Some excerpts from McIntyre’s full broadside:
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In today’s post, I’m going to discuss an important obiter in the ICO decision, an obiter in which the university unsuccessfully attempted to reconcile unequivocal declarations by both Acton and Muir Russell to the Parliamentary Committee that “all” the emails were available with the contradictory statements in their FOI refusals that the university no longer possessed key emails. Unfortunately, the university’s attempt was based on more untrue and unsupported assertions, this time to the ICO.
In my appeal, I had pointed out the inconsistency between assertions in East Anglia’s FOI refusal and Vice Chancellor Acton’s assurances to the Parliamentary Committee. The ICO asked East Anglia to comment on this point, reporting on the exchange as follows:
21. In relation to this information the complainant has suggested that:
“These were attachments to emails from [third named individual- Wahl] to [named individual – Briffa] that were the subject of Jones’ delete-all-emails request. At the hearings of the Science and Technology Committee, MP Stringer asked Vice Chancellor Acton “Are all the emails now available and can be read? Acton said “Yes”. If so, then the University must hold the documents that they had refused on the basis that they did not hold the documents and appeal their refusal on this basis.”
The Commissioner therefore asked the University to respond to this.
22. The University explained that:
“In his testimony in front of the Select Committee, the Vice-Chancellor was merely stating that no emails had been deleted as a result of, or subsequent to, an email form Prof. P. Jones of 28 May 2008 that suggested such an action. The documents at the heart of this present request, and the emails to which they were attached, all date from 2006. It is highly likely, even good records management practice, that such emails and attachments would have been deleted in the normal course of business between 2006 and 2008, well in advance of any request for either the emails or the attached documents.
The Vice-Chancellor was not aware of this request, or these documents, when he made his comments before the Select Committee, nor were his comments directed at these documents. The question and the answer pertained to an entirely different set of documents within a different time frame.”
“An entirely different set of documents within a different time frame”. The mind boggles at the audacity of the misrepresentations by VC Acton and the University of East Anglia.
——————————————————————————————
Amazingly, the Muir Russell panel failed to interview either Jones or Briffa on the deletion of emails (see discussion of the fall hearing below). Despite this neglect, the Muir Russell report stated (incorrectly) that there was “no evidence of any attempt to delete information in respect of a request already made” as follows:
28. Deliberate actions to avoid release. There seems clear incitement to delete emails, although we have seen no evidence of any attempt to delete information in respect of a request already made.
In September 2010, Fred Pearce wrote sarcastically in September 2010 that Muir Russell must have been the “only person studying the affair not to have known about it”:
———————————————————————————————
McIntyre:
At this point, the web is so tangled that it’s very hard for Acton and the University of East Anglia to keep their various stories straight.
…
As noted above, in August 2010, the university had said that they were not in possession of the attachments to the Wahl-Briffa emails. However, two months later, they unequivocally told the Parliamentary Committee that they could produce “all” the emails and that Jones and Briffa had deleted nothing. But in their submissions to the ICO in 2011, they said that they were not able to produce the Wahl-Briffa documents, arguing that:
It is highly likely, even good records management practice, that such emails and attachments would have been deleted in the normal course of business between 2006 and 2008, well in advance of any request for either the emails or the attached documents.
Bishop Hill points out this phrase as being relevant:
A few months back, Steve McIntyre said something that stuck in my memory:
Never under-estimate the capacity for institutional mendacity.
And these people are saying: “Trust us.” It would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.
@thepompousgit: The thing about the way they are saying “Trust us” is that they aren’t asking, they are demanding. It is “We are the experts, you can’t possibly know what you are talking about, your ‘denial’ is invalid and your opinion isn’t worth my consideration”.
History is full of such cases. I am becoming quite tired of the condescending, patronizing behavior.
And 3 million more views since the “BIG 100” !
Anthony, the truth is accelerating…
The Truth is Out There….
Yes it is.. It’s right HERE !!!
There’s a place for these anti-science enablers and obfuscators: Circle 8
Described in Cantos 18-30
Fraud: Pimping and Seducing (18), Flattery (18), Simony (19), Sorcery (20), Political Corruption (21-2), Hypocrisy
More Fraud: Theft (24-5), Fraudulent Rhetoric (26-7), Divisiveness (28),
Falsification (29-30)
Did you really expect anything other than lies and deceit from the British establishment?
