“POETRY, said Auden, makes nothing happen. Usually it doesn’t, but sometimes a poem gets quoted in a national argument because everybody knows it, or at least part of it, and for the occasion a few lines of familiar poetry suddenly seem the best way of summing up a viewpoint…
“Before the floods, proponents of the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) view had argued that there would never be enough rain again, because of Climate Change. When it became clear that there might be more than enough rain, the view was adapted: the floods, too, were the result of Climate Change. In other words, they were something unprecedented. Those opposing this view — those who believed that in Australia nothing could be less unprecedented than a flood unless it was a drought — took to quoting Dorothea Mackellar’s poem ‘My Country’…
Read more from Clive James here http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/3743/full
[Via Neville]
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
When stuff like this pops up, it’s always good to consider ‘A complete list of [the 854] things caused by global warming’ at http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
You’ll find drought and flood in the list, of course.
Clive really gives it to Tim Flannery and Clive Hamilton.
“Tim Flannery had been loud in the land. …….. Professor Flannery was heard all the time, and always predicting that the major cities would run out of water. ”
“Clive Hamilton is an especially piercing example — pronounce the necessity of suspending democratic rights, so that citizens can be punished for sinning against Gaia.”
And yet Laurie Oakes calls us Wingnuts and Looney tunes – http://tiny.cc/myli7
“proponents of the CAGW view had argued that there would never be enough rain again, because of Climate Change.”
AFAIK that statement is untrue and I would be glad if someone could provide me with evidence to support the statement. There are scenarios and projections but nothing as definitive as “there would never be enough rain again”
However, due to a hotter and drier summer the desal plants in Perth have been running flat out and the desal plant in QLD was used due to contamination of stored water.
“As in the CSIRO (2001) projections, it will not be possible to make definitive statements on the direction of precipitation change in many cases.”
http://www.climatechangeinaustralia.gov.au/index.php
Rog just to give you a taste, the last two Victorian premiers Bracks and Brumby stated that “just building new dams wouldn’t make it rain.”
These men were both leaders of the state that built a desal plant on the best (? ) advice available from the scientists .(?)
Funny I didn’t notice any scientists complaining that the desal plant was a waste of time and money and they should just build a dam on the Mitchell river for a paltry 1.3 Billion for three times the water per annum from the desal plant costing ( now )23 billion.
Stupid trolls who never ever make much sense can be very tiresome, but I don’t believe anyone could be so uninformed.
It ain’t gonna rain no more, no more
And it’s never been warm before, before.
Well try the harp song of the Dane women if you don’t think warming happens every thousand years or so:
What is a woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre.
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?
She has no house to lay a guest in
But one chill bed for all to rest in,
That the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in.
She has no strong white arms to fold you,
But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you
Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.
Yet, when the signs of summer thicken,
And the ice breaks, and the birch-buds quicken,
Yearly you turn from our side, and sicken- –
Sicken again for the shouts and the slaughters.
You steal away to the lapping waters,
And look at your ship in her winter-quarters.
You forget our mirth, and talk at the tables,
The kine in the shed and the horse in the stables
To pitch her sides and go over her cables.
Then you drive out where the storm-clouds swallow,
And the sound of your oar-blades, falling hollow,
Is all we have left through the months to follow.
Ah, what is Woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?
Rudyard Kipling
I always knew, in the end, the climate debate would come down to who has the best poets.
After all, poetry is all about distilling complex truths down to bare essentials. Now that the “science is settled” and the debate all but over, it’s time for a bit of introspection.
We’ve got Clive James and Mackellar, et alii. The Warmists got Gore, Flannery, Brown and Hamilton.
May the best poetry define our era!
Rog: (from Bolt’s blog)
In March 2008, Flannery said: “The water problem is so severe for Adelaide that it may run out of water by early 2009.”
In fact, Adelaide’s reservoirs are now 75 per cent full, just weeks from 2009.
In June last year (2007), Flannery warned Brisbane’s “water supplies are so low they need desalinated water urgently, possibly in as little as 18 months”.
In fact, 18 months later, its dams are 46 per cent full after Brisbane’s wettest spring in 27 years.
In 2005, Flannery predicted Sydney’s dams could be dry in just two years.
Our old friend Mungo MacCallum, has popped his cork in his latest rambling in The Byron Shire Echo.
http://www.echo.net.au/opinion-piece/vague-promises-fuel-carbon-tax-stoush
In fact, three years later its dams are 63 per cent full, not least because June last year was its wettest since 1951.
In 2004, Flannery said global warming would cause such droughts that “there is a fair chance Perth will be the 21st century’s first ghost metropolis”.
