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
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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.
I enjoy diffusing frustration by attempting to make light of situations. But, I simply cannot when the side-effects of tolerating ‘Useful Idiot Greenies’ is causing harm to specific communities such as the flood hit regions of Queensland, and especially – Toowoomba.
The facts in this article highlight the far-reaching effects and damage that is this religion of promoting ‘planet’ over ‘populace’ (ie: ‘Giah’ worship) thrives upon.
The ‘carnage’ (whether it be verbal or, as in the case of today – physical) is not at all necessary, if the Agenda (on all its myriad fronts) is brought to a timely end by thoughtful patriotic individuals wherever they be on this beautiful globe.
Bush fires ran rampant in the United States because ‘Greenies’ forbade our National Park Services from clearing dead brush amongst forest trees and now, the U.S.A. is going to be reaping the benefits from having ‘deep oil wells’ taken off the Southern Coast. …Why? Because they were yet again, ‘forbade’ to set up their rigs in shallow waters where their maintenance would be less troublesome. This religion literally ‘primed’ the oil well fiasco and now, the Gulf’s normally robust ‘ecosystem’ has suffered incalculable damage for many years to come.
I enjoy ‘ranting’ about not being able to walk along the beach in the Southeast of Australia picking them up by the tens – NOT because I don’t want to pay for them – for I can find them (at high cost) in the local grocery store…but, because I cherish my FREEDOM of doing such trivial exploits. I cherish my Individual rights. I cherish and hold fast to the intrinsically basic idea that humans…THINKING HUMANS…best govern themselves and their communities with little over-arching government controls.
I can still drive the beach in my ute and light a fire at night to rest and refresh myself…but, I wonder with all this insanity… How long do I, and others, have till those little cherished Freedoms will too, go the way of most common sense in the year 2011?
Here’s a poignant example – if the loss of human lives ‘doesn’t do it’ for you – How ’bout these Giah zealots forbidding hunters to harvest the deer that proliferate within the ‘ecosystem’ of the Coorong? Hunters – with rifles or cross-bows have been forbade to hunt and then…. With little warning – the hum of army helicopters was heard in the ‘so called’ pristine Coorong. (We could hear the savagery from our farm house.) The ‘copter doors slid open and the ‘bambi’ (singular for deer?) were indiscriminately shot with high powered guns by military personnel. I ask you. Isn’t THAT ‘insanity’ in its purest form? These manically inspired zealot ‘Greenies’ give the ‘go ahead’ for mass carnage of deer – don’t pick up the carcasses…but, simply allow them to rot…. when Hunters ‘harvesting’ could be doing so in a balanced manner…complete with great meals for their families afterwards…
Do you dare say that my ‘bambi story’ has nothing to do with Toowoomba? I daresay it does, my Scientific friends. All this needless harm to humans and fauna in our environments can be ended, IF – as individuals – we begin to simply STAND against the tyranny of this ‘system’. I ask each of you – What will it take for you to stand with me and many other conscientious citizens and simply ‘stand up’ after you are schooled in the issues within your immediate sphere of influence. (I’ve blown past many of mine already – eg: reading & then writing on Watts Up). Then, we will find that honest individuals can and will ‘make a difference’ with residents like Heather Brown.
When we stand within our respective environments and link up arms (mentally and physically) – to stand against this encroaching idiocy/tyranny – wherever the ‘green agenda’ rears it’s ugly head…eventual cataclysmic events will be avoided by logic and common sense.
‘Greenies’ ~ when in leadership ~ speak for ‘the Earth’ and usher in disasters on multitudenous fronts. BUT – the ‘leadership’ is only directed from ‘the tippy tippy top’ by the ‘Gia Groupthink’. The folks (the idealistic and the indoctrinated) at the middle and bottom of their food chain – are just basically, misled teenagers in either age or mentality. ‘They’ have been co-opted at a high price indeed, at least – for towns such as are in Queensland. How many years of needless work could’ve been avoided…?
But, the CONSEQUENCES go far beyond Queensland and are staggering, indeed.
