Guest essay by Eric Worrall
15 years after former Aussie Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery claimed rainfall would not fill our dams, the Guardian asks whether ongoing severe New South Wales flooding is due to climate change.
Is NSW flooding a year after bushfires yet more evidence of climate change?
Experts say it’s unusual to see so many places with such high rainfall across such a wide area. But identifying the cause is complicated
- NSW flooding: disaster zones declared as 18,000 people evacuated
- How three weather systems are crashing together
Life-threatening floods have washed away homes and businesses with a deluge of rain inundating hundreds of kilometres of the New South Walescoast.
Falling on already soaked soils, the rains sparked dozens of flood warnings, with residents in parts of Sydney’s north and west also fearing for their homes and their lives.
…
So what about climate change?
Whenever Australia experiences extreme weather events, the inevitable question arises: was this caused by climate change?
Some climate scientists will argue all weather events are influenced by human activity because we’ve rapidly changed the composition of the atmosphere.
Burning fossil fuels and deforestation has increased the amount of climate-warming CO2 in the atmosphere by about 50% since the start of the industrial revolution.
And while the rainfall totals experienced over recent days are not yet confirmed as record-breaking, this does not mean that climate heating has had no effect at all.
Professor Steve Sherwood, of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, says that basic physics shows a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture – about 7% for each degree of warming.
“So we know that something like 5-10% of the rain we are getting now [in the current downpours] is from global warming and the rest would have happened anyway.
“It’s not a game changer, but it is making things worse and that gets worse still as emissions keep going up.”
…
Strangely the Guardian overlooked explaining the tie in to former climate commissioner Tim Flannery’s climate predictions. Flannery is still a regular in Guardian editorials. From the original ABC Tim Flannery interview transcript;
…
SALLY SARA: What will it mean for Australian farmers if the predictions of climate change are correct and little is done to stop it? What will that mean for a farmer?
PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: We’re already seeing the initial impacts and they include a decline in the winter rainfall zone across southern Australia, which is clearly an impact of climate change, but also a decrease in run-off. Although we’re getting say a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas of Australia, that’s translating to a 60 per cent decrease in the run-off into the dams and rivers. That’s because the soil is warmer because of global warming and the plants are under more stress and therefore using more moisture. So even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems, and that’s a real worry for the people in the bush. If that trend continues then I think we’re going to have serious problems, particularly for irrigation.
…
Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/local/archives/landline/content/2006/s1844398.htm
I don’t recall many objections from the scientific community when Flannery made his absurd predictions. But despite this embarrassment, Tim Flannery, who now heads the non-governmental Climate Council, can still draw an impressive audience of mostly younger people with his apocalyptic rhetoric.
Below is one of my favourite climate videos – In Search of The Coming Ice Age. I remember watching it as a kid on Australian TV. All the adults were worrying and talking about plunging global temperatures the day after the documentary was aired. Everyone believed the documentary, because the presenter was actor Leonard Nimoy, who played Dr. Spock in the original Star Trek series. The ice age documentary featured an impressive lineup of scientists, including Chester Langway, James Hayes, Gifford Miller (who described how the descent into the next ice age started 3000 years ago), and Stephen Schneider, who speculated about using nuclear energy to melt the ice caps, to halt the big freeze.
Climate scientist Stephen Schneider later backflipped and started promoting global warming alarmism.
Settled science anyone? JoNova points out similar severe flooding occurred in New South Wales in 1857. Clearly the 1857 floods were natural, while the current floods are due to our sinful carbon emissions.
h/t William – as if the flooding wasn’t enough, NSW farmers report a plague of mice (link to a spectacular video) is affecting large areas of NSW. Perhaps they shouldn’t have made such an effort to eradicate feral cats.
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Did you notice that global warming is now climate heating?
Heating the ”climate” is like heating a story.
I call it “The Global Hots”…
Why aren’t they having spasms over Iceland’s newest (and very active) baby volcano?
It’s streaming live online by ruv dot is, and is growing nicely, very gassy, slowly increasing lava output, doing what volcanoes do: world building.