And it is on the evidence provided by these ‘trustworthy’ individuals that the UK is squandering £500 million a year in subsidies paid to the wind power industry. It is surprising that UEA retains its accreditation.
Science, facts, and the truth are inconsequential and merely calateral damage of the AGW machine. And, apparently, it’s going to take more than being caught in a web of lies to dissuade the believers. I say “Climategate” to most of my friends and they say “What?” (with friends like that, who needs enemies right… then again, it’s not “deniers” who we need to spread the word to).
“We didn’t delete anything because someone asked us to, we just deleted it because we wanted to. We were in error in saying that we can retrieve all of the emails, since we chose to delete them, but not, you understand, because we were asked to do so in violation of a Freedom of Information request. Definitely not because of that.”
If the “Global Warming”continues, those records will be really unavailable….under several miles of ice.
Maybe Jones, Mann, Briffa et al. should start using Burn Note, a service that destroys e-mails without leaving any trace or record.
http://www.tecca.com/news/2012/01/31/burn-note-self-destruct-email/
https://burnnote.com/#/
You’re not supposed to question, just accept what they tell us.
It worked. For sufficient duration to allow the lies to become embedded in our schools, at all grades. For long enough to gelatinize the meme into our institutions and the media. Time enough to label any who deign to disagree as deniers.
Job done. Cup of tea old chap?
I never really understood why Mcyntire bothered with any of these people. Hes been taken for a ride again and again. Also I don’t understand why he or for that matter anyone here (ie meteorologists) would bother to be part of decaying and likely to be massively sued organizations such as the IPCC, UEA and UVA. I think its about time people followed Colemans (Meteorologist) reasoning. Ill give you one example of what is very likely to happen: to the team: The Queensland Government is on the way right now to be sued for BILLIONS due to incorrect climate assumptions and data supplied by the likes of the team (The engineers covered it up)
http://www.weatherbell.com/weather-news/australia-where-drought-was-projected-repeats-major-flooding-of-2011/
Heres the BILLION dollar suit acction. I’ll bet that they based the water withholding (Dam) on the idea pushed by warmists advising the Qld Labor Government that Queensland was in for eternal drought and every dropped needed to be saved
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2012/s3424308.htm
I find all of this very confusing. It is not explained clearly at all.
There seems to be the need to distinguish between individuals deleting emails in their personal accounts and the general house keeping that IT does behind the scenes.
There is no evidence here about any of this and interpreting such evidence would require detailed knowledge of the UEA email system. In the face if this lack of knowledge there seems to be a whole lot of making stuff up.
Good luck with that billion dollar suit. Whilst the QLD Flood inquiry quibbles over what the engineers put into a report they were asked to start preparing less than a week after many sleepless days spent trying to save Brisbane from a catastrophe that would have been far worse (whilst still dealing with the effects of that event), the actual data on what was coming into the dam and what was being released is available and clearly shows the right strategy was being employed.
If 68.5m is the level at which the dam operators should make “large releases” under strategy W3 (what is being asserted by the media but certainly not what the manual says) then god help the poor people of Brisbane next time the dam level gets to 68.5m (as it did 3 times from October 2010 to January 2011). The Australian newspaper would no doubt have the dam operators dump half the contents dam unnecessarily next time this happens.
The murdoch media is focusing entirely on what the engineers reported about what happened from Saturday morning through to Sunday. Nothing has been reported in their newspapers about the dam level having stabilised and actually falling below 68.5m during that period. Nothing reported on the very low rainfall in the catchment areas during the majority of that period. Nothing about the forecasts for heavy rainfall BELOW Wivenhoe into an area that dam operators should allegedly have been releasing large amounts of water into. All this was discussed during the Past few days in the inquiry but none of it made the Murdoch papers.
