Extreme weather events more frequent in Australia

All signs point to the climate becoming more extreme by Marian Wilkinson and Ben Cubby When hundreds of small, grey-headed flying foxes began falling from the sky at Yarra Bend in suburban Melbourne, for some it heralded the awful events that would later unfold. It was Wednesday, January 28, one day into the ferocious heatwave […]

Smoke covers Melbourne as Victoria fires continue to burn

By James Campbell, Sunday Herald Sun MELBOURNE is shrouded in a smoke haze as the Victoria fires continue to burn across the state. Visibility at Melbourne airport is down to 2km with the Bureau of Meteorology warning the haze could linger until the end of next week. The Environment Protection Authority has issued a smoke […]

More 'megafires' to come, say scientists

  By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor Sunday, 2 September 2007 Fires of unprecedented ferocity are sweeping around the world, fuelled by global warming and misguided environmentalism. Dubbed "megafires", they rage over thousands of miles at 1,000C and create their own weather, even triggering tornadoes. Rapidly increasing in number, they are often unquenchable by any human […]

Australia wildfires release tens of millions of tons of carbon

by Asa Wahlquist VICTORIA’S bushfires have released a massive amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – almost equal to Australia’s industrial emission for an entire year. Mark Adams, from the University of Sydney, said the emissions from bushfires were far beyond what could be contained through carbon capture and needed to be addressed in […]

Armageddon? In wake of so many disasters, one can't help but wonder

Here’s some Grade-A doomer porn, from the LA Times: It feels like Armageddon. Part of Australia becomes a raging inferno, killing more than 170 people and perhaps millions of animals, and elsewhere Down Under floods have forced people from their homes, and into watery streets they now share with crocodiles. Costa Rica still reels from […]

Animal death toll from Australia bushfires may be in the millions

MORE than a million native animals may have been killed in the Victorian bushfires, a wildlife expert says. The massive effort to rescue animals caught in the fire has begun with triage centres set up to assess injured wildlife at staging posts at Kilmore, Whittlesea and Redesdale near Bendigo. The animals are then being treated […]

Animal refugees emerge from the Victoria fires

[This is the first great climate disaster of the 21st century. –Jim] Video By Megan McNaught IT is not just humans who are emerging from the ashes after amazing feats of survival in the Victoria fires. Animals of all shapes and sizes are starting to limp, stagger or be carried from the worst-affected fire areas. […]

Australian fires ‘devastating’ to wildlife

Overlooked amidst the human tragedy, thousands of animals — kangaroos and koalas as well as cattle and sheep — also perished in the scorching fires that have swept through southeast Australia. At least 130 people died in the flames, official figures showed, but nobody was prepared to venture an estimate on the animal losses. "It’s […]

Australian bushfires: when two degrees is the difference between life and death

Scientist Tim Flannery recalls the long, wet Victorian winters now replaced by a drier and dangerous climate by Tim Flannery The day after the great fire burned through central Victoria, I drove from Sydney to Melbourne. For much of the way – indeed for hundreds of miles north of the scorched ground – smoke obscured […]

Photo gallery: bushfires in Victoria, Australia

The state of Victoria in southern Australia has recently been hit with hundreds of bush fires during a record-breaking heatwave – temperatures well above 38°C (100°F). Unfortunately, these fires have proved to be the deadliest in Australian history, with at least 166 deaths reported so far. The fires mostly appear to have been started by […]

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