text:
Expect the Black Saturday fires to be eclipsed in the summers to come
About Scott Hamilton
Scott Hamilton is a Panel member of the Strategic Advisory Panel for the Australian-German Energy Transition Hub.
The historic fires of 2009 might have shocked a nation, but considering the changing climate of this planet, we're set to see far worse.
Ten years ago, on February 7, 2009, the Black Saturday bushfires killed 173 people. More than 2,000 houses were destroyed in Victoria, including at Kilmore, Kinglake, Vectis (Horsham), Narbethong, Marysville, Strathewen, Beechworth, Labertouche (Bunyip), Coleraine, Weerite, Redesdale, Harkaway, Upper Ferntree Gully, Maiden Gully, Bendigo, Eaglehawk, Lynbrook, St Andrews, Flowerdale, Narre Warren, Callignee, and my home town of Churchill, where my mother and father still lived. Their home wasn't burned, but many of their neighbours were badly affected by the worst bushfire day in Australia's history.
A week before, my uncle and aunt had to seek refuge at Mum and Dad's place when a fire ember landed in their front yard during the Boolarra bushfires. Mum has since passed and Dad still lives in Churchill.
The climate is changing due to human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, and this means more bushfire danger days in what is already one of the most fire-prone countries in the world. Unfortunately, we have not done enough to curb climate change and the situation is getting worse.
Climate change means more days of extreme heat, longer heatwaves and more frequent droughts. Droughts now occur further south than in the past and have been increasing in Australia's southeast, including Tasmania. The records continue to tumble, and the evidence of dangerous climate change continues to mount.
Back in 2008, John Brumby was Premier of Victoria and Kevin Rudd was Prime Minister. I was working on climate change for the Victorian government, developing projections for increased risk of bushfires. A 2005 study had already predicted an increase in fire weather risk throughout most of southeastern Australia over the coming decades, with "very high" and "extreme" fire danger ratings likely to increase in frequency by 4%-25% by 2020 and 15%-70% by 2050.
There has been more research in this area, although certainly not enough, given the huge stakes. A 2007 report for the Climate Institute of Australia predicted increases in annual average fire danger of up to 30% by 2050, and a potential trebling in the number of days per year where the uppermost values of the index are exceeded. The largest changes are predicted for the arid and semi-arid interior of New South Wales and northern Victoria.
Projected increases in the number of days with very high or extreme fire weather for selected years. This study was based on scenarios producing 0.4℃, 1.0℃ and 2.9℃ temperature rises, which will respectively be reached by the years indicated, without emissions reduction. (Lucas et al. 2007, author provided.)
The 2008 Garnaut Climate Change Review also warned that fire seasons will begin earlier, end slightly later, and generally be more intense. "This effect increases over time but should be directly observable by 2020," it said.
In 2015, a further study by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology concluded that:
Projections of warming and drying in southern and eastern Australia will lead to increases in and a greater number of days with severe fire danger. In a business as usual scenario (worst case, driest scenario), severe fire days increase by up to 160-190% by 2090.
By combining all of this research, I created the graph below.
Projected annual number of days of very high or extreme bushfire danger. (CSIRO/BoM/Bushfire CRC.)
This shows that while there is some uncertainty as to the extent of increase in the number of bushfire danger days in southeastern Australia, the situation is undoubtedly getting worse, and it's time for action.
In 2017, the independent Climate Council published a report on Victoria's growing bushfire threat, which made several stark findings and recommendations:
climate change is increasing the risk of bushfires in Victoria and lengthening fire seasons;
Victoria is the state most affected by bushfires, and is on the front line of increasing bushfire risk;
the economic cost of bushfires in Victoria is an estimated A$180 million a year, and this is predicted to more than double by 2050;
bushfires will continue to adversely affect human and environmental health;
in the future, Victoria is very likely to experience an increased number of days with extreme fire danger. Communities and emergency services across Victoria must be prepared;
reducing greenhouse emissions is vital for protecting Australians.
The risk to water supplies
Our grandfathers and grandmothers had the wisdom to build amazing water infrastructure, protected by the "closed catchments" that give Melbourne and Victoria some of the best water in the world. Bushfires are a major risk to these water supplies—particularly in the catchments of major dams such as the Thomson.
A bushfire followed by a downpour that washes ash into the dam could potentially force the closure of the trillion-litre capacity Thomson reservoir, making it unusable for months. Firefighters have been battling exactly this kind of blaze at Mount Baw Baw in recent days and at the time of writing the situation has improved.
Major bushfires often occur in a time of severe drought. Black Saturday itself happened towards the end of the 15-year Millennium Drought when Victoria's water supplies were already strained. I remember vividly the then chief executive of the Melbourne Water Corporation urging the government to deal with any fire in the Thomson Dam catchment immediately, given the threat to Melbourne's water.
Fortunately, amid the devastation of Black Saturday we avoided major disruption to our water supplies. But this risk poses a huge challenge to both firefighters and policy-makers. The rule is that protection of human life is ranked above assets and infrastructure, and rightly so. But when there is a clear and present danger of towns and cities going without water, it's also true that safeguarding water means saving human lives in the ensuing days.
