Friday, January 03, 2020


Nearly half a billion animals have been killed in Australia's devastating bushfires


A koala drinks water from a bottle given by a firefighter in
 Cudlee Creek, South Australia, on Dec. 22, 2019. Oakbank 
Balhannah CFS via AP

Ecologists at the University of Sydney told News.com.au that an estimated 480 million mammals, birds, and reptiles, have died in the bushfires sweeping Australia.Eight thousand of the animals deaths are believed to be koalas, The Independent reported. Federal environment minister Sussan Ley told ABC Radio on Friday that up to 30% of koalas in New South Wales have been killed by the fires.As of Thursday morning, more than 130 fires were burning in New South Wales and Victoria. The fires have razed more than 9.9 million acres across five states.At least 18 people have died as a result of the bushfires. Some 1,400 homes have been destroyed.

Nearly half a billion animals are believed to be dead in the bushfires still spreading across Australia.

Ecologists at the University of Sydney told News.com.au that an estimated 480 million mammals, birds, and reptiles have died in the bushfires, which have been burning across Australia since September. Eight thousand of the animals deaths are believed to be koalas, The Independent reported.

As of Thursday morning, more than 130 fires were burning in New South Wales and Victoria. The fires have razed more than 9.9 million acres across five states. At least 18 people have died as a result of the bushfires. Some 1,400 homes have been destroyed.

Animals living in the regions include koalas, kangaroos, wallabies, possums, wombats, and echidnas.

Tracy Burgess, a volunteer at Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Services, told Reuters that rescuers aren't receiving as many animal patients as expected, which is cause for concern.

"Our concern is that they don't come into care because they're not there anymore, basically," she said.
Smoke billows during bushfires in Bairnsdale, Victoria, 
Australia, on December 30, 2019. Glen Morey via Reuters

Rescuers across the country have shared videos and photos of burned and dehydrated animals being cared for and fed by local residents.

Federal environment minister Sussan Ley told ABC Radio on Friday that up to 30% of koalas in New South Wales have been killed by the fires.

Nature Conservation Council ecologist Mark Graham told parliament in December that koalas can't move fast enough to escape the fires. Koalas also eat leaves from eucalyptus trees, which are highly flammable.

"The fires have burned so hot and so fast that there has been significant mortality of animals in the trees, but there is such a big area now that is still on fire and still burning that we will probably never find the bodies," he said, according to The Independent.

Food and fuel are running out in remote areas of southeastern Australia as the fires rage on. Weather conditions are expected to worsen through the week.


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Scientists believe meteors may be striking Earth more frequently than thought

By Ben Mitchell, PA,
PA Media: Science•January 2, 2020

Scientists believe that meteors may be striking the Earth more often than previously thought after they found one of the world’s largest craters is 180,000 years younger than earlier estimates.

Dr Tim Barrows, from the University of Portsmouth, has used two dating techniques to establish that Wolfe Creek Crater in northern Western Australia is 120,000 years old – not the 300,000 years it was previously aged at.

He explained that the crater was most likely to have been created by a meteor about 15 metres in diameter and weighing 14,000 tonnes hitting the Earth.

For the study published in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science, the researchers collected samples from around the crater and used exposure dating which estimates the length of time a rock has been exposed at the Earth’s surface to cosmic radiation.

Wolfe Creek in northern Western Australia (University of Portsmouth/PA)

And they were also able to determine the age of sand buried after the impact through optically stimulated luminescence – a dating technique which measures how long ago sediment was last exposed to sunlight.

Dr Barrows, a professor of environmental change, said: “The crater is located in a fortuitous situation where we can use two different techniques to determine its age.”

Wolfe Creek Crater is one of seven sets of impact craters in Australia dating to within the last 120,000 years. From this, the researchers were able to calculate how often these crater-producing events occur.

Dr Barrows explained that the dating exercise suggested that meteors could be striking the planet more frequently than previously calculated.

He said: “Although the rate is only one large meteor hitting Australia every 17,000 years, it isn’t that simple. The craters are only found in the arid parts of Australia.

“Elsewhere, the craters are destroyed by geomorphic activity like river migration or slope processes in the mountains.

“Since Australia has an excellent preservation record with dated craters within the arid zone, we can estimate a rate for the whole Earth.

“Taking into account that arid Australia is only about 1% of the surface, the rate increases to one hitting the Earth every 180 years or so.

“There have been two big objects hitting the atmosphere in the last century – Tunguska in 1908 and Chelyabinsk in 2013.

“This is a minimum estimate because some smaller impacts were probably covered by sand during the last ice age.

“The number of large objects in the atmosphere is probably 20 times this number because stony meteorites are far more common but not as many survive the fiery journey through the atmosphere or effectively make craters.

