The latest political message by the climate change alarmists and their enablers takes advantage of the suffering in Australia
It's once again apparent that climate change alarmists and their leftist enablers in politics and the mainstream media alike will use any disaster as fuel for their political propaganda.
The latest "face" of climate change comes from the massive Australian bushfires sweeping the nation, destroying millions of acres of land and killing countless local animals and wildlife as the horrific wildfires continue to burn out of control.
This isn't the first large-scale destruction Australia has suffered from wildfires, but climate "scientists" are sounding the alarm and claiming the "cataclysmic" event is a direct result of climate change. While some blame the entire thing on climate change, others merely state that it's exacerbated and made much worse by climate change, rather than it being the cause. While the latter is at least less blatantly stupid, here's why both of those stances are wrong.
This isn't a deep dive into everything surrounding bushfires and fires in the past, I merely felt compelled to write this quick piece in response to the incredibly false reporting and claims going around using the fires as a political fear tactic. Bullshit surrounding climate change is nothing new, but it is getting more and more traction.
So let's get started with the claims.
First and foremost, the claims are that Australia is experiencing abnormally high temperatures that are causing or making the fires worse. Australia is hot, that much is true. Abnormally so? No. In fact the amount of 100°+ days experienced in Australia during the calendar year was higher in 2019 than it has been in recent decades, but is still far from the highs seen regularly in the early 1900's.
As you can see, there's a large spike in the last two years or so, yet even with that spike past periods of hot weather have eclipsed it and in general the trend there has been downward, not up despite emissions adding up year over year. That doesn't really fit the narrative though, does it?
In terms of precipitation, Australia is drier than normal, that much is true. But is it climate change's fault? No.
The Indian Ocean Dipole, which is lesser known but acts kind of like the La Niña and El Niño phenomenons, is an irregular oscillation of sea-surface temperatures in the Indian Ocean. This past year saw a major positive Indian Ocean Dipole which leads massive rainfall and even flooding in the western Indian Ocean, and drought in the east - every major drought in the past 100+ years in Australia has coincided with a positive IOD phase.
So while the level of drought Australia is experiencing may not be common, it has happened plenty in the past, including during extended periods in the early 1900's and the 30's and 40's.
What has had the biggest effect on the size and spread of the wildfires are the increasing restrictions on controlled burns.
Controlled burns in the winter and fall have been used extensively in the past to help contain bushfires in regions such as Australia. Burning undergrowth and patches of land creates effective firebreaks that serve to contain wildfires and prevent them from spreading to uncontrollable levels.
That practice has become increasingly difficult in recent years and thanks to environmental groups and naive bystanders who complain about the killing of wildlife, landowners are banned from the practice leaving only government controlled burns in the winter and fall. Thanks to the slow movement of bureaucracy and increasingly urban areas that can't be bothered with the inconvenience caused by them, these burns have come few and far between.
All of this has combined to create conditions that have made the bushfires uncontrollable and massive in scope, and ironically, while it may not be caused by "man-made climate change", the bushfires have in fact been man-made.
Nearly 200 total arrests have been made by the New South Wales police, with 24 arsonists being charged for deliberately setting fires. Police took further action against a further 159 people, including 53 that failed to comply to the area's total fire ban and 47 that allegedly discared a lit cigarette or match on land.
Of course, that's been largely or completely ignored by the media and Hollywood, which continues to blame climate change for the tragedy and use the disaster to call for action against it...rather than calling for more to be done to prevent or control the fires themselves and punish those actually responsible.
That's all for today's rant - I'll have some thoughts to share on Iran, Soleimani, and the insane media coverage backing a terrorist regime in the near future as I continue my work on an article on Islam. It's a doozy and if you don't know much about the "religion of peace" it'll be an eye-opener.
I'll leave you with the thoughts of one poor Australian that summarizes what's going on better than I ever could: