Dear Mr Steelredux.

Is the climate changing? Answer, Yes. The climate has always changed. Specifically, our planet warms and cools, warms and cools, in regular, cyclic events roughly every 1000 years. The last warming period was the Medieval Warm Period 1000 years ago, followed by cooling in the Little Ice Age, 500 years ago. Our planet is now in another scheduled warming period. If the last 9 warming periods are a reliable guide to our present warming period (they should be) then our planet will warm another 2 degrees before it reverses into a serious ice age.

And you know what? There is not a single, solitary climate scientist who does not know that. It is part of the historical record, and in our present free democratic society, the State can not just air brush the historical record away.

The planet it warming. I don't even know why the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, or NOAA are "adjusting" the figures to prove it is warming. I suspect it is because it is not warming fast enough to scare entire populations to turn away from free market democracies, and instead submit to socialist totalitarian control.

Whether climate change has anything to do with our present bushfire crisis is something that nobody can answer. Increased temperatures might cause increased desertification, or it might cause increased precipitation through increased evaporation. Or it might be that this is just another bad drought and bushfire season of which Australia has already had plenty.

The Big Lie being propagated to naive and easily led people like your good self, is that climate change is caused by increased human induced atmospheric CO2. That is total bunkum. If anthropogenic CO2 is the main reason for climate change, then what anthropogenic increases in CO2 caused the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period, or every other preceding warm period going back millions of years??

HIGW is the biggest hoax since The Stolen Generations, or Hitler's claim that the Jews burned down the Reichstag. And you fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.

Dear Alison Jane,

Yes I can understand your reaction. Getting called out on your blithering denialism can be confronting.

Just a quick question if I may. What would it take for you to accept that the predictions are valid? 50% more days over 35C? 100%? 150%? 200%. Are you able to put any kind of figure on it. It doesn't even have to be around temperature, just something that would tip the scales for you.

Graham Y is correct re temperature data. We only got access to digital satellite data in the late 1970’s and having spent all my life running networks of point measurement stations, the only way to get global views is via the satellite networks. Seeing a electrostatic facsimile map roll of a met office machine was an insight, but 5 years later seeing my first multispectral 1-20 metre resolution SPOT satellite pre-launch pilot study image was truly eye opening, particularly once you started manipulating it with a mainframe computer.

The point measurements are essential for validation, but when I started using them in the mid 1980’s, it was amazing how the previous “models” for extrapolating point sources to produce areal/regional/global distribution maps of data were distorted compared to the actual satellite images when they became available. Satellites are not perfect, but when likes to reliable point sources, they offer objective global perspectives.

Also remember, global climate models operate on 100km square grids, satellites operate from 10m to 1km squares (pixels).

The El Nino/ La Nina has produced drought in Australia. This has been caused by and made worse by Climate Change. The bushfire season has lengthened in Northern and Southern hemispheres. What this does is to reduce the time in which cool burning can occur without is getting out of hand. Arsonists are a convenient distraction just like downed electricity lines.
The real reason for the ferocity of these recent bushfires is the fact that hazard reduction could not occur in the small window of time available.

MJO, Enso, SAM and the IOD were all contributors to the drought. They are natural weather systems. The effect of these systems left Australia dry and hot as result of unfavourable wind patterns and the land being surrounded by anomalously cool ocean (less evaporation with consequent cloud/rainfall reduction).

If someone can explain how global warming caused this I am all ears. I would have thought that if the oceans were warmer we would get more rain, not less.

It's not about choice. Both need to be acted upon.

At the one level we can have measures to control the fuel loads by bush clearing, backburning, development controls, etc. This can be handled by State and LGAs.

At the other level we need Soot 'Beam up me Scotty' Morrison and his team of born-again climate change warriors to put pressure on the big greenhouse gas emitters of the world to reduce their levels of emission in order to limit the extreme heat and dryness that is making Australia a constant victim of global warming.

We cannot expect Soot and his mates to blank out sun spots or stop volcanoes from erupting or alter the Milankovitch cycles but can can take action on the burning of fossil fuels producing the greenhouse effect. Actually his political career now depends on it.