But he said the report showed that periods of extreme heat were becoming more common, which was leading to severe bushfire conditions.
Steffen said the trends of a hotter and drier climate meant bushfire season in southern WA was stretching into spring and autumn, narrowing the window for fire management authorities to safely conduct prescribed burns.
Mr Abbott also denies a quarter of a century of science showing the link between global warming and the increased risk of bushfire in Australia, as does his environment minister Greg Hunt.
Western Australia will need twice as many firefighters in 2030 to cope with increased bushfire risks caused by climate change, a report by the Climate Council has found.
Bushfire fronts are fast moving and tend to pass in two to five minutes; the way to avoid them is by being inside.
WA has faced six major bushfires in the past eight years, including Northcliffe; the 2007 Boorabbin national park fire, in which three people died; the 2009 Toodyay bushfires; the 2011 and 2014 Perth Hills bushfire; and the 2011 Margaret River bushfires.
That's the area that burned in the 90,000 hectare Northcliffe bushfire three weeks ago, which firefighters told Guardian Australia was the biggest in WA's recent history.
Guardian Australia has won a Walkley award for multimedia storytelling for Firestorm, an interactive project centred around the January bushfire in Dunalley, Tasmania.
WA has had more than 1,000 reported bushfire incidents since 1 January.
Back in Marysville, the insurance payments are slowly being paid out, and rebuilding will continue way beyond this summer, which meteorologists are predicting will see even worse bushfire conditions than 2009.
Blocking free speech in one place would simply "start a bushfire" somewhere else.Much of the desire to control the flow of information and ideas can be traced back to longstanding fears over the spread of North Korean propaganda, which remains illegal.
