Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Apparently Anthropogenic CO2 is responsible for Australia’s wild weather swings between drought and flood. But “it’s not too late to forestall a dystopian future that alternates between Mad Max and Waterworld.”.
It’s not too late for Australia to forestall a dystopian future that alternates between Mad Max and Waterworld
Catastrophic fires and devastating floods are part of Australia’s harsh new climate reality. The country must do its part to lower carbon emissions
year ago I lived through the Black Summer. I had arrived in Sydney in mid-December 2019 to collaborate with Australian researchers studying the impacts of climate change on extreme weather events. Instead of studying those events, however, I ended up experiencing them.Even in the confines of my apartment in Coogee, looking out over the Pacific, I could smell the smoke from the massive bushfires blazing across New South Wales. As I flew to Canberra to participate in a special “bushfires” episode of the ABC show Q+A, I witnessed mountains ablaze with fire. One man I metduring my stay lost most of his 180-year-old family farm in the fires that ravaged south-east New South Wales near Milton.
My experiences indelibly coloured the book I was writing on the climate crisis at the time called The New Climate War.
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Tragically, many of the same towns that were devastated by the massive bushfires a little more than a year ago found themselves under siege from these historic floods. A climate contrarian would cry foul: “You climate scientists can’t make up your mind. Is climate change making it wetter or drier?” But in fact, that’s a false choice: It’s both.
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Australians can’t seem to catch a break. But it’s not too late to forestall a dystopian future that alternates between Mad Max and Waterworld.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/24/catastrophic-fires-and-devastating-floods-are-part-of-australias-harsh-new-climate-reality
Our rather violent weather extremes seem to have left an impression on Michael Mann. But are these extreme conditions unusual? History suggests not.
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What did early explorers have to say about fire? Here are some quotes from early explorer diaries and records.
The natives were about, burning, burning, ever burning; one would think they … lived on fire instead of water.’ Ernest Giles (1889), Australia Twice Traversed.
The natives set fire to the grass which is abundant everywhere, and at that time is quite dry… The conflagration spreads until the whole country as far as the eye can reach, is in a grand and brilliant illumination.’ Report from Port Essington, in Arnhemland.
Captain James Cook wrote that his crew ‘saw upon all the Adjacent Lands and Islands a great number of smokes — a certain sign that they are inhabited … ‘
… the very extraordinary devastation by fire which the vegetable productions had suffered throughout the whole country we had traversed – George Vancouver.
I wish it would rain and cause the grass to become green, so as to stop them burning… – Stuart (1865).
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Read more: http://learnline.cdu.edu.au/units/env207/introduction/history.html
What about Mann’s assertion climate change is making the extremes worse? From a government website description of the Federation drought, 1895-1903;
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In 1892 Australia had 106 million sheep, two-thirds of which were in the eastern states. By 1903 the national flock had almost halved to 54 million. The nation lost more than 40 per cent of its cattle over the same period, nearly three million in Queensland alone.
Drovers sought feed for hungry stock along travelling stock routes (known as the ‘long paddock’) or moved stock to pastures on the east coast and southern mountains where conditions were less dire.
Droving took an immense toll on sheep and cattle with losses of up to 70 per cent recorded, particularly in regions where watering points could be 100 kilometres apart. In 1902 local newspapers reported that more than 2000 steers lay dead along the Goondiwindi to Miles route in Queensland.
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Read more: https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/federation-drought
Michael Mann, What you call a land of Mad Max and Waterworld, we call home. Breathing a bit of bushfire smoke every other year, enduring floods and droughts, is as much a part of Aussie life as beach BBQs and beer, and always has been.
I think China has been attacking Australia with CO2!
It is an act of war.
Come on Mann.
From the article: “Catastrophic fires and devastating floods are part of Australia’s harsh new climate reality.”
No, they are part of Austrailia’s harsh, old climate reality.
There’s nothing unprecedented going on. It’s all happened before and had nothing to do with CO2.
Michael Mann is the problem.
Why does anyone take Prof Mann seriously any more?
I filmed in Australia in 1983 for the BBC1 Farming programme in the middle of a drought. Farmers were using the long paddock then! That was followed by bush fires that left 75 people dead. Very impressive and much worse than the recent ones…
There is no substitute for checking back over the decades, to put our recent “weather” into perspective!
Ban Mann.
Yet they still get MSM attention because it fits the narrative, not reality or history.
Has the fat fool fraud paid climatologist Dr. Tim Ball’s money yet?
http://www.principia-scientific.com
put Ball defeats Mann in search box.
Alternating “between Mad Max and Water World,” and even just the term “Dystopia” shows a complete failure to understand the words fiction and allegory and to discern either of those from the real world. No wonder he lost the suit.
MM would make a nice export item as long as it is permanent.
That mann is a fool.Any competent and honest scientist should be embarrassed to be in any way associated with him.
Mann IS a dystopian future.
‘Apparently Anthropogenic CO2 is responsible for Australia’s wild weather swings between drought and flood’
yes, it is.
The distopia that Mad Mike would create given the chance would have nothing on Mad Max
“Catastrophic fires and devastating floods are part of Australia’s harsh new climate reality.”
