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@PGuillermoSerra
By Jo Nova
Oh the Dilemma?
More than 219 people have drowned and another 80 are still missing after the devastating floods in Valencia, Spain. The UN expert climate scientists say that shutting coal plants and building windmills is the best way to stop floods.
Matt Ridley is wondering if removing 133 dams had anything to do with it, or if perhaps they should have built the big dam that was approved in 2001 but stopped by the Socialists in 2004:
Dam shame: what really caused Valencia’s floods?
Matt Ridley, The Spectator
… Valencia had a similarly terrible flood in 1957, in which 81 people died, long before climate change became the go-to excuse for any bad weather. After that flood, to prevent a recurrence, the Spanish government built a string of dams in the hills to hold back water and diverted the Turia river away from the city. For more than six decades the system worked well. Why did it fail this year? Because the unusually warm sea made for an unusually bad storm, say some. Yet charts of rainfall in Spain show no trend towards a higher frequency of more […]
By Jo Nova
Any which way you look at global drought measures in the last 120 years this is not the CO2 doom scenario of the IPCC prophesies either in rainfall patterns or in water supplies. The graphs below show rainfall trends shifting slightly due to unknown forces and looking for all the world, like CO2 is irrelevant. Despite the scare campaigns about floods and droughts, and the threats of climate wars over dwindling rivers, there has been no trend in hydrological droughts since the Wright Brothers first flew a plane.
Kenneth Richards at NoTricksZone reported on Shi et al, a paper which looked at trends from 1902 to 2014 in all nine climate zones of the world.
The first graph shows a mixed bag of trends in Meteorological Droughts, none of which are obviously linked to human emissions of CO2. Remember, half of all human emissions since we crawled out of caves has been emitted after 1995. According to CDIAC fully 250,000 Mt of CO2 was emitted up to that year, then we have doubled that in the years since then. If CO2 was a planet transforming molecule, surely we’d see something in the last 25 years?
The […]
The Murray River was far higher in the 1970 floods and worse still in 1956 when CO2 was just 314ppm. Obviously, if all current floods are “caused by CO2”, we need more of it.*
A photo of flood markers on a tree in South Australia has sparked a debate on Facebook. The only things we know for sure — floods were worse when CO2 was perfect, and censorship of banal truths is the only way to stop the climate change rort unravelling.
Picture of tree at centre of furious flood debate
News.com.au
A picture of a tree in regional South Australia has sparked a wild climate change debate.As floodwaters from the River Murray crept up the Loxton’s Tree of Knowledge, one local thought it was a good time to take a picture to put things into perspective.
The updated flood markings of The Tree of Knowledge, SA, Nov 30th, 2022. Click to enlarge
UPDATED: Dec 2, 2022. Previous photo Nov 28th. See future updates on flood levels (weekly) here. Thanks to Craig Thomas.
The depth of the scientific response:
“Using one tree as evidence to suit your agenda shows what level of […]
by Jo Nova
There is extraordinary flooding across Victoria lately in the land of Droughts and Flooding Rains. The Australian ABC is telling us that “flooding in Victoria is uncommon“. But a ten second search on Trove Australia turned up the forgotten floods of 1870, just as one example, with these glorious drawings (below). Those floods 152 years ago seemed to affect many of the same places as the floods of 2022: the Murray River was a “vast inland lake” and almost the whole distance from Sandhurst to Echuca, about sixty miles, was underwater. Melbourne became an “antipodean Venice”. A rain-bomb dropped on the Keilor Plains and three feet of water fell “in minutes”. Train lines were left suspended in the air, and men, women, children, horses, cattle and sheep sadly drowned. And at Echuca, the water stayed high for two whole months, starting on Sept 9th but not peaking finally until November 7th.
Imagine what the ABC could do for Australia if it had a billion dollars and access to the internet?
