The Greens oppose the CPRS not because it is too weak, but because it will point Australia in the wrong direction with little prospect of turning it around in the timeframe within which emissions must peak, says Senator Christine Milne.
The bushfires, the pain, the climate change
|
On the hottest day on record in Victorian history my sister’s home in St Andrews, 45 minutes north of Melbourne, burnt to the ground. While temperatures peaked at 48.8 degrees Celsius, ferocious winds battered a state that had baked to a tinder through two weeks of over 40 degree-days, and through a 13-year drought. All day Angie and Drew had cut back and hosed off. At about 4pm they fought off four fire fronts. Burning balls of fire were tumbling through the air outside every window. As the house filled with smoke the kids were screaming under blankets on the floor where the terrified dog was sh-tting. They had followed to the letter a detailed fire plan, but Angela tells me “we had no intention to stay and defend, we were trapped, and there was no warning.” They scrambled down an embankment on to the road because it was the only thing around them not on fire. Grace fell and burnt her palm on hot coals. They went up the road under a blanket until the length of hose from their petrol pump ran out. Soon they saw through the smoke the flashing lights of the Angels masquerading as the Country Fire Authority. The firefighter told them they looked like ghosts materialising out of the smoke and most harrowing to them was that two of them were children. The CFA took hours to chainsaw them up the road to safety. They lost their lovingly tended home and garden, a beloved old dog and their eccentric chooks, but they have their lives. “Chas the wonder dog” was found two days later on the only patch of green guarding the bag of photos Drew had pitched onto the lawn before they fled. But, as Angela tells me they have “lost the way our family lived”. Their self-sufficient daily lives that gave them so much happiness is now “in chaos”. Worse than that, within the weld of emotions including survivor guilt and bewilderment, Angela feels that she nearly caused the deaths of her own beautiful girls. We picked them up from the Diamond Creek Emergency centre after midnight where people with ears full of soot huddled under the stiff dried blankets that had shielded them from ember attack. They were handed apocalyptic cards, which folded out through the phases: “Walking Wounded”, “Priority One”, “Priority Two”, and “Dead”. My 12 year-old niece unfolded hers to “Dead” next to me and looked up from under the ember burn on her eyelid and said with adolescent drollery, “Well, that’s helpful”. Somehow Angela and their family escaped the unimaginable deaths that hundreds of Victorians suffered. But the ferocity of the inferno they perished within was unnatural. There is a class action being mounted against the Singapore power company whose pole came down in the wind spraying sparks. There is an arsonist refused bail for the fire that erased the township of Marysville. There is much recrimination directed to local councils about restrictions on back burning and fuel load. But how these conditions resulted in a firestorm, which exploded with the force of some 400 Hiroshimas, and incinerated as many as 300 Victorians in our worst Australian peacetime disaster points to another kind of arson. We were warned. Over and over again scientists told us of the increased danger of bushfires fueled by severe, protracted drought and record-breaking heat waves. But over the last decade governments have either turned their backs or dragged their feet on the warnings of their own commissioned and credible reports on climate change — including the increasingly dire warnings of the International Panel on Climate Change, which now says its 2007 report substantially underestimated the severity and rapidity of global warming. Scientists have also warned against attributing a direct causal relation between global warming and the devastation of the Victorian bushfires. Indeed there are a number of factors at play, from arson to the privatization of amenities, to our repeated failure to heed the ecological cycle of fire-stick farming established by Aborigines over millennia. But common sense dictates that climate change is undeniably a major factor. The morning of the fires Victorians were warned to stay indoors and not venture out into “our worst day in history” because of record-breaking temperatures fanned by high winds. Southeastern Australia had experienced a record-breaking heatwave over two weeks and the drought had primed fuel loads with combustible vegetation that no amount of back burning could possibly keep up with. Yet the Australian government continues to subsidize our fossil fuel industries by 9 billion taxpayer dollars annually. They will offer to the emergency summit in Copenhagen next month a piddling 5 per cent reduction in emissions by 2020 from 2000 levels when Professor Ross Garnaut, in his interim report on climate change, had recommended a 25 pc reduction. The solace of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s quite genuine words has felt empty. He has walked through the ashes and held the grieving and called the Marysville arsonist a “mass murderer”. But he needs to heed the growing sense that that these fires were beyond our ability to fight because they were something altogether new. He needs to heed the fire ecologists and climatologists who are telling us these bushfires were not a once in a lifetime event. Under a “low level global warming scenario” these firestorms may be experienced every four to five years in Victoria. The head of the Bureau of Meteorology’s National Climate Centre has offered the chilling words, “We are in the build-up to the next El Nino and already the drought is as bad as it has ever been — in terms of the drought, this may be as good as things get”. In other words this drought is here to stay, meeting the CSIRO prediction that the pretty and lush garden state of Victoria will become desert within two decades. Carl Sagan has said that ‘the universe is neither benign nor hostile but merely indifferent to creatures such as us’. But we creatures are neither indifferent nor stupid. I am no scientist but I cannot help feeling that those who have failed to act on climate change imperiled my sister and her family’s lives on ‘Black Saturday’ and put them through a literal hell. My sister is now sick with fear for the danger our parents face in Cottlesbridge over the hill from what is now her “property” and for our sister and her children whose township of Beechworth was spared because of a wind change. Angie now feels “we will go through this again until the whole state is burnt”. They are reluctant to apportion blame amongst so much sorrow. But like many of the traumatised who have joined the dots on climate change and this tragedy, part of their healing will require assurances from those in power, all around the world, that they will provide climate security to all of us, whether it is from drowning coastlines, flood, loss of food production or fire. That is, if it isn’t already too late, as it is for hundreds of our fellow Victorians, who I know with an immediacy I have never felt before, were just people like us. |
|
|
18 Comments
A wonderful erudite response to a critical problem. It is a sad fact of life that the “media” and our politicians can only generate emotive responses to the dire situation that Australia is in. The only rational comments that I have read so far have been in Crikey. Well done!
