Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Who’s Really to Blame for the LA Fires" video.

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  2. AUSTRALIAN HERE - we have some experience with bad fires, the loss of life, loss of property and general mayhem of lives being ripped apart. After our last major fire season in 2019 there was the same sort of political misinformation campaign and a lot of it came from the MURDOCH media. Murdoch people made so many claims about arson that we ended up spending millions on a full public enquiry that investigated more than 30 of the major fires that season. YES we had over 30 major fires that season and in the end NOT ONE fire was found to be caused by arson, but there were a couple of inconclusive causes. The vast majority of fires in Australia are from lightning strikes and power lines where there's been insufficient maintenance keeping the power lines clear of trees. Another major factor was a shortening of the time period when we could safely burn-off of the fuel loads. Just as Adams recent guest Dr. Daniel Swain explained about California we'd had several good years of rain that caused a lot of growth followed by a drought which dried it all out. So the fuel load in 2019 was very high making those fires worse than usual. The other thing that the faux-media (with few exceptions) point out is that like Australian Eucalyptus trees the California scrub brush is high in oil content. The sap in those trees is a form of oil. So they don't just burn they literally explode when the fire gets fierce enough. In 2019 we had trees blast apart and shower the surrounding area in eucalyptus oil. Another thing the faux-media fail to highlight is the effects of an unusually high hot wind event. We knew in 2019 that it was going to be a day of high winds and it doesn't matter who's in charge they can't affect the weather. All you can do is hope to be prepared well enough with water, fire trucks, water bombers and people, that you can handle the situation.
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  6.  @lostbutfreesoul  ITS A COMBINATION OF EFFECTS. It started with baby boomer Prime Minister John Howard giving a monster tax break to investment housing. THE CLAIM was it would have a lot of his generation investing their retirement savings into housing and expanding the rental market making it easier for younger people to save up for a deposit to buy their own homes. HOWEVER they also let foreigners buy into that market because that allowed the housing developers to build massive apartment blocks. What you also have to know is that Australia's population was 19 million in 2000 and is now 27 million. We have roughly 400,000 immigrants each year. Because we also run our version of neoliberal economics we have roughly 50% of our population living bellow the line where they can ever save for a house. We shut our manufacturing down and that made this part of the equation worse. There's also a fixed number of new houses each year. We only have so many builders and they can only build so many houses. So its essentially a fixed supply market of about 40,000 houses (from what I have heard). I don't know how many new apartments are available each year but when you're importing 400,000 people each year they simply swallow that up. The whole system is complex but its basically manged to keep the housing supply limited by matching it with immigration. That keeps the values going up and up and that helps developers and banks and arguably the 3 most influential lobbies in Australia are mining, banks and housing developers. So this system is loved by 2 of those 3 groups. Donal Trumps mantra is "Drill baby drill" in Australia we have 2 mantras. "Dig baby dig" for our miners; and "Build baby build, but no too much" for our banks and developers. Sorry for the length of comment, but you asked a great question and I hope that answers it or at least covers it enough.
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  8. AUSTRALIAN HERE - we have some experience with bad fires, the loss of life, loss of property and general mayhem of lives being ripped apart. After our last major fire season in 2019 there was the same sort of political misinformation campaign and a lot of it came from the MURDOCH media. Murdoch people made so many claims about arson that we ended up spending millions on a full public enquiry that investigated more than 30 of the major fires that season. YES we had over 30 major fires that season and in the end NOT ONE fire was found to be caused by arson, but there were a couple of inconclusive causes. The vast majority of fires in Australia are from lightning strikes and power lines where there's been insufficient maintenance keeping the power lines clear of trees. Another major factor was a shortening of the time period when we could safely burn-off of the fuel loads. Just as Adams recent guest Dr. Daniel Swain explained about California we'd had several good years of rain that caused a lot of growth followed by a drought which dried it all out. So the fuel load in 2019 was very high making those fires worse than usual. The other thing that the faux-media (with few exceptions) point out is that like Australian Eucalyptus trees the California scrub brush is high in oil content. The sap in those trees is a form of oil. So they don't just burn they literally explode when the fire gets fierce enough. In 2019 we had trees blast apart and shower the surrounding area in eucalyptus oil. Another thing the faux-media fail to highlight is the effects of an unusually high hot wind event. We knew in 2019 that it was going to be a day of high winds and it doesn't matter who's in charge they can't affect the weather. All you can do is hope to be prepared well enough with water, fire trucks, water bombers and people, that you can handle the situation.
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