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Post by marchesarosa on Jan 12, 2011 19:59:05 GMT 1
Urbanisation of flood plains, Eamonn? No one is suggesting the WHOLE of the flood plain is urbanised - drip! But the urbanisation and development ( otherwise known as "population growth") makes the floods SEEM worse because ever more people and ever more property are affected by them.
Just as in last year's Pakistan floods - the population there is now 5 times bigger than it was back in the 1920's when the last comparable flood hit, so that means there is at least five times the aggro caused when these acts of nature occur because there has been development on the flood plains - i.e IN UNSUITABLE PLACES. SIMPLES. Doesn't mean NATURE has changed, just the perceptions of Nature by modern PC ideologists.
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Post by marchesarosa on Jan 12, 2011 20:54:19 GMT 1
Google "Queenslander Style Homes" and then click on images. This is what you'll find. Why are they all built on stilts you may ask?
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Post by eamonnshute on Jan 12, 2011 22:10:12 GMT 1
Urbanisation of flood plains, Eamonn? No one is suggesting the whole of the flood plain is urbanised - drip! But the urbanisation and development ( otherwise known as "population growth") makes the floods SEEM worse because ever more people and ever more property are affected by them. They don't just seem worse, they really are getting worse, as you would expect, but even faster than predicted. "Climate models suggest that extreme precipitation events will become more common in an anthropogenically warmed climate. ... the observed amplification of rainfall extremes is found to be larger than that predicted by models, implying that projections of future changes in rainfall extremes in response to anthropogenic global warming may be underestimated. " air.snu.ac.kr/journals/Allan_Science2008.pdf
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Post by marchesarosa on Jan 12, 2011 23:19:14 GMT 1
"Climate models suggest that extreme precipitation events will become more common"
But in Australia the powers that be have believed the last but one version of the global warming scenario i.e. that DROUGHTS would become permanent in Oz - hence the silly, ill-fated de-salination plants and the failure to attend to flood protection! People just like you, Eamonn, are to blame for this flood unpreparedness - because you have lost touch with common sense and believe "models" instead. Look to the history books! Read the poem and ask yourself what Dorothea meant by "terror" one hundred years ago.
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Post by marchesarosa on Jan 12, 2011 23:25:35 GMT 1
Thanks to Bishop Hill for this:
Here’s Prof Tim Flannery in New Scientist in 2007 –
Over the past 50 years southern Australia has lost about 20 per cent of its rainfall, and one cause is almost certainly global warming. Similar losses have been experienced in eastern Australia, and although the science is less certain it is probable that global warming is behind these losses too........Desalination plants can provide insurance against drought. In Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane, water supplies are so low they need desalinated water urgently, possibly in as little as 18 months. Of course, these plants should be supplied by zero-carbon power sources
Here’s Dr David Jones from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology in 2008 –
IT MAY be time to stop describing south-eastern Australia as gripped by drought and instead accept the extreme dry as permanent… “Perhaps we should call it our new climate,” said the Bureau of Meteorology’s head of climate analysis, David Jones. January 4, 2008 The only uncertainty now was whether the changing pattern was “85 per cent, 95 per cent or 100 per cent the result of the enhanced greenhouse effect”
How could your gurus get it so wrong, Eamonn, only a few short years ago?
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Post by eamonnshute on Jan 12, 2011 23:33:39 GMT 1
Droughts and flooding are not mutually exclusive - Queensland has seen both recently. Both are expected to become more common.
Queensland has built several dams to defend against flooding, but they were not enough, perhaps because they didn't expect such extremes. Perhaps they should have paid more attention to the implications of climate change and less to the climate change deniers?
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Post by marchesarosa on Jan 12, 2011 23:51:51 GMT 1
"Perhaps they should have paid more attention to the implications of climate change and less to the climate change sceptics?" pleads Eamonn.
Eamonn, Australia is RULED by climate alarmists.
They are chasing their tails right now!
No government on earth is more alarmist, more green and more environmentally conservative than the Australian.
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Post by eamonnshute on Jan 12, 2011 23:59:26 GMT 1
Eamonn, Australia is RULED by climate alarmists. Not surprising after recent events proved they were right to be alarmed. I expect they will be even more dominant in future!
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Post by rsmith7 on Jan 13, 2011 0:52:16 GMT 1
Eamonn, Australia is RULED by climate alarmists. Not surprising after recent events proved they were right to be alarmed. I expect they will be even more dominant in future! Nah, in reality (know that one ,eamonn?) the eco-loonies will be voted out. It's happening already all over the world. I'm loving it!
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Post by marchesarosa on Jan 13, 2011 22:47:16 GMT 1
"Alarm" is not a very constructive emotion, Eamonn.
Practical response is what is required from Australians in the face of their extremes of weather. They USED to have it in spades! Maybe the pioneer spirit has been diluted with too much immigration of more "alarmist" stock i.e. those weak-kneed folk with a propensity to panic?
I would not normally resort to such low innuendo but, you know, in the climate debates anything goes to discredit the opponent, doesn't it, Eamonn, Helen, Monbiot et al?
