Dont get in a flap over fires, Adam ANDREW BOLT HERALD SUN OCTOBER 21, 2013 12:00AM FLAP, flap, flap. See the global warming vultures over the NSW fires, searching for a feed. The biggest is deputy Greens leader Adam Bandt, who at the height of the fires urged us to read his latest green sermon. Showing a picture of smoke over Sydney and linking to his article in the far-Left Guardian, he tweeted: Why Tony Abbotts plan means more bushfires for Australia and more pics like this of Sydney. Click his link and you find Bandt claiming that by repealing the carbon tax, Tony Abbott is failing to protect his people. Worse, even. Bandt claims Abbott, the volunteer firefighter, is actually starting the fires: Donning a volunteer firefighter uniform for the media is a con if youre also helping start fires that put peoples lives in danger. Says Bandt, who never fought a fire in his life. Sure, Bandt is not the only vulture. Tim Flannerys Climate Council also claimed global warming was bringing the sorts of weather conditions that increase the risk of fire, and Sydney Morning Herald columnist Peter FitzSimons jeered: And who should be repenting, Prime Minister? Some critics mistakenly think the worst of this politicking is the timing - and, true, even Bandt once claimed he was against it. Three years ago I said Prime Minister Julia Gillard had blood on her hands after some 50 boat people drowned off Christmas Island. As I argued, Gillard had rewritten our border laws to make them much softer, and had dismissed earlier reports Id cited showing dozens of boat people had already been lured to their deaths at sea. Bandt was livid: I think that, using this opportunity to say the Prime Minister has blood on her hands, I think that thats just outrageous. I saw a similar thing happen here in response to the bushfires that we had (in Victoria), there were people who would jump in and say it was all the fault of not having enough burning off ... I dont think that trying to turn a tragedy so quickly into some kind of perceived political advantage is how we want to be characterised as a nation, and I think those comments are outrageous. Now whos being outrageous? What a hypocrite. Still, Id excuse Bandt if he was right - if Abbotts global warming policies really did leave us more vulnerable. Trouble is, Bandt is completely wrong. Ironically, the higher fire risk in NSW this year is due mainly to the very thing the Greens once told us not to expect from global warming. For years these alarmists claimed warming had dried up the rains. In 2006 Greens leader Bob Brown warned southern Australia faced the spectre of permanent drought. Instead, NSW over the past three years has had two years of massive rain, followed by one of above-average falls. Brown fields turned lush green and top bushfire experts grew alarmed. The NSW Rural Fire Service last year warned, Widespread rain in the past two years has led to grass growth not seen in more than 30 years, and as it dried, NSW faced a greater risk of large and fast-moving fires. The Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council recently repeated the warning: Above-average rainfall for much of the preceding three years is likely to continue the trend of heavy grass fuel loads throughout the grassland areas of NSW. Add some hot weather and a big fire was bound to go off - just as NSW saw in 1957, 1976 , 1991 and 2001, when years of fire also followed years of rain. Nor is there is anything unusual about the size of last weeks fires, which burned 100,000 hectares. NSW suffered far worse in 1968, when 14 people died in fires that burned more than a million hectares. Another 1.5 million hectares were burned as fires raged for 151 days from 27 September 2002. Nothing in the records shows global warming has made bushfires bigger or deadlier in NSW - or globally. The US is recording its quietest fire season a decade. The most telling point against Bandts alarmism, of course, is that global temperatures have barely changed for 15 years. Indeed, Canberra last week recorded its coldest October night in history. Like Sydneys hot spell, its called weather, Adam, not climate change. So Bandt is wrong about the cause of the fire and wrong to pretend these fires are worse. Hes wrong to imply global temperatures have been steadily rising, and wrong to claim Abbott could make the slightest difference. Just ask Professor Roger Jones, an author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which estimates that even if Abbott kept Labors carbon tax policies, Australia would at best cut temperatures by an imperceptible 0.0038 degrees by 2100. So Bandt is wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong. And a hypocrite as well as a vulture. Oh, and a disgrace.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 10:57:22 +0000