UPDATES ADDED: See updates below the read more line
My heart goes out to Australia. The ugly side of this is that a portion of the tragedy may have been prevented with a dam to control floodwaters. But as James Delinpole writes:
Were it not for the actions of Environment Minister Peter Garrett, for example, the Queensland town of Gympie would not now be underwater. Unfortunately, Garrett took it upon himself to block the proposed dam that would have prevented it.
To add insult to injury, the state run warning system sent warning messages out six hours after the flood engulfed homes. – Anthony
=============================================================
The disaster is extraordinary:
THE nation confronts its worst flood disaster in living memory, with 30 people believed dead and 90 missing in southeast Queensland.
The wall of water bearing down on Brisbane threatens to engulf thousands of homes and put more people at risk.
What I cannot understand is this: how was the possibility of such a danger not forseen, when climate experts and the Government claim they can predict the climate 100 years from now? How did this week’s rain come as such a surprise, when we now spend billions more on computer models predicting the future?
Some of the stories are tragic:
A three-year-old boy drowned at Ipswich, after floodwaters pulled him from his mother’s arms.
Sarah Norman yesterday told how her brother Sam punched a hole in the laundry ceiling and pushed their sister Victoria, 15, to safety after water flooded the brick home at noon on Monday.
“He went back to get Mum and Dad, but they had just gone. Victoria heard Mum scream,” Ms Norman said.
Steve Matthews, 56, an electrician and former pastor and his wife Sandy, 46, a teacher’s aide from Spring Bluff near Murphys Creek near Toowoomba, were found dead downstream on Monday afternoon.
UPDATE
How amazingly fast the floodwaters rose in Toowoomba.
UPDATE 2
The global warmists claimed Queensland’s rains would dry up, which is why the Labor Government built a desalination plant – now mothballed – instead of yet more dams:
(Premier Peter) Beattie said the effects of climate change on our region meant we could no longer rely on past rainfall patterns to help us plan for the future…
“My advice indicates if we continue to experience below average rainfalls it could take several years (anywhere from five to ten years) for our major dam system to climb back up past 40 percent even with purified recycled water, desalination and the other measures we’re taking to supplement our water supplies.
“Given the current uncertainty about the likely impact of climate change on rainfall patterns in SEQ over coming years, it is only prudent to assume at this stage that lower than usual rainfalls could eventuate.
But Heather Brown, a Toowoomba resident, says locals made other bad choices in the same mistaken belief that floods would not come:
Tragically, it seems some of the most basic rules of survival – and certainly the most elementary rule of town planning – were forgotten in the case of Toowoomba, a city that is dissected by East Creek and West Creek, two deceptively innocent looking little creeks that seem to run as much water as a decent suburban gutter for most of the year.
Admittedly, Toowoomba – Australia’s Garden City – has been battling drought for almost a decade… Along the way, the creeks have been prettied and preened and slotted into your typical modern urban plan. And the breadth of their flow – and their seminal right to a small flood plain – has been gradually stolen away.
At the intersections of Victoria, Margaret and Russell streets – where the boiling muddy tsunami was its fiercest and most graphically filmed – the city council had embarked on an ambitious beautification plan to turn the creek into a pleasing urban feature, complete with boardwalks, gardens, illumination and seating. Everyone thought it was wonderful, except for cynics such as my husband and me. In fact, every time we drove past the feature we would say to no one in particular: This little creek is going to make them sorry one day. Tragically, we were right.
Early yesterday morning I went back to the bruised and battered Margaret Street to support any local business that still had the heart to open. My coffee shop was handing out free coffees to the battered owners of the local businesses who had lost so much. When I went to buy my newspaper, the newsagent told me he was devastated, not because of what had happened but because the engineer who had worked on the beautification project told him he couldn’t make them listen when he pleaded for bigger pipes – “18-footers” he called them – to let the water through, because it simply didn’t suit the aesthetics of the architects and landscapers.
So that’s what happened to my city, folks, the same as happened to so much of flooded Queensland. We did stupid and really, really dumb things because we thought we could get away with them. We built the wrong sort of houses and the wrong sort of bridges. We built towns and suburbs on flood plains. And we ignored at our peril the forces of nature and the history of the great floods that have shaped this continent for thousands of years.
Read more at Andrew Bolt
UPDATE: The Herald Sun has a broad coverage Flood News Page here
UPDATE2: For some background on the Mary River dam that James Delingpole refers to there’s this entry in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveston_Crossing_Dam
The question is whether it was more important to save fish or to protect people. From the Wiki article there’s this:
A University of Technology, Sydney report stated that “the proposed Traveston Dam near Gympie could pump up to 400,000 tonnes of greenhouse emissions into the atmosphere each year” and “even desalination, itself a last resort in a severe drought, would result in fewer emissions at 280,000 to 350,000 (annual tonnes) to yield the same quantity of water”.[10]
They apparently went with the desalinization plant, now mothballed. It seems that AGW gets into every discussion, even dams. The question has been raised as to whether or not this damn could have saved these people. I don’t know that it would or wouldn’t, but it would seem to me that more storage upstream helps in both times of drought and flood.