In fact, Perth now has the lowest water restrictions of any state capital, thanks to its desalination plant and dams that are 40 per cent full after the city’s wettest November in 17 years.
woops sorry about the incorrect formatting above.
A brilliant article, I will always love Clive James.
Of interest was the odd comment along the lines of “yes but it’s still getting warmer”, which led me to ponder; how often in the past has it not been either warming or cooling? In fact I suggest that periods of 10 years or more of flat temps are exceedingly rare.
So, if it is indeed “still warming”, then it will continue to do so until it starts cooling.
Cheers.
In my experience the usual argument is Drought drought drought drought drought drought drought drought drought drought drought drought and more drought. I point out that the IPCC tells us right there in the executive summary for Chapter 10 of the AR4 that in a warmer world there will be more precipitation, but it falls on deaf ears. “They” usually claim that it’s the rate of change or that the patterns will change or switch to sea level or what ever. Did I just ramble? Sue me!
Unlike James, Mackellar at least had the good sense to come home after her trip to the mother country that inspired her poem. History is just one roll of the dice. It suited Clive J to ignore that the dice is now loaded and the odds are uncertain. Mackellar was apparently a bit embarassed by her poem. But Clive is shameless basing his spin and weave on it.
OK, so we have one person nominated as representative of the CAGW crowd. But as Bolt nominated him it doesn’t count, as Bolt is not recognised as an authority.
The question then, for self titled experts like Clive James and Bolt, is what will be the weather in all capital cities in Australia be for the next three years?
I don’t believe Bolt or Clive James have ever put themselves up as experts on Climate or weather.
But Tim Flannery and Clive Hamilton have.
Rog,
My best answer is to toss a coin!
It’s likely to be just as accurate as anything else we’ve been fed.
Great post Jen,
We don’t have to delve far into the work of our poets and novelists to understand that much of our literature is based on our early settlers’ battles with our extreme and unpredicable climate.
Mackellar is one of many.
Her ‘drought and flooding rains’ line is so popular because it cleverly depicts our climate.
Lawson, O’Brien, Patterson and numerous others have also written poems and short stories around the same basic theme.
The fine line between prose and poetry was laid bare by Phillip Adams – There was a young man from Bulli Pass, who stood in water up to his knees. Had he ventured in a little deeper, it would have been poetry . But now, with the climate achanging, he need only stay and wait.
Rog have a look at MDB rainfall anomaly graph for last 111 years and work out rainfall for yourself, sort of follows the PDO cycle wouldn’t you say?
First 48 years terrible next 50 years very good and 2001 to 2009 terrible and 2010 very good.
Choose other states and territory to look at anomoly graphs or total rainfall and you’ll find eastern, southern, SE Aust, SA all basically follow the PDO cycle, + = less rain – neg =more rain.
Factor in the IOD for SE Australia and the accuracy steps up another notch again.
Here’s MDB 15 year moving average, ZERO equals average rainfall.
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=rranom&area=mdb&season=0112&ave_yr=15
bazza’s comment that ‘it suited Clive J to ignore that the dice is now loaded and the odds are uncertain.’
Actually no, we are back in a cool IPO. It is certain that there will be more snow and ice over the next 20 years.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2011/03/01/coldest-back-to-back-us-winters-in-a-quarter-century/
Rog check out the PDO here mid page right, ( click on ) one for last 110 years and one for last 1000+ years, then look at total rainfall for say MDB, looks a fairly good fit.
If that graph for 934 to 2010 is accurate then the period to 1320 is very strong negative for the PDO and later strongly positive say for 1450 to 1600.
The cyclones and rainfall along our east coast must have been mega strong for 320 years then mixture from 1320 to 1440 then less rainfall from 1450 to 1600, with west coast of Nth America opposite.
The article mentions that the west USA and Canada mega droughts corresponds with this timeline and Prof De Deckker’s 20 year study of mid holocene to present ( 5,000 years ) rainfall record shows the same over Southern Australia for last 1000 years.
See Catalyst ABC 1000 year drought, pause graph at 8 mins 10 secs or so.
But that natural CC must have been very severe and extreme in Nth America and east coast of Australia over that 1000+ years.
But yes the climate does change with sometimes very extreme results for hundreds of years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_decadal_oscillation
Sorry the PDO graph for last 111 years only applies to MDB, when I looked again it could seem to mean something else.
