Are Australia Bushfires Worsening from Human-Caused Climate Change?

Roy Spencer PhD
Summary Points
1) Global wildfire activity has decreased in recent decades, making any localized increase (or decrease) in wildfire activity difficult to attribute to ‘global climate change’.
2) Like California, Australia is prone to bushfires every year during the dry season. Ample fuel and dry weather exists for devastating fires each year, even without excessive heat or drought, as illustrated by the record number of hectares burned (over 100 million) during 1974-75 when above-average precipitation and below-average temperatures existed.
3) Australian average temperatures in 2019 were well above what global warming theory can explain, illustrating the importance of natural year-to-year variability in weather patterns (e.g. drought and excessively high temperatures).
4) Australia precipitation was at a record low in 2019, but climate models predict no long-term trend in Australia precipitation, while the observed trend has been upward, not downward. This again highlights the importance of natural climate variability to fire weather conditions, as opposed to human-induced climate change.
5) While reductions in prescribed burning have probably contributed to the irregular increase in the number of years with large bush fires, a five-fold increase in population in the last 100 years has greatly increased potential ignition sources, both accidental and purposeful."

China Plans to Put 300 Million Chinese People in Africa

Electroverse
Europe plundered wealth from Africa. The USA plundered slaves from Africa. Now it’s China’s turn to plunder resources from Africa, as they step-up their prep for the coming Grand Solar Minimum.  
With most of China’s agriculture destined to go offline in the next 5-10 years –due to the impacts of solar cycle 25 and this next Grand Solar Minimum cycle– could the world’s most populous country’s investment in desert farming be their way of maintaining the “Mandate from God” (holding onto power)? The lower-latitudes are refreezing in line with historically low solar activity, with NASA recently revealing this upcoming solar cycle (25) will dip further still, to become “the weakest of the past 200 years” and the has agency correlated previous solar shutdowns to prolonged periods of global cooling here. Don’t be fooled by bogus political agendas — our future is one of ever-descending COLD. Prepare accordingly — learn of the threats, relocate if need be, and grow your own."

This burning issue of life and death

SMH (Australia)
One of the biggest furphies in the supercharged debate in the wake of Victoria's bushfires is the claim by green groups that they are great supporters of hazard reduction burning.
Also known as prescribed burning, this scientific regime creates a mosaic of lightly burned land at regular intervals of five to seven years, thus reducing surface fuel loads by varying amounts within the mosaic.
This reduction of fuel loads is expensive, but Australia's pre-eminent bushfire researchers, such as the CSIRO's Phil Cheney and Monash University's David Packam, say it has been proven to reduce the power and intensity of fire. Every bushfire inquiry since the 1939 Stretton royal commission has recommended increased prescribed burning to mitigate the effects of inevitable wildfire.
It is a matter of public record that green groups have long opposed such systematic prescribed burning, as is evident in their submissions to bushfire inquiries from as far back as 1992. They complain of a threat to biodiversity, including to fungi, from "frequent burning" regimes and urge resources be spent on water bombers and early detection, as well as on stopping climate change - good luck with that."

Greens leader declares he SUPPORTS hazard-reduction burning as Facebook critics accuse him of being responsible for bushfires

Daily Mail

Australian Greens leader Richard Di Natale has angrily insisted his party supports hazard-reduction burns as his critics accuse him of causing bushfires.

The campaign against the Greens has intensified on Facebook after blazes destroyed more than 6million hectares of bushland in Australia.

Conservative commentators, including News Corp columnist Miranda Devine, have consistently accused the left-wing minority party of being responsible for raging infernos.

More extreme critics have accused the Greens of being responsible for lives being lost, with 25 people now killed as a result of recent bushfires. "

British TV Personalities Savage Aussie Politician Over Climate Action, Bushfires

WUWT
British TV personalities including Piers Morgan have attacked Aussie politician Craig Kelly on air during an interview, over Kelly’s claim that dry weather and the buildup of fuel load is the reason for Australia’s horrific bushfire season. 
The claim by British TV personalities that anthropogenic climate change is making Australian bushfires worse is pure ignorance, not supported by the evidence.
MP Craig Kelly is spot on about the lack of long term drought trend. Although he later recanted a little, earlier this year Professor Andy Pitman explained in a lecture in Sydney science can’t tell us what impact climate change will have on Australian droughts, because there is no long term trend.
As for Craig Kelly’s claim about fuel load, I can confirm this by personal observation. My local area, much of the region along the road from my hometown to the Queensland state capital Brisbane is a vast tinderbox of dry, scrubby bush and dry grass growing on the ground between the trees, overlaid with flammable eucalyptus deadwood ranging from twigs to fallen tree trunks, all ready to be ignited by the slightest spark  ......
Hardly anybody in Australia dares to clear the bush and trees away from their houses, an obvious safety precaution in a bushfire area. People who make their homes or properties safe from fire risk financial ruin under laws based by urban green politicians, if the government catches them clearing native vegetation. Nobody, no matter how remote, is safe from the scourge of potentially lethal government bullying; Aussie state governments use satellites and AI to target and prosecute people trying to keep their properties safe from bushfires.
I am not personally at risk from bushfire, but I know people in my area who could lose their homes if it all ignites."

