Australians just aren't going to know what rainfall is

This is the opposition leader in Australia, Tony Abbott. He hates the carbon tax, he will repeal it, axe the climate commissioner and clean green energy subsidies.

Go you Beauty!

billions in mothballed desal plants is only the beginning of the damage done by the Alarmists in Australia. the modus operandi in the following link should sound familiar. all u need to know is Hedley Thomas of The Australian newspaper was/is the only reporter getting to the bottom of this very expensive story, relating to the severity of the Brisbane floods last year, and the BOM’s raw data was hardly the place to be looking for an accurate picture:
10 Feb: Australian: Jared Owens and Rosanne Barrett: Wivenhoe w(a)rning to ‘get on front foot ‘ with The Oz
A HYDROLOGIST who independently assessed Wivenhoe Dam’s compliance with its manual was hired after praising the efforts of dam engineers and urging them to “get on the front foot” against scrutiny by this newspaper.
Brisbane hydrologist Greg Roads told Queensland’s floods inquiry yesterday he stood by his March review of Wivenhoe operations, saying the engineers carried out their duties in compliance with the dam’s operating manual…
Mr Roads was quizzed over his email to SEQWater principal hydrologist Terrence Malone four days after the flood peak on January 13, saying it “looks like you guys did a great job”.
Mr Roads was responding to an email from Mr Malone thanking him for “supportive comments” he gave in an article published in The Australian that day.
“I think (reporter) Hedley Thomas has smelled blood,” Mr Roads wrote, copying in Mr Malone’s fellow engineers John Tibaldi, Robert Ayre and John Ruffini.
“I advised (SEQWater dam and weir planning principal) Barton (Maher) yesterdays (sic) that you guys will need to get on the front foot with him. It shouldn’t be me!”
Six weeks later, Mr Roads was commissioned to review the engineers’ compliance, sending his report to Mr Tibaldi on March 9.
Asked how he could have judged the engineers’ work before seeing SEQWater’s account of its actions, Mr Roads said he was intently following raw data on the Bureau of Meteorology website as the disaster unfolded…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/wivenhoe-wrning-to-get-on-front-foot-with-the-oz/story-fn59niix-1226267178158

A Maunder like moment would really mess with some Professional Career’s.

BOM/CSIRO rainfall map here: http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/trendmaps.cgi?map=rain&area=aus&season=0112&period=1960
Note the start date is 1960. Change that to 1900 and you will see the long-term trend is wetter, not drier. The period 1900-50 is drier than the period 1951-2000. OTOH the climate models say that the reverse is happening. Quelle suprise!

We’re also paying for three useless desalination plants. Not much change from $10 billion. Which Dr Flannery is at least partly responsible for in my view.
The biggest, in Melbourne, is ‘way over budget and has not yet been completed because it has been raining so much the builders haven’t been able to work on it. Irony, what irony?

…And. we have desal plants at Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane & a now axed pipeline from the Murray to Melbourne, a temporary dam to prevent salt accumulating in the lower Murray River Lakes, also now dismantled…all these items at huge costs…when rivers and dams have been full or nearly full for close to;2 or 3 years. Much of NSW-NE VIC resembles an inland sea, green grass abounds in the outback and this is the third year in a row of floods and record rains in many areas of Central and Eastern Australia.

On top of all that we have now some very expensive desalination plants that ‘cannot be stopped’ and with the dam overflowing, their output sort of just runs back into the ocean.

The fellow has amazing nerve. If there was not a ‘scientific’ expectation for a decrease in rainfall, various state governments would not have spent billions on desalination plants. The Queensland state government has now mothballed theirs. The New South Wales state government is investigating it’s contractual arrangements to see if it can mothball it’s one. The Victorian State government’s plant has not yet been finished, because construction delayed due to wet weather. If no experts were warning against dramatic and short term reductions in rainfall, why the huge rush to build these plants and who exactly did these various governments actually listen to? Are we expected to believe they acted against the recommendations of experts?

