WILD FIRES

[Nom De Plume]

Didn't you hear, Nom? All the wildfires in Brazil have been caused by NGOs, according to the Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro...

link please

Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro baselessly blames NGOs for Amazon fires and ignites global outrage

without evidence may be setting fires... Just spurious allegation, designed to deflect the issue away from the govt.

[Nom De Plume]

Hi Cods. I didn't include the bush fires in QLD/ NSW because they were not sufficiently significant enough, in comparison to those I've highlighted.

[brian ross]

Didn't you hear, Nom? All the wildfires in Brazil have been caused by NGOs, according to the Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro...

link please

Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro baselessly blames NGOs for Amazon fires and ignites global outrage

without evidence may be setting fires... Just spurious allegation, designed to deflect the issue away from the govt.

Really? I am surprised that a politician, "of the people", like Senor Bolsonaro would do such a thing?

Mmmm, why am I reminded a political leader in a country to the NW of Brazil?

[Nom De Plume]

Look, all I'm trying to show is how much of the world is on fire atm. I you want to make this into a political issue, be my guest... but I'm not playing.

[Serial Brain 9]

It always amuses me that Western Countries are always telling places like Brazil that they should not be cutting down their forests - After clear felling their own countries and making thousands of animal life extinct.

[Black Orchid]

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has authorised the use of the military to battle massive fires sweeping across parts of the Amazon as US President Donald Trump also offered his assistance.

Brazilian forces will deploy starting on Saturday to border areas, indigenous territories and other affected regions in the Amazon to assist in putting out fires for a month, according to a presidential decree.

The armed forces will collaborate with public security and environmental protection agencies, the decree says. Mr Bolsonaro's office confirmed that he had signed it.

The decree comes as Mr Trump tweeted out that he stood ready to assist if needed.

"Just spoke with President @JairBolsonaro of Brazil. Our future Trade prospects are very exciting and our relationship is strong, perhaps stronger than ever before. I told him if the United States can help with the Amazon Rainforest fires, we stand ready to assist!" Trump said in a post on Twitter.

Mr Bolsonaro has previously described rainforest protections as an obstacle to economic development, sparring with critics who note that the Amazon produces vast amounts of oxygen and is considered crucial in efforts to contain global warming.

Charred trees and fallen branches were seen around Porto Velho, the capital of Rondonia state, which borders Bolivia.

In some instances, the burned fields were adjacent to intact livestock ranches and other farms, suggesting the fires had been managed as part of a land-clearing policy.

A large column of smoke billowed from one fire, and smoke rose from a couple of nearby wooded areas

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-24/ ... d/11445008

About time some attempts were made. Bolsonaro is a fool of mammoth proportions.

[Serial Brain 9]

How Australia became one of the worst deforesters in the world

Australia is the only nation in the developed world to make the World Wildlife Fund's (WWF) global list of deforestation hotspots.

The biennial Living Planet Report, published this week, puts Australia alongside New Guinea, Indonesia, Congo and Brazil for deforestation.

The main cause of this is land clearing for livestock, according to WWF conservation scientist Dr Martin Taylor.

"Most deforestation in Australia is just for livestock pasture," he told Hack.

Urban sprawl is a problem in the areas where it occurs but it's a drop in the ocean compared to the amount of forest destruction just to produce livestock for pasture.

And the state with the highest rate of land clearing is Queensland.

In that state, in 2015-16, about 395,000 hectares of native vegetation were cleared.

That can be hard to visualise, but it's an area roughly the size of Sydney or Melbourne. It's the equivalent of 1,500 football fields cleared per day.

"In Queensland alone it's estimated 45 million animals were killed in 2015-16 because of bulldozing of forests - everything from geckos to cockatoos," Dr Taylor said.

When animals lose their habitat they die, they don't just run away and live happily ever after somewhere else.

Where it gets really scary, though, is looking at the amount of land that will be cleared in the next 15 years if we keep clearing at the same rate.

The WWF's figure is 3 million hectares - or 30 billion square metres.

That's an area a bit under half the size of Tasmania.

How many trees on 395,000ha?
Another way of understanding the scale of land clearing is to look at how this figure has increased in the last few years.

In the six years to 2016, the annual rate of land clearing in Queensland increased by 330 per cent - from 92,000 to 395,000 hectares.

That's not the total land cleared - that's the annual rate of land clearing.

The cumulative figure would be far higher.

Another way of visualising the amount of land cleared is to calculate the number of trees that have been cut down. With a conservative estimate of 1,000 trees per hectare (a hectare is about the size of a football oval) we can estimate 395,000 hectares equals about 400 million trees.

Compare this with government programs to plant trees in response to land clearing.

The Australian Government is currently working with communities to plant 20 million trees by 2020 at a cost of $50 million.

The benefits of the 20 Million Trees Program have been more than neutralised by a single year of land clearing in Queensland.

And that's just in Queensland

https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs ... LfAEB5sXv4

[Texan]

The wind can carry smoke a long way. A year or two ago, we had a dust storm blow into Texas from Africa.

https://weather.com/science/weather-exp ... -july-2017