One ‘lone crazy’ in Arizona and we have the Media of America (and now the world) telling all of us to ‘fear words’ to ‘not speak out’ and to literally ‘quake in our boots’
until another ‘crazy’ unleashes. (Was that SAID when the guy who shouted ‘Allah Acbar’ when he killed so many – was that ‘rush to judgement’ espoused, then? Of course not. Because it didn’t ‘fit’ with the Agenda. I’ve listened to ABC radio ‘polls’ within the last couple of days that say Australians believe American fixation on weaponry is the culprit… You and I KNOW that is not the case and that ‘they’ corrupt polling. (You KNOW that the scenario down in Tasmania was only a ruse to get you all weaponless) And, what – I sincerely ask you – has THAT done? My ears are constantly ‘assaulted’ by stories of Aussie Butchery by knifes, machetes, wrenches and hammers used in many heinous crimes…and the victims of those crimes had absolutely NO defense to be used against the perpetrators of those crimes.
Those stories end in tragedy because Australia ‘bought the line’ that is now being foisted upon her fellow country, America while she shovels snow nationwide and we
wish we hadn’t prayed so much for rain…
Lest you think I digress… please try to understand that these issues simply ‘snowball’ from the folks trying to milk ‘the system’ in Anthony Watt’s hometown by wanting to institute more ‘laws’ about buying and selling homes… to the now ’30 plus’ lives that have been snuffed out by ‘bad ideas’ ~ which go against common sense and all logic ~ gaining footholds against good ol’ common sense.
Please remember that having ‘Giah Greenies’ in office have implications that are truly staggering and costly on many many levels of society. Today, Australia pays the price by having more of her citizenry harmed by rivers rising when it could have been avoided by common sense… and the ‘Greenies’ will lament along with all of us ~ but, do you NOT remember that ‘they’ also advocate the killing of our children by Abortion…? That ‘human life’ has been ‘cheapened’ in their hearts? Can we TRUST them when they stand alongside us at funerals? I ask you – doesn’t it ring terribly hollow when Australia’s Prime Minister gives her (and Australians) SYMPATHY to Queenslanders? I dare ask you each – Who NEEDS sympathy? It is a totally useless commodity…but, when one’s PM has no ‘moral base’ ~ sympathy is all we’re – sadly- due.
Guys… Tomorrow – will our kids and grand kids (indoctrinated by these very same ‘groups’ on their T.V.’s and in their classrooms) be more capable of ‘reasoning’ than ‘we’ – against this ‘Tide’? I suggest to you that if WE AREN’T capable of mounting an intellectual defense – they surely won’t.
It’s ‘high time’ that we get our ‘personal acts together’ and begin to thoughtfully engage within our respective cultures wherever we are best used. I invite you to PRAY with me, Ladies and Gentlemen of Science. Your ‘fields of study’ – this GLOBE is truly at stake…and I believe you were born for a time such as this. I believe this corruption of the GOOD in our humanity has gone on long enough. I do truly hope you agree.
Cynthia Lauren Thorpe
From the Australian Government web page called ENSO WRAP UP
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/
La Niña periods are generally associated with above normal winter, spring and summer rainfall, particularly over eastern and northern Australia. The current event has contributed to 2010 being Australia’s third wettest year on record, and Queensland having its wettest December on record. During La Niña periods, Tropical Cyclone occurrence for northern Australia is typically higher than normal during the cyclone season (November-April), while summer daytime temperatures are often below average, particularly in areas experiencing higher than normal rainfall.
I agree with some of the previous bloggers comments, the flooding has nothing to do with global warming. Unfortunately, this La Nina could be around for a while .
Wivenhoe dam is designed to work in conjunction with the Somerset dam which is further upstream. Had both dams been at the recommended 60% capacity (as determined when they were designed) between the two of them they could have held back a lot more water than they did but they were both above the 60%.
After the 1974 flood a huge enquiry was held and a list of recommendations made, especially about where to build in the Brisbane area. This report was completely ignored by the Brisbane Council and thus people were allowed to build in areas totally unsuitable for housing. As part of it’s campaign to attract new residents the Council encouraged the riverfront housing boom – you were extra trendy if you owned a riverfront block.
After this event I expect heads in council to roll!! The people who have been flooded have the right to sue the council for negligence.
Two words to explain this phenomenon; Cloud Experiment.
Sorry Guys! Methinks I actually EDITED the word ‘cockles’ out of my ‘rant’
when I jumped from oil rigs in the U.S.A. to my beach here in Australia!