If it turns out that the dam would have made a difference, I hope that Environment Minister Peter Garrett will be in a public enquiry, so that people who have suffered in this tragedy can express their grief. Politicians need to hear that such actions have consequences. This isn’t the first time environmental issues have been blamed in Australian natural disasters. See this previous WUWT article on what people went through with the brush fires.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Worth reading this blog entry by an Ozzy man stuck in th efloods
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100071290/queensland-floods-but-at-least-the-endangered-mary-river-cod-is-safe-eh/
Hes not happy with the eco nuts.
And all because the enviro-fascists claimed that this kind of flooding was a thing of the past due to global warming. What’s the betting they will now attribute this very flood to just that: global warming?
Paging Barrie Harrop. Please talk to us again about the drought in Australia and why they need your windmill powered ro plants.
Went down to the Brisbane River near the Breakfast Creek Hotel this morning for the peak, which has turned out at 4.6m, a metre lower than ’74. In 1897 the river had 2 floods of 8m.
Saw countless pontoons and boats amongst other flotsam and jetsam of flooded homes washing out towards the mouth to be emptied into Moreton Bay, including a length or River walk pontoon about 300m long which smacked into a boat and set it free as well, amongst other damage that it caused on the way out.
Lets get something straight about the proposed dam at Gympie. As much as I am a believer in the value of dams, and also that a lot of the flooding in various parts of Qld that are currently underwater or towns that have been smashed over the last 3 weeks could have been prevented by appropriately placed dams. The particular proposal for a dam at Traveston, near Gympie, was to be built on alluvial sand flats and would have resulted in a shallow innefectual silt trap. It was definitely not a dam that should have been built. Just because Andrew Bolt down in Melbourne thinks every river should be dammed doesn’t mean that a poor proposal such as Traveston should have went ahead.
http://www.science.org.au/nova/newscientist/105ns_001.htm
Tim Flannery – the man that stopped the dams.
“power plants, farmers and households pay too little for their water, so they waste it. Water thrift is an absolute prerequisite for life in the new climate. The country also needs to shift to a new energy economy. Australia’s coal-fired power plants consume around 2 tonnes of water – for cooling and steam generation – for every megawatt-hour they produce. They also emit much of the CO2 that is the ultimate cause of the drying. Dwindling water supplies are raising the price of electricity, and to avoid an economic and environmental disaster the old coal clunkers need to be closed as quickly as possible and replaced with cleaner, less thirsty means of power generation. These could include geothermal, solar thermal, solar, wind or wave energy, and possibly clean coal. ”
Well clean coals possible. Reading these articles my thoguhts go to the Ozzies, I lived there for 18 months and there a great group of pomey bashers.
The floods are truly tragic … but remain weather, and terrible floods are part of our (Australian) history and folk law.
One famous Australian poem (by John O’Brien) describes an alarmist called Hanrahan who if he were alive today would be part of the CAGW crusade. The poem was first published in 1921. (“rooned” would be aussie for ruined)
SAID HANRAHAN
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
In accents most forlorn,
Outside the church, ere Mass began,
One frosty Sunday morn.
The congregation stood about,
Coat-collars to the ears,
And talked of stock, and crops, and drought,
As it had done for years.
“It’s looking crook,” said Daniel Croke;
“Bedad, it’s cruke, me lad,
For never since the banks went broke
Has seasons been so bad.”
“It’s dry, all right,” said young O’Neil,
With which astute remark
He squatted down upon his heel
And chewed a piece of bark.
And so around the chorus ran
“It’s keepin’ dry, no doubt.”
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”
“The crops are done; ye’ll have your work
To save one bag of grain;
From here way out to Back-o’-Bourke
They’re singin’ out for rain.
“They’re singin’ out for rain,” he said,
“And all the tanks are dry.”
The congregation scratched its head,
And gazed around the sky.
“There won’t be grass, in any case,
Enough to feed an ass;
There’s not a blade on Casey’s place
As I came down to Mass.”
“If rain don’t come this month,” said Dan,
And cleared his throat to speak —
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“If rain don’t come this week.”
A heavy silence seemed to steal
On all at this remark;
And each man squatted on his heel,
And chewed a piece of bark.
“We want an inch of rain, we do,”
O’Neil observed at last;
But Croke “maintained” we wanted two
To put the danger past.
“If we don’t get three inches, man,
Or four to break this drought,
We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”
In God’s good time down came the rain;
And all the afternoon
On iron roof and window-pane
It drummed a homely tune.
