You might be forgiven for thinking this is all too familiar. But it’s August. We’re not yet in spring and already the fires are burning.

The land is dry, the forests are dry. What is going to happen when the hot weather hits?

Australia has been getting hotter for at least the past century or so, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

On the climatechangeinaustralia.gov.au site it notes “the 2016 State of the Climate report states that Australia’s climate has warmed since national records began in 1910, especially since 1950. Mean surface air temperature has increased by around 1.0°C since 1910. Australia’s top five warmest years on record included each of the last three years—2013, 2014 and 2015”.

It goes on to state that “very warm months that occurred around 2 per cent of the time during the period 1951 to 1980 occurred over 11 per cent of the time during  the period 2001 to 2015. For the same periods, very warm monthly night-time temperatures have increased from 2 percent to 9 percent of the time. The duration, frequency and intensity of heatwaves have increased across large parts of Australia since 1950. There has been an increase in extreme fire weather, and a longer fire season, across large parts of Australia since the 1970s.”

Whatever your beliefs around the causes of the warming, we are all going to feel the effects. In higher cooling and heating bills, in heatwaves, in heat-related illness. 

This week we  have droughts, fires and a debate on the National Energy Guarantee around the renewables v fossil fuels ratio for the immediate future.  The longer climate future seems to be something politicians, looking to re-election, appear less keen to stick their necks out for. 

Let’s hope we aren’t like the frogs in the fable, who sat in a pot being brought slowly to the boil and failed to jump out not realising they were cooking to death.

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