greenies are to blame for nsw bushfires

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/bush-fuel-is-to-blame-for-nsw-blazes-not-united-nations-climate-change-theory-experts-say/story-fni0cx12-1226744870197


Bush fuel is to blame for NSW blazes, not United Nations' climate change theory, experts say


CLAIMS by the United Nations that climate change was "absolutely" linked to the current NSW bushfires was dismissed as rubbish by both veteran experts and local residents who survived previous Blue Mountains infernos.

UN climate chief Christiana Figueres told CNN yesterday that climate change was creating more intense bushfires.

"What we have seen are just introductions to the doom and gloom we could be facing,'' Ms Figueres said. "The World Meteorological Organisation has not established the direct link between this wildfire and climate change - yet

TEN's Ali Donaldson reports on the worsening fire conditions from within the nerve centre of the Rural Fire Service
"But what is absolutely clear is the science is telling us that there are increasing heatwaves in Asia, Europe and Australia, that they will continue in their intensity and frequency."

But leading bushfire experts said it was ridiculous to link the current crisis to climate change when the most recent major report from the UN's own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the world's weather had warmed by just 0.89C since the start of the 20th century.

"If there is any global warming, the global warming is so slow and so small the bushfire event is totally overrun by the fuel state," retired Monash University researcher David Packham said.

He said reducing fuel loads in the Australian bush is what was urgently needed.

Research by Phil Cheney, a former head of CSIRO Bushfire Research, has found "the effect of (increasing temperatures forecast by the IPCC) on bushfire behaviour, by itself, will be trivial''.

"Fire intensity is far more significantly affected by fuel quantity, fuel dryness and wind strength than it is by temperature,'' he said.

In November 1957, bushfires driven by gale-force winds destroyed 25 homes, shops, schools, a church and a hospital in the Blue Mountains, and four young men died.

Local resident John Macgregor-Skinner, who was part of the 1957 fire-fighting effort, said yesterday it had been 5 degrees hotter then. "The Greens might try to blame Tony Abbott but in reality the blame is firmly in their court with their continued obstruction to planned widespread hazard reduction."