Collide-a-scape

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the horrible fires in Australia can be partly attributed to global warming. It’s a legitimate storyline, which many in the media have picked up on.

By and large, these stories have been measured, with the appropriate caveats. (See here and here for two good examples.)

The brutal heat wave that preceded the fires (which Tom Yulsman graphically lays out here), combined with an epic drought, and high winds, set the stage for a tragic disaster that may have been initially caused by arsonists.

Still, in this insightful analysis published on the Forest History Society’s blog, environmental historian Stephen Pyne cautions against fixating on global warming or arson as the agents of destruction:

Both are reasons, and both are also potential misdirections.  Global warming might magnify outbreaks, but it means a change in degree, not in kind; and its effects must still be absorbed by the combustible cover.  Arson can put fire in the worst place at the worst time, but its power depends on ignition’s capacity to spread and on flame to destroy susceptible buildings.

Australia, says Pyne, knows this well. The country “developed many key concepts of fire ecology and models of bushfire behavior.  It pioneered landscape-scale prescribed burning as a method of bushfire management.”

In recent years, however, this knowledge has not been put into practice. Australia, Pyne writes,

seems to be abandoning its historic solutions for precisely the kind of telegenic suppression operations and political theater that have failed elsewhere.  Even when controlled burning is accepted “in principle,” there always seems a reason not to burn in this place or at this time.  The burning gets outsourced to lightning, accident, and arson.

Or global warming.

No one knows more about the history and ecology of fire than Stephen Pyne. “Australia,” he writes today, “is a fire continent: it is built to burn.

To this general combustibility its southeast corner adds a pattern of seasonal winds, associated with cold fronts, that draft scorching, unstable air from the interior across whatever flame lies on the land. At such times the region becomes a colossal channel that fans flames which, for scale and savagery, have no equal on earth.

Still, even Pyne calls Saturday’s fires a “horror.” And that speaks volumes. As he notes, “Australia has filled the weekly  calendar with Red Tuesdays, Ash Wednesdays, Black Thursdays, and is having to re-number its sequals. There was a black Saturday on February 12, 1977, but Black Saturday II is a bad bushfire on steroids.”

Pyne’s essay should be required reading for people living in flammable landscapes and especially for the planners, politicians and land managers that shape the built landscapes of these vulnerable communities. The bottom line, he writes:

With or without global warming or arson, damaging fires will come, spread as the landscape allows and inflict damage as structures permit. And it is there – with how Australians live on the land – that reform must go.

What this means, he insists, is fighting fire with fire:

The choice is whether skilled people should backburn or leave fire-starting to lightning, clumsies and crazies.

Over at Resilience Science, however, Garry Peterson says that Pyne “understates the change in settlement patterns, as increasing number of people live in ex-urban areas that complicate fire management.”

Hmm, from where I’m sitting (Boulder, Colorado), that certainly is true. Should the arid Southwest, with its own drought woes, growing ex-urban population, and fire-starved landscape, pay close attention to Australia’s agony?

Several years ago, when Australia was baking from an extended drought and its agricultural economy was near collapse, Australians partly blamed global warming and soon booted their conservative Prime Minister (who advised everyone to pray for rain) out of office.

Now, in the wake of southern Australia’s  catastrophic fires, which has leveled whole villages and killed up to 200 people,  climate change is again being cast as one of the culprits.

That’s too crude, similar to when some American environmentalists immediately blamed global warming for Hurricane Katrina.

For starters, Australia’s landscape is pretty damn flammable. Tragic wildfires have struck the country many times before. And, as The Australian points out,

The severity of bushfires is determined by a number of key factors: weather, including drought; fuel load; topography; the location of the population: their houses: and householders’ preparedness to manage fire.

In this latest case, what’s even more awful to consider is that authorities issued dire warnings to the public on the eve of the disaster. And still, many of the victims had no inkling that fire was upon them until the last minute.

As for the future, will hotter temperatures from greenhouse gases  lead to longer and more frequent dry spells in Australia? Most likely, say scientists.  And this, of course, will beget more nasty bushfires.

Residents in Boulder, Colorado got spanked by their sheriff this weekend, for their chuckle-headed behavior during a January 7 fire that forced the evacuation of 25,000 people. At a community meeting, the lawman chastised homeowners

who filled pickup trucks with numerous personal items and left them parked in front of their driveways until they had to evacuate. That delayed rescue and notification attempts by firefighers.

Touching on a problem all too common in the West, the sheriff also was concerned that Boulderites

aren’t taking preventive measures around their property to keep fires at bay, such as clearing brush and stacking firewood away from decks.

Boulder residents better wise up or they’ll be on their own next time around. “If you don’t want to help yourself, we’ll just walk away. I’m serious about it,” the sheriff warned, according to the Denver Post.

Yeah, right.

But the message may well have gotten through, if anyone is paying attention to the news out of Australia.