Floods in Victoria — Sandhurst, from the top of Bridge Street | Click to enlarge
For the record, here’s the effect of all that […]
While people in Pakistan struggle with their devastation, the UN chief has burned some fossil fuel to make sure he doesn’t miss an advertising opportunity. The poor of Pakistan need homes, medicine and food, but he wants to sell carbon schemes and solar panels. You rich sinner, you. Give us your money! The Almighty, I mean Nature itself (!) is striking back and if we don’t pay the UN enough and send more tithes to Big-Government supporters like the Renewables Industry then more people will die!
In a new scientific discovery Professor-cum-Saint-Guterres also declared 100% flood attribution to man-made CO2. This is not something the glorious Experts of the UN have ever announced, and nor will they, because it’s scientifically preposterous — but they will not correct him, because their role was never about getting the science right, just about being the window-dressing for the money grab.
Pagan witchdoctors never had it so good: In flood-hit Pakistan, Guterres appeals for ‘massive’ global support, tougher action on climate change
“[We] have all seen media images of the extraordinary destruction. I can only imagine the power and ferocity of the water as it bore down on villages, roads, bridges and […]
The bad news for Sydney-siders is that floods have been happening to them for all of history and probably a lot of prehistory too, though the ABC and BOM don’t mention it. This week the flooding in Windsor appears to have peaked at almost 14 metres. But in 1867 the water peaked at 63 feet or an amazing 19 metres.
Not to dismiss any of the suffering of the current flooding in Sydney, because I’m sure it’s horrible. Just people need to know the Bureau of Met isn’t telling them the whole truth, and climate grifters are exploiting their pain so they can nab a few more grants, or sell some solar panels.
Almost all the Eather family died in the Hawkesbury flood of 1867.
The Guardian laments that For Hawkesbury residents flooding is now a part of life and blames climate change. But nothing has changed since 200 years ago. For the first thirty years of European settlement, floods hit the Hawkesbury river one after the other, people died, and houses were washed away. Back then, people were in danger of starving when the crops failed. Flooding would have been a very big deal.
A little book […]
If Climate Change was a real threat, the Bureau of Meteorology might even look at their own historic records.
When Jennifer Marohasy and Chris Gillham did just that, they found that as bad as the current situation is, it’s happened before:
The wettest day in Lismore was in February 1954. The wettest year for Lismore was 1893. There was no increase in the intensity or frequency of extreme wet days at Lismore, or the towns around it.
Now if the BOM looks at this with a supercomputer, they might find an effect from CO2. But if the BOM just used a calendar, like I did, they might find the latest floods started the week after Hunga Tonga volcanic dust rolled across Australia. Maybe that matters?
No one needed a supercomputer to read a rain gauge in 1885, and we have excellent long data. Imagine how handy that might be if the BoM wanted to understand, say, Australian flood cycles? There are 137 years of rainfall records in Lismore from 1885 to now, but the BOM said we set a new record for Lismore based on Lismore airport where records started as long ago as… 2002.
The Bureau […]
If only the $3 million dollar a day ABC could afford a science team that could do as much research as one unpaid volunteer does in a day?
Thanks to Cliff Ollier and Ken Stewart for the BOM graph of past Brisbane Floods. Clearly things were worse in the 1800s.
If CO2 has any effect perhaps it reduces flooding?
There have always been big floods in Brisbane | BOM Source | KensKingdom
One day when the ABC finally gets the Internet they’ll be able to find official pages like “Known Floods in the Brisbane and Bremer River Basin“. And one day the half billion dollar BOM agency will be able to update graphs like this within a week of a new flood peak, like bloggers did (above).
Ken Stewart went looking for lost Rain Bombs and found them
As Ken reports the ABC made a fuss over three Queensland sites recording more than 1 metre of rain in just four days. But neither the ABC or the BOM is telling Australians that there have been at least nine similar “Rain Bombs” before and most of them were more than one hundred years ago.
I went […]
At least eight people have died in dreadful flooding in South East Queensland and Brisbane. The slow moving rain system moved south through NSW, inundating towns, and has arrived in Sydney and surrounds, where evacuations have begun.
