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Students of bush fires will know that various authorities claim the Australian Bush fires are as bad as any in the world and the Chauvinists would say they are without parallel. The season has now started and the ghoulish and gleeful but macabre voyeurs are on a countdown to another season of excellence or should it be infamy. It is now clear from the Royal Commission that there was severe mismanagement at very senior levels. This must include the State Government which bears ultimate responsibility. The current Victorian Government has been there for a long time and still seems to think that it can blame previous administrations. It used to be called the mirror government (I’ll look into it) and now seems more and more to be a righteous initiative free area which looks for a scapegoat when pressed and fines them massively while it continues the grand old tradition of Victorian State governments of either stripe, of infra structure inaction. Only the buzz words change: Fiscal responsibility , responsible leadership and so on. A recent little gem surfaced which would seem to bear a bit of closer examination. After a particularly bad summer a number of ultra large helicopters know locally as Elvises (after the name of the first to come to public awareness) have been engaged for fire fighting work. These are the Erickson S 64 (9500 kg of water) of US Military origins and have done a very good job. The first time they came in mass they did not have a lot of wok but subsequently have been veryvaluable. The need is hard to predict and it is a lot of money to spend if they are not needed but still what is the price of insurance? Until that year of disaster, requests for such capability had been steadfastly refused with the usual official smokescreen of reasons.
Even more recently another gem surfaced. During the 2009 prior to the Feb 7th Black Saturday disaster the Russian Government offered the Victorian Government the use of IL 76 very large water bombers (able to drop 11,000 gallons of water). They were turned down for reasons which range from garbage to plausible (Too long to arrange certification, not suitable for the mission, we have enough, time for transit too long etc).
The US fire fighting services have had the same offers and made the same response. Some critics of this decision are very scathing about the reasons. The US at least do have some very heavy metal available but the Vic Government has only Elvises and smaller.
American and some Australian experts have seen the Russian aircraft in action and are very impressed. They put the refusal of the Russian offer by the US Fire Authorities down to Politics. One of the reasons for refusal which seemed implausable was that the water could not be placed where it was needed. At the Kinglake fire this seems very unlikely.
There also seems to have been a lot of politics in the Australian situation. A sort of “don’t question us we are the experts” and “don’t get in the way we know what we are doing”. It would be very interesting to see a detailed account of why the Russian offer was refused and to compare the cost of the Russian offer with the over all cost of fire fighting. More fiddling while civilisation burns?

‘Stealth’ blades take wind turbines off the radar. It seems nothing is ever simple in these days of environmental concern, technological complexity and growing populations and standards of living. A recent example is the innocent windmill. Some see them as a major answers to major problems. Others see them as bird killers, infra noise generators and a con job that will cost too much and deliver too little. Most likely they will find their place but one problem that snuck up on a lot of us is that they can screw with Domestic aviation radars.
The big, fast-moving blades of modern wind turbines interfere with radar for both planes and ships. But ’stealth’ technology could solve the problem. Read more…

Today the Bow Bells will chime 350 times to mark an International Day of Concern about Global warming. Might take quite some time. And hopefully give many pause to think. Many are left more than a little bemused by the various claims made about the climate and who is doing what to whom. The press in an allegedly high minded attempt to achieve balance seems to print back to back articles by doom sayers and climate skeptic which serves to confuse rather than inform. Some actually seem more bent on inflaming the debate than informing or analyzing. An example is the local Australian Provocateur Andrew Bolte in the Sun Herald.
For what it is worth I have been running thru the literature with a view to reaching some sort of understanding. My qualifications are: an interest and a rather stale PhD from a good university in an unrelated field of Science so make of this what you will.
Once one start trolling thru the literature it emerges that there is a consensus that is truly impressive. The globe is warming and man has contributed to this. The closer the area of expertise of the sources is to climate the more there is the agreement. When the arguments of the skeptics are examined they seem to all be readily shot down. The longer it goes on the more the persistent skeptics seem to be willfully blind and self serving (IMHO). Read more…