Neville
This graph (from your wiki link) suggests the PDO was very positive during the LIA?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PDO1000yr.svg
It must have been a very droughty time, with more El Nino, while the MWP would have been wetter because of more La Nina.
el gordo,
That PDO graph is based on tree ring reconstructions, so any conclusions made from it might be problematical.
El Gordo real ice ages are periods of lower evaporation and therefore rainfall
, but I presume that during a minor ice age there are warm periods and colder periods.
What we do know is that a cool PDO brings drought to parts of western Nth America and a positive PDO brings higher rainfall, with the reverse being true for Australia.
It all depends on higher sea temps allowing more evaporation off the coast of western USA during + PDO and neg PDO for Australian east coast.
Of couse add in a strong el nino or strong la nina and rainfall must be increased or decreased again. Pos pdo’s produce more el ninos and neg pdos produce more la ninas.
Louis there are other studies using different proxies that show the mega droughts in USA during that period.
El Gordo have alook at the graph in the Catalyst video and then read the last few paragraphs of this paper by the young bloke working with De Deckker on that 20 year massive program. Certainly changes in temp and rainfall over the Holocene, certainly higher temps than now in the middle holocene over Southern Australia.
Sorry here’s that paper.
http://ems.anu.edu.au/ethesis.php?abstract=95
Neville,
I’m not questioning the PDO relationship with the droughts etc, but the implication that the LIA is associated with it, given the PDO is an effect of some underlying process that we don’t understand. It is an oscillation of the SST between the east and west Pacific, but what is the root cause of that oscillation, what’s the physics underlying it. No one seems to know.
Glad someone is doing this research – to get us off the IPCC drip.
From the Gouramanis abstract:
‘There is also evidence of a 200 year periodicity in the south eastern Australian lake levels that may be related to solar cyclicity.’
“I don’t believe Bolt or Clive James have ever put themselves up as experts on Climate or weather.”
So why refer to them?
Louis,
the underlying process relates to the gravitational pull from the moon and to a lesser extent the planets. Think atmospheric tides and changes in their magnitude relating to variations in distance and position of the moon.
“So why refer to them?”
Well, we don’t need your permission, do we? In any event Bolt is a conduit who attracts and processes all sorts of interesting and pertinent information about the scam of AGW and the assorted flotsam who support it; to this information he occasionally adds his own pungent observations which are generally germane and incisive.
James is a witty guy who has written an entertaining critique about the often grotesque contradictions, self-indulgence and dereliction of responsibility of the more prominent members of said AGW supporting flotsam and the even more wretched dereliction of duty by the press who collectively, with few exceptions, should be tarred and feathered.
Do you you have anything relevant to add or are you just intent on being an irritant?
Louis I don’t think the PDO is associated with the little ice age at all, I think of the PDO as a longer decadel version of enso, but it is certainly hard to predict its coming and going, i.e. phase changes.
If those earlier centuries long positive and negative phases are real why doesn’t it happen now, we now seem to be having decadel changes over the last 200 years or so.
If they were real then the extremes of climate would have been much greater than anything we have experienced since Europeans settled Australia.
Jennifer, can you provide a reference pls on the moon and planets etc. as the driver of the underlying PDO process in general and compared with say ENSO.
Clive James and Andrew Bolt probably are far better equipped than most alarmist scientists to make a judgment about Australian weather cycles and further afield because they ask themselves the most relevant question of all. Does the long history of weather events indicate that there has been any change in the frequency or severity of weather events post the Industrial Revolution?
The answer of weather history, either on the written page or on the page of geological investigation, from many places around the world, indicates that the sort of droughts and floods and other severe weather events that the alarmists imagine are unique to the post IR age and particularly the last 40 years or so is a figment of their collective imagination.
If the IPCC and their fellow traveler scientists had had a decent grasp of that history they perhaps would never have got into this wild goose chase. The starting point then should not have been the science but the long term history of weather, which sometimes covers thousands of years. It may have saved a lot of wasted effort and money and given the scientists more useful things to do.
This it seems to me is the most devastating area for the whole silly escapade. That’s why climate science needs to take notice of a Clive James and an Andrew Bolt simply because too many scientists are apparently uninformed on our Earth’s long history of drought and flood and extreme weather events.
Ahhh yes – the ye olde denialist scams:
(1) the MDB wide average scam
(2) the verballing “it will never rain again” scam
(3) and “Does the long history of weather events indicate that there has been any change in the frequency or severity of weather events post the Industrial Revolution?” ummmm – YES !
(Louis sinks PDO in cross-fire – tree rings!! – hahahahahahahahahaa…..)
More of the same denialist drongoism …. so tedious …… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Luke, thank god you’re back, I think Rog and bazza were claiming resident troll status. So you’re over the sulks then? Such a sensitive petal for an old fella.