Any way you look at it, these are hard questions. On our current trajectory, we are heading for terrible trade-offs.
In 2050 my daughter Astrid and my son Atticus, Mum and Dad's grandchildren, will be 45 and 43, respectively. I hope it is not too late for our leaders in Canberra, Davos and throughout the world to wake up and take urgent action to limit global warming 1.5℃. That would mean that the most fearful predictions of our bushfire future never come to pass.


text:
On TikTok, everyone is starring in their own TV show
Another day, another filler episode.
By Elena Cavender Nov. 16, 2022
> Digital Culture
On TikTok, a young person sits on a bus and stares out the window. The caption reads, "What the fuck in the filler episode." Another creator sits on their bed and stares up at the camera. Text covers their face. "I don't think I've had a filler day in at least two years," it says. "Not even an ad break. Something is always going horribly wrong and it just keeps going. This isn't even a show this is a five part docuseries that some teenage girl is binging and won't turn off."
This particular TikTok has since garnered over 1.5 million views and 300,000 likes on the app. Remarks like "my whole life is a filler" and "my filler episodes are me crying over my other episodes" flood the comments section. The "filler episode" tag has over 22 million views.
So, why are TikTokkers using television jargon to make sense of their lives? "We use these TV terms because our world is absurd around us. We are in this age of 'peak TV' where so many people are consuming it," Amanda Brennan, a meme librarian and senior director of trends at the digital marketing agency XX Artists, explained to Mashable.
A filler episode is an industry term to describe an episode of television that doesn't contribute to the main plot of a show. On TikTok, it's since become synonymous with an uneventful moment in your life.
Using the language of popular culture to talk about and understand your life isn't a novel concept, but it reached new heights in 2020 with the rise of "main character syndrome," or thinking of yourself as the main character in your life. The dialogue took off on TikTok when Ashley Ward uploaded the audio, "You have to start romanticizing your life / you have to start thinking of yourself as the main character." More pointedly, thinking of yourself as the main character was a coping mechanism that allowed people to accept the intense early days of the pandemic as plot points in the story of their lives.
Two years later, the main character is a fixture of the internet lexicon. It's become a way of narrativizing your life on social media. As such, users have started to incorporate the language of television into their online vocabulary. Just like how eras were democratized on social media, now anyone can be the star of their very own television show that's all in their head.
TikTokkers aren't just conceptualizing their lives using filler episodes; they're also describing everyday situations using phrases like "crossover episode" and "spin off" — even going so far as addressing "the writers" of their show. Television language translates especially well when you're filming a video of yourself to be consumed on a digital platform, just like an episode of television might be.
"As video has become a dominant form of communication, it feels like you're consuming your friends lives as TV shows," Brennan said. "All of this social video consumption combined with entertainment consumption can create this big beautiful soup in your brain of 'oh no, my life is also a TV show.'"
It also becomes a way for people to talk about their lives online without getting too personal. One of these TikToks reads, "When you used to be a series regular but you moved away and got your own spin off and now you're waiting around for the holiday crossover episode." Another says, "My Best Friend currently working on her college life storyline while I'm just waiting for the Halloween episode so I can make a cameo." Both of these videos have accumulated nearly 2 million views. These are creators who are grappling with transitional periods of their life; they're navigating how to live apart from their friends by casting everyone in a figurative television show.
"It's kind of like a level set of language where you can talk through these feelings that you're having to someone on TikTok. Someone can pick it up and be 'OK, I know what this is talking about,'" explained Brennan. "It's a boiled down taxonomy of putting yourself into an archetype." You say that you're in your filler episode or about to have a crossover episode, and it's a shared language. While someone on the internet might not understand the nuances of your friendship, they will understand what a crossover episode with a friend means.
Other videos are less about making sense of one's life and more about putting the onus on someone else: the writers of their show. One of these videos reads, "To whoever is writing my show, I love that we've kept a consistent theme of me being a baddie with a big personality who doesn't need a man. But I was thinking for this season I'd be ok with switching things up and adding in a (realistic) love interest. We don't need every season ending up exactly the same :)" Another says, "Can the person writing the 'college' season of the show skip to the bit where i feel as close to my college friends as i did my high school mates. there's only so many times i can ask someone's major." Brennan compared this phenomenon to the popularity of astrology. "It's this comforting to think 'I'm this way because someone else or like something else is causing it.'"
The "writers of my show" trend is a passive way to manifest your destiny. It's being a viewer instead of the main character, content to just watch life go by. In this trend, creators leave their fate in someone else's hands. It's not unlike the "my FBI agent" meme where users imagined an FBI agent investigating their digital footprint and judging them for it.
By viewing your life as a television show through the eyes of someone else, life's everyday trials, tribulations, and mundanities become easier to understand — for you and your audience.
Topics: Memes, tiktok, Life, Digital Culture
A Brooklyn rave is about peace, love, unity, respect — and 'Sailor Moon'
In the name of the moon, dance!
People are selling Disney Splash Mountain water on Ebay. It's the dumbest thing ever.
Don't be Goofy.
In the age of TikTok, the female gaze has lost all meaning
There's no room for nuance online.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl