Bushfire commission in denial over hard climate truths

The unprecedented drought of the past 12 years, the unprecedented three-day heat wave of late January, and the unprecedented high temperatures on 7 February, must all have contributed to exacerbating the bushfire situation on 7 February. In turn, there are strong grounds for concluding that human-caused climate change, specifically the enhanced greenhouse effect caused by increased atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, contributed to each of these three unprecedented meteorological features. The obvious conclusion is that human-caused climate change exacerbated the bushfire situation of 7 February, even though it did not “cause” the bushfires.

Climate models, and our understanding of the climate system, lead us to expect even stronger warming, perhaps with further rainfall declines, over the next few decades, leading to increased frequency of days with extreme bushfire risk. Any actions taken to reduce fire risk in the future will, as a result, need to be more extreme than might have been considered a sufficient response if the climate of southern Australia had not been expected to continue warming and drying.

Why didn't the Commission want to explore further in its public hearings such powerful scientific analysis and warnings, centrally relevant to its mandate? One might ask whether the Commission plans to set climate change issues aside: to refer to them, but essentially report on Black Saturday as just another big bushfire.

Royal Commissions are independent of politics. So it must be a coincidence that, under federal and state governments determined to downplay climate change as a clear and present danger to Australians, and to pursue policies which worsen it, this Royal Commission seems disposed to shrug off climate change science too.

The possible awful truth - that Victoria's cool mountain ridges and valleys may be drying out as a result of climate change, to the point that their rich forest ecologies may no longer be sustainable, and that such ferocious bushfires may be nature's way of transitioning these areas to a hotter, drier climate - might be a truth too much to bear. Maybe that is why the Royal Commission seems not to want to go there.