John L Daly was also interested in this topic of precipitation and said that in Kenya, a study by Verschuren et al., extracted lake bed sediments from Lake Naivasha.
“Our data indicate that, over the past millennium, equatorial east Africa has alternated between contrasting climate conditions, with significantly drier climate than today during the `Medieval Warm Period’ (~AD 1000-1270) and a relatively wet climate during the `Little Ice Age’ (~ AD 1270-1850) which was interrupted by three prolonged dry episodes.”
Natural variability is complex.
“Does the long history of weather events indicate that there has been any change in the frequency or severity of weather events post the Industrial Revolution?” ummmm….no!
Here’s a bit more for those with no knowledge of the history of weather:
“The Sahel drought was a series of historic droughts, beginning in at least the 17th century affecting the Sahel region, a climate zone sandwiched between the African savanna grasslands to the south and the Sahara desert to the north, across West and Central Africa. While the frequency of drought in the region is thought to have increased from the end of the 19th century, three long droughts have had dramatic environmental and societal effects upon the Sahel nations. Famine followed severe droughts in the 1910s, the 1940s, and the 1960s, 70s and 80s, although a partial recovery occurred from 1975-80. While at least one particularly severe drought has been confirmed each century since the 17th century, the frequency and severity of recent Sahelian droughts stands out. Famine and dislocation on a massive scale—from 1968 to 1974 and again in the early and mid 1980s—was blamed on two spikes in the severity of the 1960-1980s drought period.[1] From the late 1960s to early 1980s famine killed a 100,000 people, left 750,000 dependent on food aid, and affected most of the Sahel’s 50 million people.[2] The economies, agriculture, livestock and human populations of much of Mauritania, Mali, Chad, Niger and Burkina Faso (known as Upper Volta during the time of the drought) were severely impacted. As disruptive as the droughts of the late 20th century were, evidence of past droughts recorded in Ghanaian lake sediments suggest that multi-decadal droughts were common in West Africa over the past 3,000 years and that several droughts lasted far longer and were far more severe.[3][4]”
wiki
Luke so now you’ve dropped the belief of mega droughts in western USA because tree rings were used in some of the proxy studies, very interesting info to file away.
De Deckker’s study of crater lakes and Murray canyons sea cores shows incredible periods of mega rainfall lasting 5,000 years from 4,500 years BP to 9,500 years BP.
Also a low point from 2500 BP to 3500 BP most of which shows lower rainfall than at present.
Of course the ice age recovery period from 11000 bp to 9500 BP had lower rainfall than today as well.
I have the graph of Lake Keilambete rainfall and the study in hard copy and when I find the bloody thing online again I’ll send it on.
But just for Luke’s delectation De Deckker’s 20 year study didn’t come within a bull’s roar of a tree ring.
BTW just in case— NO I’m not trying to say this proves that mega droughts were real in western USA.
A possible planetary influence on the PDO and climate is explored here:
So why refer to them?
http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/scafetta-JSTP2.pdf
There is a paper floating around coauthored by Carter [not Bob] which looks specifically at the influence of the planets which I can’t put my hands on right now and then the whole CR theory comes into play in respect of long-term, not just PDO, climate.
That Carter paper is here:
http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/138/paper/AS06018.htm
Jennifer,
The lunar tidal effect etc hardly explains the temperature differential – tides yes, but SST?
I suspect Bruce Leybourne’s work while he was working for the US Navy mapping the oceanfloors etc might shed some light, including Meyerhof’s surge tectonics idea – Leybourne has noticed, if memory serves me, some link between solar behaviour and upper mantle/lower crust behaviour in the electromagnetic domain causing thermal surges. This effect might be modulated by the moon, since Piers Corbyn also factors in the lunar effect in his study of the polar jet streams and the effect that stream has on climate.
Then again looking at the imagery of the PDO simulations etc, other possibilities arise including explanations based on Birkeland’s little terrella experiments.
Cohenite’s comment of a link between earth climate and planetary influence could be another clue, though if the planetary effect is restricted to gravitational effects, then not much can be explained, but if the effect is via the plasma state, all sorts of possibilities open up.
But to think that the earth system is a closed system that is solely heated by an external radiating sphere, as climate science does at present,somewhat restricts the number of possible scientific explanations for weather, and one of these of course is the proposition of greenhouse gases to explain the thermal anomalies.
Hello, Lukey 😉
Hmmmm…If I recall correctly one of Luke’s favorite tropes was the endless droughts we were doom, doomed, I say, to suffer forever more.
