‘This is not normal': Minister urges action on climate change.

NSW Environment Minister Matt Kean says "no one can deny" that climate change is to blame for the smoke haze choking Sydney as bushfires burn across NSW.

Environment Minister Matt Kean says Sydney's
bushfires and smoke must be a catalyst for change.

In the state government's strongest comments yet on the link between climate change and bushfires, Mr Kean said: "This is not normal and doing nothing is not a solution".

Mr Kean, who spoke at the Smart Energy Summit in Sydney on Tuesday as smoke blanketed the city, said the weather conditions were "exactly what the scientists have warned us would happen”.

"Longer drier periods, resulting in more drought and bushfire," Mr Kean said. "If this is not a catalyst for change, then I don't know what is.”

Read the story from The Sydney Morning Herald by Alexandra Smith and David Crowe - “‘This is not normal': Minister urges action on climate change.”

The Human Fingerprints on Extreme Weather

Hurricane Michael broke records Wednesday, when it became the most powerful cyclone ever recorded to make landfall along the Florida Panhandle. Abnormally warm waters fueled winds up to 155 miles per hour, which laid waste to homes and businesses caught in the storm’s path. As multiple outlets noted, climate change likely fueled the record-breaking wind speeds. That fact is notable given that both reporters and researchers have historically been reticent to link any one storm to climate change.

Hurricane Michael, October 9, 2018. Source: NOAA

Five or ten years ago, if you asked a scientist how climate change figured into a particular hurricane, she would demur, saying that it was impossible to blame any single event on the overall warming trend. Those days are over. In the last decade, scientists have developed sophisticated tools for finding the human fingerprint on extreme weather. The emerging field of attribution research, as it’s known, investigates the role of climate change in specific events. A newly published report amassing more than 200 attribution studies makes clear that heat-trapping carbon pollution is already making the weather measurably more severe.

Read the NexusMedia story  by Jeremy Deaton - “The Human Fingerprints on Extreme Weather.”

Tigers died in drought

Drought was to blame for the extinction of Tasmanian tigers from the Australian mainland, a new study by the University of Adelaide has found.

A University of Adelaide study has attributed
extinction of the Tasmania tiger to drought.

Using DNA from fossil bones and museum specimens, the report says drought caused by the onset of El Nino weather patterns was the likely cause of the tigers’ demise.

‘‘The ancient DNA tells us that the mainland extinction was rapid, and not the result of intrinsic factors such as inbreeding or loss of genetic diversity,’’ researcher Lauren White said.

Read the Country News story - “Tigers died in drought.”