There is a huge disconnect between the contents of the transcripts of the QLD flood inquiry and what is being reported in a handful of Murdoch owned newspapers who have always been staunchly pro-liberal. This is a political witch hunt at the expense of a group of highly experienced professional engineers who did the best they could based on the information they had available, as they had done previously in Oct 2010 and December 2011, the previous occasions where the dams levels exceeded 68.5m with releases not exceeding 1200m3 sec.
We don’t need a global warming induced drought to screw up QLD’s water supply (there was never one in the first place). A study showed that last century there were 3 episodes where periods in excess of 10 years passed without a signficant rainfall event in SE QLD. On 75% FSL at Wivenhoe Dam it will take just over half that period to get SE QLD’s water supply critically low.
Forget what happened during the floods, the stupidest thing the QLD government ever did was drop WIvenhoe dam down to 75% FSL (in reality only 37.5% of the dams full storage capacity) . Sooner or later the whole of Brisbane will pay a severe price for that stupidity.
And for any of you fanboys out their who are going to post that I probably work for the dam operators or the QLD government (as has been previously asserted here in other threads), I’m more than happy to provide my personal information to Anthony who will be able to confirm that I am nothing more than a weather enthusiast with no links to either.
UEA just go swept up in all the excitement–you know, the earth was going to melt, they’d get plenty of money proving the earth was going to melt, the earth was going to melt, they’d get plenty of money proving the earth was going to melt.
What’s not to like (except a rather specious example of circular logic, but it keeps the kids fed.)
Steve, like Anthony, is a tireless seeker of the truth.
Dave says:
February 6, 2012 at 1:06 pm
Wivenhoe was a flood control dam designed to prevent a recurrence of the 1974 floods. It didn’t because it was used for water storage as a result of the cancellation of the Wolfdene Dam by the incoming Goss Labor government in 1990 to appease the Greens and some people whose properties would be flooded(chief of staff to Goss was one Kevin Rudd, the second worst Australian Prime Minister ever). After the 10 year dry the Labor government was keen to maximise water storage. The dam operators were warned on the Thursday the week before the flood that there would be very heavy rain for several days but according to their story put no weight on this forecast. It rained and the dam looked like it might be in danger of bursting so the water was released and Brisbane flooded.
So who flooded Brisbane? The Australian Labor Party. Now this pack of barbarian looters are trying to destroy the Australian economy.
@Dave
What does that have to do with this? Except the obvious link that clear records need to be kept of what people are doing even in an emergency, let alone the things that they do in the course of research.
From my perspective I hope that the facts of the Brisbane Flood are fully established and that whatever rectification is necessary is made. As someone who doesnt live in (uninsured) Queensland, but is still paying for that mess, I am very keen that all the lessons that need to be learned are learned fully so that it doesn’t happen again.
Meanwhile our esteemed Prime Minister is introducing a, soak the rich (hah), Carbon Tax, based on the advice of non-experts that this research was carried out objectively and is the best available. And once again guess who’s going to pay for it.
Their actions give insight to the basis for much of the Monty Pythonesque humor we’ve enjoyed over the years.
Think of the Cheese Shop, only substitute MET.
JimB
Reading the latest news on “Global warming”, it is very obvious this scam is already over as far as the media are concerned.
The overwhelming majority of news stories are now hostile. The overwhelming majority of high-profile websites are now being updated with hostile stuff.
But like always, the politicians & civil servants are totally out of touch and about an election behind public opinion.
LT for being so highly educated as you like to point out, your reading comprehension is abysmal.
Steve McIntyre is a real person working at a real university, unlike the fraudsters at East Anglia… Sorry Kev.
No, he’s a pensioner, I believe.
Charles S. Opalek, PE says:
February 6, 2012 at 3:01 pm
Steve, like Anthony, is a tireless seeker of the truth.
==============
And note they are supported by an ‘army of ones’.
Mike Borgelt,please don’t spread myths about Brisbane’s Wivenhoe Dam,and the Wolffdene proposal. Wivenhoe,completed in 1985, was always intended as a dual purpose structure: water supply AND flood mitigation. Ample public documentation from the time demonstrates this.
The Wolffdene proposal was non-economic,provided a reservoir only a fraction of Wivenhoe’s size and volume,and harnessed a catchment only 10% the size of the Wivenhoe catchment. It would have provided a small boost to total yield of the metropolitan water supply. The cancellation of Wolffdene had no effect on the Wivenhoe use strategy,which was then and remains dual purpose.
