Bogus claims on Australian and Brazilian floods from ABC and Dr. Richard Sommerville

It’s the usual conflation.
“Climate change is happening.” No doubt.
“The extreme weather events we saw in 2010 were caused by climate change.” OK. If you say so, and depending on what you mean by “caused by climate change.” Agreed if you simply mean that the ever-changing climate causes all weather phenomena, by definition.
“It’s all our fault.” Fill in your favorite screaming-at-your-TV-set verbiage here.

ShrNfr: both

You can show these graphs time and again, with no effect whatever on people like Sommerville or Australia’s equivalent David Karoly.
These are people who have never learned that reality exists separate from their own wants or desires. They still want what they want when they want it no matter what. And what they want is to be heroes of Saving the Planet, a prerequisite for that being that the planet must be proved to be in terminal trouble.

I guess that the droughts that they also blame on global warming are also caused by more moisture content.

The leftist ideology wants more money for their pet projects.
The rightist ideology wants more money for their pet projects.
What ends up happening is the lions share of the money goes to your overlords at the to of the pyramid food chain of our society, ie the people that rule over you either inside or outside government.
I try to transcend both ideologies. I don’t want any of your money coming to me from anyone else’s pockets that I didn’t honestly earn.
Please step away from the overlords.

OK … I accept … it’s probably not global warming that’s the cause of these floods.
Maybe it’s Sarah Palin’s “inflammatory rhetoric”… ???

I’m just sick to death of so-called scientists talking out of their poo hole. This needs to be a punishable offense where the offender is required to post a video on YouTube wearing extremely embarrassing attire and singing “No, I won’t, I won’t make sh*t up! (repeat to fade).

Status of the CLOUD experiment – November 2009
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1221088

D. King says: wrote
January 14, 2011 at 8:43 pm
‘Give him a break!
It’s not easy to predict change, with everything changing all the time.
This guy gets it right 100% of the time after the fact.
Could you do any better?
I think we all know the answer to that question!”
Piers Corbyn gets it right 85% of the time, before the fact.

Thanks for posting this. The charts you’ve posted clearly support the statements by Dr Somerville and other renowned scientists that anthropogenic global warming is already exacerbating the weather around the world, with disastrous consequences. More frequent and intense precipitation (rain, floods and snow), more extensive and hotter drought, more frequent and worse fires as the global temperature rises.
I realise that some people here aren’t yet ready to accept the reality that is confirmed by observation, and neither is the original poster. But the evidence is in and available to anyone with an open mind.

Michael says:
January 14, 2011 at 8:38 pm
Status of the CLOUD experiment – November 2009
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1221088
=========
Thanks for the link, but I’m afraid to click it, lest my already slow computer
gives up the ghost. 🙂

Hugh says:
January 14, 2011 at 8:17 pm
OK … I accept … it’s probably not global warming that’s the cause of these floods.
Maybe it’s Sarah Palin’s “inflammatory rhetoric”… ???
—————————————————————————-
Well, her rhetoric is no less likely to be the cause than is global warming.

This ridiculous video story below from ABC news cites über alarmist Richard Sommerville
Global warming is going off the rails.

This makes one wonder if Dr. Somerville is an advisor to Rep. Hank “Tip-Over” Johnson of Georgia. If a climate scientist can twist his own mind into a tangle, for whatever reason, how easy should it be to confound the non-scientist with expert opinion.
You need a laugh; here’s Hank:

Sou says:
January 14, 2011 at 9:00 pm
You forgot the sarcasms tags.

“This is no longer something that’s theory or conjecture or something that comes out of computer models,” Sommerville said. “We’re observing the climate changing — it’s happening, it’s real, it’s a fact.”
Sommerville then turned his head toward the vast sky and proclaimed, “Yea, my brethren, but behold, there shall also come a time when Anthropogenic Climate Disruption doth maketh even a passing cloudless shadow of the Sun itself!”

For the benefit of readers who mistakenly think that Brisbane (as shown above) represents the entirety of Queensland (or Australia), the records show that the number of major floods in Queensland has been increasing since the 1970s and 1980s, and particularly since 2000. Records also show that rainfall in many parts of Australia is breaking records in regard to precipitation intensity much more often than before. And that droughts are longer and more pervasive.
In other words, many parts of Australia are getting hotter and drier and when it does rain, it buckets down more intensely. All this is in line with what is expected with human-induced global warming as far as Australia is concerned.
As for the rest of the world – well, everyone knows the arctic ice continues to disappear, glaciers are melting, snowfalls and rain are more intense etc etc. And that warming-related extreme events far outweigh cold extreme events.
Unfortunately, not wanting all this to happen is not sufficient to prevent it. Nor is protesting that it’s not happening. We need to do more to shift away from using the atmosphere as a rubbish dump.
REPLY:We can’t tell the difference between Brisbane and QLD? That’s just stupidly insulting. And what records of floods? Cite them. Just saying it doesn’t make it so. Are you actually capable of reading? Because it sure seems that you have not read nor understood a single thing about this article. Have a look at what the other experts says, and then comment on that, and we’ll see if you have cognizance of the facts. Or you can not read the article, and remain ignorant like you are now. – Anthony

Well, I looked at the Smithsonian eruptive history of volcanoes by date for the years on or just prior to 1893, 1974 and 1967. There are a number of eruptions reasonably close to the lattitudes of the flood subjects. Vesuvius was active all throughout the latter 1800’s as well. I still think Merapi in Indonesia added massive amounts of steam and aerosols to the La Niña weather pattern. Volcanoes inject a lot of steam into the atmosphere, especially near subduction zones, that will eventually come down. Sometimes a lot in one area. What say the rest of you?