When its hot and dry its due to ‘Climate Change’.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/01/29/us-australia-heat-idUSTRE50S0OA20090129?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews
When its cold and wet it’s due to La Nina
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-04/la-nina-leads-to-third-wettest-year-on-record/3758114

Breganza has responded to Franks. I do not feel licensed to quote from it, but as I understand it, his argument is that the quotes I’ve produced don’t come from oficial documents but scientists speaking unofficially to journalists without context or the ability to correct errors.
So that CSIRO press release in October 2010 and the CSIRO newsletter in 2007 don’t count as “official documents”? **face palm**

What goes on in Australia by the climate science community is a disgrace. Reputable science organisations have these taxpayer sponsored get-togethers during a 7 year drought and conclude:
-They suggest that global warming, being caused mostly by humans, is causing a permanent shift to drier conditions in Australia. They say this so that more deslanation dams are built, and less dams (at least 2 were mothballed-one in Victoria, one in NSW), using taxpayer funded money (most of which comes frrom mining, which they are also generally against).
-The Murray Darling river system they claim is in dire straits, during the 7 year drought, again, they claim, being caused mainly by humans causing a shift to permanent drought. (It promptly flooded the last 2 years). They assumed, like a really bad investor, that a past trend simply means that such a trend will continue. Perhaps, instread of taking money from the taxpayer, every climate science initiative has to involve personal money invested by climate scientists-I wonder then if they would be investing their own money buying back water for the now naturally flooded Murray-Darling Basin.
-Tim Flannery claimed the dams would never be full again, partly because of the permanent shift to drier conditions, and partly because the soil was too hot (the have since nearly all filled and flooded). Never have I seen a reputable scientist be so stupid, and so out of balance. If he cant correctly assess the (lack of) relationship between soil temperature and water runoff, then how can he correctly assess the relationship between something like CO2 and temperature. (The answer is he can’t, he has made a career mostly out of pandering to the prejudices of the left (you know green good, mining bad; renewable energy good industrialisation bad ; irrigation and dams bad desalination plants good etc etc), which is now causing him trouble when people are actually checking his now defunct claims).
-They claim the drought was unprecedented, it wasnt. There was a 7 year drought from 1895-1902 called the Federation Drought, and Plimer correctly showed longer droughts up to 10 years or more which have occurred further in the past.
-They failed to acknowledge that the drier conditions and less cloud cover was also contributing to the apparent temperature warming, the 7 years of drought were particularly warm partly because there were less cloouds and less rain.They never mentioned this anywhere, attributing the 7 year warm period to humans and C02, without looking at the cloud cover. The last 2 years have been noticeably cooler in Australia, which they now correctly note is partly because there is more clouds and more rain. (So when its cooler its because of clouds, but when its warmer its not because of less clouds, but because of C02).
Amongst other things, Flannery has claimed and got wrong in the past:
-in the 1990s in the book the Future Eaters he claimed that Aaustrlaia shoudn’t invest in mineral resources because they were in decline and likely to run out soon. They have since boomed.
-in 2011 in the book the Natural History of Planet Eearth he claimed that mineral desposits (he doesn’t say which ones) are created by microorganims taking minerals out of sea-water-on behalf of gaia- to make the oceans clean, which are then sometimes uplifted and taken out the hills to poison the water again by miners. Most mineral deposits are formed by nature itself-by tectonic and magmatic (ie volcanic) processes, and have nothing to do with micoorganimss in the sea In fact in the entire book, about the geology of the earth, he doesnt mention volcanoes hardly or at all, because in general volcanoes do not generally sit well with the ideology of the green movement. How you can write a book about the geological history of the planet without mentionng volcanoes is beyond me. He also suggests and support the idea that gaia made the crust through the action of microorganisms as a kind of shell, and the atmosphere as a kind of cocoon, which we are now destroying. He also claims mining is the biggest threat to humans and the enviroment, (his standard few pages against mining in virtually every book he writes so as to pander to the prejudices of the green left, something bad must be said about big, bad, evil mining which is going to make the sky fall down and destroy the world. He never once mentions what mining does for Australia, and the world in general (e.g. funds for hospitals, schools, welfare etc), nor that societies are simply unsustainable without it).
A scientist not happy with the general climate science comunity in Australia.
T

