There’s been a lot of noise coming from “climate science” regarding the fires in Australia. Recently, in an act of desperation, Facebook flagged one of my Facebook posts from Breitbart about the Australian fires as being false:
The Breitbart article said:
But the desperate academic clods over at “Climatefeedback” would have none of it, promptly flagging the article as false.
Note the pea and the thimble here.
They scope of the fires was related to arson, pure and simple. Lightning also contributed. These are indisputable facts. CO2 molecules didn’t run around starting fires. The best they could claim is that the fires started by arson and lightning might have spread faster due to a dry fuel load.
Climatefeedback didn’t actually dispute that the fires weren’t started by Arsonists or lightning, they just chose to flag it so they could inject the climate change narrative:
But here’s the thing, and there’s no getting around this. In the key take-away they cite the year as the “driest on record” while also mentioning “dry and windy weather patterns”. As anybody knows, a weather event is not climate, and a year’s worth of weather is not climate.
It’s an epic fail by the supposed climate experts at Climatefeedback. If the tables were turned, and an article was citing a year of cold weather, and a cold weather event, they’d dismiss it with the wave of hand saying “weather is not climate”.
Unless of course, weather events support “the cause”.
Then there’s the data from Australia’s BoM. Rainfall over the past 60 years has been wetter.
From Dr. Roy Spencer:
To drive home the point that any given year should not be used as evidence of a long-term trend, Australia precipitation provides an excellent example. The following plot is like the temperature plot above (Fig. 2), but now for precipitation as reported by the BOM (data here).
While it is certainly true that 2019 was the driest year in Australia since 1900, likely caused by extended La Nina conditions in the Pacific, they can’t pin it on climate change caused drought, because climate is a 30 year average, and because we’ve been told repeatedly that “weather is not climate“.
Then there’s this summary from Dr. Roy Spencer:
Summary Points
1) Global wildfire activity has decreased in recent decades, making any localized increase (or decrease) in wildfire activity difficult to attribute to ‘global climate change’.
2) Like California, Australia is prone to bushfires every year during the dry season. Ample fuel and dry weather exists for devastating fires each year, even without excessive heat or drought, as illustrated by the record number of hectares burned (over 100 million) during 1974-75 when above-average precipitation and below-average temperatures existed.
3) Australian average temperatures in 2019 were well above what global warming theory can explain, illustrating the importance of natural year-to-year variability in weather patterns (e.g. drought and excessively high temperatures).
4) Australia precipitation was at a record low in 2019, but climate models predict no long-term trend in Australia precipitation, while the observed trend has been upward, not downward. This again highlights the importance of natural climate variability to fire weather conditions, as opposed to human-induced climate change.
5) While reductions in prescribed burning have probably contributed to the irregular increase in the number of years with large bush fires, a five-fold increase in population in the last 100 years has greatly increased potential ignition sources, both accidental and purposeful.
In summary, [IMO] Climatefeedback is either ignorant, incompetent, or flat-out lied to support the narrative that “climate change” has it’s fingerprint on everything. As I’ve said repeatedly, it has become the universal boogeyman.
Meanwhile:
Alas, to be politically correct in attributing cause in the future, Josh has created this handy quiz (updated):
“Then there’s the data from Australia’s BoM. Rainfall over the past 60 years has been wetter.”
Maybe I’m being pedantic, but are there really degrees of wetness in rainfall? 🙂
I’d like to see all climate change temperature graphs show 30-year averages at each point. Then have the climate models show postdicted 30-year averages.
What really caused the bush fires are all those blue years that were anomalously wet.. and there were a lot of them since 1995. No rain, no bush growth. Couple that with forest mismanagement and bingo. You can’t blame all this on one summer.
Yep. The extra rain increased fuel availability.
As to the drought conditions in Australia, the now decaying IOD positive phase was the main factor for dryness inland, as it has been for similar conditions in the past, together the solar induced Stratospheric Sudden Warming strongest event recorded.
With low levels of moisture inland surface temperatures can only rise. With the monsoons now starting, the heat traveling from the north is beginning to decrease as is the moisture increasing as the IOD moves more towards a neutral phase and perhaps toward a negative phase.
Nothing complicated here, just don’t ignore or forget to include all relevant factors into the equation.
