The Climate on SteroidsFrom Ten News (of all places!)
The report from the Climate CommissionHere is a link to the Climate Commission report, "The Angry Summer".
- The Australian summer over 2012 and 2013 has been defined by extreme weather events across much of the continent, including record-breaking heat, severe bushfires, extreme rainfall and damaging flooding. Extreme heatwaves and catastrophic bushfire conditions during the Angry Summer were made worse by climate change.
- All weather, including extreme weather events is influenced by climate change. All extreme weather events are now occurring in a climate system that is warmer and moister than it was 50 years ago. This influences the nature, impact and intensity of extreme weather events.
- Australia’s Angry Summer shows that climate change is already adversely affecting Australians. The significant impacts of extreme weather on people, property, communities and the environment highlight the serious consequences of failing to adequately address climate change.
- It is highly likely that extreme hot weather will become even more frequent and severe in Australia and around the globe, over the coming decades. The decisions we make this decade will largely determine the severity of climate change and its influence on extreme events for our grandchildren.
- It is critical that we are aware of the influence of climate change on many types of extreme weather so that communities, emergency services and governments prepare for the risk of increasingly severe and frequent extreme weather.
The decisions we make this decade will largely determine the severity of climate change and its influence on extreme events for our grandchildren.
I believe it's fair to say that this decade has seen more record-breaking and more extreme heat, fires, drought and floods than any similar length period in the past century in Australia, with accompanying loss of life, property, distress and chaos. If we combine all this century's events, it would come close to the devastation wreaked by weather in the whole of the last century combined. The Canberra fires; the Black Saturday fires; the Lockyer Valley floods; many places experienced two or more 100 year floods in a single year; the big drought and more. And this is just the beginning.
A Shift in the ClimateNo - what's happening is that climates are shifting and we are experiencing the effects in day to day weather.
Disaster FatigueIt's not just that we are experiencing heat, fires, floods and droughts it's that they are no longer one off events. They are becoming so common that they no longer get the news coverage they used to get in times gone by eg the latest massive floods in Queensland and NSW. The news outlets figure people down south are suffering flood fatigue. Imagine what the poor people living in places like Gympie feel.
“I don’t think any other place in Queensland has had five floods in two years, four in 12 months, and two of those back-to-back in the last four weeks,”