“Our results give us a better idea of how frequent these events are.”

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Female warriors' tomb suggests basis for Amazons of Greek mythology


USA TODAY•January 2, 2020

The Amazons, a mythical race of female warriors that inspired fictional heroes such as Wonder Woman and Xena the Warrior Princess, may have been more than ancient Greek lore.

The Institute of Archaeology at the Russian Academy of Sciences announced the discovery of a tomb where four women were buried alongside a slew of battle weapons about 2,500 years ago. The findings were published by the Akson Russian Science Communication Association last Wednesday.

The Scythian women represented three generations of female warriors. The eldest was buried with a ceremonial headdress consistent with Amazon myths.

Valerii Guliaev led the archaeological expedition at a burial ground in the Russian village of Devitsa. She said in a news release that other Amazons have been discovered, but this is the first time the women ranged so widely in age.

The youngest was a girl researchers estimated was 12 or 13. Two women were 20 to 29 and 25 to 35 years old. The eldest woman was 45 to 50 years old. The average life expectancy for a woman during that time was 30 to 35 years.

The cemetery consisted of 19 mounds, which researchers said were broken into by robbers during ancient times. Archaeologists found 30 iron arrowheads, an iron hook, fragments of horse harness, iron knives and jewelry that was 65% to 70% gold.

The burial ground was found in 2000, and work for the expedition has been ongoing since 2010. Since then, researchers have discovered about 11 burials of young armed women.

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TIME TWISTER

Astrophysicist Says He Knows How to Build a Time Machine

But his peers are far from convinced that it'll work.

Astrophysicist Ron Mallett believes he’s found a way to travel back in time — theoretically.
The tenured University of Connecticut physics professor recently told CNN that he’s written a scientific equation that could serve as the foundation for an actual time machine. He’s even built a prototype device to illustrate a key component of his theory — though Mallett’s peers remain unconvinced that his time machine will ever come to fruition.
To understand Mallett’s machine, you need to know the basics of Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity, which states that time accelerates or decelerates depending on the speed at which an object is moving.
Based on that theory, if a person was in a spaceship traveling near the speed of light, time would pass more slowly for them than it would for someone who remained on Earth. Essentially, the astronaut could zip around space for less than a week, and when they returned to Earth, 10 years would have passed for the people they’d left behind, making it seem to the astronaut like they’d time traveled to the future.
But while most physicists accept that skipping forward in time in that way is probably possible, time traveling to the past is a whole other issue — and one Mallett thinks he could solve using lasers.
As the astrophysicist explained to CNN, his idea for a time machine hinges upon another Einstein theory, the general theory of relativity. According to that theory, massive objects bend space-time — an effect we perceive as gravity — and the stronger gravity is, the slower time passes.
“If you can bend space, there’s a possibility of you twisting space,” Mallett told CNN. “In Einstein’s theory, what we call space also involves time — that’s why it’s called space time, whatever it is you do to space also happens to time.”
He believes it’s theoretically possible to twist time into a loop that would allow for time travel into the past. He’s even built a prototype showing how lasers might help achieve this goal.
“By studying the type of gravitational field that was produced by a ring laser,” Mallett told CNN, “this could lead to a new way of looking at the possibility of a time machine based on a circulating beam of light.”
As optimistic as Mallet might be about his work, though, his peers are skeptical that he’s on the path to a working time machine.
“I don’t think [his work is] necessarily going to be fruitful,” astrophysicist Paul Sutter told CNN, “because I do think that there are deep flaws in his mathematics and his theory, and so a practical device seems unattainable.”
Even Mallet concedes that his idea is wholly theoretical at this point. And that even if his time machine does work, he admits, it would have a severe limitation that would prevent anyone from, say, traveling back in time to kill baby Adolf Hitler.
“You can send information back,” he told CNN, “but you can only send it back to the point at which you turn the machine on.”
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News
New Zealand glaciers turn brown from Australian bushfires' smoke, ash and dust

The Guardian•January 1, 2020


New Zealand glaciers turn brown from Australian bushfires' smoke, ash and dust. Snow-capped peaks and glaciers discoloured as former PM says ash could accelerate glacial meltingMore

Snow and glaciers in New Zealand have turned brown after being exposed to dust from the Australian bushfires, with one expert saying the incident could increase glacier melt this season by as much as 30%.

On Wednesday many parts of the South Island woke up to an orange haze and red sun, after smoke from the Victorian and New South Wales blazes drifted east on Tuesday night, smothering many parts of the island for most of the day.

On Thursday, pictures taken from the Southern Alps showed the smoke haze carrying particles of dust had tinged snow-capped mountain peaks and glaciers a shade of caramel, with former prime minister Helen Clark expressing concern for the long-lasting environmental impacts on the mountains.

