While the Waragamba dam overflows in NSW, and the Sydney Morning Herald reports…
‘Unprecedented amount of rain’: flood evacuations after Sydney dam spills
The quotes that warmists claim don’t exist
By Andrew Bolt
I’ve already written about the deception in this piece by Anthony Sharwood, who falsely claims sceptics accuse alarmist scientist of saying it “would never rain again”.
The accusation is inherently preposterous. Never rain again? In fact, the accusation – and the truth – is that many warming alarmists claimed we’d get less rain, with some even tipping a “permanent drought” and empty dams. See the quotes here.
But I’ve since been sent even more quotes that suggest Sharwood was hoodwinked by the National Climate Centre – or that the NCC itself is incapable of proper research.
Let’s focus on the highlighted part of Sharwood’s defence of climate scientists:
Dr Karl Braganza of the National Climate Centre… says that any prediction whatsoever of higher or lower rainfall as a result of climate change is complete bunkum.
That’ll come as a surprise to those who promoted the straw man argument that the climate scientists all told us in the midst of the drought that it would never rain again.
In fact, the reputable scientists never said anything of the sort.
“I have trawled everything we put out to see if someone from one of our offices said anything like this, but no, we definitely never put out statements that it would never rain again,” says Dr Karl.
“The scientists at the BoM (Bureau of Meteorology)and CSIRO made continuous statements that the drought will end, and that [the dry spell in the 2000s] wasn’t permanent…”
Here’s all of that in a nutshell. No one reputable ever said it wouldn’t rain again. All they said is, it’s getting warmer and we don’t really know what comes next. Maybe it’s more rain. Maybe it’s less. We’re still working on that.
No predictions were made about future rainfall? Any predictions were “bunkum”? “We’re still working on that”?
The barest research of statements by the Bureau of Meteorology or the CSIRO by Sharwood or Breganza would have revealed all that to be nonsense. Spokesmen of both warmist insitutions said exactly what Breganza denies. Examples:
The Sydney Morning Herald in 2008:
IT MAY be time to stop describing south-eastern Australia as gripped by drought and instead accept the extreme dry as permanent, one of the nation’s most senior weather experts warned yesterday.
“Perhaps we should call it our new climate,” said the Bureau of Meteorology’s head of climate analysis, David Jones….
“There is a debate in the climate community, after … close to 12 years of drought, whether this is something permanent. Certainly, in terms of temperature, that seems to be our reality, and that there is no turning back….”
The Bureau of Meteorology’s Jones to the University of East Anglia in 2007:
Truth be know, climate change here is now running so rampant that we don’t need meteorological data to see it. Almost everyone of our cities is on the verge of running out of water and our largest irrigation system (the Murray Darling Basin is on the verge of collapse…
The Bureau of Meteorology’s Jones in The Age in 2008:
Should Victorians view this drought as climate change? This drought is now far beyond our historical experience. It is very difficult to make a case that this is just simply a run of bad luck driven by a natural cycle and that a return to more normal rainfall is inevitable, as some would hope.
Climate change caused by humans is now acting to make droughts more severe and increasingly likely… Regardless of the underlying cause, the drought provides Victorians with a snapshot of a hot and dry future that we all will collectively face.
The Age in 2009:
A three-year collaboration between the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO has confirmed what many scientists long suspected: that the 13-year drought is not just a natural dry stretch but a shift related to climate change…
‘’It’s reasonable to say that a lot of the current drought of the last 12 to 13 years is due to ongoing global warming,’’ said the bureau’s Bertrand Timbal.
‘’In the minds of a lot of people, the rainfall we had in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was a benchmark. A lot of our [water and agriculture] planning was done during that time. But we are just not going to have that sort of good rain again as long as the system is warming up.’’…
CSIRO in June 2010:
Climate model projections for the coming decades indicate an increased risk of below average rainfall for south-eastern Australia….The current rainfall decline is in part attributed to climate change, raising the possibility that the current dry conditions may persist, and possibly intensify, as has been the case in south-west Western Australia.
CSIRO press release in October 2010:
Senator Wong said the findings of CSIRO’s South-West Western Australia Sustainable Yields (SWSY) Project were sobering… The research, which will inform key water planning and management decisions for Perth and the entire south-west of the state, found the region could face a 24 per cent reduction in surface water yields by 2030 under a median future climate, according to CSIRO project leader, Dr Don McFarlane.
CSIRO newsletter in 2007:
Southern Australia will continue to experience a reduction in rainfall in winter and spring, the impact of which will be magnified by increased temperatures…
“Our results provide strong evidence that rising temperatures, hence increasing evaporation due to the enhanced greenhouse effect, impact on Australia’s water resources, in addition to any reduction in rainfall.”
What could partially offset this is an increase in summer rainfall in south east Australia
And if the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO really had no idea if global warming would bring less water or more, why did they not say so when politicians built hugely expensive desal plants in expection of less rainfall, or warned farmers to prepare for more droughts?
Fact is, they called it wrong. And warmist scientists and journalists don’t want you to know it.
Why?
Climatologist Stewart Franks has written to Breganza to ask if he’d known of some of these statements. We will try to let you know how he responds.
(Thanks to reader Bob.)
UPDATE
However, it turns out that it is not just Flannery that has been making incorrect statements – many supposed experts including prominent commentators from the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO have been making equally incorrect statements. In principle, these people should really know better….
The mistake that Tim Flannery, as well as the numerous expert commentators made, was that they confused climate variability for climate change. The future impact of climate change is very uncertain, but when one “wants to believe”, then it is all too easy to get sucked in and to get it spectacularly wrong.
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.
I cannot say I’m impressed.