JulianTol you could start here for Vic and Aust.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/datasets/datasets.shtml
Anyone who wants real scientific information on how climate change is linked to the fires, checkout everyone’s favourite climate-science blog, by real climate scientists. References included at the bottom of the article. The info and figures on how climate change has influenced the Forest Fire Danger Index are particularly crucial to understand.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/02/bushfires-and-climate/langswitch_lang/tk
Thanks Paddy. I did not produce “evidence” for anything. A previous commentator recommended RealClimate.org as some sort of fund of scientific information. Many believe however, that it is merely an example of opinionated ‘scientism’ in the extreme.
Michael Mann is a principal scientist behind RealClimate.org.
However he is already been proven to be egregiously dishonest in his scientific writing and is of course the infamous author of the high-profile publication of the “hockey stick” graph which was then triumphantly ‘used’ as a key piece of supporting evidence in the third assessment report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2001, which offered a stark warning to policymakers of the urgency for action on reducing greenhouse emissions and of course also in the notorious Al Gore deceit: “An Inconvenient Truth”.
How convenient!
LOL Give us a break JamesK’
When you start producing “evidence” and commentary from the likes of James A. Peden
It all starts getting a bit “Boltian”.
Crikey readers can peruse his website here.
http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html
As for Dr. Richard Lindzen,
Wikipedia has some worthwhile info here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lindzen
Dear Loz
Please remember that scientists (I am one) tend to be very conservative people - they don’t like to declare anything that can’t be proved. The caution about attribution of this catastrophe comes from that conservatism: the link can’t be proven without doubt in this case.
But there is also common sense. Given the solid scientific understanding that rising CO2 is making the world hotter, it is sensible to conclude that an unprecedented event of hot weather is at least partly caused by the recent rise in CO2. Liz is making an intelligent and informed judgment in her article.
After reading this article and many of the excellent comments, I have summoned the courage to ask the following question:
Can anyone direct me towards a truly reliable PRIMARY data source for temperatures in;
a/ Victoria
b/ Australia
c/ World
Ideally the data would be;
a/ where the PRIMARY source is credible
b/ purely HISTORICAL, rather than projected (10 / 50 / 100 years)
c/ up-to-date
I would be grateful for any help in tracking these sources down.
Oh dear, JamesK.
Looks like we’ll have dueling experts at 20 paces.
I think I still prefer Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann, along with numerous other peer reviewed authors, to the likes of the two you’ve mentioned.
Never mind. I enjoy the articles and commentary on realclimate.org and will continue to check it out.
Other readers can make up their own minds.
Blaming the Victorian bushfires on man-made global warming is pure speculation. There is no actual evidence anywhere in the world that carbon dioxide emissions have caused global warming, bushfires, droughts, sea level rises, etc.
For years and years, forestry management experts have been recommending the use of controlled burning to reduce the dangerous buildup of combustible fuel (e.g. fallen leaves, twigs, dead grass) in bushland, particularly adjacent to inhabited areas. This common-sense advice has been ignored by the Victorian authorities, thanks to the misguided lobbying of environmentalists. Given many years’ buildup of combustible material, it is not surprising that with the hot, dry, windy conditions the fires were so intense that they could not be controlled, resulting in tragic loss of life and property and widespread destruction of trees. None of this would have happened if controlled burning had been carried out every two or three years.
It can be argued that the environmentalists are in effect the firebugs that have caused the recent devastation.
What Victorians should realise is that the threat of ferocious fire still prevails in those thousands and thousands of hectares of bushland ‘loaded’ with combustible material. Sadly, given that the Victorian authorities have ignored the fire control advice many times in the past, they can be expected to do so again, particularly if the environmentalists have their way.
Liz - I agree with most of what you say and support your message.
My dilemma is probably encapsulated in your sentence: “Scientists have also warned against attributing a direct causal relation between global warming and the devastation of the Victorian bushfires.” No I am NOT a climate change denialist - rather someone who thinks this issue is SO important that we have to make sure our conclusions are based on good evidence and expert considerations so that they have the biggest impact on decisions made by politicians, business and all of us. As an example I challenge friends who cite a hot week as proof of climate change - I know you are not doing that but I hope you get my point that we need to make sure we highlight, promote and make accessible any well founded evidence so we can all learn.