Despite the pain, some are already exploiting the situation for their climate religion or their retirement plan. What was torrential rain is now a rain-bomb, and to stop floods they yell at us that the Climate Change Emergency must be our priority!
A few days ago the floods in Brisbane peaked at 3.85m. Apparently this was due to a surplus of coal fired power or a lack of wind turbines, or something like that. But this photo below, was taken in Brisbane 129 years ago, when there were almost no coal turbines anywhere in the world, and CO2 levels were ideal, yet floods reached 8.3m.
Not climate change: the flood waters rose to 8.3m.
And in the land of flood, fire and drought, it keeps happening. In 1974, floods in Brisbane reached 5.45m. In 2011 the waters were 4.46m deep. Obviously things have changed a bit: the Wivenhoe dam wasn’t there during the first two floods, and the hydrology of city […]
Multiple Cyclones, Fires, Floods and Heatwaves striking Australians at same rate for last 55 years
Gissing et al looked at insurance losses and plotted all the times multiple disasters piled up on each other in a three month period in Australian history. Despite the monster headlines and three quarters of all human CO2 emissions occurring since 1966 there was no trend.
Three new studies affirm there has been no significant change in natural disasters, precipitation, or bushfire across Australia for the last several decades.
Kenneth Richard, NoTricksZone
From the paper:
“Here we utilise an Australian natural disaster database of normalised insurance losses to show compound disasters are responsible for the highest seasonal financial losses. … There has been no temporal trend in their frequency since 1966. “
The predominant and most predictable driver of climate-related disaster events is not anthropogenic global warming, or CO2 emissions, but the El Niño Southern Oscillation.
Bad things happen:
Global levels of CO2 rose from 320 to 405ppm and made no difference to Compound disasters.
h/t Neville and El Gordo
REFERENCE
Gissing et al (2021) Compound natural disasters in Australia: a historical analysis, Environmental Hazards, […]
With great sympathy for all our European friends. It’s like European history doesn’t exist.
In 1717 on Christmas Eve a flood started that killed 14,000 people and spread across the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany. It was followed by savage frosts, and more floods in February of 1718.
So much for the theory that solar panels, windmills, or global cooling will save us from floods.
In the Little Ice Age, the floods were vast, common, and very, very cold.
Daily Mail, Christmas Floods 1717
How one of the most devastating storms in European history killed 13,700 people in 1717
Daily Mail, Dec 2017
On a chilly Christmas Eve three centuries ago, one of the most devastating storms in the history of Europe smashed into the coastlines around the North Sea, killing over 13,000 people, annihilating thousands of houses and wrecking countless farms.
The apocalyptic weather caused enormous floods to submerge coastal areas in the Netherlands, Northern Germany and Denmark by Christmas Day.
As the surviving population struggled with the wind and the waves, Arctic gales spread across the continent and caused a crippling frost to descend on […]
Floods are sweeping across NSW and 18,000 people have been evacuated, and rain is forecast to keep coming for til Wednesday. Flooding is described as the worst in 60 years. But that’s the point. There have always been floods right after droughts and fires — and we knew that 150 years ago.
The scandal is that in 1865, scientists had a better grip on what caused them. Today “top” climate scientists think your car causes the weather.
Top science in 2021: Solar panels and windmills could have stopped the flooding:
The multiple natural disasters Australia has experienced over the past 18 months — such as the floods currently ravaging NSW — should be blamed on climate change, say experts from the Climate Council.
“The intense rainfall and floods that have devastated NSW communities are taking place in an atmosphere made warmer and wetter by climate change, which is driven by the burning of coal, oil, and gas,” Climate Council spokesperson Will Steffen said in a statement on Monday.
“For many communities dealing with floods right now, this is the latest in a line of climate change-exacerbated extreme weather events they have […]
UPDATE: Scroll through the Twitter thread #ChinaFloods
See the spectacular and heart-wrenching footage of raging torrents. I have never seen water move on that scale. Why isn’t this on the news?
