Well cobber, ponder this. You ask if JM had shown this to the Climate scientist at her Uni. Well there are now loads of them after we poured money into this nonsense and the completely corrupt CPP whatever the idiots call themselves.
United Nations just means corrupt and greedy! Climate Scientist, when was that made a discipline? - as soon as there was an easy and public quid in it.
I was told by the BOM in 1989 that there had been no changes to the Australian climate since records began. Then they told the truth but after being thoroughly politicised are now saying a lot but meaning nothing.

We can't say there has been no change!
We might be able to say that our winters are milder and shorter, that the springs seems to be earlier, and more windy days seem to be happening?
And yes, this could also contribute to the greater release of more oil and evaporate from the forests, as they seek to compensate for the changes.
In fact an acre of trees can evaporate 2.5 times the evaporate of an acre of open water!
Given open water can reduce its total mass by as much as 50% annually during drought/dry conditions, one can then see in the comparison, that trees can aspire enough water to concentrate the salt in the lowering water table, causing die back, (which assists crowning) and progressive dehydration of all other companion understory.
Creating in the process during frequent dry spells, tinder dry conditions; and not the sort of conditions conducive to fire hazard reduction, with traditional burning.
As hard as it is for some to accept change, this is what we must have, with fire hazard reduction being surrendered to non fire methods, which would largely be done by cell grazing, assisted by very portable electric fences.
If people want to build in the bush, there needs to be mandatory building codes, which must include six foot high colorbond fences, roof top sprinklers, steel frames, brick cladding, concrete and clay, in all outdoor ornaments, and no tree, bush or shrub, and short grass only, within 30 metres of any dwelling!
All power/gas supply to be underground, where there is far fewer chances of interruption, or falling wires actually starting uncontrollable wild fires!
But particularly where people rely on reticulated electricity/NG for emergency pumps etc.
Gas bottles ought to be retained in water filled tanks, where cooling water would diminish the possibility, of radiant heat causing them to erupt with explosive force and contribute to the danger and destruction.
If this means changing them requires the assistance of a truck mounted hoist or some such, so be it!
Bitumen free gravel or concrete roads are safer!
Rhrosty.

Yes David G, and if you're the one battling, with your every resource to save hearth and home, or those of friends and neighbors, in the middle of a happening now, raging, crowning wild fire, racing toward you with the speed, power and sound, of a thundering express train; or a 474 passenger jet taking off, just yards from you!
The very last thing to worry about or trouble your mind, would be the very distant and hypothetical use, by some nut job dictator, of a nuclear weapon!
Please let the rest of us know,why is it, in almost every thread, we see your radical views on extremely hypothetical, Middle East self annihilation, nuclear conflicts?
One would be forgiven for believing, that's exactly what you want to see or somehow promote?
Like yet another Hate warped, radicalizing professional agitator, who invariably loads the gun, but always requires others to take all the risks, or pull the trigger?
No sacrifice is too great for radical HOMOPHOBIC Islam, as long as it is always someone Else, or entirely innocent women and children, eh?
Rhrosty.

As a volunteer firefighter myself and as a biologist I cannot do anything but agree with you that we desperately need to start actively maintaining our bushlands with prescribed burning as one of the tools.

Politics is a player in our total hands off approach but less so then money.

A forgotten culprit and a real long term killer for our natural environment (I believe) is our legal system with its simplistic right/wrong winner takes all approach. Any state government that conducted hot burns would be crazy. Such fire regimes are not compatible with our risk free society.

When they escaped the government would be 100% responsible regardless of how people where maintaining their properties or where they had built them. Small contained cold burns are possible but expensive, can only be done in accessible areas and limit the ability to build up a mosaic of environments which is what you are aiming to achieve for conservation purposes.

That all said you cannot take the readings from one town and lay it out as proof of your beliefs. The 100 year old weather stations all change over time as is well documented. They become urbanised and the temperature readings go up, trees grow and shade them and they go down. The jail weather station might have been situated in a hot stone courtyard for all we know and the later weather station might have had a completely different micro climate.

To use such a tiny set of data and then extrapolate it out like that is very manipulative. It strikes me as a bit like our legal system - the idea is to win the argument regardless of the truth. Inflexible and unchanging in the goal which is to score a point in the debate, get a bit of a rise and confirm personal beliefs. The actual problem that needs sorting out sadly gets lost a little don't you think?

Pericles, you old humbug, you are right! (Ooow, does that make me an old humbug too?)

We’ve had more than adequate warning over the years of the dangers of living in firestorm-prone areas.

So those who continue to live there, and those who have moved in since at least 1983 (Ash Wednesday), have got to bear a great deal of the blame for these tragedies.

Hey, people can have a sea-change or tree-change without moving into areas like this!

I live in a rural residential area in north Queensland, in ironbark and poplar gum savannah woodland. We don’t get firestorms here, and indeed the risk of firestorm events is not even a consideration in this part of the world.

Bushfire, yes, for people living nestled into the bush in slightly higher rainfall areas elsewhere in the far north, there is a real risk. But this a much lesser thing than the southern firestorm type of situation..... and can be much more effectively dealt with by a program of hazard-reduction burning.

The point is that you CAN live in wonderful bushland or semi-bushland areas that don’t have a grave fire risk.

Ok, this is off on a tangent to Jennifer’s article. Well…. it shouldn’t be! It should actually be at least as important as fire-reduction burning, strict building codes and assistance to move out of these areas, as well as addressing climate change / sustainability… and requiring very strict fire safety measures for those who remain, as per Rhrosty’s suggestions.

There's something to be said for concentrating on problems that we have a chance of influencing and correcting. The cause of the main State Mine fire was reportedly a military explosion. No explosion, no fire. This suggests that changing military policies and expanding fire-ban criteria-periods are the solutions to the problem.

Even if human caused climate change exists we Australians can do nothing effective about it. This is because India, China, the US and all of Europe (Eastern and Western) are expanding their carbon (greenhouse gas) use many times faster than any reductions in Australian carbon use. Any assumption that Australia exists in a plastic bubble isolating our climate from the world should be dispelled.

Even if we halved our carbon use, thereby destroying our economy and way of life, it would have no impact.

Australia providing a moral example may be a belief of greenies and the Rudds of this world. But righteous examples do not impress countries (that include China) that have a right to raise the material standard of living of their people.

Again - The cause of the main State Mine fire was reportedly a military explosion. No explosion, no fire. This suggests that changing military policies and expanding fire-ban criteria-periods are the solutions to the problem.

Pete