I think the tide gauge is not a good metric, you need to factor in the effect of the Somerset Dam (1959) and the Wivenhoe Dam (1974). I’ve lived in Brisbane but feel free to call me stupid.

Excellent article Anthony. In skewering this particular blowhard you have also presented a great summation of this whole story.

“Sommerville said. “We’re observing the climate changing — it’s happening, it’s real, it’s a fact.””
He’s correct. We’re also observing global rotation – it’s happening, it’s real, it’s a fact.
That Orwellian shift to ‘climate change’ sure was handy.

Let’s assume that we have Global Warming and more moisture in the sky due to the increased temperature. OK, come winter the cold causes more snow, more moisture = more snow; it all sounds reasonable, UNTIL you look at the science.
(1) The process of freezing water, causes the water to release heat energy.
(2) According to the laws of thermodynamics, the energy does NOT just disappear.
(3) Air circulation will mix the air from the ground level to the cloud level and back again.
The explanation given could explain more snow, BUT it should be very mild cold temperatures. Sooner or later the heat will make its way to the ground. If it doesn’t, then we would have more snow, followed by more rain. However, we are seeing a very bitter cold. The facts don’t fit the theory.
Given that 10 years ago they told us that, “However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”. ”
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
I’d say they are just making it all up as they go along.

Re comment to my previous post: Yes, I’m sure that this season’s rainfall has been exacerbated by the warming world. And AGW has not only clearly exacerbated the weather of this year and this summer as a whole, but also that going back at least the last 20 years or more.
Certainly in my part of the world the weather of the last decade or more has included events unprecedented in recorded history. Record drought in extent and duration, record heat in duration and temperature, record rainfall in intensity and extent, record floods in extent.
Many other parts of the world are recording similar patterns of increasing extreme events.
BTW – not sure what units Robt is using, but the global temperature has increased by 0.36 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since the late 1970s, which is considerably higher than 1/4 of a degree in total using any known temperature scale. And as the charts in the original article above show, the land temperatures in Queensland and the sea surface temperatures around Australia are trending up at an alarming rate (the scales in Celsius as is used around the world except the USA). (If not for humans using the air as a waste dump, global temperatures would probably be falling.)
REPLY: You really need to look at the history of rainfall in your area, reader crosspatch provides this link to Jennifer Marohasy, in Australia. When this graph is updated, it may be close to the 1974 rainfall peak from that La Nina – Anthony
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/Eastern%20Oz%20No%20Trend%20Line.jpg

I have put some other examples of Biased and Unbiased Climate News together. This particular topic is part of the coverage as well.
There is good news coverage out there, there is also an equal amount of crap.
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/2011/01/examples-of-biased-and-unbiased-climate-news/

I do not think anyone in Oz has woken up to this post yet, so may I add a couple of comments.
Brisbane is not the only part of eastern Australia affected by floods. The problem started as a cyclone developed in the Coral Sea, moved south and then inland. This left a trail of townships flooded down the Queensland coast.
Oz is the flattest continent, averaging only 300 m asl. The continental divide runs close to the eastern coastline and is generally less than 1000 m asl. As a result, major waterways starting in the ranges, run inland until they reach the Southern Ocean or Lake Eyre. The gradients on these rivers is thus very low, except near the headwaters and so there are no effective deep channels to guide rainwater in the manner of many northern hemisphere rivers. Instead large downpours in the headwaters of the major rivers readily spread across broad, ill-defined flood plains and readily cause chaos.
A similar pattern has developed in the Gascoyne region of WA and flash flooding is seriously affecting northern Victoria. Much of the Queensland water is about to flood western NSW.
It is like pouring water on a table. Too readily the flow takes ill-defined courses to the sea or lowest point.
Unfortunately many settlements are on or close to the “normal” water courses, and hence they are too readily prone to flooding, because there is little to contain extra waters in existing channels. Brisbane is one such settlement. Water from the eastern side of the Darling Downs escarpment was channeled onto the flood plains of the Brisbane River. Old hands learnt by experience and designed the “Queenslander” style of house on stilts, that generally survives flooding. Unfortunately engineers warnings, particularly after the 1974 floods, were ignored by governments and planners and much of the damage witnessed in the past few days could be blamed on lax planning laws about rapid development and poor house design on flood-prone plains, ie. in much of western Brisbane.
And don’t forget northern Australia is in the tropics, subject to monsoonal conditions. Heavy rains are “normal” in that part of the world. The cyclone was an unwelcome extra.
And after all that, I agree Somerville is an ignorant idiot.