Related: 'Apocalyptic': New Zealand shrouded in smoke from Australian bushfires

“Impact of ash on glaciers is likely to accelerate melting,” Clark tweeted. “How one country’s tragedy has spillover effects.”

There are more than 3,000 glaciers in New Zealand and since the 1970s scientists have recorded them shrinking by nearly a third, with current estimates predicting they will disappear entirely by the end of the century.

Professor Andrew Mackintosh is head of the school of earth, atmosphere and environment at Monash University, and the former director of the Antarctic Research Centre.

He said in nearly two decades of studying glaciers in New Zealand he had never seen such a quantity of dust transported across the Tasman, and the current event had the potential to increase this season’s glacier melt by 20-30%, although Mackintosh stressed this was no more than an estimate.

“It is quite common for dust to be transported to New Zealand glaciers, but I would say that the amount of transport right now is pretty phenomenal – I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it,” Mackintosh said.“It is concerning to me to see so much material being deposited on the glaciers.”


NZ glaciers


#AUSTRALIANBUSHFIRES pic.twitter.com/7XDjERi71n

— Fabulousmonster (@Rachelhatesit) December 31, 2019

Mackintosh said the whiteness of snow and ice reflected the sun’s heat, and slowed melting. But when this whiteness was obscured the glacier could melt at a faster rate.

The higher glaciers around Mount Cook could likely get more snowfall soon, Mackintosh said, but the lower glaciers may not get another dump till March, and the dust would sit there until then, likely turning pink when algae began to grow.

The impacts of the dust event would likely last no longer than a year, Mackintosh said but if Australia continued to be impacted by extreme wildfires and droughts “it will be one of the factors that is accelerating the demise of glaciers in New Zealand overall”.

The recent smoke haze drifting over New Zealand is the fourth such event this summer, the Met Service said, and despite no official health warnings being issued, many with asthma said they were choosing to remain indoors during the unusual conditions.


This the view from the top of the Tasman Glacier NZ today - whole South island experiencing bushfire clouds. We can actually smell the burning here in Christchurch. Thinking of you guys. 😢#nswbushfire #AustralianFires #AustraliaBurning pic.twitter.com/iCzOGkou4o

— Miss Roho (@MissRoho) January 1, 2020

The Met Service most of the smoke remaining over New Zealand would clear by Friday.

Early in December travel writer Liz Carlson took pictures of regions of the Southern Alps turning pink following exposure to smoke from Australia early in the bushfire season.

In a blog Carlson wrote: “It’s pretty remarkable to see the impact of the fires from so far away.”

“Our glaciers don’t need any more battles as they are already truly endangered; it puts the impact of climate change into even more stark reality we can’t ignore.”

Hazy sunrises for the North Island today! The main band of smoke has moved north from yesterday, while another band of smoke lingers over the South Island. ^Tahlia pic.twitter.com/eafnnsu89q

— MetService (@MetService) January 1, 2020

Residents in Auckland and some parts of the North Island woke to an unusually bright orange sun on Thursday, thought to be a result of the bushfires 2,000km across the Tasman sea.

The Ministry of the Environment has been contacted for comment.

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Thursday, January 02, 2020

2019 was one of the decade's worst years for job cuts in the US

REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
Job cuts in the US were the highest in four years in 2019 even as the economy maintained a historically low unemployment rate, according to a report by Challenger, Gray & Christmas.Employers announced plans to eliminate 592,556 jobs last year, a 10% rise from 2018 levels.Companies most often said a bankruptcy or restructuring was behind the changes, according to the report.

US employers announced the highest number of job cuts in four years in 2019 even as the economy maintained a historically low unemployment rate, according to a new report.

The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said on Thursday that employers announced plans to eliminate 592,556 jobs last year, a 10% rise from 2018 levels. That was the largest annual total since 598,510 were announced in 2015. Over the past decade, job-cut announcements were higher only in 2009 and 2011.

The sectors with the highest number of cuts this year faced trade concerns, emerging technologies, and shifts in consumer behavior, said Andrew Challenger, the vice president of the Chicago firm. Companies most often said a bankruptcy or restructuring was behind the changes, according to the report.

A tit-for-tat trade dispute between the US and China has cast uncertainty on businesses since early 2018, threatening to raise costs and disrupting global supply chains. "Trade difficulties" were cited as the reason for 11,688 job cuts, while tariffs accounted for 5,881, according to the report.

But the broader labor market has held up better than was expected against a backdrop of slower growth abroad and widespread trade tensions, adding nonfarm payrolls for a record 110th month in December. For much of the year, the unemployment rate held near a half-century low.