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Post by marchesarosa on Jan 13, 2011 22:56:21 GMT 1
According to the BBC the flood gauge peaked at 4.46m, which makes it big, but smaller than some floods in the past, and much smaller than the megaflood in (I think) 1894. Bishop Hill
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Post by eamonnshute on Jan 13, 2011 22:59:29 GMT 1
"Alarm" is not a very constructive emotion, Eamonn. That reminds me of the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where someone wears glasses that go black when there is danger nearby, so that he doesn't see it and get scared. Failure to be alarmed by possible danger is far more harmful than being alarmed.
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Post by marchesarosa on Jan 13, 2011 23:02:34 GMT 1
Aynsley Kellow writes The disaster, as with all climate-related events, owes as much to human action affecting impact. Indeed, human actions always affect both hazards and sometimes even frequency. (If risk = hazard x frequency – a simplification — that does not mean that frequency is independent of human actions). Interestingly, The Australian this morning carried a story that the City Council (under a previous mayor) had both ignored and suppressed a report drawing attention to fault in their planning scheme that was allowing houses to be built on flood plains on the assumption that floods would be 1-2m less than the engineers thought prudent. See: www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/alarming-report-on-risks-covered-up/story-e6frg6nf-1225986634328The Australian is a Murdoch newspaper, so of course we can ignore that! (Sarc off). Note that this story includes some interesting data. The 2011 flood peak at Brisbane was 5.2m (5.45m in 1974). The peak at Ipswich on the Bremer River (a tributary of the Brisbane River that lacks the flood protection of Wivenhoe Dam) was 19.5m (20.5m in 1974). The worst of the flash flooding on Monday appears to have been in the Brisbane catchment, so it may be that Wivenhoe served some purpose in mitigation. The suggestions by David Karoly and David Jones that anthropogenic climate change has exacerbated extreme weather events such as this are undermined by the historical record: the 1893 flood peak figures are 8.35m for Brisbane and 23.5m for Ipswich. The 2011 floods would seem to be consistent with (as climate scientists would put it) 1-in-100 events. But they are not exceptional, and come at the end of an unusually cool year in Australia (though we know cool is the new global warming). The local newspaper also carried a report that the discharge from Wivenhoe was increased on Tuesday evening, which seems a little late, given that the flash flood at Toowoomba in its catchment came at about noon on Monday. While designed for multiple use, the dam is operated by the water corporation, and one wonders whether they were more interested in maximising catchment yields for water supply (so that they could defer their costly desalination plant) rather than maximising the flood protection capacity of the dam. This should not have been a surprise. Most of the deaths have been the result of the flash flooding in the Brisbane River catchment, which no dam would have prevented. (The national disaster notification system – put in place after the 2009 fires in Victoria failed, and gave notice of the danger 6 hours after the event, but that is another issue). But all the figures indicated a substantial La Nina, with the December Southern Oscillation Index a record. At a minimum, they should have been expecting a substantial monsoon. Why then was the storage not emptied out to maximise its ability to manage the flood? It played some role, in managing flows. Water releases from Wivenhoe Dam were reduced from an overnight peak of 645,000 megalitres per day on Tuesday night to 205,000 megalitres per day on Wednesday as the peak approached. See: www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/wivenhoe-dam-water-releases-to-be-scaled-back-but-not-for-about-36-hours/story-e6freoof-1225986190427At 9pm Wednesday Wivenhoe Dam was at 189 per cent, down from 191 per cent overnight, while Somerset Dam, which feeds into Wivenhoe, was down from 190 per cent to 186 per cent. Wivenhoe was releasing 215,000 megalitres, up from 205,000 megalitres earlier in the day, but still lower than a peak of 645,000 megalitres per day on Tuesday night. Releases were expected to be increased to 301,000 megalitres per day when the downstream peak in the Brisbane River has passed. But note that it was reported that it takes about 36 hours for water released at the dam to arrive at city reaches of the Brisbane River. This suggests that the increased releases on Tuesday evening probably ADDED to the flood peak around 4am Thursday morning. It was also reported that about 10,000 cu m of water per second was passing down city reaches on Wednesday - slightly higher than in the 1974 floods. Of this, 8000 cu m was from Wivenhoe Dam releases combined with lower Brisbane River and Lockyer River flows. I think there are some questions to be answered about planning by the Brisbane City Council, and the operation of the flood control infrastructure. There might be good answers to those questions, but the understanding of SOI (Southern Oscillation Index) is one of the best pieces of climate science we have. Did the management of the catchment reflect that scientific understanding, and if not, why not? Those who are trying to link this to climate change are simply in denial: there is nothing exceptional in the flood levels – they were worse before AGW could have kicked in. Jan 13, 2011 at 12:12 PM | Aynsley Kellow
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Post by rsmith7 on Jan 13, 2011 23:04:17 GMT 1
Unprecedented is such an ugly word - shouldn't we be using the more "sellable" "unremembered" (by some).
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Post by rsmith7 on Jan 13, 2011 23:05:28 GMT 1
"Alarm" is not a very constructive emotion, Eamonn. That reminds me of the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where someone wears glasses that go black when there is danger nearby, so that he doesn't see it and get scared. Failure to be alarmed by possible danger is far more harmful than being alarmed. Aren't there drugs available for this type of anxiety, eamonn?
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