Australia is getting torched by wild fires right now, and there's plenty of blame to spread around. First, there's the Australian brush, which makes for a primo environment for blazes to spread, and has been regularly catching fire ever since the continent was settled. Scientists have also fingered climate change, which left conditions unusually arid even late in October (the middle of spring there). Finally, we've got Australia's military, which actually started the biggest fire of all when "live ordinances exercises" went awry.Yes, the military accidentally burned 180 square miles—an area the size of some small nations—to a crisp by launching live munitions into the brush. The Smithsonian points us to Stars and Stripes, which explains the debacle:"Fire investigators found that a massive fire near the city of Lithgow, west of Sydney, began Oct. 16 at a nearby Defense Department training area, and that the blaze 'was started as a result of live ordnance exercises' at the army range, the Rural Fire Service said in a statement."And of the 70 or so fires currently raging in the nation's most populous state, this one is by far the biggest. Whichever military official decided it would be a good idea to fire live rounds into an uber-dry brush after the warmest September in the nation's history is probably not the sharpest tactical mind in the shed. But the damage is done.Along with the other fires, it has consumed 200 homes and at least one man's life in the flame. It's got the nation sweating, as it, along with a dozen others, are still uncontained. Two thousand firefighters are overworked and currently battling 58 blazes. The Rural Fire Service Deputy Commissioner says "it's as bad as it gets."Clearly, this was a colossal fuckup on the military's part, but it also demonstrates the intense precariousness of the situation in Australia, and the dry, fiery future that awaits the home of the Outback. This time it was an errant munition from some dumb squad leader, but so as long as the climate continues to warm, the culprit could come from more mundane fire-starters; cigarette butts, lightening strikes, untended campfires.David Bowman, a professor of forest ecology, told CNN that the local conditions are showing "very convincing evidence" for signs of change."It's no big deal to have a fire in October but to have one that has burned like this for more than a week at this level of intensity is unprecedented," he said. "We are now looking at really catastrophic fire weather -- for October it just doesn't compute … firefighters are saying that because of the heat, bush fires are burning just as fiercely at night. It's all getting pretty worrying."The fires they're fighting are bigger are hotter—I've said before that in the not-so-distant future, fire-fighting is going to rank as one of the world's worst jobs. And yet world leaders aren't keen to make it any easier on them. Even as the fires sweep across the continent, Australia's global warming-denying prime minister, Tony Abbot, said that "these fires are certainly not a function of climate change. They are a function of life in Australia."If Abbott's so keen on denying the 25 years of science that support the wildfire-climate link, then the least he can do is work a little harder to idiot-proof his military.
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