I’m truly sorry. I was using as few words as possible and in my humanity –
edited a crucial one for the benefit of the reader.
Sorry. Trying to be as concise – as always…
C.L. Thorpe
Graeme W says:
January 12, 2011 at 1:56 pm
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).
Prof David Karoly was interviewed by the ABC yesterday and he stated that the intense rainfall was due to a combination of the deep la Nina plus record sea temperatures north of Oz which is due to global warming.
Oh – that’s the other point.
No one has built (houses) in the 100 year flood plain or in the 100 year storm surge zone for decades in Australia. Do you think we are complete idiots?
If some engineer is aware of a problem all they have to do is not sign off on it. If they allow it through they are guilty of transgression against the primary duty of engineers which is not to risk public safety regardless of commercial or personal interests.
Cheers
Robert
Regarding the Delinpole comment re Environment Minister Peter Garrett: whilst I enjoy reading his articles this comment is out-of-order. Even if Garrett had given his approval dam construction would have barely begun thereby there was no hope in mitigating the current flooding of Gympie. Furthermore, the dam was to supply water to Brisbane and neighbouring towns consequently would have been as full as possible under the prevailing rainfall regime, rather than as empty as possible if operating as a flood mitigation dam. Given that these strong La Nina-based events occur in Australia on multi-decadal cycles with very long intervening drought cycles then virtually most of Australia’s dams are for water supply rather than flood mitigation purposes. Obvious answers to reduce the impacts of flooding include restricting development on floodways, not infilling urban catchment areas, build more levee banks to protect existing development, and seeking the opinion of those people aware of the natural cycles of drought and flood.
A case in point: Grantham, a small township where most of those people missing are from, is located at the confluence of a number of streams draining a deep semi-circular valley below Toowoomba, a location where flash-flooding will coalesce before issuing out onto a broad floodplain downstream. Half of Grantham is built on a hill above the floods, the other half on the floodplain below! Before development did not anyone ask, “Just how did this floodplain get here?” Dams are not always necessarily the solution but clear, honest thinking based on real-world events would go a long way to help.
Can I say it now? It’s drainage problem.
Sadly, when they get up to normal precipitation they don’t keep enough, but when they do get more precipitation ‘an normal they can’t drain it fast enough. So drainage problem. But of course people will go, this time too, how can we be certain it’ll happen again like so?
John Trigge, Karoly IS global warming himself… 😉
Midnight. UK time, 12/13. 01.2011. Just been in contact with very dear friends who live in Brisbane. They’re OK but have ten people ‘squatting’ with them!
Rewind to 1966. Working on my Father’s farm in Zambia (after school). Farm was bordered by the Kafue River and the Muliashi Stream. The stream flooded every rainy season and swamped a lot of our land. Got an expert who worked on the copper mine (Roan Antelope Mine) to help. We built a large earthen dam on the lower reaches of the stream. When the expert said that we had to build a number of lesser dams higher up the stream I questioned him as to why. He said that these extra dams were NOT for water storage, they were to assist in the diversion of water into other natural courses, away from normal course of the Muliashi.
The farm has gone now, like most other productive enterprises in Zambia, but the Muliashi still does not flood what used to be our farm.
Surely a number of diversionary rather than holding dams would have helped to alleviate the flooding in Brisbane?
Readers may be interested to have a quick peep at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology website to see the history of floods in Queensland since the late 19th century. Either go to http://www.bom.gov.au or Google ‘Queensland flood history’ and open the BoM entry. There have been 4 occasions on which the Brisbane River has gone higher than this time, 3 higher levels for the Fitzroy River at Rockhampton, and significant flooding almost every year.
Dams are not always the answer. Many years ago I was at the University of Iowa, in Iowa City. They planned on building an art museum in the flood plain. I asked the facilities management office if that was wise. The answer I got was that they expected water in the basement and the design allowed for sump pumps, so it “wasn’t a problem – just an engineering” decision. There is a dam up stream a few miles.
Here are the Google Earth coordinates:
UI building: 41.668833, -91.537852
Coralville dam: 41.724863, -91.529837
Here, you can read of the result:
http://www.artsjournal.com/culturegrrl/2009/04/sorriest_sight_inside_iowas_fl.html
If you follow the river you can see that it meanders – Just like the lower Mississippi River, and it also floods.