The rain event that hit the Brisbane catchments was forecast but its intensity and duration were not to be known beforehand. Rainfalls into Wivenhoe’s catchment turned out to be in the 1:200 to 1:2000 year return time range. As well, half the catchment that feeds through Brisbane is completely unregulated,and provided half the flood height. The presence and operation of the dam is estimated to have reduced the flood height at Brisbane CBD by two metres.
Nick,
1974 floods had more falls in the catchments let alone 1893 which dwarfs both 74 and 2011. there is no excuse for the late release to save areas like wivenhoe pocket etc, they gambled, held on and lost big time. some gamble though!
the higher flow rates through the creeks from the laidley creek side only eventuated because of the poor planning of toowoomba. this is a man made (council and developer) problem that ended up taking many lives in grantham and further exacerbating the flooding downstream in the brisbane river.
that 1 in 2000 year event is just rubbish. invented by a bom model, not real data. the real data shows the full picture, and the 2011 event could have been controlled, at least in terms of brisbane. this coming class action will be interesting.
OT but just wonder if Solar 24 is over (current SSN 24?!)
“Carbon Climate Forcing” was a congenitally defective science hypothesis, created for FORCING Carbon Commodity Market trading on all of humanity. Climatology is the “credit default swap” figleaf for the “carbon derivitives” certificates. It is Faux Science, using selected photo-shopped properties and manipulated data. At the heart of all twentieth century evil is a defective monetary system, concealed by frauds of both science and history. Thus, “Fractional Reserve Banking Begat Faux Reality”. It is this control network, with power over government, education and media that is the root problem.
In all fairness to the Team, if the UEA is so pathetically careless with essential scientific data management as inconveniently admitted by Jones, isn’t it asking a bit much to expect them to know the whereabouts of emails at any given time? After all, the building of a pyramid (scheme) in and of itself is a daunting task.
@LT – Aha! The butler did it. It was only a matter of time.
@JB – Superb analogy.
“Do you have any rain?”
“Oh no sir…we’re fresh out of rain today.”
“How about snow?”
“Oh no sir…we shant be seeing any snow for many, many decades, I’m afraid.”
“And would you happen to have any cooler tempratures?”
“I’m afraid not, sir…you see, everything’s been warming up and up and up, it seems!”
I’m telling you…it’s straight out of the Cheese Shop Dialogue.
JimB
Have we won a battle, but lost the war?
A Dem on Obama in 2008: “I want him to create a revolution to save the nation from corruption and fascist trends by, at least, using the bully pulpit to the point where corporatists, foreign government lobbyists and Republican nut-jobs are foaming at the mouth. We can run commercials painting the GOP as rich fat cats stealing all the wealth. A good model was the WAMU commercial with the old out OF touch bankers standing around confused about free checking. Or the Lending Tree commercial where the giant banker tries to crush the small lender.
When a non-profit group takes money from oil companies and advocates drilling for oil as a solution to energy shortages, it is certain to be attacked as a tool of Big Oil. So far, the groups linked to Obama’s Chicago Climate Exchange have avoided similar scrutiny.
There are trillions of dollars to be made in trading emissions credits. But first the federal government must force everyone to play the game: buy and sell pollution credits. Has anyone seen the new building codes; private and public? How much has the EPA already added to the price of an automobile? OTR truckers are now on the block.
CCX aspired to be the New York Stock Exchange of carbon-emissions trading. CCX owes its existence in part to the Joyce Foundation, the Chicago-based liberal foundation that Barack Obama provided $347,000 in grant support in 2000 to test the viability of a market in carbon credits. On the CCX board of directors – Maurice Strong. His former job titles include “senior advisor” to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, “senior advisor” to World Bank President James Wolfensohn and board member of the United Nations Foundation, a creation of Ted Turner.
Other financial organizations have invested billions in the carbon-exchange concept.
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
• Winrock International (received government grants from the EPA, USAID, Departments of Labor, State and Commerce, Nature Conservancy (chairman – Henry Paulson).