I sit here, in Sydney, with the rain pouring down outside. It has been flooding in NSW, VIC & South East Queensland (about 65% of Australia’s populated areas) for the last few weeks. Not only that, but we have a tax, for everybody who earn over $A150k, to pay for LAST year’s floods.
The Australian government is still buying back water rights from farmers and other agricultural businesses, ostensibly to ‘save’ the drought stricken Murray-Darling river system (this river system, for those of you who don’t know Australian geography, is pretty much the supply system for – yep, you guessed it – NSW, VIC & South East QLD) – two years in flood.
We have been told again, and again, that the ‘drought’ is the new normal; many people (probably more correctly ‘sheeple’), still believe this. This is undoubtably due to to the mis-representations of our Socialist Government, the CSIRO, the Bureau Of Meteorology and severe alarmists such as our climate ‘commissar’ Dr Tim Flannery.
Each of NSW, VIC & QLD have built desalination plants, ostensibly to provide drinking water to water distressed cities, over the last 5 years. I don’t know the QLD experience but in both NSW & VIC, the operators are being paid to pump the product (water) straight into the ocean, as the dams are overflowing! Interestingly, I believe, that the VIC operator successfully sued the VIC government last year, as the de-sal plant was built in a flood plain (really – I’m not making this up!)
One of Australia’s most beloved poets, Dorothea Mackellar OBE wrote one of Australia’s best known poems (first published in 1908) that has, at it’s heart, that most Australian’s can quote, the following part-stanza:
“I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.”
Do you think that these numpties (see numpty, under slang in an Aussie dictionary) will ever learn or admit defeat?

It begs the question what advice the government has been following if these remarks are “”unofficial” If the comments are wrong then what is the official position? No one contradicted them at the time of publication. Perhaps Dr Karl Braganza could enlighten us?

‘Unprecedented amount of rain’: flood evacuations after Sydney dam spills
Predicted February 29th …
http://wattsupwiththat.com/tips-notes-2/#comment-908048
Let the climatologists stick to what they do best – predicting weather, not climate.
BTW, there’s been a slight delay with my paper using physics to debunk the greenhouse effect, but the reviewers are happy with it and the launch is expected next week sometime.

!984-(revisted?)
Winston dialled ‘back numbers’ on the telescreen and called for the appropriate issues of The Times, which slid out of the pneumatic tube after only a few minutes’ delay. The messages he had received referred to articles or news items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, as the official phrase had it, to rectify. For example, it appeared from The Times of the seventeenth of March that Big Brother, in his speech of the previous day, had predicted that the South Indian front would remain quiet but that a Eurasian offensive would shortly be launched in North Africa. As it happened, the Eurasian Higher Command had launched its offensive in South India and left North Africa alone. It was therefore necessary to rewrite a paragraph of Big Brother’s speech, in such a way as to make him predict the thing that had actually happened. Or again, The Times of the nineteenth of December had published the official forecasts of the output of various classes of consumption goods in the fourth quarter of 1983, which was also the sixth quarter of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. Today’s issue contained a statement of the actual output, from which it appeared that the forecasts were in every instance grossly wrong. Winston’s job was to rectify the original figures by making them agree with the later ones. As for the third message, it referred to a very simple error which could be set right in a couple of minutes. As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a ‘categorical pledge’ were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.
As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of The Times and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.

Thingadonta & Ricardo
If you want to help the situation in Australia, contact me via email (as on http://climate-change-theory.com ) as an important launch is planned next week.
Doug (in North Rocks, Sydney)

Breganza has responded to Franks. I do not feel licensed to quote from it, but as I understand it, his argument is that the quotes I’ve produced don’t come from oficial documents but scientists speaking unofficially to journalists without context or the ability to correct errors.

