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A category 5 cyclone, more severe than Cyclone Tracy or Hurricane Katrina, lashes Far North Queensland and there is not a single fatality.

It perhaps says something about Australia, modern economies and democracies and their potential capacity to adapt and to survive?

Congratulations Far North Queensland!

When we were less technologically advance, that is on 10th March 1918 and a severe cyclone hit Innisfail, over 80 people died.

Following is the note in the Bureau of Meterology records for that event:

“This cyclone is widely regarded as the worst cyclone to hit a populated area of Queensland. It crossed the coast and passed directly over Innisfail. Pen on Post Office barograph was prevented from registering below 948 hPa by flange on bottom of drum. 926 hPa read at the Mourilyan Sugar mill at 7 pm 10 Mar. The eye wall reached Innisfail at 9 pm. In Innisfail, then a town of 3,500 residents, only around 12 houses remained intact the rest being blown flat or unroofed. A report from the Harbours and Marine Engineer indicated that at Maria Creek the sea rose to a height of about 3m above high water (If this refers to HAT the water was 4.65m above the tide for that day). Around 4.40pm 10 Mar at Bingil Bay a tidal wave was seen surging in from the east into Bingil Bay taking the bridge over the creek 400 m inland. Mission Beach was covered by 3.6 m water for hundreds of metres inland, the debris reached a height of 7m in the trees. All buildings and structures were destroyed by the storm surge in the Bingil Bay Mission beach area. The surge was 2.6m at Flying Fish Point. Babinda also had many buildings destroyed and some reports suggest that not one building was left standing. There was widespread damage at Cairns and on the Atherton Tablelands. Recent reports suggest that 37 people died in Innisfail while 40 to 60 (mostly aborigines) lost their lives in nearby areas.”

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My aunt and brother who live in Cairns and Smithfield, respectively, are fine. They both said there was a bit of wind last night, but otherwise OK.

Last week, after reading ‘Nine Lies About Global Warming’ in which Ray Evans draws a comparison between the issuing of taxi licenses and carbon trading, I posted a quote from Ray and some related information at this blog.

I was interested in exploring the comparison.

Blair Bartholomew made several interesting observations. Following are some edited extracts.

“The big issue of course is how many licenses to grant. From the point of safety regulations you could argue that an unlimited number of licenses would be acceptable. The issue of availability of service i.e. enables a certain number of cabs to be available at all times would demand some restriction in the number of licenses. Otherwise you would have plenty of cabs available at the more popular times of the day and the year and a dearth of cabs at others.

So in making the decision as to the number of licenses the regulators rely on data to support their decisions. If they get it wrong and have two few licenses then the original lucky taxi license holders make a windfall. If they issue too many licenses then taxi users will suffer from an unreliable service.

Similarly with respect to emission controls, in the absence of controls, the population, as a whole, would be worse off from the effects of AGW. Just as the cab regulators need good information to decide on the number of cab licenses, so do the emission regulators to decide on the level of emission controls.”

Then Blair made a second comment, asking more questions.

“Regulators have to decide whether the likely scenario, after the introduction of controls (and allowing for the costs of implementing the controls) is preferred to the likely scenario without the controls. In other words will there be an aggregate gain in society’s welfare. To do this they need information about the alternate states, the “with” and the “without”.

In the case of global carbon emission controls the information needs are infinitely greater and more complex (and the effects of “bad” research much greater).

While the questions and topics are different, regulators would enquire [information] along the following lines. For the carbon emission regulators:

1. Is the increase in world temperature over the last 60+ years largely the result of human-induced carbon emissions?

2. And without regulation will the situation worsen i.e. the world gets even hotter?

3. In the absence of controls will profitable technology provide the solution? By profitable I mean carbon emitters will voluntarily invest in the research as they will be better off from application of the research.

4. If it is agreed that indeed warming will increase, what will be its effects on human welfare?

5. How do we quantify these effects?

6. What will be the distribution of these effects? Will some regions/countries/people actually gain some benefits from warmer temperatures and by how much? What regions/countries/people will lose and by how much?

7. If we are satisfied with the projected outcomes in the absence of the controls, then we must model expected outcomes in the presence of different levels of controls …no mean feat.

8. How do we quantify the benefits from the implementation of these different levels controls?

9. What are the likely costs and their distribution from implementation of controls?

10. Finally how do we then determine the “right” level of emission control?

A lot of the rather heated discussion on this blog seems to relate to points 1,2 and 3.

However I have not seen much discussion or data relating to the subsequent points.

I am sure some economic thinktank would have done the massive modelling required to come up with the answers. That is why Phil I asked you earlier if you are familiar with studies estimating the economic returns, including distribution of benefits and costs, from the massive research in global warming and appliction of its findings viz levels of controls etcetera.”

I am unfamiliar with any “massive modelling’ effort by an economic think tank. The analysis I am most familiar with, and that I consider most comprehensive, was done by Bjorn Lomborg in Chapter 24 of ‘The Skeptical Environmentalist’ published in 2001. But perhaps there has been something done more recently?

I am guessing that Neil Hewett and his family have spent the day preparing for Cyclone Larry.

The cyclone is already a category 4 (225-279 km/hr winds) and expected to intensify before crossing the coast somewhere south of Cairns (and the Daintree) early tomorrow morning.

Hurricane Katrina was a category 4, as was Cyclone Tracy.

My brother Jim lives in Cairns and he said he had never seen the city so busy as it was today, with people stocking up on food, cleaning up around their homes and gardens and carting rubbish to the dump.

I am also thinking of my Aunt Diana, keep safe.

After reviewing more than 100 peer-reviewed studies, Thomas Huntington from the United States Geological Survey, has concluded that there is more water circulating as a consequence of global warming. This includes more rainfall and more evaporation, but there has not been more tropical storms or more floods over the last 100 years.

Huntington’s findings were published earlier this week in the Journal of Hydrology (Volume 319, No 1-4, pages 83-95) in a paper titled ‘Evidence for intensification of the global water cycle: Review and synthesis’.

Eureka Alert includes the following comment about the study:

“Although data are not complete, and sometimes contradictory, the weight of evidence from past studies shows on a global scale that precipitation, runoff, atmospheric water vapor, soil moisture, evapotranspiration, growing season length, and wintertime mountain glacier mass are all increasing. The key point with the glaciers is that there is more snowfall resulting in more wintertime mass accumulation – another indication of intensification.

“This intensification has been proposed and would logically seem to result in more flooding and more intense tropical storm seasons. But over the observational period, those effects are just not borne out by the data in a consistent way,” said Huntington.

Huntington notes that the long term and global scale of this study could accommodate significant variability, for example, the last two Atlantic hurricane seasons.

“We are talking about two possible overall responses to global climate warming: first an intensification of the water cycle being manifested by more moisture in the air, more precipitation, more runoff, more evapotranspiration, which we do see in this study; and second, the potential effects of the intensification that would include more flooding and more tropical storms which we don’t see in this study,” said Huntington.“

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Thanks to Benny Peiser for alerting me to this study.