• World Resources Institute (WRI) (donors are CCX members or support carbon exchanges, including Shell Foundation, Whole Foods Market, Nature Conservancy, American Forest and Paper Assoc., Pew Center for Climate Change, Rockefeller Brothers Fund and ord Foundation.)
• World Bank – operates a Carbon Finance Unit that conducts research on how to develop and trade carbon credits, runs the Carbon Fund for Europe, Carbon Fund traded on the ECX (half of which is owned by CCX,
• Al Gore’s firm, Generation Investment Management
• Tom Boucher, founded Native Energy and Green Mountain Energy, a CCX associate partner that describes itself as “the nation’s leading retail provider of cleaner energy and carbon-offset solutions.
• Goldman Sachs – commissioned the World Resources Institute (affiliated with CCX), Resources for the Future, and Woods Hole Research Center to research U.S. regulation of greenhouse gases. Bought initial 10% of CCX shares for $23 million. CCX owns half the ECX.
• Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America, Barclays, JPMorgan all entered CCX. They saw U.S.-issued carbon allowances as a potentially lucrative new commodity.
• Ford Motor Company, Amtrak, DuPont, Dow Corning, American Electric Power, International Paper, Motorola, Waste Management.
• AP, Reuters, BBC, US and UK scientific and academic institutions too long to list.
The power behind this money is not going to give up.
One interesting thing about this issue is how neatly it dovetails with other State-driven ‘interventions’ that *may* have started with good intentions, but rapidly got captured by zealots.
Ancel Keys and his dodgy dossier -> the lipid hypothesis -> the low-fat high-carb obesogenic diet
Alcoa’s waste problem -> dodgy science about tooth decay -> water fluoridation -> fluorosis etc
For two generations, you had Buckley’s chance of getting research funding for anything that might undermine the ‘received wisdom’ of ‘diet science’; namely, that high-fat (esp high saturated fat) was BAD, and led to higher levels of blood lipids and increased risk of cardiovascular disease.
Except: it wasn’t true (as a multitude of studies have now shown), AND it ignored the problem that LOW blood lipids are significantly correlated with increased risk of stroke etc.
Result: widespread insulin-resistance, Type II diabetes, and a grab-bag of other metabolic issues.
If you familiarise yourself with how the ‘Food Pyramid’ got started (as a political theatre – expedited by a Presidential Hopeful who actually said – out loud – “We don’t have time to wait until the science is in.”) From there it was ‘consensus conferences’ and highly biased research.
{Key thing to note: I’m a vegetarian, so I’m clearly not an ‘Atkins’ advocate. I eat like a horse and am the same weight as I was a quarter-century ago (235lb).}
The same issue happened with fluoride: Alcoa and the nuclear weapons industry had a bunch of toxic waste that was costing them buku $$ to dispose of. They happened upon (badly flawed) research that seemed to show that fluoridation would reduce the incidence of dental caries in kiddies. They got into the ear of the political class (how? those $, baby), and next thing you know we’re all gulping down variable forced doses of fluoride.
Except: it wasn’t true. The reduction in dental caries is ENTIRELY a statistical artifact: fluoridated water causes endocrine disruption, which DELAYS the emergence of teeth. Later tooth eruption (delayed by 9-18 months) means reduced CHANCE of caries formation by the target age.
Result: widespread endocrine disruption (Fl displaces Iodine in the thyroid, blocking production of 2 key thyroid hormones; these in turn moderate calcium uptake… -> bones become denser BUT more brittle. The hypothyroidism is also obesogenic, which helps tremendously [not] if you’re already eating loads of starch),
Climate hysteria is basically the same model. Problem->reaction->”solution”, where “solution” is a politically-driven agenda given a scientific veneer by a State-funded cadre of heavily-invested zealots.
And – last but not least – folks like me also believe that the *may* in my first sentence is probably [wrong]. These things probably DON’T start out with the political class trying to do something right: they probably start out with the political class trying to solve some OTHER problem (e.g., ‘fixing’ climate change is a convenient, ‘do it for the future’ trope that will add another ad valorem tax, which will partially offset the coming demographic-driven budget nightmare when Baby Boomers try to retire on promises that governments can’t pay for).