Sou
for you
http://www.bom.gov.au/lam/climate/levelthree/c20thc/flood7.htm
The year 1973 was one of the wettest known over much of Australia, and in keeping with the strong La Niña event that prevailed, the 1973/74 northern wet season started early. By the end of 1973 large areas of the country were saturated. Then came January 1974, which featured probably the biggest continent-wide drenching since European settlement, inundating vast areas of the country.
New Year celebrations had barely finished when torrential rains on 4 January soaked northeast Victoria and parts of the Riverina, and flooded Albury. Meanwhile, far away in north Queensland, big floods on the 5th marooned cars and coaches across a broad area. The deluge then extended to northwest New South Wales on the 7th and 8th, causing flooding along the Namoi and Castlereagh rivers: railways and roads were cut, necessitating evacuations by helicopter.
Further heavy rain fell in NSW during the second week of January , and many rivers in the north of that State were flooded. On 11 January, creeks in Brisbane burst their banks, flooding roads and streets. Northern Victoria experienced a second burst of heavy rain on the 13th; this time, floodwaters swirled through the streets of Nhill and Dimboola. Rains also extended to the normally arid north of South Australia on the 17th, flooding opal mines at Coober Pedy.
As monsoonal rains poured down, the Gulf Country of Queensland, and extensive areas of the dry centre, were turned into vast inland seas, isolating pastoral stations and causing heavy cattle losses. About 500 people were evacuated from Normanton and Karumba, while 250 stranded passengers on the Townsville-Mt Isa railway were air-lifted to Mt Isa. Some 400-600mm of rain inundated the southern Northern Territory and southwest Queensland in January, more than twice the average ANNUAL total at some locations.
On top of all this came tropical cyclone “Wanda”, which moved ashore north of Brisbane on Thursday 24 January, producing relatively little wind damage, but sending down enormous quantities of rain over the Australia Day weekend. In Brisbane, intensifying rain throughout Friday dumped over 300mm within 24 hours. In three days (ended 9am 27th) the Queensland capital received 580mm, with even heavier falls over river catchments near the city (1,300mm in five days at Mt Glorious). Wanda floodThe first houses were washed away along Enoggera Creek early on the 26th. As rivers continued to rise, many more were lost. The Bremer river peaked at Ipswich on the Sunday, and the Brisbane River peaked early on Tuesday; both at their highest levels since the disastrous floods of 1893. Fourteen people were drowned, some trapped in offices by the rising waters.
By the end of January much of Australia – normally the “dry” continent – was experiencing the problems of too much water. Vast areas of the inland remained submerged for weeks – in some cases, for months. Crops were destroyed, and outbreaks of disease, such as Murray Valley encephalitis, took their toll.

“Again, how did this massive flood happen without the help of CO2 back then?”
That’s easy!
In the past such disasters were due to the weather … these days they are due to the climate!

this goose should be told that he speaks a load of crap, in brisbane it has been flooded countless times 1886 was a bigger flood than 2011 I wounder what they where blaming back then I bet it was not global warming.

It’s been suggested that I haven’t referred sufficiently to the data. I assumed, perhaps wrongly, that many posters here would have been familiar with the masses of climate data widely available. I also referred to the information shown in the charts in the original post above. For some more data, here is the latest annual climate statement from our Bureau of Meteorology, which includes some explanation of data on 2010 weather in Australia:
http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/climate/change/20110105.shtml
The statement concludes with the following: “Increasing global mean temperatures derived from instrumental measurements are consistent with other independent indicators of climate change, such as reductions in ice and snow cover, and rises in global sea levels.”
The BOM site is rather good to delve into for anyone wanting to learn more about weather in Australia and the changing climates in the different parts of this large island continent.

Just a relative surface dig of Richard Somerville (couldn’t stomach more than that at the moment) yielded some interesting facts about him. He was a coordinating lead author of IPCC AR4 and helped throw together “The Copenhagen Diagnosis” released a few weeks after Climategate broke (Mann, Schneider, Steig, Weaver and others listed as co-authors). A gem among many from the executive summary:
“[T]he average annual per-capita emissions will have to shrink to well under 1 metric ton CO2 by 2050. This is 80-90% below the per-capita emissions in developed nations in 2000.”
I wonder if the Luddite brigade will still be flying around the world spreading the good word. I glanced through the report itself, twitched a bit at the Nature cover illustration of Steig’s fiery Antarctica, and then forced myself to stop at the Mann 08 spaghetti schtick. Gotta love this passage:
“The first of these reconstructions has come to be known as the ‘hockey stick’ reconstruction (Mann et al. 1998, 1999). Some aspects of the hockey stick reconstruction were subsequently questioned, e.g. whether the 20th century was the warmest at a hemispheric average scale (Soon and Baliunas 2003), and whether the reconstruction is reproducible, or verifiable (McIntyre and McKitrick 2003), or might be sensitive to the method used to extract information from tree ring records (McIntyre and McKitrick 2005a,b). Whilst these criticisms have been rejected in subsequent work (e.g. Rutherford et al. 2005; Wahl and Ammann 2006, 2007; Jansen et al. 2007) the US National Research Council convened a committee to examine the state of the science of reconstructing the climate of the past millennium. The NRC report published in 2006 largely supported the original findings of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) and recommended a path toward continued progress in this area (NRC, 2006). Mann et al. (2008) addressed the recommendations of the NRC report by reconstructing surface temperature at a hemispheric and global scale for much of the last 2,000 years using a greatly expanded data set for decadal-to-centennial climate changes, along with recently updated instrumental data and complementary methods that have been thoroughly tested and validated with climate model simulations.”
Now I have to go and try to fall asleep with that ripe tripe revisionism fresh on my mind. Why do I do this to myself? If you’re a glutton for punishment, the links are below. And maybe somebody can do the calculations on just how far (in today’s terms) one metric ton of CO2 will get us, perhaps even some top ten lists of ways we can use our alloted energy of “well under 1 metric ton CO2.” For perspective, according to the last link I provide below from Science Daily 2008, the average American’s carbon emissions is 20 metric tons. Better still, that article says that even a homeless American tallies 8.5 metric tons:
“But the ‘floor’ below which nobody in the U.S. can reach, no matter a person’s energy choices, turned out to be 8.5 tons, the class found. That was the emissions calculated for a homeless person who ate in soup kitchens and slept in homeless shelters.”
So perhaps our new goal (based let’s say on 0.85 metric ton CO2 to qualify as “well under” one) should be as follows:
“”[T]he average annual per-capita emissions will have to shrink by 2050 to 90% below the per-capita emissions of a homeless person in America in 2008.”
Pleasant dreams.
http://www.copenhagendiagnosis.org/executive_summary.html
http://www.ccrc.unsw.edu.au/Copenhagen/Copenhagen_Diagnosis_LOW.pdf
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080428120658.htm

This is enraging, especially coming from idiots who don’t even seem to know what the “normal” climate is for Queensland.
Queensland floods. Australia floods. Always has always will. Just as it has always suffered severe and extended drought.
One can only attribute such comments to stupidity of dishonesty.

