For that matter, long before we started trying to control these things
there's no reason to think that continent-wide brush fires occurred
regularly, in fact there lots of indication that they did. You don't
need climate change to have drought, or even droughts to have fires.
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-fot@autox.team.net [mailto:owner-fot@autox.team.net] On
Behalf Of Randall
Sent: Friday, September 29, 2006 7:35 AM
Cc: fot@autox.team.net
Subject: [FOT] RE: No TR content [was Herman & Helena Van Den Akker]
> Americans don't have any idea of what real bush fires are about. Lose
> a few thousand acres and a state of emergency is declared. Go to Oz
> and find out about real firestorms. E,g., Ash Wednesday (yes, really)
> in 1976, 3 fires burnt 6 million acres in a single 24 hour period.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I think you're mistaken.
The name "Ash Wednesday" was coined in 1983, when almost 150 separate
fires broke out in Oz. The fire threatening Herman & Helena's home has
already burned half again the area of the largest of the Ash Wednesday
fires, 160,000 acres vs 105,000.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WILDFIRES
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22ash+wednesday%22+australia
The largest estimate I found for all the land burned in Oz that entire
summer was only 1.3 million acres.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash_Wednesday_bushfires
Which is still a lot, but comparable to 2003 here in CA (approx 900,000
acres burned). And less than the 1.5 million acres burned in
Yellowstone in 1988.
Not to mention Alaska 2004 when a single fire destroyed 1.3 million
acres.
(Total wildfire damage in Alaska that season was over 6 million acres.)
> fighting the Administration's deceit about Global Warming
I guess we must have global warming under control, since the largest
wildfires in the US were over 100 years ago ... 3 million acres burned
in Maine in 1825; another 3 million in S. Carolina in 1898; 3.8 million
in Wisconsin & Michigan 1871; 2.5 million Michigan 1881; etc.
http://www.nifc.gov/stats/historicalstats.html
Randall
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