Ah, September. The first weeks of spring. Surely this is one of the most liveable times of the year, right?
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Well not exactly. The ESA have already been called out to grass fires, people are being urged to download fire preparedness plans and clear away bushfire hazards from around their homes and temperatures across the ACT have been nudging 30 degrees for much of the week.
Sydney had its first total fire ban day of the season on Tuesday and a "catastrophic" fire danger rating for the far South Coast issued late on Monday led to the closure of 20 government and up to nine private schools.
Large parts of Queensland and the Northern Territory have already been ravaged by massive bushfires including one that threatened Tennant Creek and, to cap it all off, the Bureau of Meteorology finally declared an El Nino event at 3pm on Tuesday.
Is this a flashback to 2019? A case of deja vu all over again?
While the ESA and others say "not quite" and that the current fire risk in the ACT is still only moderate, that could change dramatically in the coming months.
If, as predicted, these hot, dry and windy conditions set in, the lush grass that is a legacy of almost three years of La Nina will dry off rapidly and become a tinderbox.
None of this comes as a surprise to the folks at the Climate Council, Australia's leading community-funded climate change communications organisation.
The council was formed in 2013 to fill the gap left by the then Abbott government's rather short-sighted and ideologically driven decision to dismantle the Climate Commission which had been headed by Professor Tim Flannery.
The council has just released its latest review of the rapidly escalating climate impacts and of Australia's emissions targets.
Its experts argue it is already far later than most people think and that Australia needs to slash emissions by 75 per cent by 2030 and to reach net zero by 2035 - 15 years ahead of the current schedule.
While politicians on both sides of the aisle will say this is impossible and the push back from business will be fierce, the council believes the current targets - and what is being done to achieve them - have Australia "barrelling towards catastrophe".
"As we head into a summer of dangerous heat and fires, the reality is stark: there's no safe level of global warming," review author Dr Simon Bradshaw said.
"Everything we do now matters. The only way we can turn down the heat is to get our emissions plummeting and fast. Australia must leave our fossil fuels in the ground."
While, as numerous surveys including pre-election polling by ACM have shown, a majority of Australians believe more should be being done to reduce emissions, neither this government nor its immediate predecessor have been willing to take the admittedly drastic steps needed to meet the Climate Council's targets.
What is most fascinating of all is that in the face of record heatwaves, wildfires and extreme weather events that have killed tens of thousands of people in the northern hemisphere over their summer there are still hardcore climate change deniers who roll out the old trope about "droughts and flooding rains".
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It seems likely that even if and when, as the council predicts, Darwin experiences 235 days a year above 35 degrees, the number of extreme fire days has doubled, entire marine eco-systems collapse and hundreds of thousands of coastal homes are exposed to the risk of periodic inundation the old guard will still be writing letters to the editor saying "it was hotter than this when I was a lad".
As the saying goes: "There are none so blind as those who will not see".