It’s clear that climate change is happening … on a cycle of tens of thousands of years.

By Lyle Dunne

In response to widely-deplored remarks from Adam Bandt MP, the PM has confirmed the recent NSW bushfires have nothing to do with climate change.

I think he’s probably wrong.

I suspect that in the last ice age, 20,000 years ago – the beginning of the current cycle of global warming – bushfires in the Blue Mountains would have been less common.

On one level this is a trivial debating point. However  it does raise some important points about the concept of ‘climate change’, a term thought by many to have been dreamt up by alarmists in order to avoid the embarrassment caused by the previous bogey, ‘global warming’. Global warming was clear, quantifiable, measurable (at least in theory) — and, according to many, not in fact happening, at least for the last fifteen years or so.

(The story, as ever, is complicated: the “pause” – note the assumption here: warming WILL resume — affects surface temperatures, and there’s a counter-argument. Ocean and subsoil temperatures are still warming, it’s just that the surface isn’t – for reasons no-one seems to be able to explain. And now the believers in warming are saying what their opponents have long argued: trends are highly dependent on which years you choose. But it does all raise doubts about the “settled science” idea.)

No drawbacks

‘Climate change’ has none of these drawbacks. All kinds of meteorological phenomena can be attributed to human activity, and if the drought you’d said was anthropogenic (and permanent) comes to an end, with any luck there’ll be a flood, and later a fire, that we can blame on those dreadful humans.

It doesn’t even matter that those events are no more common than heretofore: if you suggest that a particular flood or cyclone is unprecedented, you can safely rely on a ‘noddy effect’ from those who’ve seen the TV coverage. Recent events weigh more heavily: as Kipling puts it in The Undertakers

In August was the jackal born;
The rains fell in September;
‘Now such a dreadful flood as this,’
Says he, ‘I can’t remember!’

It’s clear that climate change is happening, on a cycle of tens of thousands of years — indeed, at this phase it takes the form of warming. (Perhaps that’s what Tony Abbott means when he says ‘climate change is real’.) The real question is whether there is a detectable additional effect on a timetable which would allow it to be attributed to human activity.

It may be worth considering what climate change of the latter sort could possibly affect the likelihood or severity of bushfires. Increased temperatures could, of course, in several ways — only, as we’ve noted, there haven’t been any on the surface in the last 15 years. And I don’t think anyone’s suggested anthropogenic wind-speed increases, although they may yet. More electrical storms, in theory?

Curious silence

Of course, increased carbon dioxide levels directly stimulate plant growth, independently of any effect on temperature — a fact alarmists are curiously silent about, presumably because it’s mainly beneficial to humanity. Here we note a rhetorical device that involves deceit, if not lying: quoting gross negative effects of (projected) climate change, and ignoring the offsetting positives. Thus we hear much about projected increases in deaths from heat stress, but much less about the much greater projected reduction in deaths from cold. The 1997 IPCC report noted a projection that ‘tens of millions’ would face increased water stress — but failed to mention that an even greater number faced reduced water stress.

In fact Matt Ridley in The Spectator of 19 October discusses a ‘consensus’ that due to these and similar effects, global warming will prove beneficial in net terms until temperatures rise another 2.2°, that is until around the end of the century.

This does not mean there are no long-term concerns, but it does suggest a careful look at the cost-effectiveness of proposed mitigation strategies.

Returning to the question of bushfires, though, the recent NSW experience underlines the key role of fuel loads as the decisive bushfire risk factor. Electrical storms, temperatures and wind speeds, not to mention human frailty, may determine whether a fire breaks out on any given day, but if you have enough fuel, sooner or later it will dry out, and sooner or later it will burn. And in most Australian eucalypt forests, sooner or later you will have enough fuel: rainfall, temperatures and carbon dioxide levels may affect growth rates, but the nature of the wood and the climate mean that fuel accumulates much faster than it rots.

“All kinds of meteorological phenomena can be attributed to human activity, and if the drought you’d said was anthropogenic (and permanent) comes to an end, with any luck there’ll be a flood, and later a fire, that we can blame on those dreadful humans.”

Yet as the McLeod Report into the ACT bushfires pointed out, fuel is the only variable subject to human control. 

Basically, the choice is to do fuel reduction burning, in a controlled way at a time of your choosing, or allow nature to take its course, which will generally mean fires breaking out at times when their capacity to inflict damage is at its highest. 

The O’Farrell government has done more hazard-reduction burning than its predecessors, but still too little. Historically, a major constraint has been the Greens, and conservationists generally, who tend to oppose the practice as unnatural, and a risk to delicate ecosystems. Recent letter-writer to noted their continuing influence in local government:

“The arrogance of the Greens to be blaming the Coalition for the terrible bushfires in NSW is breathtaking because so-called Greens councils have banned burning off in the winter months, thereby creating a potential catastrophe.”[Bill Dobell, The Australian, October 19]

“I am permitted, by the Greens-dominated Shire of Yarra Ranges to clear 2m along my fence lines of my property. What these silly Greens don’t realise is that trees grow to 15m or more, and fires are in no way impeded by such a narrow clearance.” [Prue Sheldrick, The Australian, October 19.]

No burning, no sense

I have to say that the Greens policy is not categorically opposed to hazard-reduction burning, in theory, provided “climatic conditions allow it to be done safely and where it is consistent with maintaining the ecosystem”. It’s just that in practice these conditions seldom seem to be satisfied.

Miranda Devine notes in the Daily Telegraph :

“It is their [greenies’] continuing opposition to properly managing the fuel loads in our bush that has turned bushfires in recent times into unstoppable infernos.

“They might pay lip service to hazard reduction but in a thousand ways they obstruct it.

“…performing a controlled burn in the cooler months has become a logistical nightmare, with multiple forms to fill out, biodiversity to monitor and myriad agencies from which to beg permission.

“A process that once took six people now needs 40, with a limited window of suitable weather days.

“While the NSW government has vowed to increase hazard reduction, it is nowhere near enough.”

Historically, environmentalists have tended to exaggerate the delicacy of ecosystems. But if they’re right, then this in fact strengthens the case for fuel-reduction burning, at least in adjacent less-sensitive areas.

In no scenario does a “no burning” approach make sense. It just increases the likelihood of catastrophic fires – and, incidentally, massive injections of greenhouse gases.

On one aspect I agree with Bandt, though: the tragedy of bushfires should encourage, rather than discourage, an examination of the factors, including political ones, which contribute to risk. I just suggest he start looking a bit closer to home.

But before we go too far down this track, we should consider one final point: Henry Ergas (“Carbonista Bushfire Fallacies”, The Australian, 28 October) argues that there’s no clear evidence that bushfires have increased in frequency or intensity in the last century or so, and any increase in fire damage is attributable to more settlement in fire-prone areas. (One might speculate that “environmental” limits on damage-mitigation strategies like firebreaks and fuel reduction could contribute to the increase in damage, offsetting the benefits of improved building techniques.)

But if there is no increase in bushfire incidence, then the question of what causes it is meaningless.