Absolutely nothing to do with climate change.

This woman is a trained ideologue - that's why she can fit so much tendentious garbage on to one page.

Come on love, we all know the problem was a huge excess of fuel.

This was caused by greenies managing to cower authorities into not conducting cool weather burning programs.

How many times does the same thing have to happen before you people start to wake up to the stupidity of what you reach.

Dr Roy Spencer and Dr Christie have indicated that for February 2016 there has been a jump in temperature of 0.83 C. Drs Spencer and Christy have been processing data from satellites for many years using modelling. They have been the scientists deniers have often quoted in the past.

Professor Bowman has attributed the recent fires off the West Coast of Tasmania and Central Plaeau to Climate change. Tasmania had experienced dry conditions in rainforest areas on the West Coast and Central Plateau from Winter through to Summer. Currently lakes are at record low levels. The bush fires were started by dry lightening. The Central Plateau is an area where vegetation has not been touched by fire for over a thousand years +, the type of vegetation is completely fire intolerant. Just after the fires had begun rain bombs fell over the Eastern part of the State; Launceston in January 2016 received the highest rainfall since records began.
The Mercury had several articles in relation to the bushfires and floods.
There are similar situations around the planet developing at an increasing pace.

Temperature as recorded by satellites is showing an increase.

Ant, an increase of 0.83 degrees causes fires and/or flooding HOW? That's a smaller temperature increase than most people would experience between getting out of bed and sitting down to breakfast.

Strange we never had bushfires before "climate change" came along and ruined everything.

With the money you just received for writing this article, Angela, you will never have to treat an animal ever again.

There may or may not be some kind of causative relationship between human-caused climate change and the phenomenon described in this essay.

However it does seem to be the case with the devastating cyclone Winston which was the worst category 5 cyclone recorded in the South Pacific. It was much much more powerful and devastating than the 2010 cyclone Tomas. See for instance the title Fiji Pounded By First Category 5 Storm on Record via The Wunderground website. Which also features observations on other extreme weather phenomenon.

Hmmmm....who to believe?
The author of this well written article - "Angela Frimberger is a biologist and veterinary oncologist. In 2014 she was trained as a Climate Leader by the Climate Reality Project and Australian Conservation Foundation''.

Or - ttbn, Calwest, Hasbeen and Yuyutsu and other non-scientist, would be expert, climate change deniers who populate this forum?

It seems to me that the climate in our world is definitely getting worse, with larger storms, cyclones, rainfall, temperatures than ever before in recorded history. I tend to believe actual records that have been kept about the weather for many years.
I see no reason why these facts aren't believed by people with their ignorant heads in the sand?

Here is the most telling figure. According to the Australian Institute of Criminology about 50% of bushfires are started by Arsonists or suspected to be. Ambient temperature is but one of seven or so other natural factors which also contribute to bushfires. Ask yourself this question...What would the best way to prevent bushfires?, Preventing arson or keeping the temperature from rising?

Considering the much larger effect of arson, it is clear that temperature increase is a trivial contributor to bushfires compared to deliberately lit fires. So Climate change, which is but one factor in temperature increase, is clearly not a significant issue when it comes to bushfires. Money would be better spent on preventing Arson.

Suseonline, it is a well established fact that you are a moron. Go away. You have nothing of value to offer.

Calwest... nothing to contribute to the discussion but ignorant troll spitting as usual.
Charming.

Well and given he is right one of those rare times, where I'm almost forced to agree with Hasbeen!

Even so and given climate is real, and one of the consequences are measured and recorded increased average wind speeds!

We witnessed some truly catastrophic unstoppable fire storms, moving with the speed of thundering express steam trains, that took everything including rare and or threatened flora or fauna before them!

Leaving great swathes of completely burnt land, ripe for infestation with extremely problematic feral species. And created erosion.

And completely down to, afterward conveniently ignored by them or their spokespersons; downright dumb and totally irresponsible, lock and leave it, imposed green policies!

Badly burnt and therefore baked land is almost totally impervious to regional rainfall! Which instead of soaking in, simply becomes runoff that and adds injury to insult by ripping away remaining fragile topsoil!

Why, intensive cell grazing with hooved animals and very temporary relocatable fencing, would have saved all that was lost, all while actually improving soil fertility and moisture absorbing capabilities.

The short term and intensive nature of the practice, massively reducing the fuel load, and rather than compacting the soil, breaks it open to improve rainfall penetration, absorption and increased storage as useful soil moisture!
Rhrosty.