Yeah, Diarrhea, The sh…s, Tijuana trots, Montezuma’s revenge are all terms for the same thing and they all stink
It can’t be “heating” as there no additional heat being applied. The Guardian would deny that there has been any change in the one available heat source. So, what is the source of the extra “heating”?
I wonder who is the Guardian’s go-to guy for science? Is it George Monbiot?
I wonder who decided to use this “Global Heating” usage? Was it George Monbiot?
Monbiot has a degree in Zoology. But I doubt if his knowledge of thermodynamics is grounded thoroughly enough to do anything more than parrot uncritically what others have written.
Floods in Australia, NSW, 1950s …
Brisbane too.
I still remember childhood experiences of my family stacking up the furniture in the hope of keeping the best pieces above the level of the water that surged through our house.
From Hawkesbury Gazette:
“This month its 150 years since the Hawkesburys biggest flood claimed 20 lives and had such a catastrophic effect on our district. Its still remembered and referenced.
The flood waters which reached almost 20m at Windsor drowned 12 members of the Eather family: two women and 10 of their children.
Raging waters struck the families farmhouses at Cornwallis on June 21.”
So much for “unprecedented” event.
And here is a bit about the 1956 Murray river floods. (I remember seeing pictures in the Adelaide newspapers.)
http://www.murrayriver.com.au/about-the-murray/1956-murray-river-floods/
And twenty years before that.
And …
and this time its even bigger…. I note the Windsor bridge, built to be flood proof after the floods of 20 years ago, is under water
And caused by CARBON DIOXIDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
.
LIAR, it is NOT bigger..
There have been bigger floods in that past, just not the one 20 years ago.
There is no connection to an engineer’s (or politician’s) description of a bridge (‘flood proof’) and its failure to remain above a flood level.
The straws you are grasping are getting shorter and shorter.
are you for real?
It is not certainly bigger than one in 1867. See picture that shows Windsor as an island. This time for Windsor to be an island water would have to rise additional 3 meters.
Even the locals have said that that ‘flood-proof’ bridge should have been higher. AU$101 million tax-payer dollars down the drain (pun intended).
“I love her far horizons, I love her jewelled seas, her beauty and her terror, the Wide Brown Land for me.” Dorothea MacKellar, Australian poet, 1908, “My Country.” Nothing has changed in Australia, bushfires one year, floods the next in our part of the Earth.
Said Hanrahan.
”Guardian Blames NSW Flooding on Climate Change”
They say they’re the worst floods for 60 years.
They say it’s the worst flood for 100 years.
Guardian claimed de-bunked in 30 seconds…..
“Burning fossil fuels and deforestation has increased the amount of climate-warming CO2 in the atmosphere by about 50% since the start of the industrial revolution.”
No! Human activity has added less than 30 PPM or about 25% of the increase since 1850. The rest is from natural sources. See https://edberry.com/blog/climate/climate-physics/preprint3/
And CO2 DOESN’T CAUSE ANY WARMING anyway.
So their whole sentence was a load of “blah-blah…
Not quite fred. It has an effect on the effective infra-red opacity of the atmosphere, but much less than the sillies claim. Of the 1.0 degree C warming at the very most 0.3C can be attributed to CO2. The rest is nature, or an act of God if you want.
Mean free path of CO2 absorbance is some 10m, 100m with supposed wings
The opacity is 100% and small amounts extra won’t change that.
Any slight warming that might, by baseless conjecture be caused by CO2, is countered immediately but over-riding and controlling mass air movements.
‘They’ are natural variability deniers.
.
Except that this January UAH Australia was 31st warmest out of 43 years..
and.. February was 25th warmest out of 43 year
…. both below the 43 year average…
So that little anti-science blah gets swept out with the other rubbish.
Fred
Excellent point.
WRT regional rainfall patterns, alarmists must pick their hypothesis for each location or region.
Then use actual data to back it up.
Most governments including NSW used broad AR4 models to predict change in rainfall.
After 14 years I am yet see any successful validation of these predictions at local level.
http://globalpoliticalshenanigans.blogspot.com/p/sundry-papers.html
That is all that needs to be said
They are really NOTHING better than glorified computer games.
”Except that this January UAH Australia was 31st warmest out of 43 years..”