The priests of voodoo science are still sticking their pins into Mother Nature. If they were fair-dinkum about their belief’s they would lead by example and abandon all their life’s choices and standard of living and return to the cave from whence they yearn to live, and leave the rest of us alone.
However, they are not fair-dinkum because there is no conned taxpayer money in being fair-dinkum.

Sou says:
January 14, 2011 at 9:53 pm
“… everyone knows the arctic ice continues to disappear, glaciers are melting, snowfalls and rain are more intense etc etc. And that warming-related extreme events far outweigh cold extreme events.
Unfortunately, not wanting all this to happen is not sufficient to prevent it. Nor is protesting that it’s not happening.”
———————-
You need to catch up on the facts. Globally, almost all glaciers are advancing not melting. The Northwest Passage between Canada and the polar icecap is well and truly frozen over. And the Antarctic ice extent increased by 3,500,000 km^2 in the three years to mid 2010. So Global Warming (via the miniscule amounts of Co2 being returned to the biosphere from previously sequestered deposits in coal and limestone) is making lots of ice in both hemispheres, but you think we need to decimate our economies to avoid boiling to death!

A correction to my last post – that is the National Committee on Water Engineering

Timiboy says
——-
It is enough of a tragedy without these rat bags politicising what is a tragic event. They will stoop to anything to push their agenda. Filthy Bastards. It is NOT OK.
——-
You’re right, so why were you silent when climate skeptics did exactly that?

I did not like the tone of Jim Cole comment at January 14, 2011 at 9:31 pm.
We are talking about peoples homes (whether these be mansions or wooden shacks) and one cannot pay a higher price than to pay with one’s life and/or the life of family members.
The point is though, if one builds a town high in the mountains where avalanches occur in the Spring, one is always living in the shaddow of an avalanche occuring. The same is so on mountain sides where there is a prospensity for mud slides, or on flood plains, or in the foothills of a volcano. When one builds and lives in these areas, one runs a risk that nature will strike with a vengance and from time to time she does just that.
We should not be surprised by the cruelty of nature (after all this is the driving force behind natural selection) but rather by man’s stupidy in settling in places which do not make good habitats or in failure to manage properly the known risks which are inherent in the habitat chosen (I have in mind that with better management, at least in Brisbane, the worst effects of the flooding could have been controlled and reduced, much like New Orleans and her sea defences). As regards Australia, one suspects that town planners/city engineers were being told that with global warming drought is the problems and floods will become a thing of the past such that they took their eye of the ball. This is what has happened in the UK with winter snowfall. There is a lot of blood on the shoulders of the AGW crowd.

Richard S Courtney says
———–
I think we are seeing a new meme being presented by catastrophists. It is based on this argument:
Weather events are driven by energy flows,
and AGW increases energy in the climate system,
so the severity of each weather event is increased by AGW.
——
Richard, it is an old meme. Maybe 20 years old. Glad to see your climate science knowledge is catching up.
Here is a little question for you. How many years of crazy weather would it take to convince you?

Brian H says:
January 15, 2011 at 12:20 am
As for “warm air holds more moisture”, the converse is also true: cool air holds less moisture. So it falls out and lands on the ground as rain, causing floods. I think you’d find much more statistical support for that observation than the Hot Rain one.
————–
So you have not heard of monsoons then and don’t believe in tropical rain storms at all then?
And the idea of rain accompanying cold fronts must be totally alien then?
And other popular climate skeptic ideas like: drought is caused by cold must be totally confusing to you then.
The problem is you don’t want to understand how rain fall is related to temperature and moisture content. All you are interested in is simple minded debating points.

Maps of Brisbane’s floods: 1893, 1974, 2011
[Includes a good background article]

Sou says:
January 14, 2011 at 10:22 pm

– even though the warming has only just begun.

Check this out: http://www.climate4you.com/ClimateReflections.htm#20080927:%20Reflections%20on%20the%20correlation%20between%20global%20temperature%20and%20atmospheric%20CO2
Not only has the warming stopped, but global temperatures have not correlated with CO2 concentrations. Hence, CO2 does not drive global temperatures. AGW hypothesis falsified.
Now about those 1893 floods.
There was also a economic panic here in the US in 1893.
My grandmother was born in 1893.
Clearly, my grandmother’s birth was the cause of all those bad events in 1893.

Rhys Jaggar says:
January 15, 2011 at 2:45 am

The situation in Brazil was described as being exacerbated by poor construction practices on steep hillsides, which is factually accurate but probably of little comfort to those who lost relatives.
The issue of inappropriate urban development was highlighted, which for any sane person is the reason behind the more toxic effects of floods when they do happen. Namely that if you are idiotic enough to build houses on flood plains, don’t be surprised when they flood. It might be once every 5 years, once every 35 but it’ll flood. Because nature is pretty predictable on longer time scales…….

Here in Colorado the issue is building homes in firewood stands, also known as forests.
People want to be close to nature, but there is a risk.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayman_Fire
The irony of the Hayman fire is the source was a government employee whose job was to prevent forest fires.
Every year we have homes burn up. But people still keep building up there.