Having now read the link to the Michael Mann interview and particularly his comments towards the end regarding the the IOD and that climate change might actually be making the Indian Ocean dipole stronger, more likely to be in the positive phase, illuminates how he can twist the facts to suit his political bias.
If he was interested in presenting scientific balance rather than playing politics, then he would have acknowledged that the IOD positive phase brings increased precipitation to Africa as it had been doing recently with torrential rains there this past year.
Lets see what he has to say next when we get a particularly strong IOD negative phase, especially in conjunction with a strong La Nina event, and we on this side of the IO find ourselves barely able to keep our heads above the flood waters covering large parts of the landscape.
well exactly…it wasn’t that long ago that global warming caused so much rain…the sea level fell…LOL
Global warming, not.
Atmospheric electrostatic discharge i.e lightning is the most likely cause of initial ignition.
This map shows the lightning intensity during 24 hours (2nd January 2020) for an area north of Sidney
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/AustLight.htm
link to real time and archive
https://www.lightningmaps.org/?lang=en
dang…..that’s a lot
Just my 2 cents worth, re the Arrested or not Arrested discussion, I found this,
Quote,
“According to The Australian, “Police arrested 183 people for lighting bushfires across Queensland, NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania in the past few months. NSW police data shows 183 people have been charged or cautioned for bushfire-related offences since November 8, and 24 arrested for deliberately starting bushfires.”
This claim was later revised to 183 people who Australian authorities have taken “legal action” against. Still, that’s 183 people who have acted illegally resulting in catastrophic bushfires, displacement, property loss, and deaths of both people and animals.”
I’d humbly suggest that any “early adopters” of the story had picked up on The Australians use of the phrase “arrested” in a colloquial “newspaper language” sense of having been at least in contact with the police, and were using that phrase in the same colloquial sense, rather than deliberately seeking to mis-represent the story.
The Sun website currently still has the “ more than 180 arrested for arson” line.
After an exchange with Nick Stokes on an earlier post on WUWT on this topic and given the heated exchanges here about the “183 arson arrests” I went to the Australian Government, Australian Institute of Criminology website, particularly “The Bushfire Arson Bulletin” , particularly the ‘the number of fires and who lit them’ which cites Bryant C,2008,” Understanding bushfires:trends in deliberate vegetation fires in Australia.Technical and background paper number 27.Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology.http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current series/tbsp/21-40/tbp.027.aspx
Figure 1 : Percentage of bushfires by cause averaged over fire agency and year.
Suspicious 37%
Deliberate 13%
Accidental 35%
Natural 6%
Reignition/spot 5%
Other 4%
The Australian Productivity Commission estimated that between 2001 and 2007 there were an average of 54,000 fires a year in Australia.
The Bulletin then continued,” This agréés quite closely with the average of nearly 52,000 fires per year calculated by the Australian Institute of Criminology ( Bryant 2008) using data from fire agencies from 1995-06 to 2005-06.It is estimated that nearly 50% of fires are either deliberately lit on suspicious in origin as shown in Figure1”
The conclusion is that 75% of bushfires above have a human source ,deliberate or accidental.
However only 6% have a natural source.
Now back to the central point, there is no scientific basis to claim that climate change causes or exacerbates bushfires, as Dr. Spencer so ably argues.
“However only 6% have a natural source.”
That is a criminology source, and refers to fires that were investigated. They also say
“Some caution should be taken when considering these figures. Just over 40 percent of vegetation fires across Australia do not have a cause assigned by the responding fire agency. Furthermore, inconsistencies exist between and within agencies in recording data. For example, different agencies may have different thresholds as to when they consider a fire to be deliberate, suspicious or unknown.”
If 40% do not have a cause assigned, you can’t say that only 6% are natural.
**If 40% do not have a cause assigned, you can’t say that only 6% are natural.**
Full of it as usual Nick.
6% are natural, the others have been assigned a category that is NOT natural. Read again.
It’s been pointed out that “arsonist” started/caused many of the fires.
The number of “arsonist” has been argued to support the meme that the fires have been caused by “climate change”, which is, of course caused my Man’s (and only Man’s) CO2 emissions.
So, I guess, instead of CO2 being able to put out fires, it must be possible of causing lightening and spontaneous combustion.