Yeah but it’s the ”vibe” of the thing.
I had no idea that Australia is only 43 years old! Streuth!
The only reliable unadulterated temperature series is only 43 years old.
BoM’s mal-adjusted series are farcical.
According to BOM monthly averages for most centres, in Australia, have been consistently around (+-1C (normal) for the past 4 months
BoM’s urban smeared temperatures. homogenised, in-filled, and generally tortured into subservience…
from sites of which at least 40% are totally unsuitable for “climate” data.
Is that what you mean?
I wouldn’t trust BoM temperatures any more than I would trust any other AGW cult member..
I live in Australia, and I can tell you that…
Many places have been well BELOW average this month.
Fred250,
You are 100% right!. Its been a cool summer in general, certainly here in Queensland – yet all I hear is crickets when I search the web for further discussion. Am I wrong?
inland qld round the coalfields has had severe ongoing heat day n night 35c avg day and more over that and nights 25c is almost cool…
have a friend lives there, so i take notice
Isn’t it the worst in 43 years, because non-digital records have been wiped from the books, for being unreliable. That is what KNMI did.
I missed the bus to town the other day because I forgot my mask. There is no doubt in my mind that climate change was quite clearly to blame.
You should sue Exxon…
Well, they are almost certainly right that the next ice age is coming… It’s just a matter of how many decades, or centuries, or millennia will it take?
When you are spitballing science, what’s the big deal with a little imprecise wiggle room in the prediction?
I wonder if governments have listened to Mr Flannery and his ilk and reduced flood mitigation measures, relaxed building regulations, etc based on his failed predictions.
Well, Texas sure did.
sadly no
regs are tighter n worse cos floods rising seas( f all in fact) until just now
insurers are making money hand over fist with insane costs and refusals to insure
not sorry theyll have to pay some back about now
Since 1893 floods there have been 8 years with more than 2.5m of rain and 27 years with more than 2m as measured at Tweed Heads on the NSW- QLD border, with 1906 the wettest year at 3.3m, ending the Federation Drought; other stations along the coast give similar readings. Cairns Airport has had 19 years since 1943 with 2.5 m or more. There is nothing unusual going on here.
Next thing you’ll be telling us that Oz is “a land of droughts and flooding rains” Howard.
Wait until the next Tsunami reaches the East Coast of Australia, as they do every now and then, I think the last time was in the 1960s and severe erosion of Sydney Harbour shores was the result.
What will that be blamed on? global over-heating?
“We’ll all be rooned…”
Howard Dewhirst: There is nothing unusual going on here.
.
.
Unless you are 6 or 7 years of age. Then it would be outside the realm of your experience or at least your memory and seem highly unusual.
Which leads me to wonder about the memory of the average jurinalist (Swedish pronunciation). I am starting to believe that they can’t recall what they had for breakfast, let alone a few years of first-hand accounts of modern history, likely passed down by their parents and grandparents and… promptly filed away with that forgotten memory of breakfast.
They have the narrative of the day and as for yesterday… “Wha’ happened?!?” Erased. Poof.
I couldn’t live like that.
.
.
.
P.S. In the U.S., one of the great floods was 1913. I still remember stories of that from my grandparents. Then there was the flood of 1939, and I recall my father’s stories about that. And then the flood of 1958, and I have my own stories about that that I told my kid.
Just who are these people – our supposed betters – that, if no one told them, they can’t bother to look it up? (string of expletives deleted)
We have a history problem in Australia: 50% of the Australian population was born overseas or is a first generation. This means there are no family stories of droughts, fires and floods for this cohort.
When the only history you get from school or the media is laced with global warming and abuse of the planet, it’s no wonder that every “extreme” event is new and terrifying and affirmation that we are on the road to annihilation.
In April was the jackal born,
The rains fell in September.
“Now such a fearful flood as this” said he,
“I really can’t remember.”