The Murray would never flow to the sea again. Dams would never fill again. Australian agriculture. Doomed! The climate models proved drought was the new normal. Luke repeated these claims endless as evidence our climate was on the brink of catastrophic AGW.
Luke had heaps of great appeal-to-authority links all peer-reviewed by their mates. Luke also forecast an end to skiing in Australia and possibly world wide as snow became a thing of the past.
How’s did that work out fer ya, Luke?
Whaddaya know it rained! The Mighty Murray flows again. The pelicans are happily nesting in the outback, as usual.
But, whaddaya know, the same Luke (aka El Creepo) now claim Big Wets are the unmistakable signature of…wait for it… Catastrophic Climate Change!!
The ATM machine sez… you have exceeded your rhetorical credit limit and just ate your card.
ROTFL, will the real denialist please stand up, please stand up.
Perhaps, we should go back and re-link some of Luke prescient insights from say 2007-2009? You know, to fact check his past claims with his current BS. I love doing research.
That’s the beauty of the Internet. Comments are forever! heh. 😉
There are theologies out there where the believer is told that no matter what happens, it is part of God’s will.
This always allow the retrospective predictions that it is obvious that God caused it….after the fact.
Current AGW is not really and different from this:
No matter what happens, after the fact the opinion leaders will solemnly explain that it was caused by AGW.
Even if they same solemn leaders were saying the opposite the week prior.
It is always to predict something after the fact.
And when you have a media network that is pretty well bought into the AGW faith, then the memory hole functions just fine.
Luke,
Come on- everyone knows you are just a lying cynic with no manners.
Why keep rubbing it in?
Imagine with Luke in charge during the Mayan drought and marching all the rellies up to the altar to have their claret splashed around.
Then suddenly, whoops! Floods!
Oh well!
Now where are those other rellies I missed?
Gimme that old time ‘ligion,
It’s good enough for me.
‘Perhaps, we should go back and re-link some of Luke prescient insights from say 2007-2009?’
Not advisable, WG, it becomes messy and leaves us all open to retaliation. Let’s move on and solve this climate riddle, destroy AGW and highlight the real consequences of natural climate change.
Besides, as you can see, Luke is now restrained.
Experts hired by insurance companies exposed to huge payouts after the Brisbane floods, believe the (late) release of water from Wivenhoe Dam contributed to the devastation.
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/floodrelief/experts-say-dam-contributed-to-flood/story-fn7ik2te-1226016795765#ixzz1Fr7y97Tf
Well of course an expert, who is being paid by the insurance company, would say that?
With the usual disclaimer “based on the information available”
Once they enter the discovery phase the case usually collapses. After being paid well the experts and lawyers go home leaving the bloke who bought a house in a known flood zone and didnt have proper insurance looking stupid. And more broke.
The argument, that it was the dam that caused the flooding, doesnt warrant analysis.
“Well of course an expert, who is being paid by the insurance company, would say that?”
Insurance Cos will have to pay out to the genuinely insured regardless of what caused the flood.
But the Insurance Cos were led to believe that because of Wivenhoe, the floods would always be much lower and they are losing a lot of money as a result of possibly bad mitigation.
And now everybody’s premium will go up.
In recent years, buyers of existing, flood-prone homes in Brisbane were told that the expected future flood levels would be enormously reduced because of Wivenhoe.
A person I know was told that his expensive two-storey house would be virtually flood-free with Wivenhoe.
The flood came to the second row of tiles on his roof.
When a disaster is a certainty, the premium is usually unaffordable, as the Qld govt knows from past experience.
“That’s the beauty of the Internet. Comments are forever! heh. ;-)” – Yes indeed Wes and you haven’t changed from the verballing denialist creep you always have been. Re your comments – errr utter horse doo – why go into detail.
El Gordo – no sulking – just bored with you guys (for a while) and hanging out with a hot chick. Plus getting into film career. What do you think of my latest? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bh7m81lkB4
My apologies in advance, to El Gordo:-) But those who live by the BS sword…
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/10/how-melbourne’s-climate-has-changed-a-reply-to-dr-david-jones-part-3/
Here’s what Luke had to say about forecasts for Our Hot Dry Future due to AGW in 2008:
Comment from: Luke October 27th, 2008 at 12:03 pm __
Of course, now that it is raining again, rainfall “appears linked to global warming” also…
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2011/01/flood-crisis-consistent-with-accentuated-hydrological-cycle-a-note-from-luke-walker/?cp=2#comment-475579
As Luke the Shameless says, “Bah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”
Yep indeed – what’s wrong with STR comment drongo puss? Lost on a dopey moron like you.
