Facts on fires forgotten in rush to blame climate change

Bushfires in Queensland and New South Wales dominated the news last week — and much of the media was quick to amplify claims climate change was at play.

Here’s retired NSW fire commissioner and former NSW climate change councillor Greg Mullins on ABC regional radio”

“There are fires breaking out in places where they just shouldn’t burn. The west coast of Tasmania, the world heritage areas, subtropical rainforests, it’s all burning. And this is driven by climate change, there’s no other explanation.”

Well, he’s an expert, he’s worth reporting. But shouldn’t such claims be tested? He cited places burning that shouldn’t burn, such as Siberia where other sources confirm bushfires happen there every summer.

And Mullins mentioned the west coast of Tasmania. We saw fires there earlier this year and on this program we exposed emotive reporting suggesting this was unprecedented. It wasn’t, of course.

This report, for instance, in the South Australian Chronicle of February 1915 reported lives lost and the “most devastating bushfires ever known in Tasmania sweeping over the northwest coast and other districts. The extent of the devastation cannot be over-estimated.”

And as for Mullins’ claims on rainforests of the west coast, there was this report in 1982 from The Canberra Times, detailing a “huge forest fire” burning out 75,000 hectares of dense rainforest.

Nine newspapers’ Jane Caro tweeted her surprise at the fires:

“So there are bushfires all the way up the NSW & Queensland coasts and no rain forecast for 6 to 8 weeks — in September!” she exclaimed, saying this was with one degree of warming and spruiking the climate action strike this Friday.

Yep, that’ll do it.

So, there are bushfires all the way up the NSW & Qld coasts and no rain forecast for 6 to 8 weeks - in September! And this is at 1 degree warming! Join the Climate strike on 20/9. Mitigating climate change is urgent.

— Jane Caro (@JaneCaro) September 9, 2019

Back in the 1940s there were September days in Brisbane of 90 degrees fahrenheit, or over 32 degrees Celsius. Now sure, last week’s conditions were horrid, and not the norm. But they are not unprecedented.

Drought, dry winters, hot springs, we get them. They might fit into a global warming narrative and they might not.

The best thing to do last week, surely, was to fight the fires.

Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott did — but I don’t know about the social media alarmists.

Channel 10 news reporter Alex Bruce-Smith wrote the fires were “unprecedented.”

“There’s no beating around the bush,” she said, “climate change is helping drive the catastrophe we are currently seeing … it’s the worst start to a Queensland bushfire season on record.”

One expert said it should "serve as yet another wake up call" that urgent -- like, in the next 12 to 18 months -- action on climate change is needed, otherwise we're headed for a catastrophic future.

— Alex Bruce-Smith (@alexbrucesmith) September 10, 2019

But is it?

To be fair to the journalists, this stuff was being put out there by people in authority. Andrew Sturgess of Queensland Fire and Emergency Services said:

“It is a historic event. We have never seen fire danger indices, fire danger ratings at this time of the year, as we are seeing now. We have never seen this before in recorded history.”

Never before in recorded history?

The Chronicle in the late winter of 1946, August 22, noted: “From Bundaberg to the New South Wales border”, “hundreds of square miles of drought stricken southeastern Queensland were aflame …”

Two years later on September 30, 1948, the Central Queensland Herald reported: “An 800-mile chain of bushfires fed by dry grass stretched tonight along the Queensland coast from Cairns to Maryborough.”

Both these easily-retrievable examples put the claims of “worst ever” and “unprecedented” into perspective, if not in the shade.

Perhaps the media ought to be more careful about such descriptors, or check them, or try for some perspective rather than just going with the zeitgeist.

Bushfire damage in Queensland. Picture: AAP

Last week, The Guardian linked bushfires in Queensland rainforests to global warming.

“I never thought I’d see the Australian rainforest burning. What will it take for us to wake up to the climate crisis?” That was written by Dr Joëlle Gergis of the ANU’s Climate Change Institute and member of the Climate Council.

“Despite being ridiculously busy, I couldn’t turn down this opportunity to share my thoughts on the current bushfires,” she tweeted.

“As a scientist, what I find particularly disturbing about the current conditions is that world heritage rainforest areas such as the Lamington National Park in the Gold Coast hinterland are now burning,” she wrote.

Well, we were busy too but were able to dig this out. It’s the Cairns Post from October 25, 1951.

“A bushfire in Lamington National Park today swept through a grove of 3000-year-old Macrozamia palms. These trees were one of the features of the park. The fire has burnt out about 2000 acres of thick rainforest country.”

That’s right, nearly 70 years ago, rainforest burning in Lamington National Park, before global warming.

Journalists were quick to share the alarmist views. Hey, it’s easier than checking them.

Seemingly forgotten in the rush to fit up climate change as the cause of these fires was one highly relevant fact.

Arsonists were responsible for many, if not most of the blazes.

As news.com.au reported last Wednesday” “Detectives have already established that ten fires — in Brisbane, Stanthorpe, the southeast and central Queensland regions — were deliberately lit. Eight of those were set by juveniles.”

Unless climate change is changing juvenile behaviour, it is hard to overlook crucial facts, such as how the fires actually started.