(Kipling)
JF
I would think in the not too distant future, someone is going to use AI (like AlphaZero/AlphaGo) to try and figure all of this out and maybe even to develop a theory of climate… and in all likelihood, CO2 will not even be a factor. There is no way this kind of flip-flop non-sense will be sustained, only human beings with an agenda to push can countenance it. (sigh)
Well I guess artificial intelligence is better than no intelligence. The simple programs I wrote in college would put Mikey to shame
The reality is that NSW hasn’t had big coastal floods since 1990 and people today don’t appreciate the risks. This year was a La Nina summer and the warmer ocean temperatures lead to this event on the east coast and the result was a good old fashioned rain dump and a flood. As La Nina fades we will go back to drier weather and the alarmists will blame that on AGW. What needs to be acknowledged by the media is that all of the properties flooded were on flood plains, which have existed for many thousands of years before humans.
Yeah, but are they “unprecedented”?
Did you read the Guardian article before deciding to write this post? Somehow you even quoted the relevant part of it stating that only 5 to 10% of rain could be attributed to climate change yet you still
managed to mislabel the article as saying that the Guardian is blaming the floods on climate change.
Gee Izaak, I hiighted the bit where Steve Sherwood said “It’s not a game changer, but it is making things worse and that gets worse still as emissions keep going up.”.
So why don’t you correct the blog title to read “Guardian suggest 5% of the flooding is due to climate change”? Is it because that would be a non-story?
Because “Guardian Blames NSW Flooding on Climate Change” is a title, not a detailed explanation. Perhaps next time I’ll say “Made the Flooding Worse”. Either way still a story – and I hilighted exactly what they said.
The headline is wrong and deliberately misleading. A more accurate one would be “Guardian refutes claims that climate change caused the flooding”. If you want the media to be honest and trustworthy then you should start with your own blog posts.
Nonsense Izaak.
WRONG izzy-a-liar..
The Gruniad is INTENTIONALLY trying to blame the intensity on “climate change™”
“Guardian refutes claims that climate change caused the flooding”.
That’s fantastic news! Even The Guardian now accepts AGW is a myth!
The Guardian takes every chance to blame anything on climate change and capitalism. Only comunism will save you.
The Guardian article is titled “Is NSW flooding a year after bushfires yet more evidence of climate change?” and the content makes it clear that they are answering the question with “yes”. Isaak Walton is the one who is wilfully misconstruing.
.
As always.
Gees Izzy, how do you manage such EMPTY comments, EVERY TIME !!
My comment is waiting moderation (For some strange reason) but I point out how silly it is to imply rains are 7% more (or 5%) so the flooding is 5% worse. Roughly, 7% more rain would have increased the flood levels by inches. Half a foot at most, and hardly likely to be close to that much. In a v shaped valley with no change in flow, you are looking at a √ amount of rain. With the extra flow rate, a 4√ but highly dependent on the landscape. So 5% more rain leads to 1-2% higher floods.
Plus, it’s also silly to suggest that there is 7% more rain due to global warming.
At which percentage point does climate change become responsible?
so…why didn’t the Guardian say that 95% of the flooding was from “Natural Causes”?
Too right Izaak.
The Guardian really holds that floods are caused by old white male supremacists.
…. which is a bit on the weird side, given that The Guardian (of what?) was run historically by old white male supremacists. Some token sock puppets now, but probably still the same behind the curtain. Like the BBC.
That would be an Act of God?
Great to see you can’t argue that the whole climate change attribution crap,..
… ISN’T a complete FARCE. !
Clearly NONE of the flooding was caused by “climate change” either natural or man made. The Guardian is wrong, whatever the percentage they claim. Vast amounts of historical evidence is available showing the present weather conditions are simply typical extremes for that climate.
The point of the article is that bird cage flooring like The Guardian specialize in misleading and never miss a chance to include “climate change” into any story with extreme weather.
When has The Guardian ever been right about anything?
I have lived in Sydney, NSW since 2005 and not seen rain like this, for as long as it has been falling, in NSW. It’s persistent and heavy. My manager is cut off further north due to flooding, fortunately for me, I live on a hill so no flooding so far. I did step out to the shops on Friday and Saturday when there was no rain but got totally drenched within a couple of minutes once the rain returned. Of course, alarmists always trot out Flannery when we have bad weather.