Wes,
And it was due to the support that rabid CAGWer advocates like Jones got that caused Vic to end up with a contract to build a 20 billion desal plant that will send the locals broke.
Luke was [and still is] one such supporter and they are fast becoming a luxury nobody can afford.
Exactly, Spangleds
Climate Alarmism has already cost our Lucky Country many tens of billions and lives as well.
Wouldn’t Brissy have been better off with a few more upstream hydrological engineering adjustments than a desal plant?
Ironically, Luke and his mates might just be the very climate catastrophe they have prophesied. You know, like Obama, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.” Self-fulfilling.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
The operators of Wivenhoe dam have just blamed inaccurate BOM forecasts for the Brisbane floods.
Herein lies the problem – if weather forecasting ends up being close to the 50/50 probability level, bad enough not to believe it, but right enough not to ignore it, simply means they have the physics wrong. Piers Corbyn uses solar magnetic effects, polar jetstream behaviour and the position of the moon in making far more accurate forecasts?
Why?
Because Piers is (probably without realising it) assuming the plasma physics explanation for the earth’s weather.
This article is about the possibility of flooding in London and it has nothing to do with global warming. They are seriously focussed on the possibility of a North Sea tidal surge accompanied by heavy rain over the next five years.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1363703/Our-future-water-How-devastating-floods-swamp-major-cities.html
Natural disasters do happen and Plan B is now in place.
It gets more interesting. BOM switched models on 17 August 2010 to one they obtained from UK Met Office. They also wanted it apparently for IPCC related work.
As we know the Met Office covered themselves in modelling glory by getting 6 long term forecasts wrong out of 6 (according to Piers anyway) with the councils running out of road salt two winters in a row because of their wrong forecasts.
So now BOM appears to be using the proven wrong Met Office long term model, which also seems to be one of the 18 IPCC models that Spencer & Braswell 2010 found did not accurately model the effect of CO2.
So if as well as getting the temperature forecast wrong BOM’s rainfall model underestimated the rain falling during the Queensland floods I have to say I’m not surprised.
Come on Sinkers – Corbyn is often spectacularly WRONG ! So quickly you non-scientists run to any old dishcloth that suits your POV. Have you undertaken a serious post-hoc evaluation of his forecasts – or course not. Leave proper evaluation to the experts hey?
I love to hear post-hoc queen Wessy Woo spruik
“Climate Alarmism has already cost our Lucky Country many tens of billions and lives as well” hahahahaa – mate if you ran out of water they’d lynch ya ! Did you predict the exact season the drought would break – no – well bugger off then. Useless old git. Want to convince the residents of Wolfdene or Traveston to be flooded in a new dam – be our guest …. they’d also like to lynch ya
Population growth and increased drought risk from AGW puts many areas at additional FUTURE drought risk – money well spent. We now have a water grid with diversity of supply options.
Grandad used to tap the rainwater tank and chalk the levels – water conservation starts when it stops running over.
Yes Bruce, what a joke! Just like the Climategate investigations. Caesar judging Caesar.
But in any case, why was it so far above the Q100 level if they managed it right?
There’s a big credibility gap here.
Luke: “El Gordo – no sulking – just bored with you guys (for a while) and hanging out with a hot chick. Plus getting into film career.”
And I thought you were moving office, joining Professor Flannery’s team. (A reward for resilience. Like the Predator guy, no matter how many holes they shoot through you, you somehow slink back into near human form and keep coming.)
Deltoid is vilifying Clive James, which comes as no surprise, so in response I put up a sentence praising the man’s prose.
It was only there five minutes before it was snipped.
The mob at Tim’s space is not libertarian and weak as piss when it comes to the science. Luke, it’s time to ‘man up’ and fight the good fight in defense of CJ’s long, beautiful sentences.
If your old mates here are so boring, you can always wander over there and get roasted in real time. Get a bit of your own back.
“A person I know was told that his expensive two-storey house would be virtually flood-free with Wivenhoe.
The flood came to the second row of tiles on his roof.”
Now this is strange. Someone, maybe a real estate agent? or local butcher? or bloke at the pub? makes an authoritative statement which is apparently accepted with analysis. And then it does flood so the blame is shifted to 1 greenies 2 govt 3 socialists 4 Take ya pick.
“Clive James and Andrew Bolt probably are far better equipped than most alarmist scientists to make a judgment about Australian weather cycles…”
Clive James uses a poem as evidence?
Rog, the poem is a better source than much of what the IPCC relies on!
