From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Aussie Agricultural productivity is soaring – but apparently good seasons and a failure to manage fire risk are a climate disaster.

Rain one minute, heatwave the next. How climate ‘whiplash’ drives unpredictable fire weather

Published: January 12, 2026 6.08am AEDT
David Bowman
Professor of Pyrogeography and Fire Science, University of Tasmania

After a weekend of extreme heat and windy conditions, more than 30 blazes were still burning in Victoria and New South Wales as of Sunday evening, including major fires in the Otways, near the town of Alexandra in central Victoria, and on the NSW-Victoria border near Corryong. 

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What role does climate change play in supercharging extreme weather conditions, such as these? The evidence shows it not only turns up the thermostat, it also makes the climate system more erratic.

One emerging aspect of such climate change is “hydroclimatic whiplash” – sudden and often frequent transitions between very dry and very wet conditions. It can feel like the climate system is toggling between lots of different states: floods one minute, bushfires the next. 

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The forecast for this fire season was not as calamitous as it is proving to be. That’s not a criticism – we have to expect the unexpected. Rather than using the term climate change, which implies a steady and predictable shift, I now prefer the term “climate instability”. 

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The key point is there are going to be lots more fires. We can’t resent the administrative and financial effort it will take to make our landscapes safer.

…Read more: https://theconversation.com/rain-one-minute-heatwave-the-next-how-climate-whiplash-drives-unpredictable-fire-weather-273104

I am so fed up with greens impeding forestry management, then trying to claim the resulting fire disaster is because of climate change.

It has been a good few years.

This Summer I barely had to turn on the garden watering system. Every day this Summer has been either blazing hot or wet, plenty of water in the ground, and lots of sunlight to drive growth.

Given such benign growing conditions, why wasn’t more effort made to do controlled burns during the wet periods of the “whiplash”?

Of course, we already know the likely answer to that question.

Sky News: Aussie Royal Commission to Investigate how Climate Activists “Hijacked” Forestry Management

The evidence of the harm greens cause by opposing sensible forestry management often strangely seems to disappear when everything inevitably goes up in smoke.

JoNova: Aussie ABC Disappearing Evidence They Helped Climate Activists Campaign Against Controlled Burns

Academics trying to describe an unexpected outbreak of benign growing conditions as “climate whiplash” in my opinion just adds to the confusion and helps deflect attention away from the people who in my opinion are the real culprits behind Australia’s fire disasters – irresponsible green activists who are preventing Australian forestry departments from mitigating fire risk.

In my opinion the blood of bushfire victims is on the hands of Australian greens who chain themselves to trees whenever some forestry worker tries to do their job. Fire risks are controllable. What we need is politicians with the guts to control fanatical green activists who prize the lives of a few possums over the safety of Australia’s children. But I’m not holding my breath waiting for that to happen.