"We tracked a lot of hiring activity in these industries as well as cuts," Challenger said.

Business confidence has rebounded some since the Trump administration's announcement in the fourth quarter of an interim agreement to defuse its trade dispute with the second-largest economy. In December, employers announced the fewest job cuts in nearly a year and a half.

"With some resolutions occurring in the trade war and strong consumer spending in the fourth quarter, companies appear to be taking a wait-and-see approach as we head into 2020," Challenger said.

Job cuts rose sharply in the manufacturing sector last year. Industrial-goods factories announced 70,894 cuts, 156% higher than in 2018 and the highest for the sector since 2009.

Retailers announced 77,475 job cuts last year, with most of those due to bankruptcies. The sector announced 886,515 hiring plans, 789,781 of which were seasonal.

Here's a look at job-cut announcements over the past decade:

2009: 1,288,030
2011: 606,082
2015: 598,510
2019: 592,556
2018: 538,659
2010: 529,973
2016: 526,915
2012: 523,362
2013: 509,051
2014: 483,171
2017: 418,770
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PHOTO ESSAY
Inside the Cocoanut Grove disaster, America's deadliest nightclub fire that killed 492 people in 15 minutes

The fire moved so fast it's still described as a mystery. Casey Grant, executive director emeritus of the Fire Protection Research Foundation, said the shape of the foyer ceiling sent the fire onward, "almost like out of a shotgun." As flames and smoke filled the club, panic ensued.
 
Source: Boston Globe

Then the club went dark. Joyce Mekelburg told the Boston Globe, "Everybody around me was screaming and crawling. Nobody knew where to go or how to go and everybody was crawling in a different direction."
 
Dead, dying and injured lie in street outside Cocoanut Grove while civilians and doctors administer aid. A girl walks in horror through the prone victims, seeking a loved one. This tragic scene was the aftermath of a fire which broke out in the Boston Night Club last night. Bettmann/ Corbis / Getty
Source: Boston Globe

People were losing consciousness due to the thick fumes. Bodies began to pile up, blocking the exits. One doctor told the Boston Globe, "They never had a chance. They never knew what happened."
 
Boston City firefighters and policemen and emergency service workers jam the street outside the Cocoanut Grove Night Club during sudden fire that swept the club before patrons had a chance to escape, Nov. 28, 1942. AP
Sources: Boston.com, Baltimore Sun

So many people died because management had locked doors to ensure people didn't leave without paying. Other doors only opened inwards, which made them unusable in the dark. The club's main entrance had a revolving door, which jammed due to the volume of people trying to get out.
 
This is what remains of the revolving door of the Cocoanut Grove night club where scores of patrons died trying to get out during a fire in the Back Bay section of Boston last night, seen Nov. 29, 1942 AP Sources: Harvard Crimson, National Archives

Outside, fireman arrived quickly. A rare stroke of good luck meant some firefighters were in the area after responding to a car fire. Those on hand grabbed axes to break windows.
Smoke pours from the Cocoanut Grove nightclub, right, during a fire in the Back Bay section of Boston, where 492 people died and hundreds more were injured. AP
Source: Boston Globe, National Fire Protection Association

But it was chaotic. The street was also filled with police, servicemen, and civilians. US Naval reserveman Nick Pagonis said in a police interview, which was publicly released in 2012, "It seemed to me that all those rescue workers were in the way. They held back those who wanted to help. The whole picture was very disgusting."
Police remove the burned body of a victim of a sudden fire that swept the Cocoanut Grove Night Club in Boston, Ma., the night of November 28, 1942. AP
Sources: Boston Globe, National Fire Protection Association, National Archives

Some did get out. But in the panic, people were separated from loved ones. A 21-year-old man named Clifford Johnson lost sight of his date as he was pushed into the open. He went back inside four times to try and save her, before he collapsed, covered in horrific burns.
This tragic scene outside of the fire-ravaged ruins which once were the swank Coconut Grove, shows dead or injured victims lying on the street waiting to be taken to hospitals or morgues. Bettmann / Getty Source: Herald Tribune

Some escaped through side doors, or climbed to the roof. According to the Baltimore Sun, two chorus girls jumped from the roof and were caught by two male dancers
 
Some of the Cocoanut Grove Night Club's luckier guests and employees escaped from the burning building through this side door. Others, who climbed to the roof, were brought to safety by this ladder, placed against the wall. Bettmann / Getty  Source: Baltimore Sun

Others survived by wetting handkerchiefs and covering their mouths. Daniel Weiss, one of the cashiers, covered his mouth with a soaked bar towel, and stayed close the ground. "The closer I was to the floor, the easier it was to breathe," he said.
 
