Tasmania is burning. The climate disaster future has arrived while those in power laugh at us

As I write this, fire is 500 metres from the largest King Billy pine forest in the world on Mt Bobs, an ancient forest that dates back to the last Ice Age and has trees over 1,000 years old. Fire has broached the boundaries of Mt Field national park with its glorious alpine vegetation, unlike anything on the planet. Fire laps at the edges of Federation Peak, Australia’s grandest mountain, and around the base of Mt Anne with its exquisite rainforest and alpine gardens. Fire laps at the border of the Walls of Jerusalem national park with its labyrinthine landscapes of tarns and iconic stands of ancient pencil pine and its beautiful alpine landscape, ecosystems described by their most eminent scholar, the ecologist Prof Jamie Kirkpatrick, as “like the vision of a Japanese garden made more complex, and developed in paradise, in amongst this gothic scenery”.

Scott Morrison sits in parliament with a lump of
coal during Question Time in February 2017.

“You have plants that look like rocks – green rocks – and these plants have different colours in complicated mosaics: red-green, blue-green, yellow-green, all together. It’s an overwhelming sensual experience really.”

Five years ago I was contacted by a stranger, Prof Peter Davies, an eminent water scientist. He wanted to meet because he had news he thought would interest me. The night we met Davies told me that the south-west of Tasmania – the island’s vast, uninhabited and globally unique wildland, the heart of its world heritage area – was dying. The iconic habitats of rainforest, button grass plains, and heathlands had begun to vanish because of climate change.

Read the story from The Guardian by Richard Flanagan - “Tasmania is burning. The climate disaster future has arrived while those in power laugh at us.”

Campers evacuated as fire in south-west Tasmania brings smoke to Hobart

A fire in Tasmania's south-west wilderness has burned through more than 2,500 hectares and forced the evacuation of bushwalkers in the area, as the state is warned to brace for a scorcher on Friday.

Traveller Teagan Fone-Stephenson snapped this
 photo of the Gell River fire from the helicopter.

Two separate fires, both started by lightning last Friday, joined together and are burning at Gell River, approximately 6 kilometres north-west of Lake Rhona, the Tasmania Fire Service said.

Parks and Wildlife personnel, supported by waterbombing aircraft, are working to contain the fire.

Leah Soo and two friends were camped at Lake Rhona on Friday and saw the fire on their way to a nearby peak.

Read the ABC News story by Ellen Coulter and Lucy MacDonald - “Campers evacuated as fire in south-west Tasmania brings smoke to Hobart.”

Victoria’s forest collapse 'inevitable', study finds

Victoria's vast mountain ash forest in the central highlands is on the brink of collapse due to logging, fire and government inaction, a new paper argues.

Professor David Lindenmayer and Dr Chloe Sato say
 the forest has lost the ability to sustain itself.

And a future collapse could threaten Melbourne's water supply, the paper claims.

But experts and the government have slammed the paper's claims as sensationalist, saying the forest is fine and Melbourne's water supply is not under threat.

This forecast comes from a study published on Tuesday in top international journal PNAS and written by two scientists based at the Australian National University.

Read the story by Liam  Mannix from The Age - “Victoria’s forest collapse 'inevitable', study finds.”

Environmental advocate dies after setting himself on fire in New York

New York City: A prominent gay rights lawyer has died after setting himself on fire in a New York park to protest against pollution and the use of fossil fuels.

The lawyer David Buckel in New Jersey Supreme
Court during a 2006 case about same-sex marriage.

The body of David Buckel was found in Brooklyn's Prospect Park early Saturday. He left a note in a nearby shopping trolley that he also emailed to several news outlets including The New York Times.

"Pollution ravages our planet, oozing inhabitability via air, soil, water and weather," he wrote in the email sent to the Times.

Read The Sydney Morning Herald story - “Environmental advocate dies after setting himself on fire in New York."

‘Unusual' thunderstorm hits Perth's south, tearing off roofs, flooding homes

The Department of Fire and Emergency Services is attending dozens of call outs for storm damage in Perth's southern suburbs after a severe thunderstorm hit Rockingham.

The storm as it approached the Rockingham shore on Sunday morning.

Winds of 130 kilometres an hour were recorded on Garden Island off the coast around 10:30am on Sunday before the storm hit the mainland.

