Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Floods

It Never Rains

By

“POETRY, said Auden, makes nothing happen. Usually it doesn’t, but sometimes a poem gets quoted in a national argument because everybody knows it, or at least part of it, and for the occasion a few lines of familiar poetry suddenly seem the best way of summing up a viewpoint…

“Before the floods, proponents of the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) view had argued that there would never be enough rain again, because of Climate Change. When it became clear that there might be more than enough rain, the view was adapted: the floods, too, were the result of Climate Change. In other words, they were something unprecedented. Those opposing this view — those who believed that in Australia nothing could be less unprecedented than a flood unless it was a drought — took to quoting Dorothea Mackellar’s poem ‘My Country’… 

Read more from Clive James here http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/3743/full

[Via Neville]

More Rain

By

Residents of my community on the Capricorn Coast in Central Queensland are being warned of two cyclones: Anthony may hit the coast to our north on Monday morning and a second forming near Fiji is scheduled for later in the week. 

The wind has been blowing strongly for two days.  This morning there was a run on food with shelves again emptying at the local supermarket.   This evening the rain is coming off the ocean in waves and with each wave my green frog starts to croak. 

Just to the west of the Capricorn Coast are Queensland’s biggest coal mines already missing deliveries because of the recent flooding which has drenched pits and wrecked railway lines.

The Value of Water to the Queensland Government: A Note from Tony

By

IN all the controversy over management of dams in South East Queensland, it is worth considering the value of the resource to the nominal owners, the Queensland Government, who sell that water to consumers.

With the aid of the Wivenhoe dam capacity diagrams, it is possible to determine that during the recent major drought, Wivenhoe went from 100 percent down to its low point of 15 percent.  That took eight and a half years, and there were no restrictions, and water was always plentiful for every use, be that residential, commercial or industrial use.

The cost of that water at the time was also cheap, in fact, the cost was almost negligible. However, as that low point of 15 percent approached, firstly the Beattie Government, and then the following Bligh Government, started to ramp up the prices and impose progressively more draconian restrictions upon the consumption of that water.

[Read more…] about The Value of Water to the Queensland Government: A Note from Tony

Looking for AGW in a Sea of Natural Variability: Drought to Flood (Part 1): A Note from Luke Walker

By

After the Queensland floods, Stewart Franks’ research on the interaction of El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) driving cycles of drought and flood in Australia has been advanced as the rebuttal to the proposition by some politicians and scientists that anthropogenic climate change has had a role in recent events. And that the sceptic position forms a more rational and unique unheard insight into the climate system. That indeed it is business as usual, there is nothing to worry about except mopping up, and that the average rainfall of Queensland is (drought + flood) divide by 2.

Franks’ proposition is well based on physical processes and observed data. Of course there have been other supporters of the same position from various fields:

Peter Helman suggests cycles of beach erosion are influenced by IPO cycles, “The impact of sea level rise during the last few decades has not been expressed due to low storm energy (Callaghan and Helman 2008). Climate variability determines when and how sea level change will occur on the coast. Sea level oscillates with decadal and annual climate variability. Over decades, sea level changes are related to oscillation phases of IPO (Figure 3). It has been shown that during phases of negative IPO La Ninã events are more frequent (Verdon 2007), sea level rises at a faster rate than the long term trend (Goring and Bell 2001) and is higher than the long term trend with high storm energy, are periods of coastal erosion (Helman 2007). The longest period of negative IPO recorded was from the late 1850’s to the early 1890’s and the most recent was from the late 1940’s to the late 1970’s. Both of these periods resulted in major changes and erosion of the coastline (Helman 2007).

[Read more…] about Looking for AGW in a Sea of Natural Variability: Drought to Flood (Part 1): A Note from Luke Walker

National Broadcaster Willfully Ignores the Evidence

By

A week ago, our national broadcaster, the ABC, interviewed both Stewart Franks, Newcastle University, and David Karoly, Melbourne University, on the alleged impact of global warming on the floods. 

Professor Karoly blamed carbon dioxide and his opinion was broadcast.  Stewart Franks,  who has for some time been warning of the likelihood of significant flooding in southern Queensland and NSW, explained the floods in terms of natural climate cycles and his opinion was not broadcast. 

[Read more…] about National Broadcaster Willfully Ignores the Evidence