Prokopos Spedalis, cook’s helper in the Cocoanut Grove night club in Boston, testifies at an inquest into the cause of the fire which took the lives of 450 guests, said, “I put a towel over my face like this,” as he told of leaving the kitchen to aid in smashing down a door to free a number of trapped guests, Dec. 1, 1942. Peter J. Carroll / AP Source: National Fire Protection Association

In little over an hour, the fire was out. Bodies were passed through the charred windows to waiting soldiers and sailors. It was so cold outside, below freezing, that puddles from the fire hoses froze over.
 
With stretchers and blankets for the burned victims, soldiers and sailors stand ready at the charred windows of the Cocoanut Grove Night Club. Bettmann / Getty
Sources: CBS News, National Fire Protection Association

An AP correspondent wrote, "When the last body was reported out I looked around the room of the ground floor. It was a shambles. Chairs and tables were upended, crockery and glassware was strewn everywhere, it was as if a tornado had whistled through the room."
 
A fireman surveys the ruins of the Cocoanut Grove Night Club, destroyed by fire last night (November 28). He stands beside a pole which was decorated to look like a coconut tree. Bettmann / Getty Source: Baltimore Sun

By midnight, the Cocoanut Grove was a charred, empty building. Despite what had happened within, the structure survived. The Sun called it a "huge brick oven," with little obvious damage to its walls and roof.
 
Firemen (rear) view the remains of Boston's Cocoanut Grove night club through the revolving doors leading to the tiny 10-foot-wide vestibule where stampeding guests were crushed and smothered as they tried to leave the burning club. Bettmann / Getty   Sources: Baltimore Sun, National Fire Protection Association

A priest administered last rites.
 
A priest is administering last rites to one of the victims of the tragic fire which claimed the lives of 399 persons. Bettmann / Getty
At least 400 persons were burned to death and more than 200 were injured when a fire swept through the Cocoanut Grove, the night of football celebration. Bettmann / Getty
 
Those still alive were sent to two nearby hospitals, Boston City and Massachusetts General. BCH got over 300 casualties, of which 132 lived longer than two hours. MGH got 114, of which 39 survived longer than two hours.  Later calculations worked out that BCH's victims came in at an astonishing rate of one victim every 11 seconds over a 75 minute period.

Because of the scope of the misfortune,
 neither hospitals charged any of the patients. 

READ ON
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AUSTRALIAN INFERNO: Stunning images from space reveal the shocking extent of Australia's bushfire crisis

The Himawari-8 satellite's view of the Australian bushfires 
and smoke clouds on January 2. RAMMB/CIRA/CSU
Australian bushfires sparked in September have spread for months, leading to a state of emergency in many regions.
As of the new year, the blazes have scorched more than 14 million acres of land, killed about half a billion animals, and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
The blazes are so large and widespread that satellites in space can easily photograph them from orbit.
Specialized sensors on satellites that can see through the thick smoke are recording the bushfires' spread.

Australia's raging bushfires are so bad that satellites thousands of miles above Earth can easily spot their flames and smoke from space.

The fires likely started naturally, though experts think human-caused climate disruption has exacerbated hot arid conditions that fuel the growth of such blazes. Current estimates suggest eastern Australia's bushfire crisis has scorched more than 14 million acres of land, killed about half a billion animals, and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

The photo above — which shows plumes of smoke about half the area of Europe darkening skies as far as New Zealand in a yellow haze — was taken on Thursday by the Japan Meteorological Agency's Himawari-8 satellite.

Himawari-8 launched in October 2014 and weighs about as much as a Ford F-150 pickup truck. It now orbits over the same point about 22,300 miles above our planet. Using a variety of onboard sensors, Himawari-8, NASA's Suomi NPP satellite, and other Earth-monitoring machines are returning stunning imagery of Australia's dire situation.

Here are some of the most revealing photos, animations, and illustrations of the crisis on Earth as seen from outer space.

Himawari-8 overlooks the Western Hemisphere and photographs this face of Earth once every 10 minutes. Australia, its bushfires, and smoke plumes are easily visible.

An animation by the Himawari-8 satellite on January 2. 
NICT Science Cloud/CEReS/Kpchi University/Nagoya Science Museum
NASA's Suomi NPP satellite, which orbits about 500 
miles up, offers a much closer view of the planet — though
 a less consistent one. Here, Australia's bushfires are 
shown picking up in November.
 
An animation shows the Himawari-8 satellite's view of the
 eastern Australian bushfires from November 6 to 11. 
RAMMB/CIRA/CSU
Redder and longer wavelengths of light, such as near
 infrared, can show fiery hotspots on the ground through
 the haze and smoke.

Himawari-8's view of eastern Australian bushfires on November 7. RAMMB/CIRA/CSU
Embers from fires that began in September have spread easily in abnormally long, dry, and expansive drought.