There is talk here about Warragamba dam water mis-management similar to the Brisbane floods a few years back. I guess if you get Govn’t “scientists” telling you there will be no rain to fill the dams let alone fill them so much they spill you set policy to “do nothing”.
Warragambah Dam was designed and built as the main water supply for Sydney, it was not intended to be for flood mitigation.
However the present NSW Government has planned to raise the dam wall for years but activists as usual have stood in the way. The government even enacted legislation to allow the construction of new dams in National Parks, former state forest lands, to overturn the UN Agenda 21 – Sustainability treaty blocking development. But as usual the activists will stop at nothing to delay or stop projects, Land & Environment Court proceedings for example.
Warragamba filled so quickly over the past week or so, it wouldn’t have made any difference anyway
They would have look pretty silly if they started releasing when it was say 80%.. then it stopped raining !
I have some sympathy for dam managers. The government is too busy building renewables to bother with water infrastructure improvement, so water resources are heavily stretched, especially in big cities.
Even when rains arrive after a dry spell, nobody knows whether it will strike the right headwaters until too late.
So dam managers are caught between a rock and a hard place – do they release water in anticipation of the flood, and maybe lose their job if the flood misses, or do they hold on to the water and get pilloried for over filling the dam? There’s no margin for error in that job.
I think I mentioned before.
Warragamba Dam was built as a supply dam, it should therefore be kept as full as practicable.
Wyvenhoe was built as a duel purpose dam, conflicting purposes, but plenty of headroom (which got close to full in 2010). They now have a secondary spillway.
Problem with Warragamba is the two gorges downstream that choke the flow and cause back-flooding into what are now built-up areas.
People down-stream from Warragamba can be VERY THANKFUL that they didn’t have to release any of the auxiliary spillway plugs !!
Water is an important resource for Australia. I guess there is merit in having strong stream flows but it is a shame for all that water to go directly back whence it came without finding an intermediate use for human needs. Actually much of that falling in the centre of NSW takes about a year to get from the Darling to the mouth and it will serve some good purpose along the way.
With water over Australia rising now, we can expect to see a fall in global ocean levels through 2021.
Any farmer who spent the effort to expand their dams during the last drought will reap the rewards now. Might keep them going through the next drought, which I am now forecasting. This time last year, when Australia was on fire in a few places, I forecast there would be floods to follow. Next will be a drought and then more fires. All those planned burns will be put on hold AGAIN until it is too late.
My Country was required reading when I was in primary school and the observations have not changed. So 60 years later and the water management has hardly improved. Population about double over that time.
any farmer enlarging dams got pilloried as a water thief and fined whenever they could get away with it
our nations as fd over as usa is with greentards epa mismanagement of water etc
Eric, fred250’s comment about Wyvenhoe being built purposefully as a flood mitigation dam is correct.
It was a fast-tracked project by the conservative Coalition government after the disastrous 1974 floods hit Brisbane.
IIRC it’s downstream from the old Somerset Dam on the headwaters of the Brisbane River.
A Labor government in the early 2000s changed the dam’s mission to that of a water storage resource for Brisbane, and in drought-stricken 2010-11 Premier Anna Bligh was reluctant to release any storage even when the forecast for imminent flooding rainfall was issued.
(She must have forgotten that Oz is “a land of drought and flooding rains”)
So it didn’t get to fulfil its primary purpose as a major flood mitigation measure.
I was given a guided tour through the bowels of the Wyvenhoe dam when it was under construction. (I was a financial services provider to the construction company)
I was wearing a business suit and got very damp, to the great amusement of all the guys wearing the hard hats.
And I have been living in Sydney, Newcastle and Port Macquarie since like 1965 and it has rained worse than this many times. 1986 was a memorable year. 5 days straight of heavy rain, Cooks river overflowed in several places, rail line from Sydenham to Campsie had land slips and blocked the line, flood waters pouring out of train stations. Oh what a fun week that was.
“… basic physics shows a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture – about 7% for each degree of warming … So we know that something like 5-10% of the rain we are getting now [in the current downpours] is from global warming and the rest would have happened anyway …”(Professor Steve Sherwood).
Does that mean any time it rains 5-10% is due to global warming or does it only apply when an event is newsworthy?