This begs the question of why did the Australian government[s] build expensive desalination plants (no abandoned)?
One of the reasons for growing scepticism is not because WUWT and other sceptics are spreading ‘misinformation’ but because people were given predictions and alarming statement, today, they can see with their own lying eyes the outcome. Britons were told to expect milder winters, less snow etc. This is why people are turning away from the CAGW scare. It’s just the weather.
For anyone who is interested here is a history of Australian droughts with explanations as to why is if often drought prone.
http://home.iprimus.com.au/foo7/droughthistory.html

It may well be the case that many billions of dollars has been squandered because of a failure to appreciate what was simply nothing more than multidecadal variation.
What one needs to see is what advice was given to governments. Who took the decision to build the dams and desal plamts and on the basis of what advice?
I consider that some FOIs addressed to some governmental departments is what is needed to pin this down..

I’d love those warmists from BoM and CSIRO go out to northern Victoria and southern NSW right now and tell those trapped farmers and townships along the Murrumbigee River that they said it would never rain and the basin would collapse years ago. As a consequence many councils in the basin didn’t upgrade levee’s and establish flood relief and flood assistance programs (no need if it’s not going to rain again).
They’re paying for it now with between 10-15 metres of flood waters destroying the basin.

Another Climate FAIL File?
FD

It is a fact that the Australian decision to build desalination plants was based and founded on reports undertaken by the so called climate community experts. The reports are open to scrutiny, those individuals and institutions involved are named. And they got it wrong, they were about as wrong as they could be, they started on a false supposition, that the climate models and the UN IPCC reports were correct and reliable and to be believed.
The Australian government asked for and received a high confidence level assessment that desalination plants were essential, that the consensus dictated that a warming world would mean a drier Australia. And those involved gave that high confidence level assessment, they were mistaken, about as mistaken as its possible to get. Those involved in the assessment received a great deal of funding from the taxpayer, they took the funding and spent it and for the money the public were sold what amounted to a half arsed ill thought out shambles based on computer models.
Now here is the rub folks, the Australian people paid for the assessment studies and paid generously indeed and they paid for desal units they didnt require and they paid handsomely for them. Is anyone involved going to pay? Will anyone at all be investigated and punished? In the USA a Ponzi scammer is going to spend the rest of his life in prison and his fraud was worth around ten billion. The fraudsters and scammers and Charlatans involved in the desal plants and those who worked so hard to oppose dams and reservoirs all not face any sanction whatsoever, those who made money will keep it, those who gained position and influence will keep it. So long as these people can escape any retribution or sanction for their actions they will pop up again and again like a cold sore.

Ask anyone living in the southern hemisphere around the pacific: It rains during summertime up to march or april, in the places where it usually rains, then it ends until the next year. Anything else is not science, less witchcraft (shamans really know about it).
This case is the same as the one in England where the MET Office said that children would have to be taught about what snow was, as they would not see any.

“unofficial” statements? Oh, well, then. Never mind. Seriously, though? These people were only quoted because of their official capacity. No way would the media have given them space if they had insisted on even the usual charade that they were offering only a private opinion not reflective of the institutions they represent and often lead.
Pull the other one, Breganza.

DaveS says:
March 7, 2012 at 5:26 am
Note that Mr Sharwood said only that ‘ ..reputable scientists never said anything of the sort’. Nothing in that statment about the disreputable ones 🙂
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
So, the next logical line would be: The reputable scientists are the skeptical ones.

Yeah, my wallet is hurting from all the bulldust that flies around in Australia. Even to the extent that the dopey politicians in Queensland decided that they didn’t want insurance for floods or any other disaster. So when a flood happens guess who pays for it – everybody. When theres a drought guess who pays for it – everbody. We even have stupid bureaucrats advertising on the telly that we should save power between 4 and 9 pm. Perhaps it hasn’t dawned on them that those are the only times people are at home. The rest of the time we’re at work, paying taxes, so we can keep these idiots in jobs where they treat us like we’re scum for wanting to watch the telly or put a fan on.
Meanwhile and with Australia being about the only country in the developed world that’s showing any growth, the marxists and the Greens want to lumber us with a mining tax and a carbon tax at $20 dollars a tonne. Seems that they don’t realise that you can only get so much juice from a lemon no matter how hard you squeeze it.

