< Climate change has been absent from the Blue Mountains area for more than 100 years, so how is it responsible for the fires? >

What? How can you assert that, Jennifer?

How can you say that hotter drier conditions this early in the season than have ever been seen before(?) or at least are highly unusual, are not connected to climate change?

You can’t! We don’t know how real the connection might be. There might be no connection, but we can’t know this. So you can’t assert that climate change hasn’t contributed to these fires, or that it isn’t the critical element that has caused these fires and that they wouldn’t have happened otherwise. This is unknowable!

< Instead of implementing the well-documented solution of prescribed burning, as a community we are distracted with commentary about a ‘clear link’ between climate change and bushfires. >

The community is not being distracted by this! They are perfectly capable of appreciating both the probable climate change connection and the need for hazard-reduction burning.

It’s not a matter of one or the other! Both need to happen.

And a lot more needs to happen, such as a complete ban on any new building in the sort of environment which fosters fires storms… and perhaps an incentive scheme to get people to move out of some of these areas.

Afterall, hazard-reduction burning in tall eucalyptus forest can only achieve so much, and can give people a very dangerous false sense of security. Fire storms travel through the oil-rich canopy. How do you effectively reduce that hazard in close proximity to buildings and property? You can’t!

continued

You’ve gone to considerable lengths to demonstrate that it has not got significantly hotter in Bathurst over a long period of time. But temperature is only one aspect. What about humidity, rainfall, wind…. and the combination of factors so early in the season that have led to critical conditions for fires?

Again Jennifer, you can’t say that this is not connected to climate change.

Given all the other indications of AGW around the planet, these fires should indeed prompt us to be taking more action on climate change…. or should I say; on sustainability.

We should be doing largely the same sort of things to get our society onto a sustainable footing as for climate change. So whether AGW is real or not should be MOOT!

Leaving aside the possibility/probability/likelihood/unlikelihood that the fires have been helped along by climate change, one question still leaves me shaking my head in confusion.

Why do so many people think they are entitled to put other folks' lives in danger, by buying properties in areas well-known to be at risk to bush fires?

It has to be one of the most selfish property purchases ever. Leaving the crowded, filthy cities (pace Ludwig) for the sylvan delights of fresh air and stunning views, and then expecting the world + dog to come to their rescue when the landscape bursts into flame. The newspapers have been chock-full of sob-stories, complete with pictures of charred ex-houses. But not a word about how the situation was entirely self-inflicted.

Knowing some of the volunteers personally - and as an employer, freely giving them time off on full pay to do their courageous, dangerous work - I am happy to do my bit when the firefighters rattle the tin. But I do not for one minute see that it is my responsibility to financially support the people who deliberately put themselves in the firing line, in order to satisfy their personal preference for rural tranquillity.

Bah, humbug.

Wot, another climate change article? This has surely been done to death! In fact it is dead, buried and cremated according to our Rhodes Scholar P.M. who clearly is a wacko, quick with his lip but slow of intelligence (yawn).

As we debate the pros and cons of climate change (yawn), spare a thought for the U.S. which is trying to put Russia and China in a geographical cage so it can control the world. Keep in mind that Russia and China have lots of nukes too and will defend themselves.

Why aren't we talking about this present looming threat which hangs over our heads like the Sword of Damocles?

A bushfire is tiny and insignificant compared with a nuclear holocaust!

It's a question of priorities.

Well I thought it was a good article and instead of being a polemic did at least contain some easily understandable data.

Even though they have changed to rhetoric from global warming to climate change the key hypothesis of the alarmists is that world is warming due to CO2 levels and this will be catastrophic for mankind unless it starts reducing the production of anthropogenic carbon dioxide. The deputy leader of the Greens has put forward the hypothesis the NSW bush fires are due to global warming. If there are not rising temperatures the hypothesis should be rejected. You do not say there are other factors, the essence of the scientific method it that you try to disprove hypothesis not prove them.

We have just had a wonderful example of the converse. Antarctic sheet ice in winter is at the highest levels since measurements began. If the reverse had been true the alarmists would have been out in force. Instead they say that other factors beside global warming have caused a distortion in the expected results. Agsin they are trying to distort the evidence to prove a hypothesis not the opposite.

Another day, another climate change denial article on OLO. Jenifer have you shown your data to the climate scientist at your Uni?.....No thought not...
The science of climate change is fought out in science journals not the court of public opinion. You can’t win the argument with informed people with the technical expertise so you appeal to the ignorant masses that’s a creationist methodology.