What is the connection between climate change and the black Thursday bushfires (1851) or the black Friday fires (1939) or Ash Wednesday (1983)? My point is that bushfires are not a new phenomenon in Victoria. The 1939 fires destroyed far more bush than did the fires in 2009. You have failed to make any firm correlation between climate change and a single event. Of course I am not a scientist, then again neither it seems are you.

Thank you to OLO for posting this article by Tony Kevin. (off topic) I first read this article in New Matilda, which is going to close because of financial trouble. I am no scientist but it does seem peculiar that the Commission did not include any hypothesis (evidence) regarding so called climate change in their deliberations and findings. I remember the Ash Wednesday, and the 1939 fires in Victoria but cannot comment on the state of the damp gullies of the mountain regions from any scientific viewpoint, but I remember that no matter how hot the summers were in Vic. those ferny gullies were always damp, always. Kevin stated
that this time, they were dry. Surely this must indicate some changes
which were different from any other time.. Just thinking out loud from an old lady pensioner.

Victoria's wet mountain forest ash species eucalypts have evolved to only regenerate after very hot fires which generally only occur during severe drought which dries out the gully systems sufficiently to allow such fires to spread rapidly and burn with great intensity. There are old b/w photos of the aftermath of the 1939 fires which show whole watersheds absolutely decimated.

So, what happened on Black Saturday is nothing new, although it could be argued that the frequency of these conditions is increasing given that we have had fires of similar intensity in 2003 and 2006, which because they occured in remote places where few people live have attracted far less attention.

Whether or not climate change should have been examined in detail by the RC is another matter. I wouldn't have thought it would've be helpful to have the whole show taken over by the sort of hysteria that accompanies debate on whether or whether it is not occurring. However, I can see that those who are campaigning for climate change action could view the RC as an opportunity to exert more political pressure.

Graham, surely we have had enough of this flood of global warming propaganda from the halls of the ANU.

I think we had one from the ANU prof for tiddly winks the other day, didn't we? One can only assume that either they are getting some special treatment from Rudd & co for this muck, or are having the heavies put on them, to repay past favours.

What ever it is, enough is enough.

Lets us thank our lucky stars that some concoction of the Global Warming rubbish was not allowed to be used to get some very slack public servants off the hook. This commission has proved to be one with much more integrity than the UK inquiries set up to white wash the Climate Research Unit & their fellow travellers.

I guess you don't want to apply some form of the tainted "peer review" system to your articles, but surely a bull s##t detector would be in order by now.

I find it rather unethical to use the suffering of so many, for a cheap properganda exercise.

So the bush fires are a direct consequence of climate change? The spurious message seems to be that the man made component of a changing climate would overwhelm all the natural forces that impinge on weather/climate.
Interestingly there are a number of Fellows of the Royal Society that are questioning the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. Such is the force of this movement that Royal Society itself will review its previous dogmatic statements on this matter.
Please refer to an article in the London Telegraph of 28thMay 2010.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7776326/Royal-Society-to-re-examine-climate-message.html

This author is a complete nutter. He has form in writing about the Siev X, trying to make a connection of australian involvement by way of sabotage. He is nothing more than a wild eyed conspiracy theorist.

Now he is trying to connect the black saturday fires and AGW. It is as though previous fires have not occured.

His theories should simply be ignored.

It is a pity our tax money is used to employ him. That is our shame