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.
Californians have a lot more to worry about than living on the coast. Wildfires, earthquakes, taxes, crime, illegal immigration, delusional hippies, self righteous actors, Jerry Brown, all rank higher than tsunami risk in reasons not to live in CA. 🙂
The people that live on the East Coast and Gulf Coast on the other hand are really rolling the dice. You can pretty much count on getting hit by a fairly sizable hurricane about once every 30 years anywhere from Texas to North Carolina. And you can guarantee one those will be a Katrina or Andrew sized disaster. Frankly I’m surprised insurance comapnies will even write policies for the area, at least for second homes.
The dam will act as an amelioration for floods even when full. The spillway capacity is a function of width and depth ( freeboard ). If the dam is spilling and a large surge of water arrives then the water level will rise and more water will go over the spillway.
Over time the water level will drop once more ( if the dam hasn’t over topped or been otherwise breached ) . This has the effect of flattening out the peak of the flood to a reduced amount but over a longer period. The bigger the impounded lake is in area and the more generous the amount of free board in height the more effective a damper the dam will be.
Think of a bath full to the overflow, when you pour in a bucket of water the level rises and then gradually falls as the buckets’ contents go out the overflow over time.
LazyTeenager
Check out this site.
http://www.bom.gov.au/hydro/flood/qld/fld_history/brisbane_history.shtml
It might give you a different perspective on whether the flooding in Queensland is a result of a recent increase in the frequency of extreme weather. It seems to me that the region has always suffered extreme weather events.
Moreover, it would appear that the trend is actually in reverse of what you purport. According to the graphs at the link, the most severe flooding was in the late 1800’s with recent years being much “quieter” (if one can refer to nearly annual flood events somewhere in Queensland as “quiet”)
RE: Lazy Teenager – “Noone ever said this, you are making stuff up”
Your’e right in a way, a scientist wouldn’t be so stupid as to say that, but what about the relentless pitch put to the Australian people by state and federal govts about declining rainfall? In the public consciousness it wasn’t meant to happen. It’s about now that climate scientists go for their finer print. How do you put the case for a desal plant without claiming it won’t rain as much. There was never anything remarkable about our drought or rainfall numbers yet that is miles away from public consciousness. Did any of our illustrious climate scientists object to this skewing? Of course not. They were more likely to dish out their crap to fawning reporters at every opportunity.
Kev-in-UK says:
January 13, 2011 at 2:00 am
Since they can control the flow to do with the tides associated with the Brisbane River I would assume much of the full releases they had started to do were in conjunction with firstly the low tide and secondly when flood levels were expected to be lower. I haven’t seen any information as to the release status as at times expected to impact the maximum height of the flooding in the Brisbane area.
As for the experts supposedly not knowing about a forthcoming disaster such as the one which just occurred (as Andrew Bolt stated), as a matter of fact the chief meteorologist in Brisbane briefed Queensland’s Premier back in October, warning her of the likelihood of potentially devastating floods to hit the state. http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-national/premier-convenes-urgent-weather-meeting-20101017-16op4.html
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”
I have been to a lot of dams, some of which generate electricity, but I have never seen a smokestack, could someone please explain to me, how exactly do you generate greenhouse gases by capturing and releasing water?