Clive James uses a poem as evidence?
Yes, isn’t it Rad, Rog? Poetry trumps bullshyt every time.
Maybe we should start a climate poetry appreciation club?
I nominate Luke “singin’ in the rain” Walker…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7QL46cK7B8
…as our first Chairperson because Luke’s so verbal and poor punctuation doesn’t really matter in poetry. Nor spelling. Or reason. Ditto rhyme, nowadays.
I know I’ll have some readings to suggest to the group. 😉
Gotta run…doing, uh, research…Hold those thoughts, Luke.
Bha, ha hah ha ha.
I know you guys are being disingenuous, nobody could be intentionally that silly. A 100 or so years ago a young girl in London feels homesick for a place that she visited as a child (probably on school holidays) and pens a poem. This is then much lster used as evidence to support climate change (that doesn’t happen but does happen) by another expatriate.
But hang on, you guys are serious, you buy houses in a flood plain!
Now El Gordo – I didn’t imply you were boring – just getting revved up to write parts 3 and 4 of my next installment here …. tell you what though they’re a dour lot over at Deltoid – Tim deserves better for all his good work – If Sinkers and Wes didn’t exist – you’d have to invent them. And Hunter – I haven’t had a severe upping for a while now.
So hang on minute, Rog
The Greens stop every major reservoir project on the continent in the last couple of decades because they convinced the pollies that new dams will never fill due to AGW-induced continental drying…
Then a not-so-unusual Big Wet comes along washing away billions of dollars of infrastructure and taking lives…
So the Greens mount the soapbox and shout, SEE! We told you so! This is the Climate Catastrophe we’ve predicted all along! AGW causes heaps of RAIN! Coal mining causes heaps of rain!
But fair dinkum Aussies look around at the flood destruction (and at their now useless multi-billion dollar DeSal plants) and know this is the results self-fulling prophecy by the Greens. It’s a climate-based catastrophe alright, caused by Green policy…
It’s the catastrophe we had to have to reveal the cynicism of the Greens for all to see.
If Australia had built the hydro engineering projects it needed to control floods and supply its cities with adequate reserves this Big Wet wouldn’t have been a “climate catastrophe” at all, but the natural blessing it surely is.
This Big Wet is conclusive evidence that the Australian Climate has NOT change one bit!
The Greens have wasted our money and our time, and now their policies have begun to take lives as well.
You don’t need to be a scientist to figure that out. All you have to do is recall a few lines of poetry you learnt as a kid.
Sometimes things are just that simple, Rog…
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror —
The wide brown land for me.
Yeah (as Wes said) the poem indicates that natural variability dominates climate and nothing has changed over the past 30 years to alter that fact.
Rog, it’s the sun stupid.
http://www.avertedimagination.com/img_pages/massive_floater.html
Pic by Alan Friedman.
“This Big Wet is conclusive evidence that the Australian Climate has NOT change one bit!” MORONIC ! What foolery.
“The Greens stop every major reservoir project on the continent in the last couple of decades because they convinced the pollies that new dams will never fill due to AGW-induced continental drying” NO THEY DID NOT – what a whopping big lie.
And perversely the de-sal plant was on during the wet when sediment overwhelmed the water clarification system. http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2011/01/13/282651_gold-coast-news.html
Chairman Mao Wessy Woo – it will ALWAYS rain again. A sequence of drought years will NEVER occur again. Population growth in SEQ will halt – I decree it !! What a drip. Well no drips – LOL !
As for dams – well currently raising the wall of Russ Hinze, just built Wyaralong Dam and just filled it http://www.wyaralongdam.com.au/ ; Paradise Dam filled last year and recently constructed ; future projects and existing sunwater projects galore
Wes – you don’t even now know when you’re bulldusting. It’s just runs out of you.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of eroded mountain ranges,
Of longer droughts and intenser rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her warming jewel-sea,
But could the records be broken
Because of you and me.
Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the sceptics lie-
But then the grey clouds gather,
We can guess again
Who fakes the contorted logic
We know who to blame.
“The Greens stop every major reservoir project on the continent in the last couple of decades..”
Another furphy. The Tillegra dam was stopped because of action by local landholders, because it failed to gain departmental planning approval, because it failed an analysis by Centre for International Economics, because a report by Bewsher challenged the hydrology, because it failed a report on downstream salinity and, wait for it, the initial reason for its construction ie to supplement the water supply to the central coast had been resolved.
In other words it would have been a total waste of time money and resources.
But dont let the facts get in your way, keep on with the poetry.
rog,
Whatta they say? It’s better to shut up and let people think you’re a dill than open your mouth and prove it.
