It's official! Today's SMH reports: "NSW Environment Minister Matt Kean says "no one can deny" that climate change is to blame for the smoke haze choking Sydney as bushfires burn across NSW.

In the state government's strongest comments yet on the link between climate change and bushfires, Mr Kean said: "This is not normal and doing nothing is not a solution"."

Minister Kean shows his hypocrisy by effectively "doing nothing" to prevent the severity of bushfires. As the minister responsible for national parks and wildlife services, he virtually completely disallows controlled burning in national parks, thus making them high-risk areas with massive fuel buildup. He keeps his fingers crossed that there would be no lightning strikes and that potential arsonists would keep well clear of those areas.

If he were serious, he should acknowledge that yesterday's thick smoke haze over Sydney originated mostly from intense fires in non-hazard-reduced, parched national parks, combined with unfavourable winds.

Yes and global warming caused the volcano on White Island to erupt.
There, we were all waiting for someone to say that were we not ?

And don't forget the CO2 emissions that were generated by that volcano.

It would not surprise if the climate change alarmists claim that those emissions were human-caused -- by way of tourists triggering the volcano by walking onto its crust.

ttbn,
> so does the IPCC whose spokespeople have recently repeated that
> climate change has had NO effect on bushfires or the drying out of the land.
Do you have a reference or that claim? I find it extraordinary because it contradicts their earlier claims and goes against simple logic – I really don't see how anyone could deny that bushfires are more intense and harder to stop when the air temperature is hotter.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Bernie Masters,
More solar panels means less in the way of electricity bills - so if anything, the prices would go down.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Raycom,
Why is it so hard for you to comprehend that 100% renewable energy doesn't mean disconnecting the gas powered power stations? It means installing so much renewable and battery power that we don't need to use them to provide a reliable electricity supply. It could alternatively mean getting all the gas from renewable sources.

Galen,
> There is absolutely no link between Co2 and temperature,
There's a very strong link between CO2 and temperature. Which is what you'd expect if you were familiar with the laws of physics.

> scientific fact clearly shows (from ice cores in Greenland and conclusively backed up
> from ice cores from Antarctica) that over the past 500 or so million years there is no correlation
> between Co2 and temperature. The opposite over long time periods is scientific fact.
That's been thoroughly debunked - see http://skepticalscience.com/co2-temperature-correlation.htm

>Had it not been for man’s contributions to Co2 resulting from the burning of fossil
>fuels, it was possible the declining levels of Co2 occurring naturally may have been
>devastating as at around 150ppm Co2, all vegetation begins to die.
Firstly it's not all plants. There are three variants of photosynthesis: C3 C4 and CAM. It's only the C3 plants that have difficulty coping with low CO2 levels, and even then, they don't just die out.
Secondly, our atmosphere has had low CO2 levels before.
Thirdly, CO2 levels are so far above 150ppm that it's as irrelevant as the fact that CO2 is toxic at high concentrations.

> 3 thousand odd years ago when Co2 levels were much lower than today,
> temperatures were approximately 2 degrees warmer.
Greenland temperatures were higher then, but global temperatures were lower.
But the problem isn't that our planet is warmer than it has been for thousands of years; it's that it is still getting hotter.

Aiden,
Your debunking is far from a reputable site which is not surprising.

Please explain this then http://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-Temperature-and-CO2-levels-over-600-million-years-Source-MacRae-2008_fig1_280548391

Galen