Why are there over 100 Australian trees, plants and shrubs that have adapted to fire or have they changed their DNA to adapt to fire in the last few years? There are also vegetation where their seeds won’t open unless burnt.
And…
Arid and semi arid landscapes are prone to flash floods.
Solution: Land management based on knowledge of the land.
Since the start of the industrial revolution around 1800, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 has increased from about 280 to 400 ppm [Keeling, 2020]. This has produced a decrease in the LWIR flux of approximately 2 W m-2 at the top of the atmosphere in the CO2 band emission with a similar increase in the downward LWIR flux to the surface [Harde, 2017]. For a CO2 ‘doubling’ to 560 ppm, the change in flux increases to approximately 3.7 W m-2. At present, the average CO2 concentration is increasing by about 2.4 ppm per which corresponds to a change in LWIR flux near 0.034 W m-2 per year.
The weather related cause of brushfires in parts of Australia and other places such as California is a mix of downslope winds and ‘blocking’ high pressure systems. There is often a combination of low rainfall following a wet year that leads to the formation of more dry vegetation fuel than normal for the fires. The lapse rate for dry air is -9.8 K km-1. In this case what goes up can come down. For downslope winds, the dry air compression can produce an increase in air temperature of 10 C in a couple days or in more extreme cases, a few hours. Similarly, there is a downward air flow within a high pressure dome combined with recirculation that can produce a temperature rise of 10 C or more over a period of about 5 days.
The figure shows the temperature record for Woomera, SA for December 2018 and 2019 [BOM, 2020]. The upper plots show the max and min temperatures and the lower plots show the rainfall and total daily solar insolation. There was an increase in temperature produced by a ‘blocking high’ in both years as indicated by the arrows in the temperature plots. For 2018 there was in increase in maximum surface temperature of almost 18 C over a period of 7 days. For 2019, there was an increase of almost 22 C over a period of 8 days. This was associated with record temperatures and major fires over a large region of Australia. There was also a record ‘spike’ in the Indian Ocean Dipole index [IOD, 2020]. The surface temperature of the Indian Ocean near Australia was below normal with reduced rainfall.
How does an average increase of 2.4 ppm in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 associated with a ‘radiative forcing’ of 0.034 W m-2 change the residence time and temperature rise in a blocking high pressure system over the Australian Bight by 1 day and 4C?
References
BOM, 2020, http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/
Harde, H., ‘Radiation Transfer Calculations and Assessment of Global Warming by CO2.’ Int. J. Atmos. Sci. 9251034 (2017), https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/9251034
Keeling, 2020, https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/
IOD, 2020, https://psl.noaa.gov/gcos_wgsp/Timeseries/Data/dmi.had.long.data
I could smell the smoke from the massive bushfires blazing across New South Wales
A smell those in the arid West experience every year. News flash, leftists: arid regions frequently have wildfires. It’s normal. If you want to reduce them, reduce the fuel load. Reducing atmospheric CO2 to reduce wildfires is as efficacious as doing a rain dance to summon more rain. Actually less efficacious because at least the rain dance will get your heart pumping and endorphins flooding your brain to make you feel better even if the rain doesn’t come.
“Climate stability”? Where do these imbeciles come up with these idiotic phrases?
Distinguished nonsense from Michael Mann
The constant burning witnessed by early explorers of the aboriginals was their recognition that if they didn’t set fires at a time convenient to them, nature would likely do so at a time inconvenient to them, or worse, a fire they couldn’t escape from.
Given the devastation that uncontrolled fires bring to a modern society with all the technology at it’s disposal, it should be obvious that in order for earlier inhabitants to survive that it was a case of using commonsense and addressing the basic issues in the most basic fashion. One of the mast basic rules which continues today and is stressed to those engaged in fighting wildfires is, stay on the black. In other words utilise the areas already burnt to attack the fire from, or to use as a safe refuge, something the early inhabitants instinctively knew and practiced.
Reduce Michael Mann emissions to restore sane public discourse.
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,“If this rain doesn’t stop.”
July 1919 – John O’Brien
Cut your emmissions NOW, or the koala get’s it !!
There goes Fraudy McFraudpants again, coloring outside the lines of science and truth to push an ideology based on nothing but lies, lies, and ,more lies.
MM is the scientist who yelled Fire! in a crowded theater to get attention. Coming to a theater near you.
Drought, bush fires and floods are normal Australia.
It has always been this way; long before the Aborigines turned up; long before the British turned up; long before the Greenies created the term “Man-made Climate Change”; and long before Michael Mann created his “hockey stick”.
Sure the floods, drought and fires are real, but they are normal and Aussies have to learn to live with them.
Extracts from Said Hanrahan, by John O’Brien 1919.
http://boreelog.com.au/the-poems/said-hanrahan
“If we don’t get three inches, man,
Or four to break this drought,
We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”
In God’s good time down came the rain;
And all the afternoon
On iron roof and window-pane
It drummed a homely tune.
And every creek a banker ran,
And dams filled overtop;
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“If this rain doesn’t stop.”
And stop it did, in God’s good time;
And spring came in to fold
A mantle o’er the hills sublime
Of green and pink and gold.
There’ll be bush-fires for sure, me man,
There will, without a doubt;
We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”