The other irony here is that La Nina is defined as colder-than-normal water temperatures in the central Tropical Pacific. So here we have a moderate to strong La Nina event. So much for the warming oceans.

WUWT had a post on DECREASING atmospheric water vapor
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/18/a-window-on-water-vapor-and-planetary-temperature/
Not that I would expect alarmist dolts like Sommerville and his ilk to actually look at facts before they spout AGW rhetoric.

Note the story told Brisbaners (?) are reading at http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/environment/weather/more-of-australia-getting-hot-and-wet-extremes-20110115-19rj7.html and the paper in last month’s Journal of Climate http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JCLI3791.1 .

It is all about sunspots and they are right in their observations.
The accumulated global warming since 1934 since the growth of global warming sunspot cycles, the amount of precipitation in the USA rose by one inch on average and low precipitation for a year rose as well as the peaks over the period 1885 to 1933.
As has been proven, lower sunspot activity lowers upper atmosphere humidity, which causes drought, which causes more dust and that seeds the clouds and causes more flooding during drought periods.

http://www.munichre.com/en/media_relations/press_releases/2011/2011_01_03_press_release.aspx
This is an insurance company, just looking to protect their money, not to advance any scientific theory or political ideology. They recognize the threat of climate change. Much like the Pentagon and our military do.

There were over twice as many floods from 1840 to 1940,
as there were from 1940 to 2010.
Man made global warming has caused the amount of floods to go down by more than half.

Mike Borgelt says:
January 15, 2011 at 2:56 am
bryn says: January 14, 2011 at 11:37 pm
“So is our new drive by troll, Sou.”
No Bryn, I think he’s been here before. I’m sure that I remarked that a “Sou” is an obsolete and valueless French coin.
As in “Not worth a sou”.

LazyTeenager says:
January 15, 2011 at 3:14 am
“Richard, it is an old meme. Maybe 20 years old. Glad to see your climate science knowledge is catching up.
Here is a little question for you. How many years of crazy weather would it take to convince you?”
So let’s change the name from Global Warming to Global Craziness, shall we? It describes the AGW believers quite well.

Was global warming the cause of potential devastating floods in Brisbane during 1841 and 1893? A small population a lesser disaster.
http://www.bom.gov.au/hydro/flood/qld/fld_history/brisbane_history.shtml
The current flooding has so far fallen short of the crest of 1974, and far short of the crests of 1841 and 1893.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/15/australian-floods-quee…

“Raging Waters In Australia and Brazil Product of Global Warming”
Or maybe a prelude to the next ice age
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html

I’ve been saying for quite some time that a change in the speed of the water cycle is the means whereby the extra energy from more CO2 is negated by shifting it faster to space.
However solar and oceanic variability already makes such huge natural changes to the speed of the water cycle that the influence of CO2 would be miniscule and unmeasurable.
For example in the North Atlantic the jet stream position (directly related to the speed of the global water cycle) can vary by as much as 1000 miles latitudinally in response to natural solar and oceanic influences.
CO2 might shift the jets by a few hundred yards.
This is the first time that I have seen a warmist accept the speed of the water cycle overall as a response to GHG effects.
Usually they just suggest more extreme events due to more water vapour. They don’t seem to realise that the speed of the water cycle dictates the speed of energy ejection from oceans to space and that therefore it offsets the effects of GHGs.

Actually, there are some updated graphs:
See here:
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2011/01/annual-climate-statement-bureau-of-meteorology/
From here:
http://reg.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=rain&area=eaus&season=0112&ave_yr=0
But the rain doesn’t stop at the end of the year and I wish there were “seasonal” or “water year” graphs someplace to get an accurate picture of the rains over the course of a rainy season and not calendar year. An exceptionally dry spring can mask an exceptionally wet winter in graphs that go by calendar year.

Anthony Watts says:
January 15, 2011 at 12:40 pm
R. Gates, welcome back from your visit to the penalty box. Unfortunately your style of debating hasn’t changed.
Explain the BoM graph is update 4 then. Explain why the rainfall total now is different from an equivalent rainfall total in the 1940′s and how CO2 made that difference. Explain how it could reach the same peak then with less CO2.
Explain why all the other experts saying this is a La Nina event, as seen before in Australia’s history, which is not connected to AGW/global warming/climate change are wrong… and you are right
_______
Anthony, thanks for the timeout…it gave me a great opportunity to catch up on some other pressing issues.
In response to your questions:
I think I made it quite clear that one could not specifcally claim that the current flooding in Australia, nor any place recently (i.e. Brazil, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, China, etc.) could be pinned on AGW or the buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere, it is true that the increase in frequency of such events is entirely consistent with the general acceleration of the hydrological cycle. We know that the current La Nina pattern combined with the cool phase of the PDO is the immediate culprit, but what we don’t know is if these natural ocean cycles might be changed by the accumulation of CO2. The carbon-rock cycle is well understood as is the long-term hydrological response to increased amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere. Could changes in the nature of the ENSO and PDO cycles be one of the ways that the hydrological cycle accelerates?This certainly cannot be dicounted, and certainly is the area of some research. With 2010 as the wettest year on record and atmospheric water vapor levels increasing, this is all very consistent with the accleration of the hydrological cycle and consistent with the trends indicated by GCM’s when considering the effects of the 40% increase in CO2 since the 1700’s.

Anthony: R Gates should never have been released from the penalty box. His latest post warrants a ban for life for peddleing bullshit. He will never reform.

