From the Howitt Society:
Dear Prime Minister,
The Bushfires Royal Commission – providing no hope for the future The Royal Commission’s interim observations and the draft propositions give cause for grave concerns.
Conditions leading to Black Summer were not unprecedented. Equally atrocious conditions have been recorded periodically since the Settlement Drought, starting in 1790, when thousands of flying foxes and lorikeets dropped dead at Parramatta during three days of extreme heat and searing winds. Aboriginal fires were constantly burning, but Europeans were able to contain any that reached their settlements, because fuels were light and discontinuous. Our first known megafire occurred about 1820 in the Strzeleckis, after local Aborigines were decimated by smallpox. When Aboriginal management was disrupted across Victoria, 5 million hectares exploded on Black Thursday 1851. By the start of the 20 th Century, before any manmade warming, megafires were delivering unprecedented quantities of charcoal in 70,000 years of sedimentary records.
Read the full letter: https://saltbushclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/man-made-megafires-letter-to-pm.pdf [PDF, 509KB]
In some respects, including all those discussed in this post, I was bitterly disappointed by the RC’s report. In other respects, I was wholly unsurprised. We are in an era where wokeness trumps science and experience, and the RC reflects that.
Anyone wants to read my submission, a serious and data-supported effort, the link to the RC submissions is https://naturaldisaster.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/nnd00100611