In the last couple of days, something of a ‘blue’ has developed among some Western Australian fire experts over ‘Prescribed Burning’ – the deliberate lighting of fires as part of fire management policy. On Jan 22, Byron Lamont and Tianhua He published a short opinion… Read more
“This is the Giant Stinger tree – avoid it”. Work place health and safety now out of the way, I could then get on with introducing my students to Australia’s forests. *** In Queensland’s O’Reilly’s/Lamington Park I began my student classes with a walk down… Read more
Have you noticed? Despite Australia’s on-going fire disaster, there are no shortage of reports telling us to … relax – it’s nothing new, and that it’s the fault of not enough hazard-reduction burning. And certainly, it’s nothing to do with global warming, which by increasing… Read more
Once again, the south east of Australia has had huge fires. But how can this be? Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are rising, carbon dioxide is ‘plant food’ and apparently the result is ‘global greening’. The greening phenomenon is actually real. Studies have shown that world… Read more
Tomorrow, Tuesday Nov 12, 2019 is looking very bad for south-east Australia (especially New South Wales, but also parts of Queensland, Victoria and South Australia), and this was clear at least four days ago. The reason for this is the ‘synoptic’ pattern of atmospheric circulation… Read more
Many of the real advances in science seem to come from a sudden ‘insight’ ( think Archimedes and “Eureka!”) – and there is often no simple connection between collecting data and that ‘aha!’ moment. The tedious data collection happens, but at some moment, the brain, perhaps… Read more
Are Australian lives and property being burnt as a result of something that happened tends of thousands of years ago? In 1994 an influential book, ‘The Future Eaters’, was published by the Australian paleontologist Tim Flannery. One of the goals of the book was to… Read more
In Australia there are trees that look like inside-out chimneys. Strong but sensitive – a fungal attack can leave them as a pile of mush within days, and, often as not, they won’t survive being transplanted from the wild. But, you can burn them to… Read more
The first time I came to Brisbane in the hot part of the year – I couldn’t believe how anyone could survive there. The nights were oppressively, putridly hot, and full of bitey-insects. Then I ended up living there and suffered for years. I would… Read more