Here are general coordinates for the currently flooding area in Queensland, near Brisbane:
-27.519074, 152.998197
I’ve selected these to show the Indooroopilly Gulf Club that is located on the inside of a meander. This is a better use of flood plain than are the uses surrounding it.
Here is a link to photos from the January, 1974 flood in the same area.
This is heartbreaking.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/gallery-e6frg6nf-1225985694831?page=1
Sorry for that!
Jim Cripwell says:
January 12, 2011 at 1:47 pm
I am sorry. If you build structures in a flood plain, eventually they get flooded.
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Indeed. There is a report in the Australian newspaper today indicating the local council ignored a consultant hydrological report about a decade ago that recommended not to allow construction of homes on low lying areas. This report was ignored and according to the report was “covered up”. Obviously it can’t be concluded that the council was relying on the “global warming” scare and therefore a future drier climate. But to say it had no influence would be difficult to dismiss.
Building on flood prone land is also cheaper and I’m sure many thought that there would be no future problem after ’74.
There was a case mentioned in the media of one householder building his house in 1975 just after the 1974 flood and hoping that the so called one in a 100 year flood would not occur again in that exact period of time. 1 in 100 year flood is merely a probability, it can occur again the next year , in 50 years or 120 years. In this case it occurred again in just 38 years.
The building of the Wivenhoe dam upstream of Brisbane after 1974 would also have given a false sense of security for many residents. Dams can only mitigate flooding not prevent it from happening.
Yes an absolute tragedy. But going on Australia’s records of floods going back to the mid 19 Century it will happen again some time in the future.
John Trigge
You said
“Prof David Karoly was interviewed by the ABC yesterday and he stated that the intense rainfall was due to a combination of the deep la Nina plus record sea temperatures north of Oz which is due to global warming.”
Reading Bob Tisdale’s latest post on SST for December and his posts on the impact of El Nino’s on global SST TEMPERATURES, I think the extra warming of the ocean surface water north of Australia may have more to do with the left over heat from the last El NINO rather than GLOBAL WARMING . Bob Tisdale may want to comment on this /
This from Bob’s blog:
“El Niño description: A reduction in the strength of the Pacific trade winds triggers an El Niño. A number of interrelated events then take place. Huge amounts of warm water from the surface and, more importantly, from below the surface of the western tropical Pacific (the Pacific Warm Pool) slosh east during an El Niño and are spread across the surface of the central and eastern equatorial Pacific.”
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/
John Trigge says:
January 12, 2011 at 4:21 pm
Prof David Karoly was interviewed by the ABC yesterday and he stated that the intense rainfall was due to a combination of the deep la Nina plus record sea temperatures north of Oz which is due to global warming.
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Karoly is “on message” here but again no evidence only a tongue-in-cheek opinion.
.
Of course the 1893 flood level some 3 to 4 m above the 1974 and current water level with no “global warming” to speak of during 1893 doesn’t seem to fit your theory dear Sir.
Einstein once said if there is one piece of evidence that doesn’t fit your theory, ( in the Aussie vernacular) “your up “s**t creek” or words to that effect!
Sorry – your are seriously wrong about dams. They will not solve this issue – the major cause is large natural rainfall variation in Queensland – and subsequently poor policy believing that it won’t rain again during a very dry decade. But its happenned before – the variation, that is. Equally, building dams won’t solve the problem of controlling floods. However, dams may be a better solutions for drinking water supply than desalination plants. Qld is not the only state to have that made that mistake with Victoria having invested something like $6 billion on a desalination plant at Wonthaggi when a $1 billion dam would have done many times the job on the Mitchell river.
An Aussie old timer on TV said that the 1974 floods were worse. So when I see this ‘worst flooding in 118 years’ or ‘worst floods in living memory’ or ‘inland tsunami’ (oh for goodness’ sake, a tsunami? honestly?) it makes me quite annoyed. They have to try and pretend that every event like this is the worst one yet.
Ryan Maue said:
Also, it’s in the tropics.
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Go to the bottom of the class, Ryan. Brisbane is 27.25 degrees south, approximately as far south as Miami or Tenerife are north. It has a semi-monsoonal climate which, as PPs have pointed out, is extremely variable in terms of rainfall.
