The sad fact is that people don't look at what it was like in the past.

The historical evidence indicates fires have burnt very large areas before, and it has been hotter before too.

Unprecedented has been the claim. But just 10 years ago, on 9 February 2009, 173 lives were lost in the Black Saturday inferno.

On January 13, 1939 — Black Friday — two million hectares burnt with ash reportedly falling on New Zealand. That was probably the worst bushfire catastrophe in Australia’s modern recorded history in terms of area burnt and it was 80 years ago this month.

Last summer, and this summer, has been hot in Australia. But the summer of 1938–1939 was probably hotter. In rural Victoria, the summer of 1938–1939 was on average at least two degrees hotter than anything measured with equivalent equipment since, as the table below shows.

So it's hot in Australia, is it? The hottest its ever been according to Greta mob of fanatics. Australia has never seen such recorded warmth since records were first kept. Well, I have news for everyone. The hottest temperature ever recorded in Australia using standard equipment (a mercury thermometer in a Stevenson screen) at an official recording station is 51.7 degrees Celsius (125 degrees Fahrenheit) at the Bourke Post Office on January 3, 1909.

As the saying goes, we are all entitled to our own opinion — not our own facts.