Paddy says:
January 15, 2011 at 1:25 pm
Anthony: R Gates should never have been released from the penalty box. His latest post warrants a ban for life for peddleing bullshit. He will never reform.
_____
Specifically, what have I said that is “bullshit”?
Would it be that:
Increased CO2 is correlated with an accelerated hyrdologcial cycle?
2010 was the wettest year on record?
Changes in the ENSO and PDO cycles might be one way the acclerated hydrological cycle is reflected?
Atmospheric water vapor levels are increasing as is consistent with an acclerated hydrolgocial cycle?
Increased flooding and other severe hydrological events are consistent with an acclerated hydrological cycle?
Or is it simply that the points I raise upset certain members of the AGW skeptical community?

roger says:
January 15, 2011 at 1:41 pm
R. Gates says:
January 15, 2011 at 12:13 pm
No, you don’t get away with that one, no way.
For the past five years articles have been appearing in the MSM advising that southern England and Kent in particular would experience such droughts and temperatures that gardeners in that area would be well advised to plant succulents and cacti in future seasons.
And for my piece de resistance the Daily Telegraph today reports that some members of the Royal Horticultural Society are objecting most strongly to that body’s politicisation as demonstrated by it’s current promulgation of AGW in advising those same gardeners to plant their gardens this year with mediterranean plants and cacti.
So you see that there are climate researchers that have not caught up with your newly espoused and completely opposite reasoning. Obviously can’t keep up with the convolutions of the new improved brand of climate science where words mean whatever you want them to mean.
Now where have I heard that before?
_____
The acceleration of the hydrologcial cycle has long been seen in the GCM’s when factoring in the 40% rise in CO2, so this is not a “new’ projection, but is based on the historical and geological record from the basic carbon-rock cycle and is a natural negative feedback…(i.e. it is the earths way of keeping CO2 levels in check).
But to your point about the weather in England and any ‘warmist’ predictions for what to expect. I think specific localized predictions based on any GCM is absurd. GCM might be good a predicting global trends (i.e. temps, water vapor, acclerated hydrologcial cycle) but very poor at telling what the weather will be like in any specific area as it is dangerous to do so with a system such as climate that exists on the edge of chaos with too many factors that we don’t know about and possible tipping points yet to be revealed.

Anthony – I agree with your analysis.
Belief in AGW is a cult, a pseudo religious belief system.
It is not a scientific paradigm, theory, or hypothesis.
It is at best, an unproven and unprovable conjecture.

Global warmers have a real problem with all this hysteria about these floods being unprecedented. It’s so simple to look up the far worse floods in the past. Then they’ll look bad for claiming these over the past week were unprecedented.
And the ones in the past had a couple over 90 feet high of flood water.

Any attempt to link the massive rainfall, floods and landslides in the Região Serrana of the Rio de Janeiro State (the city itself was not very much affected) to the global warming hysteria is preposterous, to say the least. This region has always suffered from such extreme meteorological phenomena and the problems are indeed aggravated by the massive irregular and precarious occupation of the slopes of the elevations, hills and mountains. And if it is a fact that most of this occupation is done by the poor, this time the tragedy was somewhat “democratic” and fell upon many middle and upper class dwellings in the cities of Petrópolis, Teresópolis and Friburgo (the death toll is already over 600 and rising).
I am a geologist with specialization in Engineering Geology and I spent some years at the university in the 1980s making geological-geotechnical maps of some of those areas. Since that time and even before the professionals of these fields have been warning the authorities against the irregular occupation of the hillslopes (and we have a good deal of highly skilled experts in such areas). Unfortunately, politics (with very small “p”) have always prevented any kind of rational solution for this problem – and the consequences may be seen in the headlines.
But in any case there is nothing new in such phenomena here, as Mr Watt himself showed in the 1967 newspaper clip about the floods of that year. In Rio and its surroundings we had very heavy rainfalls and the corresponding tragedies in 1965, 1966, 1967, 1971, 1982, 1988, 1994, 1996 and 2010. There are records of the same problems going back to the 18th century. Global warming all this time? Please no kid.
By the way, despite its huge toll of human suffering this tragedy does not come even close to being the country’s greatest. This dubious distinction goes to the terribly severe droughts in Brazil’s Northeast in 1877-79 and 1915 (caused in part by very strong El Niños), whose combined death toll reached some hundred thousand lives.

“Monroe says:
January 15, 2011 at 9:20 am
Was global warming the cause of potential devastating floods in Brisbane during 1841 and 1893? A small population a lesser disaster.
http://www.bom.gov.au/hydro/flood/qld/fld_history/brisbane_history.shtml
The current flooding has so far fallen short of the crest of 1974, and far short of the crests of 1841 and 1893.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/15/australian-floods-quee…”
Sigh. You’ve made a point of saying “The current flooding has so far fallen short of the crest of 1974, and far short of the crests of 1841 and 1893.” but you have failed to point out this is purely due to the flood mitigation capacity of the dams now in place.
I’ll say it again dont compare flood levels from 1841 and 1893 to those for the current event and 1974.
In 1974, Wivenhoe Dam was not yet built and in 1841 and 1893 nor was Somerset Dam.
Had these 2 dams not been in place, flooding for this current event may well have approached 1841 and 1893 levels.
It is better simply to say that the nature of the current event is no different to events that occur once every 50 years on average in SE QLD. These events will continue to occur into the future with or without global warming so until we get frequent events of a severity in excess of those seen previously, blaming the current one on AGW really is something that cannot have any statistical support.

