The science behind climate change and its impact on bushfires

When considering the science around climate change, one expert believes it’s useful to compare it to another famous hypothesis – the theory of gravity.

Seeing red. A familiar image for many Australians now.

Not many people would think to cast doubt on the theory of gravity, and according to Professor David Karoly, who leads the Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub in the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program at CSIRO, the evidence that human activity is causing global warming is so strong it is equal to this theory.

“The theory on the human impact on climate change is just as strong, or stronger, than the scientific basis for the theory of gravity,” Prof Karoly told news.com.au.

Prof Karoly said that there was also evidence climate change was a factor in recent devastating bushfires in Australia.

Read the story from news.com by Charis Chang - “The science behind climate change and its impact on bushfires.”

Decades have passed and at last the popular media understands, maybe!

Finally, after decades of clearly articulated warnings from scientist, the popular media is beginning to understand the connection between climate and weather.

Professor Tim Flannery.

Stories linking Australia’s rather disturbed weather patterns, and the subsequent record breaking weather events, have been published in major metropolitan daily newspapers, alluded to on television news and said quite bluntly on the ABC.

In a story headed: “Angry Summer' made worse by climate change: Commission” on the ABC said: “The latest report from the Federal Government's Climate Commission says the weather extremes experienced around the country this summer were made worse by climate change”.

Climate Commission chief Professor Tim Flannery says that while Australia may have always been a land of drought and flooding rains, the nation is now experiencing a "climate on steroids".