This is what our lying Prime Minister Julia Gillard said on the eve of the last election when Labor’s internal polling told her the Party would be decimated if she didn’t make such a declaration:
“There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead”, promising to allow consultation, an informed debate and get a genuine consensus before attempting to do so in later years!
The result was a hung Parliament. She then bought the support of the sole elected Green plus three self-serving Independents, two of whom went against the wishes of their electorate, in order to retain power.
She then broke her election promise, and introduced a carbon tax, subsequently saying “I expect my government to take advice from CSIRO, BoM and Science Acadamies “..
To understand how she bought the advice she wanted from these sources see this article:
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/04/professor-points-out-its-a-less-than-nobel-consensus/
Now have a look at this lying unscientific drivel from her when she announced the carbon dioxide tax.

Coupled with the resurfacing of questions about her involvement in the Australian Workers Union fraud several years earlier, it’s no wonder she is trying bring in draconian restrictions on freedom of speech!

in passing, note the premeditated dodge about “official documents”: standard M.O. is to make all “official documents” so full of doublespeak and faux-technical nonsense that they mean nothing at all. THEN the “scientists” and various ministers come out and “unofficially” say what it all meant, and base policy on that.
That way, when the explanations have to be walked back, the offenders can *always* say “oh that wasn’t in the official document, can’t blame them.” And the “official documents” can then be used to justify any new jabberwocky hunt that seems currently popular.
Wash, rinse, repeat.

dtbronzich says:
March 7, 2012 at 4:41 am
I’m sure they’ll either spin the rain and floods as proof of climate change or alternately that it’s a blip on the radar, a natural result of climate chaos due to AGW, and the drought will return as “hardly interrupted” , blah, blah, blah…..

Get up to speed boy! Or girl. These climate criminals are costing people an arm and a leg. They will stop at nothing with their lies, U-turns, deceptions and double talk. Thank God for the Internet.

February 6, 2012
Flooding, other effects of climate change expose Australians to toxic contamination
““Most of our urban landfills contain highly toxic substances from past decades – and were designed for the climatic conditions at the time. These have now changed, with the risk of bigger and more frequent floods, droughts, heat and acidity releasing substances we thought were gone for good,” says Prof. Naidu, the director of the CRC for Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the Environment”
http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/293370/20120206/flooding-effects-climate-change-exposes-australians-toxic.htm

Ditto with last year’s floods. What a load of horse sh** Australians should now prepare for more droughtflood.

So his position is that “when I’m right just consider everything I say official and when I’m wrong forget about it.”

Nevertheless, 2012 Rio Earth´s summit goes!. Nothing has changed, everything is alright guys, we´ll meet at Rio!
Deniers and skeptics can say anything, however we got the power, we got the money and, don´t forget it, we got the UN!, those poor fools will be defeated by boredom!

Our children being brainwashed:
http://youtu.be/oSOOHfcq0pA

These plants are a perfect example of why the Do Something! attitude is wrong. Often the argument is made that we should hedge our bets and do this or that just in case, well here’s the result. And it’s the same thing that happened en masse in the old USSR when they tried to direct and manage markets instead of letting them order themselves. Christ knows how much money was sunk into these projects and how much of that is now recoverable and how much isn’t? How many more rusted out unusable old buildings and plants to we need to litter the landscape until these people learn the definition of captial consumption and opportunity cost?
The economic ignorance of the warmistas is astounding.

So the journalists were lying about a decrease of rainfalls. The government has spent billions on desal plants. And the scientist paid by the government(the tax payers), didn’t care to denounce the lies. I don’t think it sounds better for those scientists.

@ Badmannersl perhaps he was only counting whole flanneries and rounding down, so as not to inflate the number?

