We seem to have an either/or from climate change quibblers that bushfires were caused by arson or fuel load. The PM evidently leans to the latter but he may have snookered himself. That's because he has quoted emissions statistics that make a deduction (about 20 Mt in 2018) for land use changes. The bushfires in recent weeks were thought to have added about 400 Mt CO2. If prescribed burns go major in future years that will also add to emissions. That's an own goal for the PM.

Right on about social media: voting trends do not reflect the nonsense spouted on Twitter and Facebook. It's a pity that the cheaper sort of politician, who also tweets, doesn't realise this.

As for the 'fake' news about arson, criminologists have found that almost 40% of bushfires are caused by arsonists

Well that was a lot of words to say not much.

Bot swarm bad. Sure.

Both sides of the debate use them. Sure.

The 200 arsonists story was widely propagated through social media despite valiant attempts to correct the record.

I hadn't heard the line that they were deliberately lit in order to push AGW but okay.

But in the end somehow the author finishes by bashing the 'greens'. So the distortions continue whatever the medium.

Some folk believe the Russians tried to buy the U.S. Elections?

Only the willfully ignorant believe this is not so and that the Russian are busy interfering in the elections of sovereign nations, ditto the Chinese and as interference all over the place universities and elsewhere, the pages of social media and anywhere there is division they can exploit! As exampled so beautifully in the article! And before you go bananas, if the cap fits?

Did climate change cause the bushfires and the terrible damage?

Well no, but without question, it did contribute to the extreme severity and unprecedented loss of property and life. Extreme and enduring drought the worst in living memory and killer heatwave conditions, all occurring during a waning phase of the sun when the opposite ought to have been the literal case!

And the subsequent drying out of wetland and rainforest that previously for over sixty thousand years acted as natural fire breaks!

Simply denying causal factors means they are never ever addressed and can be without ever once harming the environment or the economy but rather the very opposite and turbocharge on steroids

So genius, let me pose this question! WTF is your objections to the economic turbocharge that is part of the solution? And laid out in chapter and verse in previous commentary on similar threads.

Wouldn't please your mate Mr Putin who clearly wants not only the opposite but socially engineered division!

To reiterate, if the cap fits?
Alan B.

Intelligent people will applaud this article because they have common sense, the educated will denounce it because they lack common sense !

After the '67 Tasmanian bushfires an American news service released a story along the lines of An island south of Australia was devastated by fires and the remaining survivors were rescued by an American naval vessel.

The more things change..

Alan B hates Trump and the Russians, so here is some news to you. Every Country and many businesses will use Bots, Trolls (and just for Alan B) "TROTS". That's the world of social media.

I thought the real issue of the opinion piece was the dangers of not educating the populus about how to live in this man made environment. This is particularly scary when most sub-20 year olds rely on social media like Facebook for their news.

Its easy. Climate change made the arsonist do it.

Not 2019, BUT 1828 at a blistering 53.9 °C

Back before man-made climate change was frying Australia, when CO2 was around 300ppm, the continent savoured an ideal pre-industrial climate.... RIGHT?

This is the kind of climate we are spending $10bn per annum to get back to... Right again?

We are told today's climate has more records and more extremes than times gone by, but the few records we have from the early 1800s are eye-popping.

Things were not just hotter, but so wildly hot it burst thermometers.

The earliest temperature records we have show that Australia was a land of shocking heatwaves and droughts, except for when it was bitterly cold or raging in flood.

In other words, nothing has changed, except possibly things might not be quite so hot now!

Silliggy (Lance Pidgeon) has been researching records from early explorers and from newspapers.

What he's uncovered is fascinating! It's as if history is being erased!

For all that we hear about recent record-breaking climate extremes, records that are equally extreme, and sometimes even more so, are ignored.

In January 1896 a savage blast "like a furnace" stretched across Australia from east to west and lasted for weeks.

The death toll reached 437 people in the eastern states.

Newspaper reports showed that in Bourke the heat approached 120°F (48.9°C) on three days

Links to documentary evidence (1)(2)(3)

The maximum at or above 102 degrees F (38.9°C) for 24 days straight!

