We need an inquiry into climate alarmism
"I hope you are sitting down; this foray into political and
media madness over bushfires and climate change starts with recognising some excellent, forensic journalism by the ABC.
Investigating last summer’s devastating Gospers Mountain fire, journalist Philippa McDonald took us to the very tree where the fire is believed to have been started when it was struck by lightning in a thunderstorm.
McDonald used this to give us the brilliantly counterintuitive opening line; “It began not with fire, but ice.”
In a series of reports, McDonald and her team retraced the history of the fire over a number of weeks, how it was almost extinguished by rain,
how bushwalkers in the wrong place at the wrong time thwarted a backburn that might have stopped it, how another prescribed burn got out of control and destroyed houses, and how a fortuitous wind change stopped it encroaching on suburban Sydney.
We might quibble with some of the alarmist language — repeating the
silly new “megafire” term and pretending that when fires meet they join and get bigger when, in fact, this reduces the number of fronts and total length of fire perimeter — but overall the reporting was factual and admirable because it explained the many variables in fire behaviour and the
factors that can influence whether a fire can be contained or extinguished before weather conditions turn it into an unstoppable beast. Surprisingly, and refreshingly, the reports did not dwell on climate change.
When it comes to our bushfires climate change is so close to being irrelevant, it should hardly warrant a passing reference — we have always faced disastrous bushfire conditions and always will. If climate change makes the worst conditions either marginally more or less common, it matters not; we still need to do the same things to protect ourselves...
Read all!!