On that note you also say: “In other words this drought is here to stay, meeting the CSIRO prediction that the pretty and lush garden state of Victoria will become desert within two decades.”
Can you provide us with a source or hyperlink to the document that outlines this shocking prediction? I’d really like to know more.
Let’s keep the information and the evidence flowing here … it’s such an important issue.
Loz,
Most of the ‘challenging’ I’ve been involved with around the footy club / BBQ / water cooler is not with the ‘hot day=climate change’ , it’s with the ‘science =a crock.. and btw all greenies should be shot” bullies. I suggest that no amount of google-ready information sources will flick their switch and they will remain unreconstructed Boltsheviks for reasons best known to their analysts.
Please send this article and “Rundle: What has Black Saturday taught us? CRICKEY 10 Feb 2009” to Jon Faine - He hasn’t a clue - perhaps he can’t conceive the impact that such intense drying has on combustibility. He insisted that the 1939 fires were similar because the area burnt was similar - Jon, they didn’t have much more than hessian bags to fight fires then, be real! Nor can he understand the guilt and blame shifting of scientists who have said “defend your house”.
Excellent article.
There is plenty of information at Brave New Climate, including this post
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/02/10/heatwave-update-and-open-letter-to-the-pm/
James A. Peden, Editor of the Middlebury Community Network and Atmospheric Physicist says:
“Quoting RealClimate.org as a reliable source of information on climate science is like quoting Disneyland.com for reliable information on mouse behavior.”
Another summary of “Real Climate” was given by a Harvard trained atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Richard Lindzen, who said: “This website appears to constitute a support center for global warming believers, wherein any criticism of global warming is given an answer that, however implausible, is then repeated by the reassured believers.”
Protection of the big emitters of greenhouse gases has already cost us more than the people of Australia can afford to pay. We have been warned that the cost of doing nothing would be greater than reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the the corpses in the bushfires are paying an installment on that cost. Soon the people whose homes are close to the sea will pay another installment when rising sea levels and wild storms destroy their homes and livelihood and farmers will pay another when they shoot their starving livestock and walk off their parched farms. If global warming has reached tipping point it may be too late to undo the damage. Why have we waited so long before demanding that industry be responsible for cleaning up their toxic wastes or close their doors?
This response encapsulates the frustrations of those who, after examining TEN YEARS of valid scientific research ( as opposed to “..a hot week ..” ), reached the conclusions stated in this article a few years ago. We were ‘challenged’ .. and then dismissed as alarmist, agenda-driven or plainly gullable - a part of some world wide white coated ‘elitist’ conspiracy. Your desire for ‘more information’ is a little disingenuous and begs the question “.. at what point do you stop challenging and start getting active ? “.
Well ?
For an up to date summary of how Victoria’s climate is expected to change see the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment’s website (www. dse.vic.gov.au home > climate change> climate change in Victoria).
The publication ‘Climate change in Victoria 2008 Summary produced by the CSIRO for DSE
(http://www.climatechange.vic.gov.au/CA256F310024B628/0/A97991409E91EFDECA25747F000CD954/$File/DSE+state+summary+WEB.pdf) tells us that by 2030 Melbourne’s average temperature is expected to increase by up to 1.2°, the number of days over 35° in Melbourne will increase from 9 to 20, rainfall will decrease by up to 9%, and there will be a 19% reduction in rainy days. There are expected to be 40% more extreme fire days by 2020.
It’s not quite ‘desert in two decades’ but with Bendigo’s average temperatures expected to resemble that of Ouyen’s by 2070, and Horsham’s rainfall expected to decrease to that currently experienced in Nhill, Liz Conor’s statement isn’t too far off the mark.
What is really a worry is that world carbon emissions are tracking higher than even the high growth scenarios envisaged by the IPCC, so the scenarios presented by CSIRO are likely to be under-estimates if things continue on as they are.
And unless the world takes serious emergency action to drastically cut our carbon emissions the conditions we experienced on Black Saturday are unlikely to be the worst we experience in our lifetimes. The Melbourne maximum temperature was ‘only’ 0.8° hotter than previously ever experienced – imagine the 2° plus warming we are on track for.
Hi Tim,
Beleive me I’m not being disingenuous in wanting sources of good information … I actually just want access to these sources so I can do my little bit to spread that information to those “hot week = climate change” folk who to me weaken our urgent arguments that I know are based on good science.
My one frustration, as stated, with Liz’s article is when reference is made to a CSIRO prediction of the desertificaiton of Victoria within 20 years and there is no hyperlink to its source, or associated discussion.
I am equally concerned with the lack of action and commitment by business and in particular Australian Federal and State Governments. My only response to this (other than increasing my blood pressure) is to want to access and gather lots of good quality information.
I’m not dismissing or challenging you Tim - I’m wanting to be part of the dissemination of good information as someone who hasn’t been involved directly up to this point.
I must have expressed myself badly.