(Maybe that explains Mann’s reactions to anybody who disagrees with him? He refuses to exhale CO2 and the build up ….?)
Earlier I posted a twitter comment from NSW Police Force 5 Jan 2020 that reads:
“Police have taken legal action against 183 people for more than 200 bushfire-related offences since November last year.”
Therefore I doubt we can take the Victoria police spokeswoman’s comment as:
currently no intelligence = there is no arson
I was taken to task by Nick Stokes that this had no reference to Victoria.
I see no flaw in the logic. If there are a number of people responsible for fires in Queensland and NSW it would be highly unlikely that there were NO INCIDENTS OF ARSON in Victoria.
The statement is therefore true:”currently no intelligence” CANNOT THEREFORE MEAN AN UNEQUIVOCAL “there is no arson”
Simple logic. QED.
Anthony
“
TheyThe scope of the fires was related to arson, pure and simple.”Great post ….IMHO
From the Dog House..lol
When did climate become a “30 year period centered on 2017 assuming recent rate of warming continues”? Sounds like using the future, via linear extrapolation.
Providing that he Court cases are reported it will be of interest t to hear what the defendants have to say as their excuse. I wonder how many will admit to starting them to highlight their cause of trying “”To save the Planet.
It will also of interest to her of the sentence handed down from the Magistrates, some of whom also favour the Green cause.
MJE VK5ELL
The satellite imagery shown with the Pielke tweet is probably “photoshopped”.
In science work, maps are traditionally marked with source, date, scale and north point. On this images, all are absent. So far as I can find, the images are from “The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission has been used to image the fires. The Sentinel-2 satellites each carry just one instrument – a high-resolution multispectral imager with 13 spectral bands. The smoke, flames and burn scars can be seen clearly in the image shown here, which was captured on 31 December 2019. The large brownish areas depict burned vegetation and provide an idea of the size of the area affected by the fires here – the brown ‘strip’ running through the image has a width of approximately 50 km and stretches for at least 100 km along the Australian east coast. Credit: Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO”
The text added to the image is unreadable, too much jpg compression, and I cannot even place the image to coincide with any Google Map data by the shape of the coastline. The smoke does not seem to align with the fires everywhere, some fires seem smokeless. It is, in fact, a shocker of an image by scientific standards, poor quality.
(Although I am no longer active, I have been an official Judge for the Australian Photographic Society and I have been doing digital image manipulations since 1992, so my comments are backed by experience. I my decades of mineral exploration science, we used satellite imagery interpretation starting with Landsat in the early 1980s. However, not much progress can be made here without the original image at high resolution. There remains a possibility that the image is untouched, but proof is not present in the image shown.)
There’s no reason to think a warmer world is drier and more drought-prone. Warmer climates of the past were wetter climates.
Regional climate models are no more predictive than global climate models. There are no objective grounds whatever to suppose that any drought, dry years, wet years, bush fires, or anything else is CO2-induced.
Most climate scientists know this. They know that regional climate models are worthless. Even the IPCC says that global models are worthless for regions smaller than continental scales (and worthless at global scales, too, but they won’t dare admit that).
The folks at Climatefeedback are lying righteously. They know their narrative is wrong, but the lie has been repeated so relentlessly that it has moral standing, even though it is scientifically vacuous.
Didn’t Nick Stokes debunk this 😉
Thank you for posting.
I was in NSW Australia a few years ago, staying in a self catering squat, all of a sudden the house caught fire. I looked at my plate, a half eaten steak told me all I needed to know – it was my food that caused the fire.
My wife reached for the fire extinguisher – ‘NO CO2’ I shouted, ‘BIN THE BURGER’
She understood immediately, threw all of our meaty foodstuffs into the bin
I wrestled with the flames but it was a losing battle
‘THE PLANE TICKETS’
The missus leaped into action, the flames engulfed me, she grabbed the flight tickets, the plane tickets went into the carbon offset pile of paperwork. Then..quiet. The flames retreated and I realised I had been saved.
Thank heavens for quick thinking Green magic
HA! Nice one.
LOL!
Coffee just spit out my mouth…thanks for the laugh.