You obviously don’t know about Q100 and conveyancing.
A bit more to improve your education:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/the-48-hour-delay-that-sealed-brisbanes-fate/story-fn59niix-1226018055436
How does that work drongo, The Australian = education?
You know there has already been an enquiry?
It was nothing to do with the dam and everything to do with excessive rain in the Bremer, which cant be dammed. or damned.
“Former hydrologist Professor Neal Ashkanasy, who oversaw the planning and building of Wivenhoe Dam after the 1974 flood, said he was “amazed” the dam had performed as well as it did in January.
“I think they did everything possible. Most of this argument that has been going on has been based on 20-20 hindsight,” he said.
“They didn’t have sufficient time between the first rainfall event and the second one to drain the dam down sufficiently to mitigate the second flooding event.
“It’s easy to sit here with hindsight and say they could have done it another way. It seems to me they’ve done a reasonable job based on the information they had available to them.”
Professor Ashkanasy said the only way to flood-proof Brisbane was to “not build on the flood plain”.
“The big example is Clarmont, where after the 1916 flood the town quite literally got moved up the hill,” he said.
“That’s the way to flood-proof Brisbane – just get rid of all the buildings in the flood plain and we can live on the hills.”
Professor Ashkanasy, a PhD in social and organisational psychology, said people had a “desperate need to find someone to blame” in the wake of the flood.
“Human beings do that – psychologists call it the fundamental attribution error,” he said.
“We’re seeing people’s basic inability to understand probabilities. People have got no idea about probabilities and if they did they wouldn’t gamble.
“We’re also seeing that people are unable to differentiate emotions from logic and that always happens after an event like this.””
“The Australian = education?”
In your case, yes.
“You know there has already been an enquiry?”
You mean of SEQwater by SEQwater?
With a finding that blamed the weather report no less.
“It was nothing to do with the dam and everything to do with excessive rain in the Bremer,”
What! Nothing to do with panic dumping of huge amounts of water on top of the Lockyer Creek flood which was much more extreme than the Bremer?
They plainly panicked when they realised the Wivenhoe was within inches of bursting the emergency spilway and by this time Lockyer Ck which joins the Brisbane just below Wivenhoe was peaking and the combination was a disaster.
The fact is that Q100 which claimed that a lot of the Brisbane flood problem was solved with the building of Wivenhoe just proves that expensive flood mitigation systems don’t work if you go to sleep at the wheel.
It was extremely presumptuous to even consider Wivenhoe could ever achieve Q100 but having done so it was up to authorities to manage the system a hell of a lot better than they did.
We seem to be doing a lot of wheel spinning on this one drongo; what is your point?
I would have thought that was obvious from my comments.
Not really spangled; lets pretend that you are right and I am a dill…you have a scatter gun approach to issues which seems more like a list of personal grudges….so just spell it out to me slowly and simply
rog,
1/ you claim an enquiry. Bureaucratic self investigation is no enquiry.
2/ you claim natural flooding. Dumping Wivenhoe peak levels on top of Lockyer PLs and Bremer floods is what Wivenhoe was designed to prevent and not only failed in its mitigation design but added to the disaster.
3/ you claim buyers should have been aware of levels. The Q100 was supplied by these same authorities to give home buyers and builders guidance in future flooding. You can download it from the web and it is very wrong.
Rog and Luke,
I guess you guys are right. The Greens love hydro-engineering projects. Especially when they’re multi-billion dollar desalination plants that shouldn’t even exist outside of Saudi Arabia!
You guys really drank your green kool-aid on this one. Sure, the Greens love catchment dams and they love farmers and irrigation projects too. That’s how the Greens got to where they are today, by supporting the development of Australia’s catchment resources so that our cities and farmers have a reliable water source.
Now the Greens are working on expanding our power generation capacity so that Australia’s economy can grow unrestrained by shortages.
Thanks guys for setting me straight!
The next time I vote I’ll be sure to remember all the Greens have done to advance catchment development in our Lucky Country.
Bob’s your uncle 😉
Still no clearer drongo, it’s like pieces of a jig saw.
Are you saying
1 we need more govt dams
2 govts can’t run dams properly
3 dam experts are not experts if they work for the govt
4 the govt needs to build more dams
Makes no sense to me.
“Makes no sense to me.”
I’ve noticed that.
Rog, you and the Green/Labor coalition are victims of your own propaganda. Wake up and smell the coffee, mate!
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/commentary/stakes-are-high-in-the-flood-blame-game/story-e6frgd0x-1226019958797