Use the several links below to read the news reports at the time for yourself ..

1. By Tuesday Jan 14, people were reported falling dead in the streets.

2. Unable to sleep, people in Brewarrina walked the streets at night for hours, thermometers recorded 109F at midnight.

3. Overnight, the temperature did not fall below 103°F.

4. On Jan 18 in Wilcannia, five deaths were recorded in one day, the hospitals were overcrowded and reports said that "more deaths are hourly expected".

5. By January 24, in Bourke, many businesses had shut down (almost everything bar the hotels).

6. Panic stricken Australians were fleeing to the hills in climate refugee trains.


As reported at the time, the government felt the situation was so serious that to save lives and ease the suffering of its citizens they added cheaper train services.

What I found most interesting about this was the skill, dedication and length of meteorological data taken in the 1800s. When our climate is "the most important moral challenge" why is it there is so little interest in our longest and oldest data?

Who knew that one of the most meticulous and detailed temperature records in the world from the 1800s comes from Adelaide, largely thanks to Sir Charles Todd.

The West Terrace site in Adelaide was one of the best in the world at the time, and provides accurate historic temperatures from "Australia's first permanent weather bureau at Adelaide in 1856".

Rainfall records even appear to go as far back as 1839. Lance Pidgeon went delving into the National Archives and was surprised at what he found.

The media are in overdrive, making out that "the extreme heat is the new normal" in Australia.

You can't blame those high records on man-made global warming!

The above was sent to me in an email. Verify it for yourself !

Excellent info. Yes subjective, but as I try to make some understand, that while Stats are useful, but nothing more than a tool, and definitely not the arbitrator of truth!

As someone who went out daily come rain or shine for decades to read weather station data, wind up clock work mechanisms and replace charts when my fingers where frozen stiff.

The comment that rings true to me is about those who made early measurements religiously.

The contempt the current breed of 'meteorologists' in the BoM who run models is appalling and when their models don't work, they change the data (see " RUthergate" homogenization scandal).

Thank the person who sent you the email on behalf of all you have shared it with, even the CCCers!

BREAKING NEWS...NO NEED FOR A ROYAL COMMISION NOW... Emperor Mal has gone on the BBC to promote his forthcoming magnum opus. So he slams Morrison, Trump, Murdoch.
Nothing new ther then. But no. Emeperor Mal's renowned braincells have been working. He has the answer. just beg him back as PM, and he will solve it.

"How many more million hectares of forest has to be burnt? How many more lives and home have to be lost before the climate change deniers acknowledge they are wrong?” he said.

“If a country like Australia is not prepared to grapple with these issues seriously – itself being on the front line of the consequences and being an advanced, prosperous, technologically sophisticated country with the means to do so – why would other countries take the issue as seriously as they should?”

Emp Mal also calls his own party like terrorists and Murdoch evil. Lame PR move, ie attacking Trump, liberals and Murdoch will hopefully boost book sales! Check him out on BBC world news... like a trim down memory lane!

NOTE TO AUTHOR. Did you forget to add "Malbots" as a threat to media misinformation? I recall the early days of "comic computer skits" and "MAX Headroom" (https://youtu.be/5d41vzvntFU) springs to mind.
That glorious stuttering pre cursor to Red Dwarfs Kryton. Could you research the "Malbot" for us and report back asap! Beware, they are slippery,cunning, rich, arrogant little so'n'sos.

SERIOUS FOOTNOTE: Sadly a true global comic leader died from dementia today, Terry Jones (Monty Python for 'young ones'). Terry Jones RIP, and sympathies to his family and fellow Monty Pythons. ps, Michael Palin's interview on news is so human. Oh to have such an reaction an old mate.

Heard one of those extremely rare sensible & rather thoughtful Academics on the radio today.
He suggested that it is time that Australia has a kind of Civil Force akin to Army reservists such as I've been advocating here for years now. He said they could learn special skills on many fronts which would give especially the young, a leg in door to adult life.
Now that an Academic has finally come around to my suggestions will there still be those like Paul1405 et al who are against such a community & society building service ?

No problems with that, but do you think Malcolm Turnball would want to be patron for such an organisation?

Malcolm Turnball would want to be patron for such an organisation?
Allison Jane,
What the hell for ? There's no need for perpetuating pomp. This is exactly what we need to get away from. There's no need for a Patron ! All we need is incentive for young unemployed people. To involve the likes of Turnbull would be detrimental to the integrity of a National Service or whatever would be the most apt name for a service to help young people in the transition to adulthood with a light at the end of the tunnel. We need to reduce red tape not make it longer.

The Washington Post, 7 October 2018

"The world has barely 10 years left to get climate under control, UN scientists say."

Associated Press June 3 1989 Headline. UN Predicts Disaster If Global Warming Not Checked. "A senior UN official has said that entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by 2000."

The Canberra Times Sept. 1988. Maldives. "A gradual rise in average sea levels is threatening to completely cover this Indian Ocean nation of 1196 small islands within the next 30 years, according to authorities."

Maldives today.

http://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ACYBGNTr80q0S_mrMOyWSa3XGjTE0k81jQ:1579808176779&q=images+maldives+tourism&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjWr8KJvJrnAhWMf30KHWZRCnUQsAR6BAgKEAE&biw=2021&bih=1085#spf=1579808179081

The Guardian (who lists the story as "more than 11 years old) announced that "President Obama has four years to save the earth."

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/jan/18/jim-hansen-obama

The World Economic Forum in 2017 upped Hanson's "four years" and went for three. We have a bidding war here, folks.

http://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/07/these-experts-say-we-have-three-years-to-save-the-planet-from-irreversible-destruction

Before Global Warming, Global Cooling.

The Guardian November 20, 1974 "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as new source of death and misery for mankind."

The Guardian. January 29, 1974 Heading. "Satellites Show New Ice Age is Coming Fast."

Science News. March 1st, 1975. "The Ice Age Cometh."

Newsweek. April 28, 1975. "There are ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically, and that these changes will portend a drastic decline in food production. The evidence in support of thee predictions has started to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard pressed to keep up with them. Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for climate change and it's effects. They propose that covering the polar ice caps with soot may prevent global cooling."

Brisbane Courier Mail, Jan 10, 1871, responding to three consecutive years of severe drought. "Every season is said to be extraordinary. Every month, the wettest, or driest, or windiest, or hottest, or coldest, ever known. Much observation, which should correct a tendency to exaggerate, seems in the minds of some, a tendency to exaggerate it.

Apologies individual, I was being sarcastic, and your idea is good.

But now I think of it, might do him good, as he is unemployed, lacking direction and in need to something constructive for once in his life.. 'what da ya tink?'

For those of you who like examples of the low depths AGWers will go, watch this review of the Graphs and stats so many AGWS love to throw at us climate realists... its a cracker expose.

https://youtu.be/rvrsA0XlYGg

LEGO Great collection of predictions that even Nostradamus couldn't match. You remind me to dig out that article that listed our own, one-an-only most loved paleo-botanist Tim Flannery. I recall they reached 47 about a year ago, so must be at least 50+ my now and may even hit the century before he leaves his mortal coil.

Alison Jane, he wouldn't go "voom" with 4,000,000 volts. RIP Terry Jones & thanks for the laughs. That the 'climatologist(s)' et al with their modern gadgetry, computer modelling & such can predict the future sounds awfully like the Alchemists turning lead into gold. The gold is then gobbled up by the various 'geese' to lay another golden egg for their masters. It's all about the money you see. Could the so called rise in sea levels be just a factor of tectonic plates bobbing up & down in their various surrounding water masses causing the littoral zones to vary? That we have some documented history (let's call it the Bible) which indicated huge forested areas in what is now Lebanon in the time 6,000 to 7,000 years ago all means exactly what? That Mr Todd took temperature readings off his balcony in Adelaide 180 + years ago means we have some "recent data" to compare against. The scientists reckon from ice samples taken from Antarctica deduce that Earth has had higher levels of Co2, so again - did the planet fly off its axis and off into space? Scientists say there is evidence from geological sampling that indicates the magnetic poles have shifted...scientists say a lot of things.

Albie Manton in Darwin,

The combined Navy, Merchant & private shipping plus artificial islands & run-off sediment etc etc. all contribute substantially to any increase in Sea level. I suppose there's no money in that hence no hysteria about it !

Albie Manton in Darwin

You raise valid points. I am a committed scientist and earned my living using it for 40 years. But what you raise is fundamental to the future of science and its value to society.

The whole climate change cult (and those money making interest that thrive off it) has shaken my faith in science,in particular those so-called climate change scientists have damaged the whole profession and society's trust in it. You would have thought 'climate gate' would have blown it open!

Science is still, I believe valuable, but like the banks, these CCC scammers have sold shonky products to innocent customers, particularly our children. Remember how the Commonwealth Bank used it kiddies saving accounts?, Same thing with CCC scientist. Hopefully before I die, science can regain its credibility from this unfortunate disgraceful period in science previously sound history. Like all things science can be used for good or evil.

Watch this as a prime expose of US plutocrats misuse of science for AGW promotion in schools

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvrsA0XlYGg

Dare I say it, what about a global Royal Commission into Climate Change Science? (only joking)

Science is great ! I has brought us many wonderful things, it's some stupid people who call themselves scientists but are lacking vision & mentality who are ruining it for all !
Politics has the same problem !

Forget GW/CC the next big scare has arrived.

I've been looking for the TV Mini Series for some weeks now about an World wide Contagion that kills just about everybody on Earth. I've finally found it.

SURVIVORS

Survivors is a British post-apocalyptic fiction drama television series created by Terry Nation and produced by Terence Dudley at the BBC, that broadcast from 1975 to 1977. It concerns the plight of a group of people who have survived an apocalyptic plague pandemic, which was accidentally released by a Chinese scientist and quickly spread across the world via air travel. Referred to as "The Death", the plague kills approximately 4,999 out of every 5,000 human beings on the planet within a matter of weeks of being released.

Series 1 (1975)
As the world's population is almost annihilated by a mysterious pandemic, accidentally unleashed by a Chinese scientist, the crisis is first seen through the eyes of two characters—Jenny Richards, a young working woman in London, and Abby Grant, a middle-class corporate wife living a comfortable existence in a suburban commuter village. As Abby goes in search of her son Peter, who was away at school when the pandemic occurred, Jenny wanders aimlessly through the countryside.

Be Afraid, very Afraid. The next big World Wide scare is coming to you soon. Brought to you by the PC, Greenies, Socialist & Marxists. As predicted 40 years ago. Ay.

That brings back memories. I watched it the first time as a teenager cold wet miserable winter nights. It was fictional entertainment.

Where is it being shown?

Odd that we are now facing a world scare from China today. Wonder how long it will take Netflix to many a series, like they did with Chernobyl

AJ: that while Stats are useful, but nothing more than a tool, and definitely not the arbitrator of truth!

I have noticed, that Stats, provided by GW/CC enthusiasts, are real, while those provided by so called Denialists are not. As explained by the Warmists. Strange that.

Survivors.
With this outbreak of a World Wide Pandemic out of China I recalled watching "Survivors" in the 70's. I am told they did a remake in 2008. I missed that one. It's not on anywhere. I just remembered the Series.

"I have noticed, that Stats, provided by GW/CC enthusiasts, are real, while those provided by so called Denialists are not. As explained by the Warmists. Strange that."

Can you clarify this?

AJ: Can you clarify this?

I think that's reasonably straight forward & self explanatory, but, for the Uni Educated, I'll try to elucidate further.

Here goes.

<Stats, provided by GW/CC enthusiasts, are real,>

Anything quoted by GW/CC Enthusiates, according to them is upright, honest & true.

<those provided by so called Denialists are not.>

Any Stats provided by Denialists are all wrong, according to GW/CC Enthusiasts.

<As explained by the Warmists.>

GW/CC Enthusiasts say that any Stats provided by So called Denialists are made up & are wrong because they disagree with what "they" want you to believe.

GE = Global Warmist.
CC = Climate Change.

Sorry to sound Patronizing or appear to be doing the Mansplaining thing. I'm just trying to help. Really. Ay.