And through the night it pattered still,
And lightsome, gladsome elves
On dripping spout and window-sill
Kept talking to themselves.
It pelted, pelted all day long,
A-singing at its work,
Till every heart took up the song
Way out to Back-o’-Bourke.
And every creek a banker ran,
And dams filled overtop;
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“If this rain doesn’t stop.”
And stop it did, in God’s good time;
And spring came in to fold
A mantle o’er the hills sublime
Of green and pink and gold.
And days went by on dancing feet,
With harvest-hopes immense,
And laughing eyes beheld the wheat
Nid-nodding o’er the fence.
And, oh, the smiles on every face,
As happy lad and lass
Through grass knee-deep on Casey’s place
Went riding down to Mass.
While round the church in clothes genteel
Discoursed the men of mark,
And each man squatted on his heel,
And chewed his piece of bark.
“There’ll be bush-fires for sure, me man,
There will, without a doubt;
We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”
Peter
We’ve had a couple of “Noddy’s” (See the kids program Noddy and Big ears for what a Noddy is) come out and try and tell s that our Evil Co2 ways are causing this.
Well I’ve got news for the “Noddy’s”.
Flood peaks are revised down and are inline with historical values.
Does this mean it’s not our evil Co2 emmitting ways? Idiots!
Can we focus on mitigating this sort of thing in the future now?
Now that we’ve wasted 30 years saving bloody fish instead of people? Now we’ve wasted 30 years of research on belief based methodology’s. Now we’ve wasted 30 years chasing politically favourable funding instead of chasing hard science and fact based observation?
http://www.bom.gov.au/hydro/flood/qld/fld_history/brisbane_history.shtml
While any newly constructed dams would have no doubt helped, I doubt that one or several flood control dams would have prevented all of this flooding. This is ALOT of water.
This is horrible. I doubt that any of those homes are salvageable, and the contents will have to be scrapped too. It’s hard to imagine any of those people ever getting their lives back to normal. Victims of Nature and idiot “experts”. Tragic.
Losing a loved one, a home, or business to flood is awful, I hope the flooding ends soon!
I lived in San Antonio for a number of years, and I understand how easy it can be to see a creek bed that is always dry, and forget what happens in wet years. The sad fact is that the pressure to develop in a flood plain is immense, and a responsible government should prevent it, but…
My initial hypothesis is that a lack of tropical cyclones in the region, due to high vertical shear, helped exacerbate the stationary nature of the convection. A TC would organize it and move it away — but no such TCs around there during the past couple months…
Also, it’s in the tropics.
The usual case of being run (over) by (hippie) fanatics.
You always know you’re dealing with the loud mouths and fanatics when the priorities are skewed away from “the locals”.
It has become some what odd when the ordinary common nature loving tree hugger is seen as rational in comparison for the tendency to prioritize children, women and men first, then, albeit try hard as hell to, save what can be saved with what is available with what economic means are at hand.
But the hysterical climate hippie people hating nazis want their god damn utopia or else and nothing but doom and gloom for everyone.
Just for the record the worst flood in this region occurred in 1841 when the river at Ipswich peaked at 21.3m and at Brisbane at 8.43m.
http://www.bom.gov.au/hydro/flood/qld/fld_history/brisbane_history.shtml
Last night Ipswich peaked at around 19m and Brisbane was only 4.5m peak largely due to the fact that the Somerset and Wivenhoe dams (Built after the 1974 flood) were able to hold some of the water back as they were designed to do.
Unfortunately the government had been advised that we were going to experience continual drought and low rainfall so they filled the dams above the recommended 60% level. Had they not done that the Brisbane peak may have been lower. (the Wivenhoe Dam water enters the system below Ipswich)
Natural disasters are tragic. And while things can be done to mitigate them, the simple fact they are “Natural Disasters” means they can not be prevented. Environmentalists are not out to save the environment, but just to remove man from it. They are under the mistaken impression that man is not a part of the environment. And that is why they are hostile to anything of man – including freedom, life, and liberty.
You don’t understand.
You just don’t understand at all.
The Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, meant well. He had to prohibit the dam, as the little fish would have been harmed. And I am sure that he had scientific proof that the drought in Queensland was permanent.
Garrett is a Government Minister, and thus doubtless protected against any suit claiming that his decisions did harm.
And as for Toowoomba, it was beautified. It is gone now, but before the floods came it was pretty.
Had the United States signed on to the Kyoto Protocols, none of this would have happened.
…
How long is it going to take before we stop putting people in office who just want to do good?
There is such a thing as the desire to believe. Many people want a simple, direct, and unambiguous answer to complex questions. Folk do not want to do the hard work of thinking through what they are told; they just want to believe.
More people means it will get hotter. See? It’s easy.
