Greens behaving like "Eco terrorists"

bryce

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25042644-5018722,00.html[^] David Packham, a former supervising meteorologist for fire weather nationwide at the Bureau of Meteorology, accused environmentalists of behaving like "eco-terrorists waging a jihad" against prescribed burning. "The green movement is directly responsible for the severity of these fires through their opposition to prescribed burning," Mr Packham said. ========= Pretty spot on from pretty much every Ocker I have spoken to sits. Bryce

MCAD --- To paraphrase Fred Dagg - the views expressed in this post are bloody good ones. --
Publitor, making Pubmed easy. http://www.sohocode.com/publitor

Our kids books :The Snot Goblin, and Book 2 - the Snotgoblin and Fluff

Christian Graus

Well, this is the first I've heard of it. Greens are big in Tassie and I've never heard anything other than warnings to make sure I clear around my house.

Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista.

Lost User

bryce wrote:

Pretty spot on from pretty much every Ocker I have spoken to sits.

Todays media beat up. Monday it was lets hang the arsonists, tuesday it was the Leave early or Stay and Defend policy that caused this, yesterday it was this fella[^], todays its the greenies. When you have a 30ft high fire and 100 km/h winds just how much cleared land do you need around your house to stop burning embers falling on it? We'll get my mate Con to concrete Victoria and be done with it.

bryce

naah bollocks to that The question is have the greenies been blocking burnoffs? If the answer is yes then look at the mess that can happen when these thing happen Bryce

MCAD --- To paraphrase Fred Dagg - the views expressed in this post are bloody good ones. --
Publitor, making Pubmed easy. http://www.sohocode.com/publitor

Our kids books :The Snot Goblin, and Book 2 - the Snotgoblin and Fluff

Christian Graus

Josh Gray wrote:

We'll get my mate Con to concrete Victoria and be done with it.

LOL. Yeah, the core issue is that the fires are selling papers, every day they just need a new angle.

Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista.

Christian Graus

bryce wrote:

The question is have the greenies been blocking burnoffs?

The answer here, at least, is no. If the answer is yes, then it needs to be proven and it needs to be asked why there was no outcry about it before this happened.

Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista.

_Damian S_

Christian Graus wrote:

Well, this is the first I've heard of it.

Really???? It's definitely the case that the opposition to prescribed burn-offs has contributed significantly to the severity of the fires. There's even a family in the paper today (I'll see if I can find you a link) that was fined $50K a few years back for clearing around their property - their house is one of the few in their area that survived the fire - not surprisingly they now feel vindicated. ---------------------- Edit: found the link - here[^]

-------------------------------------------------------- Knowledge is knowing that the tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in fruit salad!!

modified on Wednesday, February 11, 2009 9:36 PM

Lost User

bollocks The question is would back burning that was disallowed have changed anything and no one can answer that with any authority.

_Damian S_

I don't often disagree with what you have to say, Josh, but on this one, you are fair talking out your ass... The build up of flammable material in the forest due to the greenies opposing burn-offs is what massively contributed to the severity of the fires... It's not the embers that fall on your roof that has caused the deaths, it's the massive flaming fireballs that have engulfed everything in their path... 100m cleared around your house and you would almost certainly have survived... and probably your house as well.

-------------------------------------------------------- Knowledge is knowing that the tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in fruit salad!!

bryce

well _Damian_ made a point up above about the family who did burn off. I'd also say, yep - lets see what the fall out is and where it all winds up :) cheerypips Bryce

MCAD --- To paraphrase Fred Dagg - the views expressed in this post are bloody good ones. --
Publitor, making Pubmed easy. http://www.sohocode.com/publitor

Our kids books :The Snot Goblin, and Book 2 - the Snotgoblin and Fluff

_Damian S_

And I just updated it with a link to the article. ;-)

-------------------------------------------------------- Knowledge is knowing that the tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in fruit salad!!

Lost User

_Damian S_ wrote:

The build up of flammable material in the forest due to the greenies opposing burn-offs is what massively contributed to the severity of the fires...

_Damian S_ wrote:

It's not the embers that fall on your roof that has caused the deaths, it's the massive flaming fireballs that have engulfed everything in their path... 100m cleared around your house and you would almost certainly have survived... and probably your house as well.

