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The Floods in Australia and Green Policy Failure

by coldwarrior ( 171 Comments › )
Filed under Australia, Climate, Environmentalism at January 19th, 2011 - 6:30 pm

Its 1030 AM tomorrow in Melbourne…so, they already read this post  🙂

Below is an amalgamation of many articles read in order to get to the bottom of the role that the Green Lobby played in the preventable deaths and preventable property damage in the floods in Eastern Australia.

It floods in Queensland, Australia every 35 years or so.  The last time was in 1974, in exactly the same places. This time thewater was a foot below the 1974 event and 10 feet below the 1893 record setting flood. Currently, there is a moderate La Nina, just like last time,  occurring which increases the amount of rain in Eastern Australia and the Western Pacific rim. In El Nino times, the rain shifts to the Eastern Pacific.

Most advanced Western Democracies learn from repetitive events, that is until politics and bad science trumps reality. This can, and has to a certain extent has, happened here.

The religion of Man Made Global Warming knows no bounds. The BBC  called this flooding a ‘freak weather event’. Really…this happens every 35 years. This is taken from the memory vault:

Here is Memory Vault’s post. It is addressed to the climate trolls who haunt this blog, forever assuring us with their characteristic shrill certainty, that the “science” is now settled and that we skeptics are greedy, selfish fools.

I am sitting here in my home in South East Queensland, watching the news come in about the flooding everywhere. Entire suburbs around Brisbane and several smaller towns are either isolated by flood-waters or have been evacuated. Highways are cut everywhere.

People have been dying. So far about 20 people have died in the past week – nine just this morning when a deluge went through the Lockyer Valley. Most of them children. Another 70 are missing. One could put it all down to “just” weather.

Except EXACTLY the same floods occurred in EXACTLY the same places back in 1974, with much the same tragic loss of life and destruction of property.

Back then we weren’t nearly as clever and learned as you think yourselves to be today. Back then we had this silly notion that climate was cyclical, and if we didn’t prepare for it, we would have a repeat of the same tragedies to deal with in “about thirty years”. That was the thinking of the scientists back then – that climate went in roughly thirty year cycles.

Flood mitigation programs were planned. A series of levee banks and diversionary dams would be built. Brisbane and SE QLD would NEVER suffer such devastation again. After all, we had thirty years to plan and build and improve.

And that’s what we did – or at least started. Wivenhoe Dam got built as the first step, but by the time it was finished clever people like you lot who “knew” that such things were never going to happen again had taken over. CO2 AGW madness had already taken hold.

Instead we had “post modern” minds like Tim Flannery “advising” the government that because of Anthropogenic Global Warming, SE QLD would be perpetually in drought from then on. “Forget dams and flood mitigation programs”, intoned the wise Dr Tim – “build desalination plants instead”.

So that’s what our government did. And that is why thirty five years later, we are once again suffering exactly the SAME tragic loss of life and destruction of property, pretty-much exactly where, and when, and how, those stupid scientists who foolishly believed climate was cyclical had predicted.

Meanwhile our billion dollar desalination plant is quietly being mothballed, and emergency crews are frantically trying to work out how they might be able to save nineteen thousand homes from destruction in the next couple of days, as the Lockyer deluge hits Brisbane. Wise Dr Tim Flannery has been made ‘Australian of the Year” for his contributions.

I google on the internet for climate extremes and climate-related disasters in the 1972 – 1979 period – the period of the last transition in the natural weather cycle, and I find that it wasn’t a good period in many places around the world. Record and near record high – and low temperatures, record and near-record precipitation, and so on. Floods and droughts pretty-much mimicking what is happening now, and in pretty-much the same places.

I also noted that the indicators of the “silly” theory of the cyclical nature , ocean and atmospheric, are pretty much exactly as they are now.

I have to admit it could all get a bit depressing. But then I remember that the world is in the capable hands of much cleverer people than those silly scientists back in the Seventies who believed climate was cyclical. Now the decisions are being made by clever people like Dr Tim Flannery

But “Memory Vault” particularly condemns a second individual, Tim Flannery, a professor of earth and life sciences at Macquarie University, chair of the Copenhagen Climate Council, and the 2007 Australian of the Year. It is he, above all, who managed to convince the state government that the predicable cycle of droughts and floods will no longer happen, and that the state, instead of beefing up defences from the last major event 30 years ago in 1974, should prepare for long-term water shortages.

“Growing evidence,” declared Flannery, “suggests that hotter soils, caused directly by global warming, have increased evaporation and transpiration and that the change is permanent. I believe the first thing Australians need to do is to stop worrying about ‘the drought’ – which is transient – and start talking about the new climate”. It was input such as this that had the state government spending $1.2 billion on desalination plant, instead of flood defences, a plant now mothballed, as the flood waters mount.

Needless to say, the Queensland state Premier Anna Bligh is now talking of “exceptional events”, and the BBC happily chirps about a “freak of nature” – an attempt to reinforce the subliminal message that nothing could have been done.

But the real story is bizarre, another classic example of the greenies forcing major distortions in policy which cost money we haven’t got and eventually kill people. Increasingly we see that the obsession with global warming is not a risk-free option. It costs money we can’t afford, and lives. This must stop.

From other articles, it appears that the Climateers managed to convince planning councils that there would be no more floods, it would be very dry. So, in earnest, billions were spent on desalination plants and homes were allowed to be build on flood planes…exactly where the floods occurred last time, and the time before that…

Detailed aerial map pictures of the Queensland flood can be viewed here. Those houses that are flooded shouldn’t be there and others should not have been built on slabs but on elevated stilts, yes stilts. just like at the beach.

Massive Flooding in Australia

by coldwarrior ( 60 Comments › )
Filed under Australia, Breaking News, Weather at January 12th, 2011 - 8:30 am

Given that our 24 hour news cycle has been focused on the shooting and the fallout from the shootings in Arizona, a very important story has been pushed aside.

There is massive flooding in the state of Queensland, Australia. As someone who has lived through a flood (Johnstown, 1977) and saw first hand the damage and loss of life that can occur, I encourage our readers to take some time and look at some of the links below and pray for our Aussie cousins. Temporary morgues have been set up, and evacuations are under way.

As you can See, Queensland occupies the northeast corner of Australia.  The major city is Brisbane, they are bracing for the worst flooding in 118 years. Here is the link to google maps so that you can match up the names from the below newspaper articles to the towns.

Here is a link to the Brisbane Times Newspaper that is being updated as stories come in.

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I like this mayor’s warning:

The rising Bremer River has submerged numerous homes and businesses in Ipswich, with evacuations centres overflowing, Mayor Paul Pisasale said.

The mayor was furious after hearing of several reports of looting taking place in flood-affected areas.

“If I find anybody looting in our city they will be used as flood markers,” he said.

Sign of things to come

Ms Bligh said it was a sign “of things to come” in the days ahead with the Brisbane River expected to peak at 4.5m today and eclipse 1974 levels at 5.5m tomorrow.

She warned local residents to stay off roads if possible.

‘‘This incident is not a tourist event – this is a deeply serious natural disaster,’’ Ms Bligh said.

‘‘Stay in your homes – do not travel unless it is absolutely necessary.”

Major flooding is also expected across the border in NSW today. With the Clarence River expected to peak at seven metres,

This is a video of haw fast the waters were rising in Toowoomba, 50 miles west and upstream from Brisbane.