The information war about astonishing arson figures

JoNova (Australia)

Rapidly the word about the astonishing rate of arson and man-made accidents* is spreading, but it doesn’t help “the cause” (which for left-leaning journo’s appears to be getting left-leaning politicians elected).   .....

Firstly: Most of these fires are man-made but it’s arson and accidental* not climate change:

In NSW alone 24 people have been charged, with legal action happening against 180 in total ( that’s just in NSW)

NSW Police take legal action against more than 180 people

6 Jan 2020. NSW Police: Since Friday 8 November 2019, legal action – which ranges from cautions through to criminal charges – has been taken against 183 people – including 40 juveniles – for 205 bushfire-related offences.

• 24 people have been charged over alleged deliberately-lit bushfires
• 53 people have had legal actions for allegedly failing to comply with a total fire ban, and
• 47 people have had legal actions for allegedly discarding a lighted cigarette or match on land.....

In Queensland, police have arrested 101 people accused of starting bushfires, 69 juveniles and 32 adults.

Five people were arrested for allegedly setting bushland alight in Tasmania – and a further 10 in South Australia.

Meanwhile in Victoria, where locals have experienced some of the most catastrophic conditions the nation has ever seen, 43 people were charged with firebug offences."

Bushfires: Firebugs fuelling crisis as arson arrest toll hits 183

The Australian

More than 180 alleged arsonists have been arrested since the start of the bushfire season, with 29 blazes deliberately lit in the Shoalhaven region of southeast NSW in just three months.

The Shoalhaven fires were lit between July and September last year, with Kempsey recording 27 deliberately lit fires, NSW Bureau of Crime and Statistics and Research data shows.  

Police arrested 183 people for lighting bushfires across Queensland, NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania in the past few months. NSW police data shows 183 people have been charged or cautioned for bushfire-related offences since November 8, and 24 arrested for deliberately starting bushfires.

Queensland police say 101 people have been picked up for setting fires in the bush, 32 adults and 69 juveniles.

In Tasmania, where fires have sprung up in the north of the state and outside Hobart, five were caught setting fire to vegetation. Victoria reported 43 charged for 2019.

Melbourne University associate professor Janet Stanley said arsonists were typically young males, aged 12 to 24, or older men in their 60s.

“There is no one profile, but generally they seem to have a background of disadvantage, a traumatic upbringing and often have endured neglect and abuse as a child,” Professor Stanley said. “They are often kids not succeeding in school, or they have left school early and are unemployed. The boundaries between accidentally and purposefully are unclear because many arsonists don’t plan on causing the catastrophe that occurs. Often there is not an intention to cause chaos and the penalties for accidentally lighting a fire are far less than purposefully lighting a fire.”

Swinburne University professor James Ogloff said about 50 per cent of bushfires were lit by firebugs and impending fire seasons excited them. “They’re interested in seeing fire, interested in setting fire and quite often the information around how fires burn and accelerate excites them,” the director of the Centre for Forensic Behavioural Science said."

The Greens: cashing in on death and destruction

Spectator Australia

It’s an ill wind and all that — and the Greens are certainly making hay while the bush burns.
Only a matter of minutes ago their saintly leader Richard Di Natale sent around a pious email missive. It’s too long to catch in one screengrab, but this gives you enough of a taste:   ...."

'Arson is not caused by climate change': Row breaks out over real cause of Australia's bushfires after it emerges more than 180 people have been arrested for starting them

Daily Mail

In Queensland, police have arrested 101 people accused of starting bushfires, 69 juveniles and 32 adults. 

Five people were arrested for allegedly setting bushland alight in Tasmania - and a further 10 in South Australia. 

Meanwhile in Victoria, where locals have experienced some of the most catastrophic conditions the nation has ever seen, 43 people were charged with firebug offences. 

There have been 183 people arrested or charged with lighting bushfires nationally - and police fear that figure will climb. 

'Police are well aware that we need to take action against people, whatever that might be, in this time it is particularly a heightened risk of fire activity and we've seen the devastation it causes,' NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Gary Worboys said on Tuesday."