Yeah, as Clinton would almost say, “It all depends on what you say ‘say’ means”.
Theorum 1: Breganza says scientists are speaking to journalists, using their credentials as members of scientific organizations, in a format where errors cannot be corrected.
Corollary 1: These scientists that belong to these organizations make errors. Fairly often.
Corollary 2: All statements to the press from individual scientists should be ignored.
Corollary 3: Including the one just issued by Breganza.
Corollary 4: Breganza has declared that CSIRO webpages, newsletters, and press releases are not official statements by reputable scientists, and therefore these too should be ignored.
I can see the cartoon: Mom and Pop figures labeled Breganza, sitting on a couch, Pop looks sad with his arm wrapped behind his wife, while Mom bawls out, “Honestly, they’re like hooligans! We tried to raise them right, but as soon as they get out at night, they go round to some sleazy journalist on the corner, and start spouting nonsense, and there they are misusing our good name! And we can’t do a thing about it. It’s not like when we were younger, you know…” and in the background, a little hooligan labeled “Scientist” with a big grin saying “Permanent Drought!”
Could all be fixed, of course, if the organizations required the individual scientists to add the caveat “These are my opinions alone, which may or may not be representative of my organization or of any scientific consensus” to any statement that journalists publish. Or, alternatively, if the organizations published official denials whenever one of these scientists-gone-wild steps out of bounds. But that’s not going to happen. And since it isn’t going to happen, Breganza’s attempt to divorce the official organizations from the opinions represented by the individual scientists is going to sound obviously lame.

Could the Australian BOM get it more wrong?
JoNova
December 23rd, 2010
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/12/could-the-australian-bom-get-it-more-wrong/

If you look out the window and say it’s raining, or it’s not, or it’s hot, or it’s not, you’re talking about weather, not climate.
So, Australia had an “almost” unprecedented drought (one dares not say that without qualification) that basically lasted 15 years. People quickly forget the farmers walking off their land, the gaunt sheep and cattle, the appalling bushfires and massive dust-storms. Most of the dams supplying water to the major cities got so low towards the end that they realised they did not have an insurance policy against the drought continuing. They wisely built desalination plants, just in case. Costly as hell? Sure, but it beats running dry: imagine being the politician left to explain why they DIDN’T build desal plants when they had the chance.Currently looking like white elephants? Sure? Now we’re having “almost” unprecedented heavy rainfall. So? Australia already had the world’s most extreme climate variations. Yes, but now the rain’s coming from massive evaporation from the Indian Ocean, where the surface temperature is running at 3 degrees C above normal. Isn’t this just a foretaste of the sort of scenario the “alarmists” have been saying will (eventually) become more the norm? Longer, hotter, drier droughts, punctuated by more extreme rainfall events? If you really dig, rather than accept the word of the paid entertainer Andrew Bolt, you will most likely find that all these “warmist” cherry-picked quotes being trotted out were made in the context of what Australia is likely to experience EVENTUALLY – let’s say by 2100, not by 2012. Bolt is just taking his usual cheap, cheap shot.

polistra says:
March 7, 2012 at 7:34 am
Well, at least the Aussie cities had the sense to build desal plants. With luck and maintenance they’ll be usable when the next drought strikes.
American governments still haven’t heard of desalination, even in coastal cities that are permanently short of water.
=========
Wrong!
Desalination plants quench cities’ thirst
Ed Brock, American City and County
Jan. 1, 2009
Of the 1,416 desalination plants operating in the United States, 53.8 percent are used to filter brackish water, according to IDA. For example, the 27.5 million-gallon-per-day (mgd) Kay Bailey Hutchison desalination facilities that opened in 2007 in El Paso, Texas, treat brackish water to supplement the city’s fresh water supply from the Rio Grande.
In the United States, 65 new plants are planned or under construction, including one in Carlsbad, Calif., which will be the largest in the Western Hemisphere.
source: http://americancityandcounty.com/water/treatment/desalination-plants-city-water-source-200901

@boobialla
The point is that none of this is unprecedented, so it’s not a snapshot of how it is going to be, its a snapshot of how it is and was. Nothing has really changed, including our inability to remember that Australia gets long periods of drought followed by heavy rains.
So my point is, why all the alarmist bulldust. We need to build for climate robustness simply to cope with our current climate and we don’t need a Carbon tax supporting who knows how many bureaucrats to do that, we just need sensible provision.