But NO evacuation #Hefei #Anhui? Like demons in the night #4thReichChina #Chinazi #Xitler #CCP blew up dams & intentionally flooded & killed a city of 60 million PEOPLE to try save richer more important areas. #ChinaFloods #ChinaTruth #HumanitarianCrisis #EnvironmentalDisaster pic.twitter.com/My8pqbZHUY
— Binni (@ExpelChina) July 25, 2020
There is remarkable footage coming out of flooding in China #Chinafloods.
I can’t verify the authenticity, or dates, but it seems likely that terrible things are happening in China. There are shots of levees being deliberately broken to allow waters to flood fields to take the pressure off the dams, and some say the flooding is done without warning and even at night. One shot shows a barge with people on board crashing into bridge pillar and breaking apart. Lord help them. There are reports that the grain crops have been hit hard. “Agriculture wiped out”. There are multiple other reports of thousands going without food or water, with no attempts to rescue them. And there are scores of videos […]
Eyes are still on the Three Gorges Dam as a rare flooding event spreads across Asia. Bridges that have stood for 500 years have succumbed.
Pity the poor people of Wuhan, the flood waters released from the Three Gorges Dam have arrived. That dam and all upstream dams have opened the flood gates, and cities as far downstream as Wuhan are flooding.
According to the South China Morning Post, 19,380,000 people have been affected by flooding across China as of July 3rd. Chriss Street says “a record 16.8 inches falling between Sunday and Monday morning, and inflows running at 40 acre-feet per second after, CMA on July 4 issued an 80-percent risk of thundershowers for each of the next 11 days.”
Check out the brief shot of the flood in a supermarket.
江蘇省：蘇州市 pic.twitter.com/OJnzeMWvUt
— 全智胜 (@MgOqkzLBRPLCHyN) July 7, 2020
Apparently the dam is so large and heavy it even ranks in discussions of seismic potential — namely that some people are concerned the weight of the water may trigger earthquakes.
The “word on the street” according to Gravitasis that Chinese people are wondering if the flooding water released from is convenient for the CCP government […]
Here’s one for all the history-deniers from 1885
Mr N Bartley understood Australias climate 134 years ago better than some climate scientists appear to now.
After the fire came the floods, Feb 2020.
Even then Australia already had a century-long rolling cycle of floods, fires and droughts. One natural disaster after another back when CO2 levels were perfect.
These go back to the earliest dates of European settlement. Wherever Captain Flinders landed in 1782 — 1792 he found “found traces of drought and bush fires invariably”. In 1839, the drought was so bad that fish “putrefied” in the big Murrumbidgee River even though there was not one coal fired power plant on Earth.
The author laments that the droughts “become forgotten in the flood intervals.”
In the modern Wifi era humans can forget even faster.
Below is my summary list of the events described in the story.
Below that, the full letter. From The Queenslander, Sept 19th, 1885.
*Since Captain Flinders was born in 1774 I assume those dates were wrong and he wasn’t commanding a ship when he was 8 years old. Any other suggestions welcome.(thanks Gee Aye, SteveD, James West and Peter Fitzroy)
(1795 onwards?)* […]
Another triumph of modeling
In 2014, Townsville City Council launched a detailed flood mapping service.
The maps will allow people to search individual properties to find out the risk of it being inundated during a one-in-100-year flood event.
Five years later and they’re publishing inundation maps. Sadly, new suburbs were built with the wrong expectations.
Townsville flood maps reviewed as more homes go under
Jared Owens and Charlie Peel The Australian
Townsville City Council’s spokeswoman said last night the model, which was based on expert modelling of different scenarios, was overwhelmed by an “unprecedented” monsoonal trough …
Local Government Association of Queensland chief executive Greg Hallam said Townsville’s flood maps relied on “exhaustive modelling of every possible scenario”, looking at variables such as rainfall and artificial structures.
“We’re not God. We don’t have supreme knowledge. We only have the best science, the best knowledge we can have,” he said. “We now know with the (dam) gates fully open … what will flood and what won’t, so there will be a new set of flood maps produced out of this event.”