Nick Stokes,
With your keen eye for misleading statements, would you care to comment on Michael Mann’s words a little after 4.15 minutes into the video interview that can be viewed by clicking on the Real News video? The Mann words include “… loss of life and property in vast expanses of rain forest …”
Rain forest seems hard to burn, even if it is the area of the fires. The main recollection I have about rain forest burns is Binna Burra Lodge, reported to have been lit by kids playing with cigarettes. No lives lost, 13 buildings burned and very little actual rain forest.
Over to you and CSIRO. What area of rain forest in Australia has burned and how many (if any) lives have been lost? Geoff S
Geoff,
One that seems to have burnt is Mt Drummer in Victoria. The forests around Putty and Eden to Mallacoota, and around places like Combienbar are normally pretty wet. But yes, I think the large majority of forest burned would not be true rain forest.
Thanks Nick,
I try to play a straight bat also.
Geoff S
With reference to the 183 arrests or warnings, we have people and most of the media in Australia trying to downplay ARSON and elevate “climate change”. The “Guardian” made an issue of telling us that most of the charges were earlier in the year and also pushing “climate change”.
The Australians are continually fed the climate BS so that is all most of them understand.
I made a few comments on an article in the Sydney Morning Herald and they were censored out or they are still in “moderation”. Most of the commentary in the Herald are by believers that the fires are increasing due to “climate change”. They have a huge problem there with misinformation. Itried posting Dr. Spencer’s post there.
We have Elton John, famous sports celebrities, actors, commenters we even have protests in London all calling for action on climate change because (Global) climate change is the driver in these fires in Australia, apparently. The Australia media is strewn with article upon article attributing these fires to climate change and a direct result of the lack of “action” the current Federal Govn’t leader has shown. Forget the fact fire management is a state level issue for the moment, people really do believe the current federal PM’s inaction CAUSED these fires. The scientifically infantile reasoning behind this is truly mind boggling!
We at least have on MSM network to speak out for us Patrick.
https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6121343004001
My dear Anthony… I’ve been a visitor to these pages for many years, and truly admire your tenacity and diligence, but honestly… what did you think would happen if you cited Breitbart – seriously… Breit-Fecking-Bart… as a source?
Breitbart – famously and unashamedly alt-Right, home of every mindless red-neck numbskull half-baked made up conspiracy, Steve Bannon… say it again… STEVE FASCIST RAPIST ALCOHOLIC BANNON… and you want to be treated seriously? Exactly how naïve are you? Did you really come down with the last shower? Could you not, with the vast intellect at your disposal, forecast exactly what the response would be? BREITBART! The very skin on your face should burst into flames with the shame of not having realised the most blindingly obvious consequence of citing BREITBART… just the very oxymoronic concept of putting the words “Breitbart” and “article” in the same sentence and expecting a considered and worthy response is utterly, mind-crushingly, imbecilic and cretinous beyond my ability to express it in words.
It doesn’t matter how strong your argument is, how telling, cogent and pretty your graphs are, how unimpeachable your sources are, how many letters you have after your name and how incontrovertible is your evidence, you’ve taken all of that and thrown it down the piss stained shitty toilet that is Breitbart…
Breitbart… you proudly display the maxim of your resolve at the top of the page… a quote from Andrew Breitbart. With that single act, you devalue everything that comes after it – the scholarly analyses, the in-depth of research, the calling out of the whole sorry climate change fiasco – and render it utterly pointless. If you don’t know why, then first of all, shame on you, and second, do you not have the faintest inkling of how this all works? Why the sceptics are being disparaged, sidelined, ignored and ridiculed? Why the Eco-Taliban are winning, and why you are powerless to anything about it, and why, ultimately, you will fail and they will win? I can tell you why, and many others can too – but until you can work it out for yourself, and do something about it, it’s pointless to continue. You may as well run up the white flag, concede defeat, close down WUWT and spend the rest of your life doing something useful, like a cat sanctuary. It’s a crying shame that the blindingly obvious falsehoods of those you oppose and do battle with will continue unchecked because you have hitched the wagon of the sceptics to the alt-right/Bannon/Breitbart/Trump kakistocrats (look it up, for Gods sake), and now all of us who haven’t fallen for it have been tarred with the same brush. Thanks for that, by the way.
