Climate change in last 70000 years

Australia around 20,000 years ago

Studies of pollen in lake sediments show that a fundamental shift from forests dominated by long living acacias started around 60,000 years ago. Increased carbon levels in these lake sediments indicate that more frequent fires brought about a shift from the fire sensitive Brigalow rainforests to fire loving plants. These are the very familiar eucalypts, shorter lived acacias, banksias, bursarias, Tree Violet and a diverse mix of grassland plants that all depend on regular burning for their long term survival.

Burning and the decline of the megafauna changed Australia's soils forever from nutrient and humus rich to nutrient and humus depleted. This is because burning removes nitrogen, sulfur and humus from the nutrient cycle. Our nutrient starved soils then became more erodible, a problem that was added to by the shift from dense Brigalow forest to less dense and more open eucalypt woodlands. 

As we see climate change significantly altered Australia's landscape in the last 20,000 years but to now suggest we are the cause of climate change is the prose of alarmists, not in fact looking at the longer term changes to our climate and how nature keeps adapting to these changes.  Yes we had to stop the heavy pollution we once emitted and this change has shown substantial health advantages that came with it, however, the attack on our fuels is ridiculous and will not benefit  the world as such as we can see from the past, it will create changes but not necessarily for the betterment of man. 

A further point should be noted that the claimed traditional owners of this land significantly changed Australian landscape through their hunting and burning of the forests ending in lack of natural vegetation and extinction of Australia's megafauna era.  This was he the largest event of changing our landscape to what it is today and cannot be attributed to actions of man today.