If we had better climate models, perhaps we might […]
After epic flooding in Townsville, witchdoctors are blaming climate change.
Queensland’s recent extreme weather – bushfires, heatwaves, coral bleaching, drought, Cyclone Penny, Townsville’s floods – showed Queensland is clearly experiencing climate change, Professor Ian Lowe said.
Thus spake the Druid of Runes waving a bunch of multifactor complex processes that have been happening forever, can’t be predicted and only have scary trends if you draw short graphs with no error bars. Verily we see doom, doth payth my grant, or whatever it is that keeps Prof Ian Lowe going. He is allegedly in the Queensland Climate Advisory Council (QCAC) — an organization so successful its only existence on the internet appears to be a sidebar on page 15 of a government PDF. But whoever they are, they’re experts, trust us, that the media doesn’t need to ask for an alternate opinion.
Wouldn’t you know it though, floods seem to happen quite a lot in Townsville
This is not to say that the current floods are not serious but just that Townsville is a floody kind of place. It’d be climate change if things stopped flooding in Townsville.
In the last ten days Townsville has had 600mm […]
Strangely, despite NASA Giss “discovering” that the world has heated a lot since 1998, fires have declined.
Apparently increasing our CO2 emissions means less fires. Tell the world.
Figure 2. Wildfire occurrence (a) and corresponding area burnt (b) in the European Mediterranean region for the period 1980 – 2010. Source: San-Miguel-Ayanz et al. [37].
This new paper points out that the perception is that fires are worse than they have ever been, but that this is simply not true, not in the last thirty years, and not in the last few hundred either. It also documents how much money and effort we put into suppressing almost all fires and that this is in contrast to tens of thousands of years where humans used fire as a tool. Suppressing fires is getting increasingly expensive and sometimes costs lives as well.
Putting things in perspective. We spend a lot of money to avoid death and damage by fire, yet earthquakes kill 700 times as many people and floods kill 1,800 times as many people. There is something primal about fire that we feel driven to stop.
Table 1. Global comparison of human and economic losses derived from wildfire, earthquakes and flood […]
It is not surprising there are floods all over the East coast at the moment
September brought 500% of normal rain to 2 million square kilometers of Eastern and Northern Australia. There are floods across the South East. There are flood alerts in South Australia, floods have been washing through NSW (and some of those floods were caused by a dam release). There are floods in Tasmania. Flood watches are active in Victoria. Spare a thought for farmers who are taking big losses from both frost and flood in Australia. (So much for endless droughts, and early springs. Hello, Tim Flannery.) Heavy snow has also fallen — 25cm in Threadbo (it so late in the season, some ski lifts have stopped operating). Right now, thousands of people still don’t have power in South Australia, while others are being rescued from floods across SA and NSW. Floods have stranded 181 families for month on islands in the middle of NSW.
h/t to Warwick Hughes, and Lance Pidgeon
Source: Australian Bureau of Meteorology
A large part of the scary purple area got only 100-200mm of rain in a month (4-8 inches). It’s just very unusual in these dry areas.
To give […]
Collaroy Beach 1967
…
Seas Pound Beachfront, Collaroy and Manly. Weds 6th Sept 1967
“…at Collaroy, heavy earth-moving equipment is standing by to prevent the huge seas from further undermining home units and a house which has been in danger for several days.”
Roger Franklin at Quadrant, wrote about a time When weather was just weather, and a Collaroy Storm of 1945.
Houses washed away, Collaroy Beach, 1945
Weds June 13, 1945.
..
Weds, June 13, 1945
14 Deaths in NSW Storms
Source: Houses Washed Out to Sea.
Blame climate change, without blaming climate change
The climate scientists are telling us that there will be less of this type of winter storm. But all the other experts, planners, engineers — get their moment of glory in the media to tell us that climate change will make this worse. In such a way does a media marketing team (like, say, the ABC) convey the sense of alarm, even when their favourite experts are actually saying the opposite.
Here’s Karl Braganza, head of climate monitoring at the Bureau of Meteorology, in the SMH, saying that this is […]
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