke event” days—those with the highest amounts of particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) from wildfires—were linked to increases in unscheduled hospital visits in California for all respiratory diseases, and specifically asthma, with the largest effect observed among children with asthma aged 0 to 5 years.

Stratified analyses demonstrated increased visits for all cardiovascular diseases, ischemic heart disease (narrowing of the arteries), and heart failure among non‐Hispanic White patients and individuals older than 65 years. The findings further suggested that the interaction between wildfire PM2.5 concentrations and high temperatures may further increase the need for hospital visits among patients with cardiovascular disease.

• A 2022 scoping review found evidence of increased population-level mortality, respiratory morbidity, and rates of various types of cancer in association with exposure to PM2.5 and chemicals from wildfire smoke.

• Findings from a 2021 study indicate that particulate matter from wildfire smoke has a greater effect on respiratory health than particulate matter from other sources of emission, based on a comparison of the increase in respiratory hospitalizations associated with increases in wildfire-specific PM2.5 (increase in hospitalizations ranging from 1.3% to 10%) and non-wildfire PM2.5 (increase in hospitalizations from 0.67% to 1.3%) in Southern California.

• Research published in 2021 showed that an increase in wildfire PM2.5 of 10 micrograms per cubic metre (10 µg/m3) was correlated with increased hospitalizations for all respiratory diseases, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and ischemic heart disease in Colorado. Wildfire PM2.5 was also associated with an increase in deaths due to asthma and myocardial infarction (heart attack).

• Other results reported in 2021 linked wildfire PM.2.5 exposure in Alaska to higher odds of asthma-related emergency department visits among various population.

• A 2018 study analyzed data pertaining to 21,353 inpatient hospitalizations, 25,922 emergency room presentations, and 297,698 outpatient visits during periods of heightened smoke exposure from the 2007 San Diego wildfires. The results demonstrated a 34% increase in emergency visits for respiratory diagnoses and a 112% increase for asthma. Even greater increases in emergency room visits were observed among children aged 0 to 4 years with respiratory diagnoses (73% increase), and in children aged 0 to 1 year with asthma (243% increase).

• Studies have also demonstrated increases in ED visits and hospitalization rates for asthma and other respiratory diseases in relation to wildfire PM2.5 in states such as Oregon and Nevada.

• Findings from multiple studies also point to a potential connection between wildfire smoke exposure and higher rates of COVID-19 infection and associated mortality. In one study, researchers found that COVID-19 cases and related deaths increased by 56.9% and 148.2%, respectively, after the onset of the California wildfires that began in September 2020 compared with the period between the onset of the pandemic and just before the wildfires began

• Results of another recent study suggest that “wildfire smoke inhalation sequesters activated, pro-inflammatory [natural killer] cells to the affected tissue compartments and may interfere with [COVID-19] vaccine effectiveness,” according to the authors.

Wildfire Today has an interview with Stowell and Haczku and full references for the post.

READ MORE:

https://scheerpost.com/2022/11/21/wildfire-smoke-can-activate-immune-cells-leading-to-a-long-list-of-diseases/

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rinceton, N.J. — As I write this, the sun is a hazy reddish orange orb. The sky is an inky yellowish gray. The air has an acrid stench and leaves a faint metallic taste in my mouth. After 20 minutes outside, my head starts to ache, my nose burns, my eyes itch and my breathing becomes more labored. Streets are deserted. The ubiquitous lawn service companies with their machine mowers and whining gas-powered leaf blowers have disappeared, along with pedestrians, cyclists and joggers. Those who walk their dog go out briefly and then scamper back inside. N95 masks, as in the early days of the pandemic, are sold out, along with air purifiers. The international airports at Newark and Philadelphia have delayed or canceled flights.

I feel as if I am in a ghost town. Windows shut. Air conditioners on full blast. The Air Quality Index (AQI) is checked and rechecked. We are hovering around 300. The most polluted cities in the world have half that rate. Dubai (168). Delhi (164). Anything above 300 is classified as hazardous.

When will the hundreds of forest fires burning north of us in Canada — fires that have already consumed 10.9 million acres and driven 120,000 people from their homes — be extinguished? What does this portend? The wildfire season is only beginning. When will the air clear? A few days? A few weeks? 

What do you tell a terminal patient seeking relief? Yes, this period of distress may pass, but it’s not over. It will get worse. There will be more highs and lows and then mostly lows, and then death. But no one wants to look that far ahead. We live moment to moment, illusion to illusion. And when the skies clear we pretend that normality will return. Except it won’t. Climate science is unequivocal. It has been for decades. The projections and graphs, the warming of the oceans and the atmosphere, the melting of polar ice sheets and glaciers, rising sea levels, droughts and wildfires and monster hurricanes are already bearing down with a terrible and mounting fury on our species, and most other species, because of the hubris and folly of the human race. 

READ MORE:

https://scheerpost.com/2023/06/11/chris-hedges-requiem-for-our-species/

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