Liberal-hating 'greenies' have 'unfairly politicised' disastrous bushfires

Sky News Australia
Sky News host Chris Smith says “We have never seen a natural disaster so horribly and unfairly politicised” as the Prime Minister receives a “big bash” from more Liberal-hating “greenies”. The Prime Minister was enveloped by enraged local residents in Cobargo on Thursday who demanded more resources and funding from the Federal Government for the bushfire crisis, but funding for volunteer fire fighting units are provided by the States “never the Federal Government”, Smith said. Smith said for a town of 776 people, four fire fighter units was an “excellent ratio of fire units to residents”, but Smith decoded the “ugly episode” and said these greenies “hate conservative leaders… and blame Scomo for not changing the weather”. “These are greenies who … hate the fact that we survive on the energy from fossil fuels”, Smith said."

The green agenda is exacerbating Australia's wildfire problem

Telegraph
The unfolding tragedy in Australia is being interpreted as an apocalyptic portent of a “climate emergency”: justification for the drastic prescriptions of Extinction Rebellion to “close down the capitalist system”.
Heart-rending tweets from the fire zone convey the raw anger of farmers burnt out of their homes. But their interpretation is strikingly different. Far from begging everybody to embrace the green agenda, many are blaming the greens for exacerbating the fires by meddling in the time- honoured practice of burning off excess vegetation to mitigate wildfires."

Opportunists and the backlash: Tree changers meet a megafire, and Greens meet some rage

JoNova (Australia)

November 2019

Catastrophic fires are predicted tomorrow across the East Coast of Australia.  Around 500 schools will be closed tomorrow. Some 400,000 people have been warned “to be ready. Thousands are evacuated. A state of emergency has been declared. 1,400 interstate fire fighters have gone to NSW to help.
For updates about  New South Wales, check the NSW RFS website. For Queensland, see the QLD RFS website.
MyFireWatch has a live map updated regularly with outbreaks.

Spot the fuel

Our hearts go out to those that have lost homes.  But in every scene here, tree changers who never thought it would happen to them, were living with their $3000 bicycles in idyllic fire traps. How much were these folk misled by an ABC constantly reporting on climate change, and barely ever discussing fuel loads and almost never interviewing skeptics? Firefighters who recite the permitted “climate change” lines were put on a pedestal. Firefighters with data on fuel loads don’t get called.
And why was that ABC journalist wearing brand new fluro fighting gear to interview the victims?

But proximity is not the biggest problem.

If the fuel loads are too high across the state, there is no firebreak big enough to stop the embers in a Firestorm. Once a fire is generating its own weather and high-speed-wind every house would need a 10km clearing all around.

Scientist David Packham on what’s really causing the bushfires

2GB (Australia)

As former State Fire Chiefs call for a summit on bushfires, expert and scientist David Packham explains that it has nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with fuel-loads. (podcast)

Bushfire scientist David Packham warns of huge blaze threat, urges increase in fuel reduction burns

The Age
March 12, 2015

Forest fuel levels have worsened over the past 30 years because of "misguided green ideology", vested interests, political failure and mismanagement, creating a massive bushfire threat, a former CSIRO bushfire scientist has warned.
Victoria's "failed fire management policy" is an increasing threat to human life, water supplies, property and the forest environment, David Packham said in a submission to the state's Inspector-General for Emergency Management.
And he argued that unless the annual fuel reduction burning target, currently at a minimum of 5 per cent of public land, "is doubled or preferably tripled, a massive bushfire disaster will occur. The forest and alpine environment will decay and be damaged possibly beyond repair and homes and people [will be] incinerated."
He said forest fuel levels had climbed to their most dangerous level in thousands of years.
Mr Packham produced his submission in response to a review of bushfire fuel management announced last month by the state government and to be conducted by the Inspector-General for Emergency Management."

 

'Illegally' clearing his property cost him $100k in fines. But when the Black Saturday fires killed 173, his family and home survived while his neighbours died - so LIAM SHEAHAN asks, why can't we control our own homes?

Daily Mail

A Black Saturday survivor whose home was the only one standing after the bushfires raged because he illegally cleared his land, says property owners should be allowed to take matters into their own hands if authorities don't act. 

Liam Sheahan cleared trees and shrubs within 100 metres of his home in the hills at Strath Creek, central Victoria, in 2002 to create a firebreak in case bushfires ever hit.

While Mr Sheahan thought that was a 'common sense' decision, the local council did not, taking him to court where fines and legal costs left him $100,000 out of pocket.

However his decision to clear the land was vindicated on February 9, 2009, when his property was still standing after Black Saturday bushfires devastated the tiny town. "