Climate Change and the Bushfires

What started the bushfires?

I've not found any reliable statistics regarding the number of fires or the direct causes attributed to the ignitions but I have seen the exaggerated lies, about arson being the principle cause of many of the bush-fires, being distributed by illiterate right wing science deniers trying to pre-empt any conclusions that climate change played a part. The first rule of fascism is to flood the media with lies and that's what they did. 

My expectation is that if meaningful bushfire ignition stats become available for this summer they will indicate mostly lightning strikes and other natural causes, plus a small number of brain-dead arsonists. Were there more fire ignitions than normal this season? I prefer to say I don't know, because I haven't counted them.

According to the ABC, only 1% of the area burnt in NSW was caused by arson - and even less in Victoria.

NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) Inspector Ben Shepherd said in January that lightning was predominantly responsible for the bushfire crisis: "I can confidently say the majority of the larger fires that we have been dealing with have been a result of fires coming out of remote areas as a result of dry lightning storms," he said.

Lightning ignited the two mega-blazes close to Sydney: the Gospers Mountain and Green Wattle Creek fires.

Mostly lightning. So how the fires were actually ignited is not something I feel inclined to debate too much.

More important is what happened once ignition occurred.

What I do know is that the experts, the fire-fighters and those directly in the path of those fires tell us that the ferocity of the fires this year, once ignited took them by surprise.

The way the fires took off, out of control and burnt out a huge area (approaching the area of England and Wales) was also unprecedented in my memory.

We've had big fires before.

We've had lots of fires before.

We've had high fuel loads before but.....

We've never had so many humongous mega-fires before.

Statistics

The only statistics I've found are listed in Wikipedia: 

                          2019-20 BUSH-FIRES (to 12th Feb 2020)

                FATALITIES      HOMES               HA

NSW               25               2,176             5,200,000

AUST              34               2,779           18,736,000

Climate Change

The link with Climate Change is not too hard to work out. The science behind the Greenhouse Effect is well known.

The gases which cause the Greenhouse Effect are known, measured and are increasing; and so are average global temperatures. Past predictions of increased gas levels being the forerunner to rising average global temperature and extreme weather have all come true. 

Everything which occurred this summer was predicted, including extreme weather events.

Climate Change is a factor in delivering extreme weather conditions and there is no doubt that extreme heat, with very low humidity and a very long drought were the main contributing factor to ignitions. After all, when those conditions were forecast, the fire danger warning was lifted to "Catastrophic" (a level that has only been required over the last ten years, as average global temperatures rose), so they knew the conditions and what was going to happen.

The Blame? 

Governments ignored the warnings of experts, leaving fire-fighting agencies unprepared, despite dire warnings from fire experts. State and Federal, they carried on as usual.

Those on the fire-front were more organised than in any of the previous major fires, some of which are mentioned above. They had more equipment, better communications, more aerial power and a more organised administration hierarchy - possibly enough to cope with fires like we had in the past, but nowhere near enough to cope with what was thrown at them this summer.

Governments are culpable. It is criminal that people in power did not want to acknowledge or even try to understand the underlying role of climate change in all this.