Fires, drought and climate change within New England

The land has been on fire. Across the broader New England fires have raged with loss of property and life. ABC Coffs Coast reproduced a poem by Armidales' Troy Gerdes based on I love a sunburnt country that caught the situation.

"I love a Sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains.
But I’ve gotta tell ya mate, I like it better when it rains.
The countryside is dying and there’s just no end in sight, and just to rub salt in the wounds, the bush has caught alight.
The landscape is on fire from Brisbane to the Gong
And everybody’s asking “where the hell did we go wrong?
But we can get through this one if we help each other out, take care of your neighbour , that’s what Aussies are about.
The rain is going to fall again , the good times will return. But living in Australia means at times it’s going to burn.
So if you need a helping hand, just give a mate a call. We’re all here to help you out and catch you when you fall.
The RFS, the SES, the Firies, and police, all put their lives upon the line to help to keep the peace.
So hats off to these heroes and thanks for all you do
And I hope when this is over we can make it up to you!"

The fires have been dreadful. Last night's NBN News, (the link is to NBN News general site; I couldn't find the specific story), contained some of the most gripping and dramatic coverage that I have ever seen. They deserve an award for the coverage.

Community reaction to the fires has been truly remarkable in terms of those who fought and those that responded to events in whatever way they could. 

I would have followed the story anyway, but now living back in the area  I followed with particular interest. Exactly where were the fires, what did it all mean, who did I know who lived in the immediate area? I followed the social media feeds from people I knew especially on the Tablelands wondering if changing wind directions would bring the fires towards them.

The fires have become caught up in the debate about climate change especially among the political warriors of left and right, but also among worried citizens.

The fires have been hailed, if that's the right word, as exceptional, a much misused word, evidence for climate change. This has led to responses pointing out, correctly, that there have been worse fires and that the fires of themselves prove nothing.

The problem with these generalised discussions is that they lack practical content. If anything, they sidetrack discussion on the problems we face.

To avoid becoming caught in unnecessary arguments over climate change, I suppose that I should make my own position clear. 

As an historian, I am well aware that climate varies over time. As a simple example, sea levels have varied by around 130 metres over the last 100,000 years. I therefore have no problem with the idea that the climate may change. Indeed, I would expect it.

I also find the idea of human induced climate change intuitively plausible because I find it hard to see how the pumping of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution could not have an effect. I accept too, if cautiously, that part of the effects of climate change is likely to be increased variability in climate, more extreme events. However, this is where my problem with some of the discussion on the New England fires comes in.

Climate change is a macro problem and has to be dealt with first at that level. This requires action to limit the emission of green house gases.

My personal preference here has been some form of carbon tax because it provides a market mechanism. The tax could have been set low and then adjusted as more evidence became available. Among other things, this would have taken a lot of the heat out of the debate over coal.

This is a macro debate. Accepting that climate change is happening, it is already clear that the effects will be a geographically distributed, creating a pattern of winners and losers. If one is going to respond in a sensible way to things like changes to the risk of fire in a particular area, one has to know what the changes might be. Otherwise discussion becomes sound and fury signifying nothing. Generalised statements won't cut it except at a very high level of generality. 

This is where the debate over the Northern fires come adrift. They lack real policy content because we just don't know what the specific effects of climate change might be in the broader New England. Here I want to put forward a specific hypothesis based on history over the last few thousand years that is potentially testable by those more knowledge in climatology than me.

Northern NSW is generally wetter than Southern NSW. The reason for that is that the area lies in the overlap between northern and southern weather systems. The dividing line is traditionally based on a line running inland from around Port Macquarie. South of that line, southern patterns dominate. North of that line to the Queensland border, systems overlap. Further north, northern weather patterns dominate.

I accept that this simple analysis is a gross generalisation. I stick my head up with a degree of trepidation. However, given all this, what happens if the effect of climate change is to move the northern systems north, the southern systems south? The result is likely to be a drought/fire zone in what was a previously a relatively well watered area.