Dammit. ‘wring’ in my last paragraph above should be (obviously) WRONG. [fixed. Robt]
I’ve been spoilt by Disqus/IntenseDebate style comment mechanisms (where you can EDIT your drivel after you post it).
They’re free, and they integrate wonderfully well into WordPress: they instal in <30 seconds and have a ginchy moderation interface. Just sayin'.
[Firefox-Mozilla has a web-sensitive spellchecker for all web-based text entry screens that helps a great deal in making one appear more intelligent that one actually is. 8<) Robt]
Sorry folks, deleting emails without backing up is not part of normal business practice. This East Anglia University sounds like a place to steer clear of.
I ***LOVE*** McIntyre for his work against the AGW fraud… However his writing style…not so much. The English language can be a beautiful thing. Not so much with McIntyre…
Remember, this giant blizzard of never ending waste and hubris is the poster boy for the phenomenon that is sucking the life blood out of what should be the greatest period of human prosperity in the history of the known world. It’s called Criminal Government, and it IS the problem, as Reagan said.
Get these fear mongering, grant leeching, culture vultures off the neck of our economies and let’s bring back freedom and go to the stars!
“It is highly likely, even good records management practice, that such emails and attachments would have been deleted in the normal course of business between 2006 and 2008, well in advance of any request for either the emails or the attached documents.”
This has got to be the most transparent crock of the lot. Under what data management policy are emails ever deleted? What is to be gained by doing so – are they suggesting that storage space is limited? And this is 2006 they’re talking about, not 1986. How can deleting emails less than 4 years old be called good records management practice.
Mendacity is way too polite a word!
Mobihc,re the 2011 Brisbane flood,the volume of water that passed the dam site was a very close second to the 1893 event [which is a modelled estimate],and was nearly twice the volume of 1974. All this data is publicly available. While perfect hindsight reveals that the dam’s operation was not absolutely optimal it still reduced the peak by around 6′ or 2metres. In the real world,operators had to work in real time with quantitive rain forecasts that critically underestimated actual falls.
Flooding in Toowoomba does not enter the Brisbane catchment: it flows west into the Condamine River and the Murray-Darling basin. No water from Toowoomba’s city drainage enters the Lockyer-Laidley system,and thus did not go through Grantham. The intense rain event that caused the flash flooding in both catchments straddled the watershed. Please check your facts.
The inquiry outcome will be very interesting. I expect that local and state government will get a good roasting for allowing building in flood zones over the last 30 years,against the advice of the planners and builders of the dam and several subsequent reports.
“Reading the latest news on “Global warming”, it is very obvious this scam is already over as far as the media are concerned.”
Nope. The leftists just switch topic to something else that has the exact same ‘solutions’: in a contest of truth vs lies, the lies ALWAYS win. The only way to defeat the hippies is to recognize that they cannot be reasoned with, cannot be bargained with, cannot be trusted in ANY way. Any other path of action WILL lead to their being victorious. Sorry if that disturbs: either enter into a kind of social war against them, or else they WILL ruin the future of your children – FACT.
“But like always, the politicians & civil servants are totally out of touch and about an election behind public opinion.”
Nope. They know exactly what is going on: they need to, in order to effectively manage the masses. These people are NOT stupid, they are NOT ‘mistaken’: what they ARE is LIARS.
It all seems to be the downstream of “Noble Cause Corruption” hand-in-hand with venal corruption. A potent combo!
Nick,
the model of flow rate means nothing considering you plug whatever figures you want into it. its obvious that bom did NOT use the actual catchment figures for this. you look at the figures for yourself (they are available) even to 1893 and watch how bom twist the truth. eg-
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=807
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=804
the same newspaper article that claimed the 1 in 2000 year event also stated that the wall of water started at toowoomba. hmm.. same crap different day. you expect it from the media, but from our own bureau. its pathetic and must stop.
on the surface, these little white lies like 1 in 2000 year event thing would seem to not mean much, but it is the building of an idea that the weather is ‘extreme’, out of control etc, and we get it daily from the media backed by our own government departments. I for one am sick of it. if they cant report the truth, then dont report at all. bom lied, the water board lied, the government lied, and the media liked their lies. it took an insider to bring about the truth about these lies! sounds familiar.
