Climate scientists generate hot air over megafires

From the 1980s, prescribed burning was reduced in south-eastern Australia, and increasing areas of land were dedicated to National Parks and wilderness. A Lock It Up and Let It Burn approach prevailed over sustainable fire management.

Now climate scientists have analysed the main drivers to see why megafires increased from 1988 to 2018. CSIRO should have given the job to a fairdinkum fire scientist.

Dr Canadell told ABC: "we are burning 1% per year of the forests, which is a really a small amount … I think it's very difficult to imagine that fuel loads would be an important component in driving what we've seen - it's really climate and weather."

He's dead right that 1% can't make any difference and dead wrong that fuel loads aren't important. He also told ABC that "The highest area of burn actually comes right after a La Niña year, because the wetness across the continent really brings up the fuel loads".

Sydney Morning Herald's Mike Foley trumpeted that "The peer-reviewed research by the national science agency, CSIRO – published in the prestigious science journal, Nature – reveals" that global warming caused our megafires.

The climate scientists didn't see that data from sustainable fire management in the southwest were swamped by the results of a huge amount of neglect, which should be criminal, in the southeast. News media uncritically accepted the flawed analysis from 'a reliable source'.

When I challenged it in Australian Rural and Regional News, Dr Canadell responded that: "Our study doesn't discuss forest management. In our paper we show that the TREND in mean annual fire area is driven unequivocally by the TREND in mean annual FFDI (a weather index), ie by the changing climate".

There is a real crisis for our future in governments accepting these kinds of analyses and taking advice from academics rather than experienced land managers.

Mike Foley in SMH inadvertently drew attention to the abysmal failings of the Black Summer Royal Commission: "Last year, the bushfire royal commission reported fuel-load management through hazard reduction burning "may have no appreciable effect under extreme conditions"".

That's why we'll continue to suffer death and destruction, pestilence, holocaust, erosion, pollution, siltation and massive greenhouse emissions (which aren't brought to account).