Climate change link ‘nonsense’
Linking the bushfire disaster in New South Wales to climate change is ‘‘an absolute nonsense’’ and reducing fuel loads in the Australian bush is urgently needed, a leading scientist says.
Retired Monash University researcher David Packham says global warming is a gradual process which does not explain major bushfires.
Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt has been accused of playing politics by linking the NSW bushfires to the new federal government’s climate change policies.
But Packham said there was no link.
‘‘It’s an absolute nonsense. The very best interpretation is [it’s] misguided by them not understanding how bushfires actually do work in Australia.
‘‘If there is any global warming, the global warming is so slow and so small that the bushfire event is totally overrun by the fuel state.’’
Hot issue:
Packham has previously accused ‘‘latte conservationists’’ of having too much influence on forest management. He says fuel loads are now the heaviest they have been since human occupation of the continent and Aboriginal methods need to be adopted.
Flying over the Blue Mountains in recent years had been ‘‘frightening’’, he said.
‘‘There’s been this determination over the last 10 to 20 years to not treat our country in the same way the indigenous people treated it for 30,000 years. The concept has been every fire is a bad fire.
‘‘In the Australian context you need fire to keep the bush healthy and safe.’’
Packham said Western Australia had successfully reduced fuel for decades and up to 20 per cent of bushland should be burned annually.
‘‘If we got to 10 per cent then our area burnt would drop by 90 per cent and our intensity would drop by at least that and undoubtedly more,’’ he said.
He said major fires had occurred every 10 to 20 years since records began in 1915.
Packham called for an end to playing politics with bushfires and called for leadership based on scientific evidence.
Bandt last week linked the Abbott government to more bushfires, while Greens leader Christine Milne said it was ‘‘climate censorship’’ to not discuss global warming and bushfires.