The roof was torn off a fish and chips store on the Rockingham foreshore letting in heavy rainfall which caused the restaurant's fryers to overflow.

Four fire crews raced to make it safe with the oil creating a significant fire risk.

Damaging winds brought down trees in Rockingham, Waikiki and Mardella.

Hail and torrential rainfall created localised flooding on some streets and in some homes.

Read the story by James Carmody in The Age - “‘Unusual' thunderstorm hits Perth's south, tearing off roofs, flooding homes.”

90 Companies Helped Cause the Climate Crisis—They Should Pay for It

Pacific Northwest forests are on fire. Several blazes are out of control, threatening rural towns, jumping rivers and highways, and covering Portland, Oregon, Seattle, and other cities in smoke and falling ash. Temperatures this summer are an average of 3.6 degrees higher than the last half of the 20th century, according to the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group analysis published in The Seattle Times.

Firefighters attempt to save the Casa Loma fire
 station in the Santa Cruz Mountains near Loma
Prieta, California on September 27, 2016.

Fire crews have been battling fires for months. In spite of all the effort, though, officials expect the fires to continue burning until major rains come sometime this fall. Meanwhile, firefighting coffers are running dry as costs run into the hundreds of millions.

Read the Yes! magazine story by Sarah Van Gelder - “90 Companies Helped Cause the Climate Crisis—They Should Pay for It.”

The burning issue - Walt Patterson

Fire is at the root of our climate problems and it is time we put it out, writes Walt Patterson, Associate Fellow at Chatham House. “We need to switch from using fire to using electricity.”

Walt Patterson's
 "Electricity Vs. Fire:
The Fight for our Future".

Is climate complicated? Yes – except in one key respect. Countless reams of disputed text preceded the Paris Agreement of December 2015. Media coverage before, during and after the summit was hectic with controversy. Yet all the furious disputation that surrounds the climate issue can be traced back to a single common four letter word. The word is fire.

Why fire? In the headlong climate debate worldwide, no one talks about fire. They talk about fossil fuels, about emissions, about carbon dioxide, about increasing global temperature, about floods and droughts, about sea-level rise, about melting glaciers and collapsing ice sheets. These, however, are symptoms of what is wrong. They are not the cause. Somehow the commentators fail to notice or remark that all of these factors arise because of fire.

Read the EnergyPost story by Walt Patterson -“The burning issue.”

The story of energy – past, present and future

In the beginning there was wind, water, fire. Canvas snatched the wind and carried us around the globe. Massive millstones turned under the force of rushing streams. A world lit by wood and wax flared brighter with the discovery of whale oil, and coastal cities grew up on that trade.

Change came, as it always does. In 1850, the whaling port New Bedford, Massachusetts, known as “the city that lit the world” was the richest town in America. Nine years later, petroleum was discovered in Pennsylvania and in an eyeblink, New Bedford dwindled into blight and poverty.

Oil, coal and gas powered a new age of industry. Sail gave way to steam and ships to planes, rail and superhighways. All this happened in the span of a single lifetime: less than a century from the Wright brothers to the Concorde, a few decades from the horse and cart to interstate highways.

Read the piece by Geraldine Brooks AO, journalist and Pulitzer Prize winning author - “The story of energy – past, present and future.”

What will be left once earth's climate changes - art?

Not much more than our art will be left among the ruins resulting from climate change, some argue.

Interestingly it has been art, at least of the film variety, that has been predicting what is ahead.

The Guardian writes in a story headed: “A doomed Earth of science fiction may well become a reality” that our climate altering activities are hurtling us towards the fictional future of a hot, melting world.

The sci-fi film, “The Day the Earth Caught Fire” was made some 50 years ago, but could easily be showing us what is really happening today.

Coal means wealth, but at the cost of individual health

The burning Hazelwood mine that could
 well force the evacuation of Morwell.

The people of Morwell are learning first-hand about the realities of living next to a coal mine.

Writing on Climate Spectator, Tristin Edis those residents are wondering how this could happen and what needs to change to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

A fire took hold in a disused part of the Hazelwood power station coal mine and now, several weeks later, continues to burn.

Writing in a story headed: “The ticking time bomb exposed by Hazelwood fire” Edis says lax regulation by Victorian governments allows operators to avoid remediation on their mines.