There is no doubt that many bushfires are caused by arsonists.
On the West Coast of Tasmania the bushfires were in very remote areas, dry lightening being the cause. Dry lightening is quite unusual for Tasmania.
Rather than take an insular view, check what has been happening in Siberia, Northern Canada, Alaska, other US States, the Amazon Basin in relation to wildfires.

Firemen; the Professional people dealing with fire, very clearly talk about the involvement of climate change.

Off topic, but relevant; prior to retirement I was in a position where with colleagues we interviewed people for Professional positions periodically. Prior to being accepted for an interview, people needed to show through examples in their CVs that they had actual experience and the relevant University Degree. During interviews people were asked about how they would deal with particular scenarios; i.e., give some proof they had the experience and understanding to deal with difficult situations.

In other words, just suggesting that Angela is wrong in a few sentences without any evidence is meaningless.

Reversing climate change is just not that difficult.

First cab off the rank is to replace dirty coal fired power station with something else and not alternative fossil fuel!

Albeit, NG powered ceramic fuel cells are acceptable local solutions, which produces mostly pristine water vapour as the exhaust product.

There are a number of carbon free alternatives, (very large scale solar thermal,cheaper than coal thorium) that we could invest in for the nation the economy and our future, but only if we're not led by Idealogues with a vested interest in the current status quo, or are working hand in glove, with those who have?

Finally there's very broad scale algae production, for the purpose of creating an endlessly sustainable homegrown fuel (ready to use as is) industry.

Some algae are up to 60% oil, and absorb 2.5 times their bodyweight in Co2. Moreover, under optimised conditions, they will literally double that bodyweight, Co2 absorption and oil production capacity every 24 hours!

Only endlessly prevaricating leaders are preventing it from being at least trialled. As it should be, given with its very low water use, (1-2% of traditional irrigation) it could not just save the Murray, but massively prosper all, [including the environment,] who depend on it.

It's not climate change the focuses the minds of the world's leaders, but just the acquisition of or holding onto power, and the devil take the hindmost!?

There'll be another talk fest, lots of empty promises and nice words, but after the conference, not too much will have changed!?

I mean we could reduce our carbon production by at least 40% and just by locating and using less carbon producing local oil and gas.

However the minds of our pollies will be concentrating on how to win the next election or just maximise their numbers in either house!?

Talk about warm and comfortable fogs, only moving when the goose is well and truly cooked!

Lord help,the human race, given our pollies are, like clever wordsmith, Cardinal pell, self evidently are just not genuinely interested the mugs out there in mugsville?
Rhrosty.

Many humans across Australia have become so anthropocentric and as usual, most writers on this topic (as usual) only look at this issue from a human perspective.

Often when the issue of bushfires comes up, there are the predictable references going back to Aboriginal people and the burning of bushland and forests for example, that occurred for long periods of time.

There is also the predictable reference to how Aboriginal people are the traditional owners of this country and the land and this has made such an activity (such as bushfire burning) acceptable. This is despite the fact, that some parts of Australia, only have as little as 2% of native vegetation left in their area - but are still a high bushfire prone region, despite large amounts of land clearance.

The facts are Aboriginal people do not own this land, we call Australia - as they did not create it. The logic of land ownership is akin to a monopoly game board. So some respect for the homes of Australia's native wildlife is not unreasonable.

And no I am not playing the race card - I am related to Aboriginal people myself, but am not Aboriginal.

So when someone suggests or communicates something that some people don't want to hear, (like Angela) they are easily cut to bits, with simplistic arguments, using terms like "Suseonline, it is a well established fact that you are a moron. Go away. You have nothing of value to offer."

Great contribution, to a very serious scientific, planning and environmental issue - involving other matters (let alone animal welfare) and shows a huge lack of respect to the large amount of volunteer hours put in by those involved in native animal assistance after a bushfire, along with those who assist the human victims.

NathanJ,

You take my comment to Suseonline in isolation. The context is far more extensive: as many commenters have noted, Suseonline is impervious to facts or rational arguments. She is an emotional thinker who does not have the faintest clue about the difference between unsubstantiated assertion and verifiable fact.

She believes in "the stolen generation", for example, on the basis that Aboriginal people with sad eyes told her stories of their forebears' being "stolen". Bugger the royal commission, its findings don't count.

According to Suseonline, she is entitled to believe their stories because everybody else is just believing whitey stories.

So, if you don't know the context, best to stay out of it.

