The rim of Australia’s east coast is burning. At time of writing, there are over 80 fires burning across Queensland, the worst in 130 years. Twenty-one properties, including the historic Binna Burra Lodge, have been lost since last Thursday. O’Reilly’s Rainforest Retreat has been evacuated. Rainforests generally don’t burn under normal conditions.
Meanwhile, at least nine homes have been lost in NSW. The state’s Rural Fire Service has reported there are more than 50 fires burning between Newcastle and Byron Bay.
Queenslanders have been told to prepare for worse to come, with dry conditions and little chance of rainfall over the next four months. Climatologists have said it’s more complicated than “just” climate change, while noting that climate change has a role. But rather than jump on that — it might be weird to suddenly start agreeing with scientists — equivocation has been the order of the day for the various denialists and fence-sitters coming out of the woodwork.
This follows a regular pattern in the mounting toll of the climate crisis: disaster followed by rapid equivocation from those who would prefer we continue to delay tackling the problem.
Campbell Newman
Naturally, in the face of the calamity afflicting his beloved home state, former premier Campbell Newman did what any great statesman would do: he went searching through the archives to prove it really wasn’t that big a deal. “Very sad to see the destruction of these fires … it isn’t unprecedented though,” he tweeted, before sharing clippings of a couple of news stories from the early 1950s proving that, yes, fires had happened in Queensland before. No mention of the record drought between January and August, or the apparent burning of subtropical forest surrounding Binna Burra, which, again, usually enjoys fire-resistant conditions (though less so in recent years).
Of course his contribution might have less to do with his interest in correcting the record and more to do with the fact that acting premier Jackie Trad has made the connection that many have: climate change may just have played a role in this.
Graham Lloyd
Graham Lloyd, The Australian‘s environment editor — whose author bio, “a fearless reporter of all sides of the environment debate”, tells you everything you need to know about that paper’s approach to science — cited the same news stories as Newman. He led his report with: “Bushfires ravaging large areas near the Queensland-NSW border are not unprecedented for this time of year but have renewed debate over whether climate change has contributed to the blazes.”
David Littleproud
David Littleproud is the minister for natural disasters and emergency services, which makes sense — disasters are something he knows a bit about. He said whether man-made climate change was responsible for fires was “irrelevant” — while implicitly agreeing climate change is happening — taking The Australian‘s view that matters of climate change are nothing more than a difference of opinion: “That is a debate that has extremes from both sides,” he told the ABC.
He later clarified to The Guardian, that in his capacity as minister for drought, natural disaster and emergency management, he hadn’t really come to a conclusion on the matter: “I don’t know if climate change is manmade.”
Pauline Hanson
Greens leader Richard Di Natale has said the fires were the result of a “worsening climate crisis” and accused Littleproud of “endangering people’s lives” for failing to make that link. One Nation leader Pauline Hanson offered the following rebuttal on 2GB, with typical mixture of passion and incoherence:
He’s an absolute idiot. I am sick and tired of hearing the Greens go on and on the floor of Parliament, about climate change. They’re brainwashing the kids in the educational system with this way of thinking.
God sent Noah the rainbow sign; no more water the fire next time.
We have always had to endure sluts, slimes, shonks, sharks and shitheads, but why are so many in parliament, in the government? Deliberate auto ignorant self wounding for career and profit and submission to donors and patrons is a great evil. Littleproud makes a peanut seem freudian, while Hanson is surely the local whore of intellectual dishonesty and aberration. It is sickening to view a receding, worsening future.
Unfortunately, our Pauline, probably/ maybe, actually believes a bit of what is expelled out of that smoker’s mouth. Of course you can’t exclude that her comment was paid for by the NRA, or the Smoking Lobby or the Mineral’s Council.
I’m pretty sure that, she, along with some of her “deep thinkers”, are well on the way to vascular degeneration caused dementia. Unfortunately, that does not make her unfit for the parliament.
Well, as for Campbell Newman, “anything I’m getting paid for is better than not”; do you really think he did the research,or, on probabilities, do you think the Australian fed him the clipping to use?