You’re quite used to the Australian habit of plain speaking, I expect, so I’ll try to put my final comments in terms that you might understand. You’re a twat. Educated beyond your intelligence. You’ve got your head stuck up your arse. Got it yet? Don’t bother replying, I won’t read it and I won’t answer. They won. You lost. They were smarter than you. Wrong, but smarter, and that’s what counts. I thought you were smarter than them. I was wrong, you were wrong, and they won, because they understood how to win, and you did not, but dragged the rest of us down with you, because you got it wrong. Here’s your medal.
Hit job.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
re: ” famously and unashamedly alt-Right, home of every mindless red-neck numbskull half-baked made up conspiracy, ”
Compared to upper-crust, advanced-degree Rachel ‘Pat” Maddow who milked a ‘theory’ for a couple years that Russia affected and colluded with Trump to ‘win’ the 2016 election?
The NYT, WaPo, CNN et al conducted witch hunts and warlock trials, not limited to those forced by Obama spied, Clinton colluded, Biden obstructed, DNC denied, etc., are supported by a progressive (i.e. dwindling) consensus.
G’day Adrian.
Here’s where you can a huge dose of your favourite and most trusted news source –
https://www.breitbart.com/newsletter/
Enjoy! 🙂
Breitbart… you proudly display the maxim of your resolve at the top of the page… a quote from Andrew Breitbart. With that single act, you devalue everything that comes after it – the scholarly analyses, the in-depth of research, the calling out of the whole sorry climate change fiasco – and render it utterly pointless.”
Oh what a load of nonsense.
Climate feedback said, “In the key take-away they cite the year as the “driest on record” while also mentioning “dry and windy weather patterns”.”
But the reason the fires have been so bad THIS year is less important than whether they were avoidable under more normal climatic circumstances in future years.
I suspect not; I suspect that by allowing the fuel load to grow the forests, especially the fenced-off Parks, the green BAU policy would create tinderboxes, leading to much-increased average wildfire acreage burnings in the coming ten years vs. the prior ten years, even though no one year would be nearly as bad as this one.
This is how to evaluate policies—not by outlier years’ losses, but by average years’ losses. (Unfortunately, we don’t have the figures for the tutue. But it stands to reason that tinderboxes will all in time be devastated. A better policy would be to prevent forests from reaching tinderbox status, even if it involves making them less lush and/or extensive by 33% or so.)
Mann isn’t a climate scientist.
He’s a climactic scientist.
He is a climate alarm dramatist.
I would go with climate narcissist.
Doomer.
OK, maybe I’m stupid or something, but how the HECK can you get the average of a 30 year period, centered on 2017, when you still have 12 years left for that period?
I wondered that too. But in climate science you can do ANYTHING!
Given what I saw the other day you project a climate model forward and claim it as real …. seems to be how they roll.
Found a twenty five year old article that had some interesting information…seems the aborigines in Australia burned the bush on a very regular basis…
“ Historical accounts record that Aborigines burnt extensively and often. Although they had little capacity for fire suppression there seems little doubt that they had a very extensive knowledge about when and where particular areas would burn and the biological consequences of their burning. They burnt some areas early in the fire season, before fires would spread extensively, to protect them from fires later in the season. When the weather conditions were appropriate they burnt to promote the flowering and fruiting of certain edible plants. They used fire extensively for warfare, for providing access through thick vegetation, for hunting, for warmth, and for protection against snakes and insects. Their traditions, it seems, did not value areas that were left unburnt for a long time, for much of the burning was done with no specific objective in mind other than `to clean up the country’; an attitude and practice that still remains with Aboriginal people living in inland Australia today.”
https://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@ur momisugly.nsf/0/6C98BB75496A5AD1CA2569DE00267E48
Thanks so much for this link Steve. The thing that makes it so brilliant is the fact that is truthful. That information about our indigenous aboriginals hasn’t been embellished by unnecessary ‘woke’ language. This report could be valid today in regard to land management and shows in fact that this is exactly what has been lacking.
Definitely worth a read!
The attribution of dryness, the critical evidence of a [catastrophic] [anthropogenic] climate change, is dependent on historical records that suggest natural causes, human choices (e.g. proximity, environmentalism) that correlate with progressive risk, flora fauna that are regularly planned and cannibalized by Nature, and an insufficient time-frame to assess anthropogenic climate variability. The attribution of cause and effect remains one of the scientifically weak, missing, links of the quasi-scientific prediction that fuels Green investor growth and hopes for redistributive change (e.g. capital and control). This latest scheme is reminiscent of the CFL coup laundered through collusion of industry and environmentalists, but with not just progressive prices, but measurable collateral damage. That said, the occurrence of these fires may not be predictable, but they are expected on a recurring basis, and the risk of human injury and property damage can be mitigated through best practices of conservation and management. These are statistics that can be observed and replicated in the near-frame, not inferred from proxies of debatable significance, or predicted with models (i.e. hypotheses) detached from reality.
