Did climate change contribute to the October Blue Mountain bushfires? > Check the facts
Who: “these fires are certainly not a function of climate change, they’re just a function of life in Australia.” Prime Minister Tony Abbott
The claim: The Prime Minister is saying that climate change is not a contributing factor to the October bushfires in the Blue Mountains.
The facts: Climate change is making Southeast Australia hotter and drier which is increasing the number of extreme fire danger days. Drier and hotter climate conditions make fire risk extremely high. Australia has just experienced its hottest 12 months on record and the hottest September on record. NSW recorded below average rainfall for the four months from July to October.
The finding: The Prime Minister was incorrect to say that the October bushfires in the Blue Mountains were not a function of climate change. Climate change has made the climate in NSW drier and hotter which were important contributing factors to the bushfires.
Discussion of evidence: By making the climate in Southeast Australia drier and hotter, climate change is increasing the risk of bushfires occurring. While the variability inherent in Australia’s climate has made bushfires a part of our history, climate change is making very destructive fires, such as those in the Blue Mountains, more likely. Fires may be part of life in Australia, but their frequency and destructiveness is a function of climate change.
But you still can’t say that these particular fires were made worse by climate change. That’s like concluding that a tall person must eat well because average height has increased with improved nutrition since 1900. You can say climate change may have contributed but that’s as far as science can go.
You sound like the kind of person that would say “may” even if the probability were 95%, as there would still be a 5% change of it not be true.
The weather conditions leading up to the fires match models for weather conditions predicted by climate change models significantly more than models excluding them. Yes, that means that can’t be said with 100% certainty that climate change is to blame for this specific event. Freaks of nature occur every millennium or so. But keep it in context: climate change is more likely to blame than not.
If it were 95% I would say probobly, but it’s not 95% as no scientist would put a number to something so hard to define. The weather conditions leading upto the fires also match those expected when we transition from a la nina period to an el nino period. As for your freak of nature every millenium there have been worse fires on sveral occasions in the last hundred years. Many in the first half of the 20th century.
The point, surely, is that Abbott made the absolute statement that they were not made worse by climate change. Since there are good grounds to suspect that they were, that is a graver error than saying definitively they were worsened.
It should also be borne in mind that Abbott made the remark in response to Christiana Figueres, who had been quite careful not to assert a connection with these particular fires; merely that climate change will make such events more likely. In repudiating this, Abbott is effectively claiming that climate change not only had no impact the recent bushfires, but will not make them more frequent or worse in the future. Now that is bold claim.
Tt’s generally understood by scientists and statisticians that you can’t attribute a particular event to a particular cause, as the conditions that make bushfires likely are so complex.
But to take a different analogy, if we increased the blood/alcohol limit for driving to – say – 0.10% instead of 0.05%, then we could reasonably expect to see more drink-drive accidents as a result, and could even say that drink-driving was a contributing factor in a specific number of them. But we couldn’t say that any particular accident happened solely because of the increased limit.
Yes, Tony Abbott is right to say that bushfires are a part of Australian life. That’s no reason to accept anything that will make them more likely and therefore more frequent. Indeed there is every reason to accept anything that might prevent that increase in likelihood, even if there is no way of eliminating them.