Himawari-8's view of the Australian bushfires and smoke 
clouds on January 2. Melbourne is visible in the bottom-left 
corner. RAMMB/CIRA/CSU
This animation, from January 1 and 2, highlights multiple
 hotspots in normally invisible infrared light. Two especially 
large patches of bushfires (shown just southwest of the
 center) stretch dozens of miles long.

Himawari-8's view of the eastern Australian bushfires
 from January 1 to 2. RAMMB/CIRA/CSU
Daytime satellite views of the ground are equally, if not
 more, dramatic. The European Space Agency's 
Sentinel-2 satellite took this image of growing bushfires 
while passing over Bateman Bay on New Year's Eve.

A view of a bushfire in Bateman Bay, Australia, on
 December 31.
Copernicus EMS; Sentinel 2/ESA
Source: Twitter
The scope of the fires is hard to comprehend. In New 
South Wales alone, blazes have created a fire front in the
 state that — if put into a straight line — would stretch 
from Sydney, across the Indian Ocean, and into Afghanistan.

A satellite's view of the eastern Australian bushfires on
 January 2. NASA Worldview
Source: Twitter
The smoke plume alone is about 1.3 billion acres, or half
 the size of Europe, and is drifting more than 1,000 miles
 over New Zealand, where it is choking and yellowing the
 skies.

Himawari-8's view of the fires on January 2.
RAMMB/CIRA/CSU
Source: Twitter
So far, the bushfires have chewed through more than
 twice the area that burned in Amazon's rainforests
 during 2019.
 
An animation shows Himawari-8's view of the Australian 
bushfires and smoke clouds on January 2. RAMMB/CIRA/CSU
Source: Queimadas

At least 17 people have gone missing in the fires, eight have died, and hundreds of thousands have evacuated. Volunteer firefighters are working around the clock to curtail the disaster, though it may burn until cooler fall temperatures arrive in the Southern Hemisphere several months from now.
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Australia bushfires: Residents refuse to shake prime minister Scott Morrison's hand as mass evacuation begins
January 2, 2020


A long queue forms at a Woolworths supermarket in Ulladulla, New South Wales - Mick Meredith /via REUTERS

 The Australian prime minister was heckled out of a fire-ravaged town in New South Wales on Thursday, as a mass evacuation of the region got under way ahead of worsening conditions.

Video of the visit to Cobargo, on the south coast, showed Scott Morrison insist a woman shake his hand as she criticised him over the government's response to the crisis.

 “I am only shaking your hand if you give more funding to the RFS (Rural Fire Service),” she said as he turned away. “So many people have lost their homes. We need more help.”

 The prime minister was soon ushered to his car by minders when other residents began shouting at him. “You won't be getting any votes down here buddy,” one called out.

 A firefighter also refused to shake Mr Morrison's hand. Video footage showed Mr Morrison trying to grab the man's hand, who then got up and walked away, sparking an apology from the prime minister. A local fire official explained that the man had lost his house while defending others' homes.

 Even a state politician from his own Liberal party whose seat is in the region took a swipe at the prime minister.

 "To be honest, the locals probably gave him the welcome he probably deserved," said New South Wales transport minister Andrew Constance.

 Mr Morrison said on Friday he didn't take the attacks personally.

 "I understand the hurt, the anger and the frustration," he said in an interview on 3AW radio.

 "Whether they're angry with me or they're angry about their situation, all I know is that they're hurting and it's my job to be there to try and offer some comfort and support," he said.

 Anger over the government's handling of the crisis has grown since the outbreak of wildfires, which have so far killed at least 17 people, including nine since Christmas Day, and destroyed 1,400 homes.

 In Victoria, 28 people are currently unaccounted for.

In Cobargo, a 29-year-old dairy farmer and his father, 53, were killed earlier this week as fires swept through the village.

Mr Morrison has overseen more than $12.9m cuts to the state's fire service in the latest budget, and has been criticised for rejecting calls to professionalise the service.

 New South Wales has declared a state of emergency, starting from Friday, and told tourists to leave a 155-mile stretch of the state's southern coast as temperatures were expected to reach 40 degrees celsius on Saturday.

 The army began evacuations in what the state's transport minister said was the "largest mass relocation of people out of the region that we've ever seen". But tens of thousands were still stranded by Thursday night as roads became gridlocked, with shops and fuel stations running out of supplies.

A long queue forms at a Woolworths supermarket in Ulladulla, New South Wales

 The navy was called in to assist in getting people out of the town of Mallacoota, in the neighbouring state of Victoria, where 4,000 people were trapped on the beach for days after the fire devastated much of their town.

 Rob Rogers, NSW's Rural Fire Service deputy commissioner, said firefighters were struggling to combat the fires.

"The message is we've got so much fire in that area, we have no capacity to contain these fires," he told ABC.

 "We just need to make sure that people are not in front of them."

 In addition to the loss of human life, homes and farmland, ecologists from the University of Sydney estimate almost half a billion mammals, birds and reptiles have been lost this fire season, with the toll expected to rise.

 At least 17 people were reported to be missing on Thursday across Victoria. The body of Mick Roberts, who had been unaccounted for since Monday, was found dead in his home in Buchan, East Gippsland, on Wednesday, his niece said.

 “He’s not missing any more ... sorry but his body has been found in his house… Very sad day for us to (start) the year but we’re a bloody tight family and we will never forget our mate and my beautiful Uncle Mick,” she wrote on Facebook .

 Brie Kingsely, a Melbourne resident, witnessed the sheer scale of the crisis while driving from Sydney to get home. She told The Telegraph the entire six-hour journey was “smoke-ridden”.

“I drove from Sydney to Melbourne. At the worst of it I was 10km from an active, 100 thousand-hectare out of control fire next to the Hume Highway,” she said. “It wasn’t closed, but basically smoke-ridden for six hours.”

A tender from HMAS Choules motors through smoke haze off the coast of Mallacoota Credit: AP

 Mr Morrison said the crisis was likely to last for months. "It (fires) will continue to go on until we can get some decent rain that can deal with some of the fires that have been burning for many, many months," he told reporters on Thursday.

 Australia’s capital, Canberra, recorded the worst air quality of any city in the world on Thursday, an astonishing outcome for a city of just 400,000 people.

 An elderly woman who arrived in the city by plane died shortly after, and family believe it was related to smoke inhalation, though that is yet to be confirmed.

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You're not welcome, you f-----': Videos show Australia's prime minister heckled and hounded out of a bushfire-ravaged town by furious locals



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Australia's fires have burned more than twice as much land as the summer's Amazon blazes. They're part of an ominous carbon-dioxide feedback loop.

Aylin Woodward
5 hours ago


 
Firefighters struggle against the strong wind in an effort
 to secure nearby houses from bushfires near the town
 of Nowra in the Australian state of New South Wales, 
December 31, 2019. Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty


Since September, bushfires have razed 14.6 million acres in Australia — more than twice the area that burned in the Amazon rainforest in 2019.

Drought conditions and record-breaking temperatures contributed to the fires' unprecedented scale and intensity.

The carbon dioxide the blazes send into the atmosphere raises the risk of more large fires in the future.

Australia has become an inferno.

Since the start of the country's bushfire season in September, 14.6 million acres have burned and at least 18 people have died. Half a billion animals have perished, and the country's eastern states and biggest cities have been hammered by smoke and walls of flame. An estimated 1,400 homes have been destroyed in New South Wales, with hundreds of thousands of people forced to evacuate.

Australia experiences fires every fall, but this year's crisis — which comes on the heels of a record-breaking heatwave and prolonged drought — is unprecedented. The fires that plagued the Brazilian Amazon over the summer, by comparison, burned through 7 million acres of rainforest, about half of the impacted area in Australia.
A satellite photo of Bateman Bay on the southern coast of New South Wales, Australia, on December 31, 2019. Copernicus EMS

Whereas most of the Amazon fires were deliberately set by ranchers and loggers looking to clear land, Australia's bushfires mostly started due to natural causes.

But they may be part of an ominous feedback loop. The more land burns, the more carbon dioxide (CO2) gets released into the atmosphere, and the more trees — which act as natural carbon sinks — disappear. Already, Australia's fires have released 350 million metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. That's roughly 1% of the total global carbon emissions from 2019. The more CO2 gets released, the warmer our planet gets; that raises the risk of more big and deadly fires.

An area twice the size of Belgium is burning
A fire fighter watches a bushfire as it burns near homes on the outskirts of the town of Bilpin on December 19, 2019 in Sydney, Australia. David Gray/Getty Images

It's hard to comprehend the size of the affected area in Australia. In total, the area of burned land (14.6 million acres) is twice the size of Belgium. Nearly six times more acres have burned in Australia than in California's devastating 2018 wildfire season, when the Camp Fire destroyed the town of Paradise.

Melbourne and Sydney have been engulfed in smoke.

"I looked out into smoke-filled valleys, with only the faintest ghosts of distant ridges and peaks in the background," Michael Mann, a US climate scientist who is on sabbatical in Sydney, wrote in the Guardian on Wednesday.
A man looks at the smoky skyline on December 19, 2019 in Sydney, Australia. Jenny Evans/Getty Images

In December, a state official said New South Wales was experiencing the "longest" and "most widespread" period of poor air quality in the state's history.


