Chris Harries’s Recent Comments

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  Spontaneous combustion

  As an Australian it is hard to overstate the conditions that arose last week.

  The poor folk of Victoria were subject to a week with temperatures in the mid 40s (Celsius) - I think that's somewhere up around 115 degrees F. Add wild winds and the fire-prone nature of the Australian bush and we had conditions close to spontaneous combustion. We've had them bad before, but this bushfire was totally without precedence.

  Angry victims understandably want to blame somebody, so the spectre of the fire bug is raised and then this spectre dominates the airwaves.

  I can't blame climate change automatically, but we have to bear in mind these events are entirely in accordance with the forecasts of climate experts. The evidence is no longer circumstantial.

  Australia is the canary-in-the-coal-mine when it comes to climate change. Many parts of our country have become too inhospitable or too uninhabitable to live in.On CNN, ABC, WashPost, and AP blow Australian wildfire, drought, heat-wave story posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago 14 Responses