KV says:
March 7, 2012 at 3:21 pm
There is only one Union Superannuation Fund, UniSuper, who has invested in the Victorian Desal Plant. Out of nearly $30 billion in assets, UniSuper invested $200 million for a 26% stake in the Aquasure Consortium. They have larger investments in Brisbane Airport, $221 million and Adelaide Airport, $362 million. Of the eleven Directors only two are appointed by national Unions. The CEO has an extensive history in the superannuation industry, and there appears to be little union involvement in the various committees etc.
The rest of your post is simply…..bullshit.

@Goldie: “The point is that none of this is unprecedented”.
Umm, let’s see, we had maximum temperature records being smashed, in some cases by two or three degrees, in the summer of 2009.
( I’m citing from the official account here at http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/statements/scs17d.pdf )
The January-February 2009 event set seven of the eight highest temperatures on record in Tasmania. The previous state record of 40.8°C, set at Hobart on 4 January 1976, was broken on 29 January when it reached 41.5°C at Flinders Island Airport. This record only lasted one day, as Scamander, on the east coast, reached 42.2°C on the 30th.
.Launceston Airport (39.9) broke its previous record (37.3) by 2.6 degrees. This is the second-largest margin by which a record high maximum has been broken at any of the 103 locations in the long-term high-quality Australian temperature data set.
Overnight minimum temperatures were also very high in many places during this part of the event.
Adelaide experienced its warmest night on record when the temperature only fell to 33.9°C in the early hours of 29 January. The extremely high day and night temperatures combined for a record high daily mean temperature at Melbourne (35.4°C on 30 January), which, along with the previous day (35.0), were the first time Melbourne’s daily mean temperature has exceeded 35°C. On the morning of 29 January, an exceptional event also occurred in the northern suburbs of Adelaide around 3 a.m. when strong north-westerly winds mixed hot air aloft to the surface. At RAAF Edinburgh, the temperature rose to 41.7°C at 3.04 a.m. Such an event appears to be without known precedent in southern Australia.
After a slight drop in temperatures during the first few days of February, extreme heat returned to the southeast on 6 February. Temperatures rose sharply in South Australia and western Victoria on the 6th, but it was the 7th which saw the most exceptional heat of the whole event.
On 7 February (Figure 2), the focus of the most extreme heat, which was accompanied by high
winds and very low humidity, was in Victoria. An all-time state record was set at Hopetoun, in the
state’s north-west, when the temperature reached 48.8°C, exceeding the old record of 47.2°C, set at Mildura in January 1939 by a considerable margin. Eight other sites, in the Mallee, Wimmera and in the area immediately west of Melbourne, also exceeded the old record, including Walpeup (48.1°C), Avalon Airport (47.9°C), Horsham (47.6°C), Longerenong (47.6°C) and Laverton (47.5°C).
The Hopetoun temperature is also believed to be the highest ever recorded in the world so far south. A total of 14 sites exceeded the previous Victorian February record of 46.7°C.
Many all-time site records were also set in Victoria on 7 February, including Melbourne (154 years of record), where the temperature reached 46.4°C, far exceeding it’s previous all-time record of 45.6°C set on Black Friday (13 January) 1939. It was also a full 3.2°C above the previous February record, set in 1983. Three of Melbourne’s five hottest days have now occurred during this event. Geelong (47.4) and Wilsons Promontory (42.0) were among long-term sites which broke all-time records which had been set only the previous week. In total, of the 35 currently open sites in Victoria with 30 years or more of data which reported on 7 February, 24 set all-time records, five set February records, and only six failed to set records at all. Record high temperatures for February were set over 87% of Victoria.
In addition to its peak intensity, the 2009 heatwave was also notable for its duration.
Now we’ve had Australian rainfall records being smashed in the past year. The surface temperature in the Indian Ocean is breaking records. Last year the rains to eastern Australia came from the Coral Sea, where surface temperatures also broke records. Obviously, I’m not saying that such extremes were never reached BEFORE records began, but unprecedented can be confidently used when historical records are so soundly broken.