Some have mentioned areas of Australia locked up in National Parks. In the 1980s, my company fought hard to have mineral exploration in three particular large areas. Each time, we were repulsed by the then Labor Government, by declaring national parks and inviting listing on the United Nations World Heritage list. Listing does not automatically stop mineral work, just mostly does. So, we became rather wary of the UN.
What really cheesed us off was the uses subsequently allowed in these areas, two of which were for military training areas while for the other, a military training areaa was created adjacent.
One has to wonder about the causes of fires when the military go pumping live ammunition of various types into military training areas that are also on or adjacent to world heritage properties.
I have not yet seen a statistical category of “exploding ammunition” as a cause of fires here, though I consider it a plausible cause.
The 3 area were at Kakadu NT, Lockhart River north Qld and Shoalwater Bay, central Queensland.
There could be a fortune locked away in any one of these because of collaboration of Labor Governments with the power-hungry United Nations. Geoff S
The ADF was a “source” of the “Black Saturday” fires in 2009 on military land that broke containment. What munitions were used that day I have no idea, tracers would be my first, easy, bet.
The Primary Factors That Have Led to the Current Bushfires
1. Two exceptionally dry years resulting in extreme drought conditions over much of SE Australia.
These drought conditions have led to extended periods of exceptionally low humidity and reduced cloud cover. Both these meteorological factors lead to higher than normal day time maximum temperatures.
2. The build-up of huge fuel loads due to poor forestry management practices.
Hence, if the current bush fires are a direct result of human-induced climate change then this must mean that droughts in SE Australia have been getting significantly worse since the 1970s when atmospheric CO2 levels started rising.
The displayed graph shows the rainfall anomalies in the Murray-Darling Basin between 1900 and 2019. It shows that the generally drier conditions between 2000 and 2019 stand in stark contrast to the generally wetter conditions that prevailed between 1970 and 2000. Both of these periods experienced comparable increases in atmospheric CO2 levels i.e. 44 ppm between 1970 and 2000 and 41 ppm between 2000 and 2019.
Ask yourself the question, why would similar increases in the levels of atmospheric CO2 produce both wetter than normal conditions and dryer than normal conditions in SE Australia? Of course, this can not be true if increasing levels of CO2 are supposedly making drought conditions worse.
In addition, the displayed graph clearly shows that drought conditions were just as bad, if not worse, before 1947 than they have been since the year 2000. Yet CO2 levels did not start rising significantly until well after WWII. How could this be the case, if droughts are getting worse because of human-induced climate change?
The humidity level (As it is of particular interest to me for health reasons) for as long as I can recall in Australia since 2005 has rarely been below ~45%. Yes, low humidity leads to greater risk of dry lightening however, overall the humidity thing is a misdirection.
There is so much fuel load on the ground now it makes little difference. It will burn regardless and, as witness this year, burns out of control. What is for sure, like after the fires in 2009, there will be a Royal Commission investigation. There will be a report generated. The findings and recommendations in the report will be, largely, ignored as has been since 2009. Come 2030, due to fuel load mismanagement *AGAIN*, there will be massive, uncontrolled fires. And CO2 will still be blamed. And so on…
I don’t think I will be around in 2030 however, my bet is the world will be seeing the touches of a major cooling period, similar to that of the 1940’s to 1970’s period and suggested by Russian solar physicists about 20 years ago.
Don’t sell your overcoat.
Patrick, I was pointing out that low humidity in the lower troposphere plays a role in producing higher than normal maximum daytime temperatures. The main effect of higher temperatures is that it increases the rate at which foliage dries out.
You are completely correct in saying that the fuel load was already so great that the bush fires were guaranteed to be uncontrollable. However, the high than normal temperatures played a role in producing the massive fuel load during the months/years leading up to this terrible disaster.
Here is the correct URL for the graph.