Prime Minister Tony Abbott has described attempts to link the NSW bushfires with climate change as "complete hogwash", as Australian scientists warn there is a clear connection between global warming and the probability of extreme fire days.
The question over any link between climate change and the devastating fires has run all week, with political figures here and abroad weighing into the debate.
Mr Abbott ramped up the rhetoric on Friday, dismissing suggestions that climate change was behind the bushfire crisis.
"That is complete hogwash," he told News Limited.
"I suppose, you might say, that they are desperate to find anything that they think might pass as ammunition for their cause."
He said it was "bizarre" people were drawing parallels between the two, given there had been worse fires in Australian history, stretching back to the earliest days of European settlement.
Mr Abbott said the longer the period of time, the greater the likelihood of extreme weather events, and broken records didn't prove anything about climate change.
The prime minister earlier this week accused UN climate chief Christiana Figueres of "talking through her hat" by suggesting the fires were the result of global warming.
This prompted a backlash from the Australian Greens - themselves accused of politicising the bushfire tragedy - and a rebuke from former US vice-president and climate advocate Al Gore.
Now the Climate Council has joined the fray, arguing the link between climate change and the likelihood of bushfires is clear.
The council - the former Climate Commission abolished by the Abbott government - claims the unusually hot and dry conditions leading to large and intense fires was consistent with climate science.
"Australia has always had bushfires," ANU professor Will Steffen said in a statement.
"However, climate change is increasing the probability of extreme fire weather days and is lengthening the fire season."
Greens leader Christine Milne said Mr Abbott was continuing to make a laughing stock of Australia on the world stage by ignoring the climate science.
"It would be laughable if it were not so serious," she said in a statement.
Opposition leader Bill Shorten said he believed climate change was fundamentally linked to human activity, but didn't want to speculate on the fires while people's homes were still on the line.
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