Nick says:
March 7, 2012 at 4:46 pm
Philip Bradley March 7 @1.39am, SW Western Australian rainfalls returned to just average only for the year 2011,not the last couple as you claim . 2010 was well below average. Rumors of the recovery of the SW rainfall are premature,sadly.
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It’s worth noting also, that Perth now has two desalination plants. In a strange twist of fate, by late 2012 both plants will be powered by renewable energy.
You can read more here.
http://www.watercorporation.com.au/D/desalination.cfm?uid=5463-2043-3200-6815

The scariest thing about Australia is not that its climate scientists are dolts or its government total numpties but that they are facing severe restrictions on their freedom of speech (driven by said dolts and numpties) to ridicule outrageous claims from the alarmists (and other PC drivel)! In a few years time, AB could find himself in a re-education camp for his heretical points of view. Poor Australia!

Glad I took all my money out of Unisuper long time ago LOL

@Angela: you must be talking about another Australia from the one I greatly enjoy living in. Either that or you only see the thistle and not the meadow.
Say what you will about our leaders but I have great respect for the quality of our scientists generally and, as for civil liberties, well, don’t take my word for it:
Freedom House rates Australia at #1 for political rights and at #1 for press freedom. By contrast, Syria ranks the lowest score – #7 – on both counts. see http://www.freedomhouse.org/
It ain’t all roses here but . . .
I am citing from:
http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2011/australia?page=22&year=2011&country=7989
“Australia is regarded as one of the least corrupt societies in the world, ranking 8 out of 178 countries surveyed in Transparency International’s 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index.
There are no constitutional protections for freedom of speech and the press, but citizens and the media freely criticize the government without reprisal.
Freedom of religion is respected, as is academic freedom.
Freedoms of assembly and association are not codified in law, but the government respects these rights in practice. Workers can organize and bargain collectively.
The judiciary is independent, and prison conditions generally meet international standards.
Now I’m citing from http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking
Australia ranks #3 for economic freedom (USA #10; UK#14; Germany #26; France #67; Italy #92)
Australia’s economic freedom score is 83.1, making its economy the 3rd freest in the 2012 Index. Its overall score is 0.6 point higher than last year, reflecting better scores in trade freedom, government spending, and fiscal freedom.
The foundations of economic freedom in Australia are strong and well supported by excellent protection of property rights and an independent judiciary that enforces anti-corruption measures effectively. While many large advanced economies have been struggling with growing debt burdens that result from years of heavy government spending, Australia’s gross public debt stands at less than 25 percent of GDP. Budget deficits have been under control owing to prudent public finance management that recognizes limits on government.
Australia’s modern and competitive economy benefits from the country’s strong commitment to open-market policies that facilitate global trade and investment. Transparent and efficient regulations are applied evenly in most cases, encouraging dynamic entrepreneurial activity in the private sector.
Unemployment rate: 5.2%
Inflation: 2.8%
Growth: 2.7%

My goodness, I hadn’t realised that things had deteriorated so badly in the last two hours and that the outlook was now so unrelentingly grim. What medication are you taking? Mine is obviously making me blind.
As for that completely harmless and beneficial trace gas, I’m taking your advice and moving to Mammoth Mountain!
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/mammoth_mountain/mammoth_mountain_hazard_37.html

Reblogged this on The GOLDEN RULE and commented:
Once again the warmists are caught out lying and revealing that they do not know enough about the climate to justify all the hype about man-made climate changes. Not to mention the millions of dollars spent, political controls, carbon controls, carbon taxes, falsely educating children and the public.

Andrew Bolt, you lost me there, his a convicted liar for presenting lies as facts, what tools would believe him