According to AirVisual, a service that provides a live ranking of air quality in the world's cities, Sydney had the 12th-worst air quality on the planet on December 11.
A dangerous feedback loop
A firefighter battles flames outside Sydney, Australia, December 10, 2019. SAEED KHAN/AFP via Getty Images

Dry conditions in Australia's bushland, wooded areas, and Blue Mountain National Park have made the land ripe for sparks. Australia experienced its driest spring ever in 2019. December 18 was the hottest day in the country's history, with average temperatures hitting 105.6 degrees Fahrenheit (40.9 degrees Celsius).

In the last 15 years, Australia saw eight of its 10 warmest years on record. Winter rains, which can help reduce the intensity of summer fires, have declined significantly, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. That meant that when the fire season started, it was savage and unstoppable.

"We used to see hundreds of thousands of hectares burned in bushfires, but now we are seeing millions on fire," Pep Canadell, executive director of the Global Carbon Project, told the Herald.
A firefighter sprays water after a fire impacted Clovemont Way in Melbourne, Australia on December 30, 2019. AAP Image/Julian Smith via REUTERS

The more forests burn, the more carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere, and the more heat it traps on the planet. To make matters worse, when natural carbon sinks like the Amazon rainforest and woodlands in Australia burn down, that reduces the natural avenues by which CO2 can get absorbed.

It's a vicious cycle.

In 2019, wildfires across the globe released approximately 6.38 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to the European Union's satellite observation program, Copernicus. That's about 17% of the global total for the year.

Until now, Australia's annual bushfires were pretty much net-zero in terms of greenhouse-gas emissions — the CO2 they emitted was balanced out by how much carbon-dioxide the country's forests sequestered. But in the last three months, Australia's fires have emitted roughly 350 million metric tons of CO2, according to the Herald. (By comparison, the Amazon fires produced less than half that: 140 million metric tons.)

Between 2013 and 2017, Australia's fires emitted 340 million metric tons of CO2 on average per year. This year's total has already blown past that, and Australia's dry season has another two months to go.

"Normally bushfires are thought of as 'carbon neutral,' but, in very simple terms, we're seeing climate extremes carry a double punch, with more frequent fire and drought," David Bowman, a fire science expert at the University of Tasmania, told the Herald.
A firefighter hoses down trees and flying embers in an effort to secure nearby houses from bushfires near the town of Nowra in the Australian state of New South Wales, December 31, 2019. Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty

Canadell said he thinks the country's forests will need 100 years to return to the point where they can act as carbon sinks for fires of this size and scale.
Climate change is linked to more intense fires

Last year was a year of fire. Blazes cut through the Siberian tundra over the summer. California was hit by three dozen fires that each burned more than 1,000 acres. More than 100,000 fires started over the course of 10 August days in the Amazon rainforest.

Climate change increases the likelihood, size, and frequency of wildfires, since warmer air sucks away moisture from trees and soil, leading to dryer land. Rising temperatures also make heat waves and droughts more frequent and severe, which exacerbates wildfire risk, since hot, parched forests are prone to burning.
The sky is filled with smoke, and ash on December 21, 2019 in Shoalhaven Heads, NSW, Australia. A catastrophic fire danger warning has been issued for the greater Sydney region, the Illawarra and southern ranges as hot, windy conditions continue to hamper firefighting efforts across NSW. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian declared a state of emergency on Thursday, the second state of emergency declared in NSW since the start of the bushfire season. Cassie Spencer/Getty Images

"Climate change is exacerbating every risk factor for more frequent and intense bushfires," Dale Dominey-Howes, an expert on disaster risk at the University of Sydney, told Business Insider Australia. "Widespread drought conditions, higher than average temperatures — these are all made worse by climate change."


Earth has already warmed about 1 degree Celsius. July 2019 was the hottest month ever recorded, and 2019 will likely be the third-hottest year on record globally, according to Climate Central. Only 2016, 2015, and 2017 were hotter (in that order).
 
A helicopter drops water on a bushfire in scrub behind houses in Bundoora, Melbourne, Australia, December 30, 2019. AAP Image/Ellen Smith via REUTERS

"The brown skies I observed in the Blue Mountains this week are a product of human-caused climate change," Mann wrote in The Guardian.

He added: "Take record heat, combine it with unprecedented drought in already dry regions, and you get unprecedented bushfires like the ones engulfing the Blue Mountains and spreading across the continent. It's not complicated."

SEE ALSO: Photos from space reveal what climate change looks like, from melting Arctic ice to rampant California fires

Read Next: Stunning images from space reveal the shocking extent of Australia's bushfire crisis


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