DEREK ARNDT.
I noticed that name when that ABC piece was on TV, wrote it down. The older talking head, Somerville, was ignorable in his spewing of the expected (C)AGW garbage. But something about Arndt seemed notable, might have been the NOAA connection.
Googling lead to a curious reprint site for WUWT-type articles, utahclimate.org (WUWT on the blogroll, and where is the Source link for Josh’s Met Office cartoon?), leading to a nice ICECAP piece by Art Horn mentioning Arndt and NOAA (Claim 2010 tied with warmest year ever lacks historical perspective, good reading) and a Goddard post with a WAPO excerpt:

Derek Arndt, who heads the climate monitoring branch at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., said the new data should be viewed in the context of the record retreat of snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere at the end of the melt season and a near-record retreat of Arctic sea ice.
“Together across the board, it was an unusual year, and a year that in many ways was a culmination of what we’ve been seeing for the past several years,” Arndt said.

As the ICECAP piece put it:

Given this twisted logic, last season with all-time record snows in the DC area meant all-time record snowmelt as it disappeared. Reminds me of the ridiculous NOAA spokesman statement last year that global warming helped explain the record DC snow thanks to storm track shifting north and more moisture from the Great Lakes. Clueless.

Derek Arndt, an Important Person at NOAA-NCDC. A younger, hipper, much less discredited face for the (C)AGW movement, now being trotted out for face time with the media as a new Great Climate Expert. A person to watch, if you can’t turn off the TV fast enough.

jtom says:
January 15, 2011 at 7:02 pm
Just a quick, simple question to Sou, lazyteenage, gates, et al, who are convinced of AGW:
Just what evidence would lead you to believe that the global climate models are wrong? If there is none, if there is absolutely no way to falsify A COMPUTER MODEL with real life data, then you are no longer practicing science.
________
I happen to think it very likely that GCM’s are wrong…about the specifics, but not about the trends. If the models were 100% accurate, we would know everything, but as it is, it is very hard to model a system at the edge of chaos. Also, as models, they are never really looked at as “right” or “wrong”, just more or less accurate. Just as it has taken decades of data to see the fingerprints of AGW, it would take decades to see the evidence disappear to totally disprove the GCM’s. This is very very unlikely to occur as the models have it generally right, but specifically:
1) If global atmospheric water vapor levels begin to level and then decline. They been rising steadily for decades as shown to occur by GCM’s and is one of the positive feedback processes specifically modelled to occur as CO2 levels rise. Corresponding to these increases in water vapor levels would be the continued acceleration of the hydrological cycle. Expect to see more frequent and more severe flooding events such as we saw in the past year in China, Pakistan. If this doesn’t happen over the course of decades, GCM’s would be shown to be grossly inaccurate.
2) Arctic year to year sea ice stops falling and returns to historical levels. We’ve not seen a positive anomaly in Arctic sea ice since 2004. Most GCM’s show the Arctic to be ice free in the summer by the end of this century, and some much sooner than that. Some skeptics want to look at one year in rebound and make a big deal of it (though no signficant rebound year has occurred). Expect a spiral down in year to year sea ice over the decades ahead. If this doesn’t occur, GCM’s would be shown to be grossly inaccurate.
3) The decade to decade temperatures stop increasing. 2000-2009 was the warmest decade on record. It is only a statistical exercise to look at any single year like 2010 and compare it to others, as natural variability can affect temperatures year to year, but decade to decade, all GCM’s show a steady rise in temps. Expect to see 2010-2019 warmer than 2000-2009, and then 2020-2029 warmer still. If this doesn’t occur, GCM’s would be shown to be grossly inaccurate.

“Unprecedented” flooding continuing in Australia:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/01/16/3113796.htm
Last I checked, unprecedented meant the worst in recorded history. Quite in line with a CO2 induced acceleration of the hydrological cycle on top of a La Nina and cool phase of the PDO. The last time La Nina lined up with the cool phase of the PDO (1974) there was flooding, but atmospheric water vapor levels were lower then, so it is not unreasonable to see how higher water vapor levels now could make the flooding worse now than even 1974.
REPLY:Sorry Gates, citing from my 30 years in the news business, “unprecedented” in a news story is often far different than “unprecedented” data. Simply put, I don’t trust reporters enough to get it right, they all have a penchant for factual inflation. The data is what is important, not the news hype. When the data comes in fully, then we’ll see if that term holds up. – Anthony

ABC, September 2003
Drought Vortex
… Climatologists are desperately trying to explain the mystery of where southern Australia’s winter rainfall is going. They’ve known the rain is being pulled south by an unexplained force. Now they’ve devised a revolutionary new theory to explain why. It appears that the circulation of the entire Southern Hemisphere is changing to suck our rain away. The reason is the Antarctic Vortex – a natural tornado of 30km high, super-cold, super-fast winds spiraling around Antarctica. The vortex is not new; it’s one of the engines that drive climate in the Southern Hemisphere. But now it appears the vortex is shifting gear, and is spinning faster and faster, and getting tighter. As it does it’s pulling the climate bands further south dragging rain away from the continent out into the southern ocean. Most disturbing of all we might be responsible for shifting the speed of the vortex. Scientists at the US Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research believe the speeding up of the vortex is caused by the combined effect of global warming and the depletion of the ozone layer over Antarctica. If their theory is true it will have devastating consequences for our southern cities – the drought may not go away. It takes just a slight shift in rainfall patterns for our capital cities to start running out of water – and the reservoirs in Perth, Adelaide, and Melbourne are all dangerously low right now.
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s948858.htm
===
April 2007
Bribie best for desal plant
… THE world’s biggest desalination plant should be built north of Brisbane to drought-proof southeast Queensland
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/features/bribie-best-for-desal-plant/story-e6freoyo-1111113319771
===
October 2007 –
… “The pattern that we’re seeing now in the weather in Australia is very much the pattern was predicted by computer models as much as a decade ago. We will have to get by with less water. The CSIRO’s telling us that. We’re seeing it now, in the evidence before our eyes in our rivers and creeks, and of course the computer models in the global models have been predicting just this now for some years. I think all evidence says that this is our new climate and we have to get by with less water than we’ve ever had before.” – Tim Flannery
http://old.globalpublicmedia.com/transcripts/2833
===
November 2007
La Nina behind Australia’s drought
… “The drought that’s going on in Australia right now is a very serious drought and it is one of the atypical situations associated with this particular La Niña event,” says WMO climate specialist Dr Leslie Malone.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2007/2078345.htm
===
October 2010
Desalination plants lose $1m a week
… RESIDENTS are losing at least $1 million a week operating desalination and water recycling plants in Queensland’s flooded southeast.
===