this class action may reveal some of the lies, but i am sure the little white lies will go by unchecked as usual and the majority of the people of brisbane will still believe that the dam brought the brisbane river levels down lower than 74 flood levels when it did no such thing! the lower than 74 level would have exists dam or not. wivenhoe could have been used properly, and should have been used properly.
mobihci, when comparing the three largest floods in the Brisbane catchment of the last 120 years,the flood flow rates at Wivenhoe are known observationally for 1974 and 2011.Only the 1893 floods are modelled. Data from stream level recorders show 2011 peaks to be higher than 1974s in the waterways above the dam wall. Less water went past Wivenhoe in 1974: 1410 gigalitres to 2011’s 2650 gigalitres.1974 featured heavier rainfalls and greater flows in the Brisbane River catchment outside the Wivenhoe portion,that is,downstream of the dam wall. This is all empirical data,not modelling.
Nick,
its hard to believe 2011 can be compared with 74 when wivenhoe dam didnt even exist. sure, somerset was there then, but volumes cannot be compared. 1893 was to be sure higher as would have been 1841 from the few records.
empirical rainfall data exists for all three floods you mention and do show a very different picture than the one bom presents. the links show this clearly. whatever volume figures you present are based on data pasted together from people who are willing to misrepresent the real rainfall figures to the tune of 1 in 2000 year events.
1974 and 2011 catchment yields and stream flow volumes can be directly compared,and the presence of a reservoir is irrelevant: each hours inflows are recorded and tally over the flood period to the figure I cited. I agree 1893 was higher and have never suggested otherwise,but its flow is largely modelled because the data coverage is much thinner,and only a few manual height gauges were present
Nick,
bom use data from select stations. ignoring river flow which change between each of thos years 1841, no somerset and only downstream data (where brisbane river was higher than 1893) also stanley river peaks higher than 2011 in 1893 and 1898. 1893 was not just a small event, some stations recorded 3 times the amount recorded in 2011. between 1841 and 1899 there were 7 of the 9 major floods! 1 in 2000 year event..
now seq water turn around and twist everything using bom figures (which are good) and come to the same conclusion that bom did (bad). somehow 1893 was to shrink in magnitude by removing closed stations, and not just stations out of the way, they ignore critical stations to bring us the new estimate of lack of rainfall in 1893. poor old 74 has had the touch up too. some stations show MUCH higher rainfall in the upper catchments than 2011, yet they seem to not count towards discovering the truth of the flood, only the river levels mean anything when in reality they are only a small part of determining future strategy. eg esk falls were much higher in 74, but somerset was higher in 2011 of course woodford shows the reality of 1893!
the minor flood event before the main event was the key to act, the history shows they should have, they didnt, they took the gamble, they lost. the government smooth it over by claiming 1 in 2000 events and all their paid supporters (sometimes bureaucrats) come out in support. reality is lost, and forever more every event will be larger than the last. even though it most likely isnt. question is where does this end. eg was yasi a cat 5?
http://www.news.com.au/national/cyclone-yasi-may-be-downgraded-to-category-four-cyclone-despite-victims-protests/story-e6frfkvr-1226261438075
who cares right? well we should care about this. truth is being re-invented daily in the great post modern tradition. why? post modernism is a self serving animal and people are innately corrupt.
Today it looks like the flood commission will be more of the white wash it was before..
flow rate models all a load of rubbish. created by anyone willing to put their name to them and use as real data.
stanley river heights show there have been 13 major floods since the 1890s
http://www.bom.gov.au/hydro/flood/qld/brochures/brisbane_upper/brisbane_upper_above_wivenhoe_dam.shtml#PreviousFlooding
so the event being unique is rubbish, the brisbane river levels show this too. try a once in 50 year event, of which there were two of within 10 days of each other in 1893 and a group of 7 between 1841 and 1893. so the slow down after 1900 (later affected by somerset dam) shows a pdo pattern/+lanina/+rain. they know this, they know the release needed to be done early, they didnt. i really do hope there are true independent calculations done for the now inevitable class action.