I know from experience that any attempt to have a rational conversation with her is doomed to failure because she simply doesn't understand rational thought.

I would not be surprised to find that members of the global-warming cult deliberately light fires in order to "prove" that climate is getting hotter.

The only place to light a fire Yoyo, is under folks like you, whose grasp of intellectual concepts of things like evidence and proof can be dismissed with yet another convenient conspiracy theory.

In a century of recording and measuring average wind speeds, there is little doubt that the average winds have increased ,as have ocean temperatures. And we've just transitioned through one of the hottest years on record. and not because of increased solar thermal activity during a waning (cooling) phase, that started in the mid seventies(NASA)! All while permanently frozen permafrost melted, Alaskan summer sea ice disappeared, and hundreds of new melt water lakes appeared on formerly permanently frozen Alaskan and Siberian plains

I agree that we should not light fires, nor should we continue the stone age land clearing process, given some rainforest vegetation along with giant wombats and other exterminated species, has/have no fire tolerance, and the reason a land once covered from coast to coast in verdant forest is now just a green ring with arid desert land and the skeletons of former species at its centre!

Even so, some of this could be reversed by simply eliminating a practise that not only destroys non fire tolerant species but tons of scarce nutrients as well, which with every fire, are lifted skyward and transported over oceans to eventually create problematic vegetation growth where there were once coral reefs and what have you.

Intensive cell grazing removes the fuel load, while providing protein for those who need it, and allowing the non fire tolerant species to get a toehold and revegetate, and is how one progressively extends the monsoon recharging forest further and further south. An acre of trees, evaporates 2.5 times the moisture of an acre of open water!

Insanity is doing what you've always done while expecting a different outcome.
Rhrosty.

I am surprised Rhrosty, that a usually logical thinker such as yourself can fall for the global warming scam. Perhaps you don't have enough math to understand some of the real science, so here is another way to understand. Although it can have a very minor effect, it is impossible for CO2 to cause catastrophic global warming.

CO2 has a very restricted range of radiation wavelengths it can absorb.

There is a limited amount of those wavelengths transmitted from the earth.

The volume of CO2 currently in the air is absorbing almost all of those wavelengths, & has already has excess capacity to do so. That is, there is no more of those wavelengths available to be absorbed.

With all the radiation CO2 can absorb being absorbed by the current level of CO2, no increase in the volume of CO2 can increase that absorption. Effectively the CO2 hot pot is as hot as it can become.

Please think about these facts, & do a bit of research to satisfy yourself that they are actually fact. If you do, I'm sure we will have another global warming sceptic.

Unfortunately I doubt the same can be said for Suse or Poirot.

Rhosty,

The climate change activists have also ignored the inconvenient truth that while temperatures have still increased over the last 18 years, it is far far slower than climate models have predicted or even slower than in the previous decades when CO2 growth was much slower. Given the vastly complex workings of the atmosphere, I remember saying nearly a decade ago, that claiming that the science is known is extremely courageous.

Action needs to be taken, but it needs to be world wide, excluding the largest emitters such as China and India makes this a futile exercise. Secondly, excluding the only proven technology that can produce reliable base load supply (nuclear) is idiotic beyond mention.

Hasbeen

You display the denier trick of making a statement without providing a reference.

Please provide your citations.

Oceans pick up much warmth and they have an impact on climate along with CO2 emissions in the atmosphere..

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0118/The-oceans-are-heating-up-more-rapidly-than-we-thought.-Why-that-matters

Once again the Iditarod dog sled race is having problems with snow and ice, 4th time in about a decade. A matter of warmth.

http://www.newsminer.com/mushing/iditarod/iditarod-route-in-limbo-as-officials-set-to-talk-a/article_a309fcb8-b907-11e5-8d0f-8b6f0ca70955.html

Hasbeen, an obvious flaw in your hypothesis is that after absorbing photons of those wavelengths, the energy is usually reradiated in the same form (but in a different direction). So even if there is enough CO2 in the atmosphere to absorb all the photons of that wavelength, an increased CO2 concentration would increase the number of times they're absorbed, and hence their chance of being reradiated back to ground level.

Do a bit of your own research Ant, rather than uselessly spouting dogma.

Aidan due to the nature of the planet, a sphere, a higher percentage of any emitted radiation will be directed to space, rather than towards the planet. The more often it is absorbed, the more quickly this happens. The same increases with increasing altitude.

