The story so far: to support the
contention that there's nothing unusual about the 2013 bushfire
season, our environment minister Greg Hunt has made himself a village
idiot with a global presence with this statement:
“I looked up what Wikipedia says for
example, just to see what the rest of the world thought, and it opens
up with the fact that bushfires in Australia are frequently occurring
events during the hotter months of the year. Large areas of land are
ravaged every year by bushfires. That’s the Australian experience.”
(Source:
The Guardian)
That's set off a round of ridicule
about his use of Wikipedia. That's fair enough, but there's another
reason to make fun of Mr Hunt. Even if you believe Wikipedia records
bushfire events accurately, Mr Hunt is using a source that undermines
his position.
The data presented by Wikipedia
clearly indicates increasing bushfire activity.
All you have to do is make a chart of how many major bushfire events
Wikipedia lists occur each decade.
Note
that in this chart, I omit the current decade because it's only 2013.
I
don't think you need me to add a trendline to get the picture.
Not
only that: Wikipedia clearly supports another statement.
The current NSW bushfire season's
early start is nearly unprecedented.
The
chart below shows the number of days between the official start of
summer (1 December) and the first of that summer's major bushfire
events, as reported by Wikipedia. Negative numbers indicate that the
fire season for that year began in September, October or November
before the start of summer.
- Every time the fire season started before 1 December has taken place after 1979.
- Before 1979, only once did the bushfire season start as early as 1 December (1951).
- Since 1979, there have been eight pre-summer starts to the major bushfire season (1979, 1980, 1997, 1998, 2003, 2007, 2011 and 2013).
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