Natural processes?
Some common sense from the normally moonbat state of California, in an analysis that would apply equally well in Australia:
For purposes of analysis, the history of wildfire in California can be loosely categorized into pre-European settlement fire regimes and post-European settlement fire regimes, especially the last fifty years where rigorous fire suppression efforts have been undertaken.
Natural fire regimes that existed prior to European settlement in California (pre-1700) involved a wide range of fire frequencies and effects on ecosystems; roughly one-third of the State supported frequent fire regimes of 35 years or less. Some areas likely burned on an almost annual basis. Pre-European settlement fire patterns resulted in many millions of acres burning each year, with fire acting as a major ecological force maintaining ecosystem vigor and ranges in habitat conditions. The pre-settlement period is often viewed as the period under which the “natural” fire regime standard for assessing the ecological role of fire developed.
…
In the suppression (modern) era, statewide fire frequency is much lower than before the period of European settlement. Between 1950 and 2008, California averaged 320,000 acres burned annually, only a fraction of the several millions of acres that burned under the pre-settlement regimes. Land uses such as agriculture and urbanization have reduced the amount of burnable landscape, and most wildland fires are effectively suppressed to protect resources, commodities, and people.
Before the twentieth century, many forests within California were generally open and park like due to the thinning effects of recurrent fire. Decades of fire suppression and other forest management have left a legacy of increased fuel loads and ecosystems dense with an understory of shade-tolerant, late-succession plant species. The widespread level of dangerous fuel conditions is a result of highly productive vegetative systems accumulating fuels and/or reductions in fire frequency from fire suppression. In the absence of fire, these plant communities accrue biomass, and alter the arrangement of it in ways that significantly increase fuel availability and expected fire intensity. (link – PDF)
Paul Homewood (h/t) summarises thus:
- Large and frequent wildfires were the norm before European settlement.
- Regular wildfires provide an essential ecological function and increase forest health and diversity.
- Acreage burnt reduced drastically during the 20thC, as fire suppression methods took effect.
- This fire suppression, though, had the calamitous effect of allowing a dangerous build up of biomass, that now makes fires larger and more intense.
Perhaps somebody might tell Obama.
Perhaps somebody might tell Flannery.
Australian Climate Madness 
Same deal for the recent Blue Mountains fires:
“THE Blue Mountains bushfire crisis was the result of a lack of political leadership over bush management issues and had nothing to do with climate change, one of Australia’s foremost disaster management experts (David Packham) said yesterday.(21 October 2013)
Mr Packham also said linking the NSW fire disaster with global warming was “nonsense”, because climate change was incremental and could not be blamed for dire fire events such as this.
He says fuel loads are now the heaviest they have been since human occupation of the continent and Aboriginal methods need to be adopted. He said indigenous Australians had learnt to manage the risks of fire and the current blazes were following a traditional pattern.“
For some time now I have thought that the ‘AGW Climate Change True Believers’ think that we are all stupid, they latch onto any report that they think will prove their case and then they proclaim the fact that this proves that they are the only ones that should be listened to, they don’t seem to understand the damage that they do to their cause when they make these wild pronouncements that cannot be supported, That Great Oceanographer Peter Garret goes out and with a straight face says that The World Ocean will rise by 11 meters when for over a century there has been no significant sea rise, fishermen in their 90’s who have fished the Hawksbury River their whole life say that the water level is still the same as it ever was yet there it is and we are all going to drown, and Timmy is so confident that the World Ocean will not rise that he buys the house that it the closest to the level of the water in the upper river and adds that we will all stave due to food production hitting a wall yet all the new evidence is that there is more food being grown that ever before, and as well as, as much water in our rivers as there ever was yet the Great Messiah Peter says that it is going to rise 11 meters, time for you to do what the Blues Brothers did Peter and get the Band back together, so still they send out their scaremongering foot soldiers time and time again to try to make a case on the thinnest evidence, evidence that is often in dispute, Tanya goes into retirement Homes to scare the old persons out of their wits, persons who are just trying to live out their lives in the happiest way that they can yet there she is scaremongering about Water World, I hope that you were proud of that act Tanya, The Great ‘Gaia’ God, James Lovelock recanted and he said that the models are wrong as enough time has passed now since they were made to at least show some proof that the models were correct but as all the World’s standard weather benchmark measurements show that the Temperature is not going up the that is proof that the models are wrong, so as the World is not doing what any of the Models say that it would do, then James Lovelock recants, then all that is left for the lunatic AGW crowd to say is that all of this heat is now hidden in the deepest part of the World Ocean, where it conveniently cannot be measured or even shown that the heat is actually there. So the only thing that any reasonable person can conclude is that the proponents of AGW/Climate Change thinks that we are all stupid and us being that means that they can say whatever they like.
Here is a Pop Quiz – Who said that the World would become so uninhabitable that the only breeding human couples would live in the antarctic where it would still be cold enough for them to live, among his other crazy predictions that is; Jame Lovelock, so no wonder that he recanted as he would not want the future to regard him as being as stupid as they think we all are.
OUR Tim Flannery has a somewhat similar record of silly predictions.<:o)