Well are we talking about the councils not doing back burning of the forest or people being disallowed to clear the area around their homes? I don't claim to be any kind of expert but my limited understanding is that these fires were of a scale previously unknown. How any one can claim that clearing 100m around a house would make any meaningful difference is beyond me. The article Bryce linked to talks about a proposal to list prescribed burning as a threatening process which is not due for decision till 2010. It also mentions a lack of expertise and the risk of lawsuits but not who they imagine would instigate the law suits. The only mention of green groups includes he term jihad which is pretty much guaranteed to make me disregard what ever he's saying. I'm all for putting human life and property before the lives of animals who would suffer if their habitat was destroyed by back burning and I understand people need to feel that someone somewhere was responsible but to put the blame entirely on "green groups" is unfair and does nothing to help anyone.

bryce

i dunno Josh old chap - most everyone knows that regular back burning keeps the material available to a fire down to a minimum. Now whether it would have prevented a fire is debatable (and I'd say that it wouldn't have prevented a fire), its fair to say that if there is less for a fire to burn then the fire cannot do the damage it might otherwise do. Open for discussion and preferably not abuse :) cheerypips Bryce

MCAD --- To paraphrase Fred Dagg - the views expressed in this post are bloody good ones. --
Publitor, making Pubmed easy. http://www.sohocode.com/publitor

Our kids books :The Snot Goblin, and Book 2 - the Snotgoblin and Fluff

bryce

If there was a legitimate plan for a council to carry out back burning and it was blocked by a green group and then later there was massive damage from a fire - does not the green group bear a degree of some sort of responsibility for this damage which would have been lessened from a burn off? cheerypips Bryce

MCAD --- To paraphrase Fred Dagg - the views expressed in this post are bloody good ones. --
Publitor, making Pubmed easy. http://www.sohocode.com/publitor

Our kids books :The Snot Goblin, and Book 2 - the Snotgoblin and Fluff

Lost User

bryce wrote:

If there was a legitimate plan for a council to carry out back burning and it was blocked by a green group and then later there was massive damage from a fire - does not the green group bear a degree of some sort of responsibility for this damage which would have been lessened from a burn off?

Well who made the final decision? The council, the Land and Environment court? the state government? Whoever it was should have taken into account the views and wishes of the community, the green and any other lobby groups, advice on the practicality and risk of attempting sufficient controlled burn offs to protect the majority of the community etc etc. I dont think its as cut and dry as the anti-green movement would like us to believe. To say the Green Groups are solely responsible and call it Jihad is as ridiculous as saying God is punishing Victory for its abortion laws or Bob Brown saying that it's the result of the government not spending enough money to combat climate change.

bryce

Ahh but Josh i didnt say they would be "solely" responsible my queston was

Josh Gray wrote:

does not the green group bear a degree of some sort of responsibility for this damage which would have been lessened from a burn off?

Bryce

MCAD --- To paraphrase Fred Dagg - the views expressed in this post are bloody good ones. --
Publitor, making Pubmed easy. http://www.sohocode.com/publitor

Our kids books :The Snot Goblin, and Book 2 - the Snotgoblin and Fluff

Lost User

bryce wrote:

Ahh but Josh i didnt say they would be "solely" responsible my queston was Josh Gray wrote: does not the green group bear a degree of some sort of responsibility for this damage which would have been lessened from a burn off? Bryce

yes yes very cleaver. "The green group", not sure exactly who this is, but yes if they lobbied to have back burning banned they probably do have some responsibility but not as much as those who made the final decision. As I said somewhere else I'm all for putting the protection of life and property before environmental concerns but this is just a media beat up out of all proportion to the culpability of these evil evil green groups. The fact the guy in the article used the word Jihad is a dead give away.

bryce

Josh Gray wrote:

The fact the guy in the article used the word Jihad is a dead give away.

well i'd say hes pretty angry and upset like a lot of people down there are right now so i can understand him using that type of language cheerypips Bryce

MCAD --- To paraphrase Fred Dagg - the views expressed in this post are bloody good ones. --
Publitor, making Pubmed easy. http://www.sohocode.com/publitor

Our kids books :The Snot Goblin, and Book 2 - the Snotgoblin and Fluff

Lost User

bryce wrote:

well i'd say hes pretty angry and upset like a lot of people down there are right now so i can understand him using that type of language

The article you linked to described him as a meteorologist and made no reference to him having been personally affected by this disaster. What I see is a bunch of people attempting to use this situation as a means to advance their own agenda which gives me the shits.

_Damian S_

Josh Gray wrote:

a bunch of people attempting to use this situation as a means to advance their own agenda

Absolutely. The difference being that of the lunatic fringe, ie: "this is proof of global warming" or "this is god punishing Victoria for allowing abortions" vs those who are making commentary on things that are both tangible and true. These fires were made worse by the lack of preventative backburning (forestry maintenance) and maintenance of fire breaks. The reduction in these activities can most certainly be attributed (at least in part) to the vocal greenies (you know, watermelons) who put trees and wildlife above humans.

-------------------------------------------------------- Knowledge is knowing that the tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in fruit salad!!