There’s something almost Biblical about the damage our “false prophets” of AGW Armageddon have wrought. Entire governments have followed them off an economic cliff and yet they prattle on, still being paid to do so by the very governments they are ruining. The mystery remains why the tax payers continue to stand for it. It isn’t as if folks had no eyes with which to see or ears with which to hear (Gee! Is that thunder?).
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 🙂
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So, the next logical line would be: The reputable scientists are the skeptical ones.
They can use a fair whack of doublespeak but the message is still the same. Temperature moves up when it isn’t. It is drier/flooding more than it has in the past which is false. On SBS Insight last year they replayed a episode from 2010 that featured Stephen Schnieder with a room full of supposed sceptics. After that repeat they had questions being answered by Prof Penny Wetton. In a stream of comment I will filter the thread that pertains best to this:
(from a question from someone called Neil who was confused on conflicting results being shown in regards to rainfall and pasture growth)
Penny Whetton: Neil,
with regard to rainfall variations and changes in Australia. In the case of southeastern Australia climate change science points to a trend toward drier conditions at the century timescale, but at shorter timescales other natural variations will be superimposed such as the effect of El Nino variations or decadal long variations. Natural wet spells could mask a drying signal for a deacade or two. In Queensland, unlike in the south the sceince doesnt even say whcih way the rainfall may change. However drought could also still increase due increased evaporation due to higher temperatures
This answer piqued my interest so I responded:
Comment From shortieshortie: ]
Penny, the BOMs figures do not match the dry signal. The later half of last century was wetter than the early half. Victoria had more extreme droughts (2 of them) between 1917-1944 I believe. On extreme events like flooding over double those events were observed in 19th century South-east QLD over 20th to early 21st century south-east QLD. I believe its difficult to say its worse when neither droughts nor extreme events are agreeing with that.
Her response:
Penny Whetton: Shortie
You are are asking if we the rainfall variations in victoria over the past century are consistent with a drier climate. It is too early to say for sure. yes it was wetter post 1950 than in the fifty years before that. however the past 15 years have been very dry. Rainfall is very variable naturally, and it may be that we need to wait a another decade for the greenhouse trends to be really clear against the noise. However that is not the case the temperature. the warming signal is very clear in victoria as it is in other parts of Australia
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As we know the warming trend has been manufactured in most parts of Australia as has been demonstrated by Warwick Hughes for a few of the key sites quoted by the IPCC even so the rhetoric continues. FWIW I should have mentioned that over double of those flooding events actually happened between 1840-1900 in South-east QLD not the whole century and was double the 110 years after it. So during the period of ‘man-made’ global warming eastern Australia on average became wetter even though they predict more droughts….
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.
Why does Oz seem like a company run by a bunch of disgruntled employees while the boss is on leave .
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!
From the article…
“New data from the Bureau of Meteorology released yesterday showed an average 123.9 millimetres of rain fell across the state last week – a deluge not seen since January 1974.”
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/no-ordinary-downpour-the-equal-wettest-on-record-20120307-1ukmi.html
Humm, that date has a familiar ring to it.
“The bureau described the rain as “extraordinary”.
“It is very rare to have such persistent, record-breaking rainfall over such large areas of NSW and Victoria,” said the NSW Climate Manager, Aaron Coutts-Smith.”
Extraordinary, in 1974 too. WOW! I had no idea NSW hada “Climate Manager”. He’s clearly not paid as much as Tim Flannery. SHEESH!
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.
Ah yes, the beauty of rain; it falls on everyone.
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.
Ditto with last year’s floods. What a load of horse sh** Australians should now prepare for more droughtflood.
This really isn’t fair. Did those experts know that somebody was going to record their actual words and quote them back to us years later?
We need a Ministry of Truth to go back and clean up history, so we can’t unfairly use something against somebody years later. Perhaps this could be a new Google Labs project?
So his position is that “when I’m right just consider everything I say official and when I’m wrong forget about it.”
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.
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!
Sean says:
March 7, 2012 at 5:02 am
Bolt proves Judge Finklesteins censorship can’t come soon enough.
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Your opinion but here is another:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100141570/why-i-owe-aussie-qc-raymond-finkelstein-a-pint/
Our children being brainwashed:
http://youtu.be/oSOOHfcq0pA
Heh.
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.
A commenter on an earlier Andrew Bolt blog says of the tremendous amount of rain now falling on eastern Australia that, in the minds of the alarmists, should never happen:
“My wife and I have decided that every inch of rain that we measure in the rain gauge will now be called a FLANNERY in honour of the great scientist and former Australian of the year.
It’s catching on. The whole neighbourhood is calling them flanneries.
We had 87mm ….almost 3 Flanneries.
There’s now a sign at the local shop and he calls them Flanneries as well.
He may have got it very wrong but we are determined never to forget the great man.”
Forgive him for the mathmatical error, 87mm is actually 3.5 Flanneries, the measurement of rain in “Flanneries” seems like an excellent way to memorialise man’s stupidity. The only question I have is whether the word should commence with an upper case or lower case “f”
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.
Jimbo, that was the point of what I wrote, no matter what occurs, they’ll manage to spin it to their advantage, i.e. taxation, more grants, etc.
@ur momisugly Badmannersl perhaps he was only counting whole flanneries and rounding down, so as not to inflate the number?
Meanwhile Lake Eyre is filling for the 4th time in a row…it had only filled twice in the last 100 years!
And they have moved the filming of the new MadMax movie to Namibia because the Outback has been too green for several years running!
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.
CSIRO predicted approx. 10% decrease in rainfall by 2030.
http://www.csiro.au/files/files/p6fy.pdf
In particular refer to Figure 2.
Assessments in scientific reports are inevitably more qualified than public or media statements given by experts, or their lecturing to politicians. Unfortunately, the public, media and politicians generally do not read scientific reports, but act on the sound bites presented to them by the experts.