Well the Minister for managing the optics of Disasters, David Littleproud, didn’t get off Scot free did he?
How on earth do you spin your way out of the destruction, by wild fire, of Binna Burra Lodge??
It was a beautiful stone and timber lodge in the midst of a rain forest and we are only 10 days into spring!
I suppose his advisors were saying “find a distraction, anything, deny the science, look there was a Hurricane in the Bahamas, Whatever, you have to do.”
Thank you god! Ms Liu you came through again.
” Oh, thank you, O’Rielly’s didn’t burn down too, yes, it came really close, and, the one road in and out was closed, by fire.”
O’Reilly’s Guest house and Eco lodge is 27 km in a direct walk from Binna Burra Lodge and this is the Lamington National Plateau, a world heritage listed rain forest, we are talking about.
Rain Forests don’t burn, usually, unless they are being cleared, such as in the Amazon.
It would be good, if the equivocation stopped, but, it won’t as long as that Murdoch clan are allowed to own our media and the LNP remain in power, punishing any researcher or government department that doesn’t toe the line.
And tarts and whores are paid to muddy the water, Murray Darling, anyone, sorry about the analogy.
Attributing every slightly dramatic weather event to climate change/crisis/catastrophe/apocalypse is undermining potential public support, including mine, for taking action. It simply invites skeptics and deniers to cite countervailing non-evidence and the debate and any possible policy consensus goes backwards.
Writing a whole article in support of doing this has lost me, I’m afraid.
I’m cancelling my trial subscription to Crikey, to continue my search for constructive journalism. See https://www.solutionsjournalism.org for inspiration.
Weather events are more frequently associated with CC precisely because increasingly they are unseasonal, more severe and more frequent as each decade passes. You don’t even have to believe the scientists, just see what insurance companies are saying worldwide. But hey, go over to Ltd News, their ‘journalism’ and commentary section is probably right up your alley…
Muzzah, I think that you are doing the right thing!
After all, if you can’t find a climate change deniers paper, here, let me suggest you invest in the Tele.
Don’t bother your pretty little head with the Conversation, either, they can’t support your prejudices either.
As for anything else, let me inform you, that parts of my antecedents go back a few generations, or so, on grazing properties in western Queensland and New South Wales.
The rainfall records on the family properties do not lie, the droughts are getting longer and the land, now, does not recover properly, with full normal rain, before the next one hits.
If you want me to put it simply, I asked a scientist in Antarctica, about the theory floated regarding the earth coming out of an ice age. “Yes, he said, however, what took 10,000 years last time is taking 50 years this time.”, “Don’t you think someone has their foot on the gas?”.
We both laughed.
See you
Perhaps a more considered assessment of the predictions of the models i.e. increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events together with acknowledgement that the data shows that this is happening (and appears to be within the bounds of uncertainty that the models predict) might lead to a more rational assessment of what is happening. Unfortunately these are technical aspects of the results of the modelling that are easily dismissed when presenting the denialists’ case because they do rely on an understanding of the modelling process and of probability which are both difficult to grasp and easy to misrepresent as denialists are rather inclined to do.
World heritage, irreplaceable Gondwana rainforest incinerated west of Dorrigo in northern NSW. Imagine if the majority of us got off our backsides, joined the kids and onto the streets on 20th September.
I will be there Vasco, and I expect plenty more will – at least those that can free themselves from idiot television long enough to give the strike some serious thought.
We can always count on Pauline for idiotic insights, and the Oz for mendacious bullshit spread thick.
Littleproud, Taylor and Canavan are beneath contempt, but in good company in the LNP bunker.
Queensland has suffered more than enough of Campbell Newman’s mismanagement & opinions, we told him so at the ballot box. Most convincingly. Did he not get the message?
Queensland is not his home territory, it is his adopted one.
He lives not far from me.
The sad thing is his wife, is one of the children, of a really well respected and loved Queensland doctor.
Tasmania, you are welcome to him, we can arrange a one way airfare, if required.