Scrolling through the BoM rainfall time series, although Australia overall has increased rainfall since 1900, there is no apparent trend in annual extremes.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/#tabs=Tracker&tracker=timeseries&tQ=graph%3Drain%26area%3Deaus%26season%3D0112%26ave_yr%3D0
Naw, it just means that Professor Steve Sherwood is capable of expounding nonsense from his fundamental orifice and has no idea whether he’s punched or bored. Climate is a complete mystery to all of them, apparently.
Sherwood exists on intravenous Klimate Kool-aide, and climate trough funds.
If you look at the flood region… ( http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/#tabs=Tracker&tracker=trend-maps&tQ=map%3Drain%26area%3Dnsw%26season%3D0112%26period%3D1970 )
There is a down ward trend in rainfall (due to climate change they say – oh yes they say that) but now when it does rain 5-10% of the rain is due to climate change as well. That’s what they want you to believe. So….. climate change creates deserts with violet rainstorms.
“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself — that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.”
– George Orwell, 1984
My God, that is genius. The first time I read that in high school I thought maybe Orwell was crazy. Now I realize that it’s the lefties that have always been insane.
If the atmosphere can hold 7% more water as vapor for every 1C warming, wouldn’t we expect to see less liquid water falling from the sky?
That seems right to me. Rate of water being emitted by a body of water seems to be a matter of the temperature of the water. The temperature of the air above that water determines whether water emitted is retained, or immediately precipitated out. Notice fog forms over a lake in the mornings when the air is too cool to absorb water being emitted by that lake.
Water absorbed into the atmosphere remains in the atmosphere until that particular mass of air is cooled. Rainfall due to orographic cooling is increased when air is cooler to start with.
Reports that Australia has been cooler than normal may be providing the explanation for the increased rain this season, rather than a warmer atmosphere carrying more water.
Droughts and flooding caused by climate change.
We need to give more money to the politicians so that they can keep the climate from changing.
Not yet! Today was nice, but not quite perfect, G T.
I’ll send in my money in a few days when the forecast is for an absolutely perfect day, with a note demanding they “keep it there.”
I expect results not just pollies’ promises.
I don’t know what they will do about January, when it’s well, well, below freezing around here, but that’s their problem.
They say they can fix it. Well, here’s my money. Fix it.
Your donation should go to the Climate Council, formerly run by Tim Flannery. Your donation will not only pay for overseas junket trips but will also control the climate, of course.
When a drought finally breaks does the Guardian credit ‘global heating’⸮ (rhetorical).
Far from celebrating the miserabilists whine that agricultural emissions rise due to herd and crop increase.
The reality is, no one has any idea what the rainfall impacts of a warmer world would be at a particular location.
The IPCC predicted impact on rainfall in NSW is between -13%and +12% by 2030.
This is based on the RANGE of climate models not the normal AVERAGE of climate models.
So one expert climate model think could be -13% and one expert climate model thinks +12% with a whole bunch of other thinking somewhere in between.
I’m amazed that anyone can actually use this BS for policy decisions.
Yep, a scatter gun, and they could still miss the side of a barn !!
If they could even find the barn !
The average of precipitation less evaporation for the CMIP5 climate models results in no precipitable water after 3 years. The model predict an unphysical negative water vapour if the annual balance is integrated over consecutive years; something that could be reasonably expected for models grounded in fundamental physics. In reality they do not even bother with a mass balance for the key atmospheric ingredient for controlling energy uptake and release – water.
Climate models are accurately described as unphysical claptrap or even more accurately steaming piles of poo that no amount of massaging will make them any more useful than any other pile of poo.
RickWill, That’s not right Rick, even the simplest climate models adjust atmospheric water content using temperature/water vapor correlations based on a fudge factor times Clausius Clapeyron correlation. They aren’t very good at cause and effect with regards to cloud cover, but none would result in zero PW.
It’s almost zero impact, on average
Well, of course it’s raining in Australia. We have a La Nina after all. Australia always get rain during a La Nina, while we here in South Texas get a decided lack on rain. Maybe not a drought, but close.
Except its not raining heavily everywhere. My local district in Queensland, a little North of the floods is talking about water restrictions. What is missing from this picture is water infrastructure to handle the variability of Australia’s rainfall.
Can you imagine how prepared Australia would be now, to handle the inevitable extremes, if it had put the same resources into water management that it has wasted on AGW and “climate change”.
Yeah, but there is no money in doing things sensibly.
Just looked at the weather map and the rain is on it’s way to North QLD. I drove from Darwin to Orange this time last year and most of North QLD was awash. Some roads blocked. Grass waste high, in stead of desert, most of the way down.
Eric
IMO the best month plus weather forecasts are from JAMSTEC – the announcements of the sintex f group. ( their website is currently undergoing maintenance).
They only says things like “ a high chance of flooding in eastern Australia in the coming summer”
That’s it. The best models can really do.
yeah western vic got 4mm or so at best got clouds but no rains
we dont even HAVE town water supply our towns reliant on them finding a new and semi potable bore when ours goes low.
i survive with 2 raintanks of 600gallons ea.
waters a luxury
It certainly true that the warm air can hold more water vapor, but all measurements of water vapor in the air, relative humidity, absolute humidity and total column water vapor show that humidity in the earth’s air has not increased, not even 1 percent. In fact, it has decreased.
Kevin Trenberth has said that such data must be wrong. So perhaps the science isn’t quite settled?
This is absolute nonsense Eric, I have to read this junk everyday from you. At least do your research properly or let me do it for you, you slimy coward!
Yet you don’t say where you think its junk or present any evidence
It is YOU that is the cowardly slithering oozing slug.
Have the guts to put forward your case properly with evidence, of crawl back into your slimy troll-hole.
The fact you have nothing better to do than listen to this guy copy and paste information straight from someone else’s work is beyond me. I’m only commenting on this, because I think it’s funny people take him seriously. I think its time to wrap it up Fred.
Mark, the Guardian is intimating that there is increased frequency between severe weather. Drought, bushfires and floods one after the other.
As you know a meandering jet stream created blocking high pressure which caused the drought, bushfire and floods in quick succession.
Its my melancholy duty to inform you that meandering jet streams in both hemispheres is a global cooling signal.
In BC flooding often follows a severe forest fire season. Forest fires destroy the organic layer that covers many forest soils and it also breaks down the structure of the surface soil, both of which greatly decrease infiltrability of the soil. In some cases, waxy compounds from the burning forest floor exacerbate the hydrophobicity of dry soil (as every gardener knows, dry soil is difficult to wet). Flooding after bad fire years is a normal thing if normal or higher than normal rains occur. I am not sure if last year’s fires in NSW are associated with this year’s floods as I couldn’t find adequate information to make an assessment. This would be the most likely scenario to offer an explanation and once again the MSM demonstrate their complete lack of useful insight.
Professor Tim Flannery bought a house on the waterfront north of Sydney – when I last checked it was still above sea level. He is the only bloke I know that can manage to state 4 errors on sea level changes in one paragraph or was it one sentence.
Either way, there is not much difference between him and Henry Lawson’s “The Geological Spieler”. Lawson’s character did know when to back off.
At this point, I tend to go for Dr Spencer and Dr Zharkova not to mention writer E Worrall and E Eschenbach who collectively have some wit about them. OK two systems met over Eastern Australia – not high energy cyclones or anything like that – just full-blown rain depressions meeting rarely but they do meet from time to time. Hence a lot of rain.
Basic physics suggests 7% more rain means, roughly, 7% more cloud cover or 6-7 W/m2 less insolation, (100 ppm extra CO2 caused about 0.9W/m2 more downwelling radiation)
7% more rain means an extra 6 W/m2 outgoing radiation.
Slightly less basic physics is how much higher flood waters are for 7% increase in rain. For a simple v shaped valley where water flow remains constant, a 7% increase in rain should be a 3.5% increase in height but more likely <2% as flow increases. So these 30ft floods would be less than half a foot higher because of 7% more rain, due to 1 degree of global warming, despite 7% more rain worldwide should drop the global temperatures by 3°C (roughly).
That is how stupid it is to blame even inches extra height to global warming.