One thing also missing from the argument is incoming radiation. Although a large majority is not in the absorption range of CO2, a fair amount is, almost enough to saturate the CO2 capacity by itself. As above a large proportion of the sun's radiation in the CO2 absorption range is similarly returned to space, without reaching the lower atmosphere. Increasing CO2 COULD thus reduce incoming radiation.

I say COULD as some studies have found a corresponding reduction in water vapour with increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, & water vapour is more effective than CO2 at absorbing these frequencies. [do your own research ant, & become informed, rather that a propaganda merchant].

One other point Aidan, you can't transfer heat from a cooler body to a hotter body, another fact ignored by the scam merchants.

Hasbeen

To add to Aidan comment:

"Molecules of carbon dioxide (CO2) can absorb energy from infrared (IR) radiation. This animation shows a molecule of CO2 absorbing an incoming infrared photon (yellow arrows). The energy from the photon causes the CO2 molecule to vibrate. Shortly thereafter, the molecule gives up this extra energy by emitting another infrared photon. Once the extra energy has been removed by the emitted photon, the carbon dioxide stops vibrating."

From:

http://scied.ucar.edu/carbon-dioxide-absorbs-and-re-emits-infrared-radiation

A simple experiment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge0jhYDcazY

A more sophisticated experiment:

http://thiniceclimate.org/blog/details/1906/how-co2-traps-sun39s-warmth

The eleven year ARM research program was conducted in the natural environment:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150225132103.htm

Quote:

"Based on an analysis of data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's CarbonTracker system, the scientists linked this upswing in CO2-attributed radiative forcing to fossil fuel emissions and fires."

Hasbeen,

"Aidan due to the nature of the planet, a sphere, a higher percentage of any emitted radiation will be directed to space, rather than towards the planet."
That much is true, although the difference is very small as the radius of the planet is huge compared to the thickness of the atmosphere.

"The more often it is absorbed, the more quickly this happens."
FALSE. More of the radiation that CO2 absorbs comes from the ground (due to it being heated by shorter wavelength radiation from the sun) than direct from the sun. Though the amount of incoming radiation in the CO2 absorption range is not trivial, it's much less than the ground emits.

"The [proportion reradiated out into space] increases with increasing altitude."
Only slightly. And if you want to include slight effects, you should also consider twilight, when the sun is not shining on the ground but the radiation reaches it indirectly.

"Although a large majority [of incoming radiation] is not in the absorption range of CO2, a fair amount is, almost enough to saturate the CO2 capacity by itself."
First you claim there's already so much CO2 in the atmosphere that "already has excess capacity to do so. That is, there is no more of those wavelengths available to be absorbed." Now just a day later you try to claim almost the opposite: there's so little CO2 in the atmosphere that it scarcely has any capacity left to absorb any more radiation of the right wavelength than what comes directly from the sun. Make your mind up!

"I say COULD as some studies have found a corresponding reduction in water vapour with increasing CO2 in the atmosphere,"
What studies have made this extraordinary finding? If they exist I'm surprised I've not heard of them, as it's the kind of thing I'd expect the climate change deniers to be trumpetting from the rooftops!

Hasbeen (continued)

"One other point Aidan, you can't transfer heat from a cooler body to a hotter body,
On average this is true, and hot things will cool down while cold things will warm up. However at the molecular and atomic level, where heat is movement, there are often small transfers of energy from cooler to hotter.

"another fact ignored by the scam merchants."
Irrelevant trivia can be safely ignored by everyone. The trouble is you've failed to spot who the real scam merchants are.

The flea says:”Dr Roy Spencer and Dr Christie have indicated that for February 2016 there has been a jump in temperature of 0.83 C”. The flea gives no reference for this statement.

The flea again:” You display the denier trick of making a statement without providing a reference.”
So why did the flea use what he baselessly and dishonestly refers to as “the denier trick” ?
It becomes clear if we look at what Spencer and Christy in fact said, which is:” there was +0.38 C warming from December to January."
http://www.drroyspencer.com/
The flea is simply lying again, and seems to think that if he gives no reference, no-one will check his false, dishonest contribution.
As I have pointed out previously, his lies and dishonesty make him unfit to participate in discussion on this forum. His uncivil and dishonest use of the term “denier” is disgraceful. He is unable to put forward any science to show any measurable human effect on climate, so there is no science to be denied by these figments of his distorted and rancid imagination.

Leo

You continue with your humour.

You really ought to check Dr Spencer's blog before making statements.

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2016/03/uah-v6-global-temperature-update-for-feb-2016-0-83-deg-c-new-record/