Climate of denial puts lives at risk

Last week the NSW Rural Fire Service announced the end of its quietest bushfire season in more than a decade. What a blessed relief it was after the horror summer the season before.

Still, many people in the same state have been hit by a disastrous autumn of flooding. Yet ­climate change has hardly rated a mention in the news coverage of the cool fire season or the damaging floods.

Climate evangelists missed an opportunity by not predicting flooding rains as more evidence of a warming climate — after all, floods tend to follow the breaking of a drought.

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Little more than a year ago, the activists had no qualms about seeking to capitalise on the sure bet of a tough fire ­season after years of debilitating drought.

Truth be known, climate science tells us as much about the floods as it does about the fire weather. The consensus of the climate science suggests the devastating bushfires and flooding rains that have scarred and shaped this continent for millennia will continue to occur, but perhaps more often.

There is an eagerness from some to see established patterns in the here and now. Bushfires that had precedents 30, 50 or 100 years ago are routinely described as “unprecedented” — even in official reports.

In the climate wars there is unprecedented use of the word unprecedented. I have previously revealed historical reporting that exposed myths about bushfires in southern Queensland and northern NSW never having started so early in the season before, or rainforests in Queensland and western Tasmania never having burned before, or bushfires never having laid waste to such vast areas before.

It had all happened before — and recently enough to have been reported in the newspapers of the time.

None of this is to downplay the latest bushfires. The summer of 2019-20 recorded the most damaging fires in NSW seen since ­European settlement, and the human toll was terrible.

The death toll across four states was 34, each life lost a ­tragedy, and many involving selfless heroism from those protecting others. This is the human toll our nation dreads every summer.

There were a staggering 173 lives lost in Victoria in 2009; 75 across Victoria and South Australia in 1983’s Ash Wednesday; 71 people were killed in 1939; more than 60 in 1967; and the list of horror goes on.

It would be shocking and distasteful if we were to diminish the earlier and heavier death tolls because they occurred farther away from the media and political centres of Sydney and Canberra, or because they were not caught up in a partisan political debate about climate change.

Bushfires have always been with us and always will be. And in the worst conditions they ­always generate unstoppable firestorms.

Severe bushfires are extinguished only when the weather ­quells them with cool, calm and rain or denies them fuel by blowing them to water, wasteland or back on themselves.

Reading the two bushfire royal commission reports released last year, and much of the media coverage of them, there seems to be a misapprehension with many people that major bushfires can be defeated. The reality is that while smaller and more moderate bushfires can be tackled, all we can do when it comes to the big bushland firestorms on extreme days is get out of the way.

We now keep hearing the silly term megafire — presumably to hint that what we face today is worse than others faced before. Bushfires often burn into each other, this is unremarkable. Calling this a megafire is sensationalist tosh that is even taken up by officials and reports.

Did we just see a megaflood on the Hawkesbury? Activists seem less interested in creating alarm over floods than flames, probably because some of their brethren, such as Tim Flannery, foolishly predicted permanent drought and dry dams.

Anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of climate science must realise that if the planet gets hotter, it will also get wetter. Sure, the experts tell us that while overall rainfall increases, because of myriad shifting patterns some places will get drier.

The consensus predictions for southern and eastern Australia involve more floods along with more heatwaves. This suggests that building extra dams might be advisable, as opposed to the Flannery rhetoric portraying dams as redundant and helping to convince state governments to spend billions on desalination plants.

The most important factor for bushfire seasons on the east coast, especially in central and northern NSW and into Queensland, is drought — because it dries out forests that usually remain relatively moist in summer. The 2019-20 horror fire season came at the end of a severe drought.

But as reported in these pages before, the nation’s pre-eminent scientist in this field, Andy Pitman, says it is too early to claim that droughts are a product of climate change in Australia. More time, more data — and more droughts — are required before that conclusion can be made.

We know the nation’s most ­severe drought occurred around Federation, before anthropogenic climate change was a possibility.

We know this was also an ­extremely hot decade, but temperature records from that time are not used by the Bureau of Meteorology.

The BOM uses only temperature records from 1910 onwards, and even then it has homogenised — or adjusted — those. This is a fascinating topic that receives far too little attention, especially given the media fascination for weather records.

For instance, in January 2019 the BOM declared the hottest overnight minimum ever recorded in Australia, at a place called Noona in NSW. Much of the media breathlessly reported this as alarming new evidence of global warming, but a few checks revealed this weather station had been in place for only two years — so all we really knew was that this was the hottest night in Noona for two years.

Around the same time, the BOM declared a new record maximum for Adelaide, claiming it beat 130 years of records — which was untrue because, as I said, the bureau accepts only data after 1910. The BOM claimed this record topped a maximum ­recorded in 1939 but failed to tell us that the temperature, as recorded in 1939, was actually a full ­degree higher and had been “adjusted” down.

In this way temperature records can sometimes be declared only by revising downwards earlier readings. The BOM has clear scientific arguments and rationale for doing this, but the lack of transparency is as worrying as the media’s willingness to gormlessly amplify the spin. Who can really say when Adelaide had its hottest day?

The BOM sometimes seems to be caught up in activism rather than just relaying the facts. Meteorologists routinely talk about “weather events” rather than simply referring to storms, heatwaves or downpours.

With all this in mind, those bushfire reports make for depressing reading because apart from stating the bleeding obvious — “remote terrain presents challenges” — and making the usual recommendations about the need for good plans, equipment, communications and co-operation, they seem preoccupied with ticking off politically correct catchphrases around issues such as Indigenous culture, ecosystems, animal rights, social media and even working with the ABC.

The climate arguments seem designed to mollify political and media objectives rather than deal with bushfires. Because whatever happens to the climate, there are two certainties: first, this country alone cannot influence the climate we face; and, second, whatever climate trends emerge, we will continue to face catastrophic bushfire and flood conditions, just as we ­always have.

So rather than fall back into the complacency that follows a cool and damp summer, we are entering a winter period that is vital for saving us from the next clutch of severe fire days. The coming months are the season for extensive fuel reduction, prescribed burns and property preparation.

The hard reality is that when a fire starts on a hot day with high winds in dry bushland, it cannot be stopped. The only properties that will be saved, except by pure luck, are those whose owners have taken adequate precautions in ­design, sprinkler systems, land clearing, or all three.

To expect firefighters, aerial water bombers or climate policies to save large numbers of homes at these times is fanciful. Many properties have been built in indefensible proximity to danger, and in some areas this is often not the exception but the rule.

We need reminding that living close to the Australian bush will always be a death trap, one day.

You might be lucky and live your whole life on a ridge top over­hanging bushland and never see a dangerous fire. And you might sit through many catastrophic fire days without ignition occurring. Good for you, but one day, an ­unstoppable fire is coming over that ridge.

People prepare for that, or they do not. And as former NSW Rural Fire Service commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons has argued, we need better planning and education to ensure the preparation happens.

It is the same with floods; too many people build on flood plains and ride their luck.

Much of the natural disaster debate is overshadowed by climate activist delusion, insinuating that we might find solutions or reduce exposure by changing the weather. We need to ensure that whatever we build can be protected, creating a haven rather than a death trap.

It is that prosaic and obvious, yet extremely difficult to implement.

Associate Editor (National Affairs)

Sydney

Commentator, author and former political adviser, Chris Kenny hosts The Kenny Report Monday-Friday 5pm, and Kenny on Media, 8pm Friday, on Sky News. He takes an unashamedly rationalist approach to national affa… Read more

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