PerspectiveOn A Hotter Planet, We Are All Australians

Published 17 January 2020

Warm the human body by 7 degrees Fahrenheit and death ensues. David Spratt writes that on the Paris Agreement emissions trajectory, the entire world is heading for around 7 degrees Fahrenheit of warming once system feedbacks are included. The Lancet wrote: “Without immediate and efficient climate action, catastrophic bushfires will become a common disaster and might destroy the future of Australia and possibly of humanity.” Spratt says: “On a hotter planet, we are all Australians, one way or another. And the fire season is far from over.”

More than a decade ago, writing in the New Scientist about the wildfires ravaging the lands down-under, David Karoly of the University of Melbourne said: “We are unleashing hell on Australia.”

David Spratt writes in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that

Yes, you read that right: this professor of climate change and climate variability had described an Australia of increased heat, drought, and catastrophic fire way back in 2009—not long after a round of wildfires had previously ravaged the landscape.

It turns out that while Australia’s 2019-20 summer wildfires may well be harbingers of death on a hotter planet for at least the rest of this century, they did not come without advance warning.

Karoly’s research had, in part, focused on what is known in Australia as Black Saturday — 7 February 2009 — when devastating fires killed 173 people (and another 374 extreme-heat-related deaths were attributed to the record-breaking heatwave across southern Australia which had set the stage for the flames). Spratt notes that firefighters faced unprecedented conditions: high winds, very low humidity, a land dried by 10 years of drought, and a fire index reaching 170 on a 0-to-100 scale. The temperature hit a record 115.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the city of Melbourne and 119.8 degrees Fahrenheit in Victoria as a whole—the Australian state in which Melbourne sits. The amount of energy released by the fires was estimated to be the equivalent of around 1,500 Hiroshima atomic bombs.

Spratt writes that Australia’s political leaders failed to heed the warnings of scientists and fire experts. The current prime minister, Scott Morrison, ran on pledge to increase Australia’s production and export of coal. “The results of [Australia’s] leaders’ climate denial—effectively kicking the can down the road for some future generation to deal with—are readily apparent., chief among them,” Pratt writes, adding:

Warm the human body by 7 degrees Fahrenheit and death ensues. On the Paris Agreement emissions trajectory, the entire world is heading for around 7 degrees Fahrenheit of warming once system feedbacks are included. Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, says of a 7 degree-warmer world: “It’s difficult to see how we could accommodate eight billion people, or even half of that… There will be a rich minority of people who survive with modern lifestyles, no doubt, but it will be a turbulent, conflict-ridden world.”

Perhaps the situation was described best in a commentary in The Lancet: “Without immediate and efficient climate action, catastrophic bushfires will become a common disaster and might destroy the future of Australia and possibly of humanity.”

On a hotter planet, we are all Australians, one way or another. And the fire season is far from over.