The dams argument is a red herring when it has been raining for weeks and the topography is pretty flat. The Wivenhoe dam undoubtedly mitigated the disaster, but if (or perhaps, when) a flood as big as the one in 1883 happens again, the whole place would go under, no matter what infrastructure was in place.
And, the monsoon season still has 2-3 months to go.
Like living around the San Andreas fault, or near an active volcano, or in New Orleans, in the end people have to make decisions about risk. I have decided not to take it, preferring a city which is geologically stable and has never had more than minor flash floods.
It will be interesting to see if these events affect the longer term future of what has been a boom town for the last 20 years. It will take many businesses months to recover, and I’m betting that insurance premiums will skyrocket.
Kev-in-UK
Kev I don’t have the full story, however this is the story as I know it, the East coast and many other areas of OZ have suffered through a long drought, Wivenhoe was built after the floods of 1974 as a multi- purpose dam.
1) to act as a slowing agent in times of heavy rain to minimize the chance of 1974 being repeated.
2) as a water storage facility for the town water.
To do both these jobs it’s storage capacity needed to be maintained above 60% when possible for town water but regulated once it passed that mark, released in managed amounts, thus leaving capacity to capture excessive run off, discharging in a controlled manner so as to not over burden the river below and reduce the incidents of major flooding.
Problem is when the drought finally broke and levels reached 60% those in power refused to remove water usage restriction (imposed to save water during the drought) , water was too valuable to let the populous use as they wished, or to release down the river and run out to sea. Since the drought broke Queensland has received constant rain, thus with authorities maintaining water restrictions and reluctant to release some of the water rapidly filling the dam they were just too late in acting.
I know they released water when it reached 140% of capacity, I’m not sure at what stage they first released some of the excess, but as an earlier poster stated it is now at 200%, that second 100% is what point 1 above refers too, flood mitigation.
After saying all that, too what extent earlier action to reserve room for flood rains would have prevented this weeks events is debatable, too much rain, too short a time to release excess water without flooding areas below the dam in a fully managed way.
Maybe a regular poster here, Baa Humbug can correct any errors in my post, to my knowledge Baa is a resident of the area, was flooded out late last year and had two metres of water on his property this week
Never happened in living memory can’t be said about Brisbane as the same thing happened a couple of decades ago.
Living memory for the climate modelers is even shorter and is not included in their models.
Unfortunately living memory doesn’t go back the to last Grand Solar Minima 200 years ago, so I think there are many surprises lurking in the near future.
The Sun is once again almost spotless.
Scott R, Graeme W: You claim that a dam won’t keep Gympie safe. The proponents have studies showing otherwise. What do you have other than an assertion?
How many fish are worth the lives lost? Can Mary’s River Cod breed with Murray Cod or the Eastern Freshwater Cod? If they can’t be destinguished visually, are these separate species or just tools against development used by environmentalists? In California we’re very familiar with that tactic… look up the “Delta” smelt… they differ from surf smelt by hanging out in the Sacramento Delta. And their numbers are reduced by Sacramento sewage, not irrigation pumps.
FrankK says:
January 12, 2011 at 5:08 pm
“Of course the 1893 flood level some 3 to 4 m above the 1974 and current water level with no “global warming” to speak of during 1893 doesn’t seem to fit your theory dear Sir. ”
Frank,
The Wivenhoe Dam did not exist in 1974. How high do you think the current flood would have reached without the dam ?
From the SEQWater website :
“Flood Mitigation
During a flood situation, Wivenhoe Dam is designed to hold back a further 1.45 million megalitres as well as its normal storage capacity of 1.15 million megalitres. Floods may still occur in the Ipswich and Brisbane areas but they will be rarer in occurrence. Wivenhoe’s flood control facility, together with the existing flood mitigation effect of Somerset Dam, will substantially reduce the heights of relatively small floods.
It is anticipated that during a large flood similar in magnitude to that experienced in 1974, by using mitigation facility within Wivenhoe Dam, flood levels will be reduced downstream by an estimated 2 metres.
Full supply level or 100 percent capacity (in the water level analysis) is indicative of the optimum level intended for town water supply, and does not take flood mitigation levels into account. ”
Cheers
Well, if global cooling is not part of the planning of governments and real estate developers, then they will build more houses and malls even in flood plains, expecting that there will be more drought than more rains in the coming years. They should start building more dams upstream, to reduce waterflow downstream during heavy rains.