And the citizens of Queensland must pay with their property (and their lives, in some cases) for the truly well-meaning environmentalist Government.
They meant well.
The Australian Policy is a total FUBAR, but they mean well.
I was listening to talk-back radio (in Australia) yesterday and a number of callers wanted to blame these recent rains on AGW. I am not sure how they reconciled that view with the fact that the floods in Brisbane were worse in 1974, and 1893.
One of these days we may learn that “Mother Nature” is very powerful and that our feeble efforts to curb her activities are marginal at best.
For a long time Australia has been a “land of droughts and flooding rains”. Nothing I have seen, heard or read convinces me that this will change any time soon (short of the next ice age).
I am sorry. If you build structures in a flood plain, eventually they get flooded.
Wow, if this is true someone’s head needs to roll. In the US you could likely argue criminal negligence as safety precautions were ignored. This is far more serious of a “human error” than say Three Mile Island which has been cause celibre for the anti nuke jobs for decades. Some law firm needs to get a pair and start going after these groups that are selling junk science and causing death and destruction. DDT anyone?
———-
Unfortunately the government had been advised that we were going to experience continual drought and low rainfall so they filled the dams above the recommended 60% level. Had they not done that the Brisbane peak may have been lower. (the Wivenhoe Dam water enters the system below Ipswich)
In my experience the Aussies never seem to learn or even understand basic science (which is in an appalling state in primary and secondary schools here) they still think it ain’t gonna happen again despite 1893 and 1974. They voted Tim Flannery Australian of the year and will continue to incredibly silly things. (This is from Toowoomba BTW), For example about 80% Australians believe in Mann made global warming compared to other states such as the US (36%) England <50% etc…
History is repeating it seems:
Green ideas must take blame for deaths
Some obvious points
———–
1. Flood control dams are not the same as water storage dams. The dam that might have been built was a water storage dam. There was no water to fill the dam so it was not built.
2. The amount of water in the flood is huge. No deasible dam is going to swallow it. Existing water storage dams are overflowing. One dam was reported as being at twice capacity.
3. Queensland is prone to severe flooding. Infrastructure is designed to handle floods. No amount of preparation that makes economic or practical sense can deal with 100 year floods.
4. Andrew Bolt is a journalist. His hobby horse is dams. But he knows zero about water resource management.
5. I despise people who exploit disasters like this to propagandize their own political views or to pretend the event is evidence if their own amazing foresight and wisdom.
This statement is unworthy of WUWT. Firstly, the danger was foreseen. That danger was the reason a dam was built to try to prevent the impact of another flood like the one in 1974. It may have helped, as this flood is lower than that one, but that dam was filled to overflowing and had to release water.
Secondly, as a site that constantly emphasizes the differences between climate and weather, to confuse the two with the above statement is ingenuous at best. This was a weather event, not a climate event. It was largely predicted… in the range of normal weather predictions, which is only days.
The floods in question are not exceptional, per se. All of the affected areas have had bigger floods in the past. What’s unusual is the fact that so many areas have big floods at the same time – something being largely attributed to the la Nina weather pattern (not climate change).
As for dams, as Scott R said above, the terrain in these areas are not always conducive to dams. A lot of these areas are flood plains, which means that they’re largely flat with no practical way or place to build a dam. Yes, a few dams could be built, and maybe some of them could have alleviated some of the problems, but most of the flooding would not have been stopped by any proposed dams.
On the human tragedy part, my heart weeped when I read the story of thirteen year old Jordan Rice, who insisted that his younger brother be saved first, and when it was his turn it was too late….
This morning we hear that the Wivenhoe Dam, built after the devastating floods of 1974, seems to have been at least partially responsible for reducing the predicted Brisbane flood level by a metre.
Meanwhile on the western side of the Australian continent bushfires are the main threat.
Truly as in the words of the well known poem by Dorothea Mackellar:
Any planning based on projections, derived from CAGW, will invariably result in similar tragedy. Preparing for an AGW desertification disaster.., leads one to ignore flood risks.
Double tragedy, since the mindset was intentionally manipulated. GK
Like many people, I question whether the proposed dams would have made that much of a difference. The temptation to build next to what look like nice babbling brooks and creeks is immense and land and property values are enhanced when near water features like this.
The answer is that floods and droughts are facts of life in Queensland. Living near rivers, however picturesque, is a not-very-well-calculated risk.
Ten years of drought and idiots talking of permanent climatic changes toward drought can cause people to forget history.
Practically all of the dams in the Brisbane area are full and spilling. See http://www.seqwater.com.au/public/dam-levels
What has failed is the water management at the dams. They were too full for too long and when the flooding rains did come, the dams were worse than useless. That is a part of the tragedy that is “human caused”.
But most of it is just about Australia climate, from drought to floods and back again. There is no ultimate answer except respect for the power of nature.\ when measuring risk.