“unprecedented” in the context of the dam upstream. There is a link in the article that goes to a video in that video I believe you can find the source of the use of “unprecedented” . “Largest outflow in the dam’s history”, is I believe what is unprecedented here and that dam didn’t exist during the earlier flooding.

@ jtom, January 15, 2011 at 7:02 pm
Just a quick, simple question to Sou, lazyteenage, gates, et al, who are convinced of AGW:
Just what evidence would lead you to believe that the global climate models are wrong? If there is none, if there is absolutely no way to falsify A COMPUTER MODEL with real life data, then you are no longer practicing science.
Sorry, jtom, you’re asking the wrong person about computer models. I have no expertise in the design or interpretation of computer models developed to help analyse climate, so it’s meaningless for me to speculate on the efficacy of any of the myriad climate models. Those who design the models would have developed test parameters and protocols. (And I’m not a practising scientist, I’m just another concerned member of the human species.)
In my case, I don’t need to rely on climate models. Where I live we have been seeing the climate change markedly over the last few years. My 90 year old mother, not known for hyperbole, said to me this week that she’s never seen a summer like this one and I agreed. I am well aware that memories are fallible, so I checked the rainfall and temperature data for our local region. We have this summer the most precipitation ever recorded in a single day, the biggest floods ever recorded simultaneously – all while a strong La Nina, which is supposed to bring cooler weather, is not causing temperatures here to drop below even the latest the 30 year average. We’ve had a longer, hotter drought and more major fires this decade (mostly by lightning strikes) than in the previous 70 years at least, combined, despite a much better fire response capability.
One locality isn’t sufficient to illustrate global climate, so I look at the world as a whole. The number of extreme events is reportedly increasing. The number of heat extremes is far outweighing the number of cold extremes. Each decade is hotter than the one before, though if not for the huge rise in greenhouse gases, the earth would be cooling slightly.
I understand the basic physics of how greenhouse gases keep the earth from freezing, having first learnt it during science lectures more than 30 years ago. The CSIRO models were basic then, computers were primitive compared to those used today, yet what the CSIRO scientists suggested then could happen to Australia’s weather as a result of global warming, is taking place already, before our eyes. I expect the scientists then thought it would take longer before becoming so evident and that we’d have done more to address the problem by now. They underestimated human failings.
I’ve referred to the BOM site in a previous post and been told that regular posters here are familiar with it so I won’t repeat the links. I expect readers here are also familiar with the global climate statements produced by US government agencies.

@ Ian, like I said in my post above – local climate is not global climate. I expect you are aware that climates in Victoria and south west WA have changed rather a lot. Northern Australia less so. I hope you are safe from the floods. (The closest capital city is a few hours drive from here and it’s a fair drive to the nearest rural city – I’ve lived and worked in large cities before, but I was raised in the bush and that’s where I prefer to live.)
@ jtom, no problem. I’ve been told my writing style puts some people off. That’s just me, I’m afraid. Anyway, if you read my post again you’ll read that I deliberately do NOT base my understanding on anecdotes or observed local climate change. It’s based on world-wide documented evidence and scientific knowledge.

Interesting use of before/after photographs of the Brisbane flooding. Some of the old ‘loop’ river channels can be seen refilling.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/infographics/qld-floods/beforeafter.htm

Why are we debating weather? Isn’t global warming about the increase of CO2 due to fossil fuel usage which causes global temperature to rise then scorches the earth if we don’t stop the usage of oil?
Can we focus on CO2 and temperature relationship? Isn’t this the core of CAGW theory? If there is no correlation between CO2 and temperature, then the debate is over.
The skeptics win, the truth is out.
Taxpayers rejoice.

Excellent web site, excellent information. All of this reminds on the French thinker Jean de la Bruyère (17th.Century) who said: `The EXACT opposite of what people are told is in fact the truth.´ Gerry Frederics

All of this will eventually force mankind to reappraise its model regarding food security. It needs to start from a household level, with local markets being fed the surplus produce. Local organic = sustainable. Large scale agriculture as we know it is in dire need of change, and the imminent collapse is going to be part of the trigger mechanism that will cause people to seek out the land.

@ Brian, it all depends on your perspective. I respect your views, and am a great fan of urban farming as an ultimate sustainable solution for city dwellers. However I am heading up a project on the KZN South Coast in South Africa where we are specifically working with rural subsistence farmers, and we’ve got a solid working model where people are actively growing organically and selling their surplus produce via a community based secondary co-operative we’ve helped set up and are supporting. You don’t get much more real than that.

@ Brian, agreed that it is not a model for everyone, not by a long shot, but it does work pretty well, and is helping lots of rurfal people to have a better life.