DOROTHEA Mackellar’s poem called Australia a land of droughts and flooding rains; now we might have to adopt Get Used to It as our theme song.

A Climate Commission report concludes Australia’s recent extreme weather will become the norm and is caused by man-made climate change.

“The record-breaking events of the angry summer show that climate change is already affecting Australians,” the report’s author Professor Will Steffen said.

“It is virtually certain extreme hot weather will continue to become even more frequent and severe around the globe, including Australia. It is also likely the frequency of heavy rainfall will increase over many areas.”

During the past summer, 123 records were broken in 90 days for maximum temperature, flood records, daily rainfall and heatwave records.

Laidley Creek’s flood level of 9.26m was up from the record 8.85m set in 2011 and at Moogerah, 293mm in one day eclipsed the record of 243.4mm set in 1991.

But Viv Forbes from Rosevale, chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition, says there is no link between extreme weather and climate change.

“There’s no question that climate changes, there’s no question that weather varies, there’s no question that we’ve had extremes of the weather in the past,” Mr Forbes said.

He believes there is no evidence climate change is caused by human activities.

“I’m not convinced that these are extreme but even if they were there’s no evidence man is causing them; that’s just a convenient excuse for people who want to control and tax all our industries.”

All weather, Prof Steffen says, is influenced by climate change and all extreme weather events are now occurring in a climate system that is warmer and moister than it was 50 years ago.

“The significant impacts of extreme weather on people, property and the environment highlight the serious consequences of failing to adequately address climate change,” he said.

“It is critical we are aware of the influence of climate change on many types of extreme weather so communities, emergency services and governments prepare for the risk of increasingly severe and frequent extreme weather.”