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- BUSHFIRE -
Local journalists are having a field day reporting the bushfires around Canberra that have destroyed over 400 houses. Canberra is Australia's national capital, has a population exceeding 100,000 and is located about 150 kilometers inland. Weather reports indicate that further bushfires are likely today.
The nation's Prime Minister John Howard is described as doing & saying appropriate things, and has canceled a meeting with Kissinger.
Many ordinary Australians are angry with the environmentalists, who are seen as the pressure group that has stopped reduction of bushfire risk by preventing land clearing, fuel disposal and the clearing of fire trails.
The NSW Premier is keeping a very low profile. He must face an election in March and he is leading the polls. He is no doubt keeping a low profile because he was hugely responsible for favoring environmental group aspirations, by (for instance) punishing the Electricity corporations for clearing a fire break around their power lines.
So nothing long term will be done to reduce fire risk. This is because the only options are:
Australian farmers have attempted to reverse the damage to the land caused by Aboriginals by clearing the scrub and planting introduced grasses and by returning trace elements (such as molybdenum) to the soil. Unfortunately most introduced grasses are from high rainfall regions and are suited to heavy grazing. When a drought comes, those grasses dry out and become fuel.
Grassland is preferable to scrub. A grass fire burns rapidly, and is less hazardous to homes and humans than a scrub fire.
What is really needed is a grass that has extreme drought resistance, requires fewer trace elements, and does not turn to fuel as quickly as present grasses do when soil moisture is reduced.
- TIME ERRATUM -
Below are extracts from TIME magazine at http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101030127/nmicro.html
America's Ultra-Secret Weapon
By MARK THOMPSON
Posted Sunday, January 19, 2003; 10:31 a.m. EST
Every war has its wonder weapon. In Afghanistan, it
was the Predator, the unmanned drone that would loiter, invisibly, over
the battlefield before unleashing a Hellfire missile on an unsuspecting
target. The Gulf War marked the debut of precision-guided munitions, and
in Vietnam helicopters came of age. World War II gave us the horror of
nuclear weapons, and World War I introduced the tank. If there's a second
Gulf War, get ready to meet the high-power microwave. ...
... HPMs can unleash in a flash as much electrical power—2 billion watts or more—as the Hoover Dam generates in 24 hours.
That is all very nice to know Mark. From the Hoover Dam site I obtained the information that "The plant has a nameplate capacity of 2,074,000 kilowatts." which is about 2 billion watts. But what is this add-on-phrase "in 24 hours".
The amount of energy generated by the Hoover Dam in 24 hours is 2 x 10^9 x 24 x 60 x 60 Joules (= 1.7 x 10^14 Joules, or 173 terajoules), and if that much energy were released "in a flash" there would be a substantial explosion. (we are probably talking in thousands of tons of TNT)*. It is also extremely improbable that any capacitor smaller than a small skyscraper could contain that much energy.
Did TIME criticize Matt Drudge for inaccuracy? Perhaps
TIME journalists should talk to a competent engineer before shooting off
their mouths with engineering "facts".
*Lets see, diesel has about 40 MJ/kg energy content, so assume the same
value for TNT, then the explosion would be equal to 173 E12 / 40 E 6 =
4,325,000 Kg of TNT, which is the same size as a small (4 kiloton) nuclear
device.