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Bushfire commission in denial over hard climate truths

By Tony Kevin - posted Monday, 31 May 2010


One way we deal with the unthinkable is to pretend it isn't there. On the basis of its published proceedings so far, the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission seems to be ignoring the relevance of climate change as a major causal factor in Black Saturday. Yet the Commission's first Term of Reference was to inquire and report into “the causes and circumstances of the bushfires”.

So far, the Royal Commission is addressing Black Saturday as if it were just another major bushfire in the series that includes Black Friday in 1939 and Ash Wednesday in 1983. The Commission is examining how particular bushfires started and spread, and how particular agencies and individuals responded to these emergencies.

The opening statements of the Chairman and of Counsel Assisting did not refer to climate change. Public hearings ended last week, yet no scientific witnesses have been called to testify on how climate change contributed to Black Saturday's unprecedented ferocity.

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Yet it was already clear to the public in the days after the fires that Victoria was in new climate territory. A feature article by Michael Bachelard and Melissa Fyfe in The Age reported climate scientists' views that these were “fires of climate change”.

The article set out the science behind the Bureau of Meteorology's warning on February 6 that February 7 was in danger of becoming the worst day in Victoria's history; in many areas, Forest Fire Danger Index values were predicted to be a terrifying 150 to 180. By comparison, Ash Wednesday in 1983 had a FFDI value of 102.

The Age journalists drew on the expertise of Professor Neville Nicholls, a distinguished climate scientist who spent 35 years as a senior researcher at the Bureau of Meteorology. Black Saturday was Melbourne's hottest-ever day - 46 degrees. The fires were spurred by fierce winds and unprecedented heat on the day itself. But to understand the intensity of the fires, one must consider that even the deepest wettest mountain gullies had been cured bone-dry during preceding weeks of unusual heat.

Because these gullies burned too, there was nothing to slow down and contain the fires.

Climate change played a major role in Black Saturday's severity. These fires came after the state's longest-ever 12-year drought, a string of the hottest years on record in the previous decade, a 35-day dry spell for Melbourne (the equal second-longest in history), and one of the most severe heatwaves on record.

The January 2009 heatwave - with record-breaking jumps in average local temperatures of more than two degrees in places - was so extraordinary that Nicholls described it as “mind-boggling”:

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The crucial thing linking Black Saturday to climate change is the preceding three-day heatwave, rather than the really hot temperatures on the day of the fires. By then, the situation was already primed. It is beyond reasonable doubt that global warming and the enhanced drying effects on Victoria's mountain forest country exacerbated the severity of this tragedy.

Nicholls lodged a detailed written submission to the Royal Commission. Other submissions addressing the climate change dimension of Black Saturday were lodged by climate scientist Professor David Karoly, and by the Australian Conservation Foundation. None of them were called to testify.

Nicholls' conclusions were:

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First published in www.eurekastreet.com.au on May 28, 2010.



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About the Author

Tony Kevin holds degrees in civil engineering, and in economics and political science. He retired from the Australian foreign service in 1998, after a 30-year career during which he served in the Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister’s departments, and was Australia’s ambassador to Poland and Cambodia. He is currently an honorary visiting fellow at the Australian National University’s Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies in Canberra. He has written extensively on Australian foreign, national security, and refugee policies in Australia’s national print media, and is the author of the award-winning books A Certain Maritime Incident – the Sinking of SIEV X, and Walking the Camino: a modern pilgrimage to Santiago. His third book on the global climate crisis, Crunch Time: Using and abusing Keynes to fight the twin crises of our era was published by Scribe in September 2009.

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