H/t to DirkH.
Reports of the Australian flood have been in the airwaves and print media here in Germany too. Of course, according to this media, it was once again all predicted by “scientists”. Today all inconvenient weather events are man-made.
Weather extremes are nothing new. Flooding in Pittsburgh in 1936. (Credit: Wikipedia)
German ZDF public television (Germany’s BBC you could say) had this piece of propaganda where the anchorman tells his viewers:
For years they had a drought that made the land infertile and brought water-intensive agriculture to an end. Back then they prayed for rain, and now they’ve gotten it – and exactly how climate scientists had predicted it. Not as a relief, but as a new catastrophe.”
Well, it’s not unusual for that region to cycle between drought and flooding, which is all mainly caused by ocean cycles (not CO2). According to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) ENSO report dated Dec. 22, 2010:
La Niña periods are generally associated with above normal winter, spring and summer rainfall, particularly over eastern and northern Australia. Night-time temperatures during La Niña periods are historically warmer than average and Tropical Cyclone occurrence for northern Australia is typically higher than normal during the cyclone season (November-April).”
Certainly the ZDF was not referring to these scientists. Floods are not new to the region. They’ve happened before. Read it all here.
NTZ reader Matti Vooro quotes the BOM here (after researching BOM records):
Flooding, unlike drought, is often quite localized, and therefore not as closely tied to broad-scale controls like the El Niño-Southern Oscillation phenomenon. However the La Niña years of 1916, 1917, 1950, 1954 through 1956, and 1973 through 1975, were accompanied by some of the worst and most widespread flooding this century. It can safely be said that, over much of Australia, flooding is more likely than usual during La Niña years, and less likely in El Niño years, though heavy rain and flooding often accompany the breakdown of El Niño in late summer or autumn.”
The graphic below shows that major Australian flood episodes are a function of the Southern Oscillation Index:
Credit: Australian Bureau of Meteorology
The BOM writes:
Extended periods of high SOI in 1916/17, the mid-1950s, and the early to mid-1970s, were periods of widespread, frequent flooding.”
Take the great Roper river flood of 1940, for example. The BOM writes:
This event was all the more remarkable because preceding conditions over the Roper River catchment had been very dry; in fact the river had stopped running for the first time in living memory during December 1939.”
The BOM writes that a tropical depression formed and dumped as much as 700mm of rain in six days.
Another example is The Big Wet – January 1974. BOM:
The year 1973 was one of the wettest known over much of Australia, and in keeping with the strong La Niña event that prevailed, the 1973/74 northern wet season started early. By the end of 1973 large areas of the country were saturated. Then came January 1974, which featured probably the biggest continent-wide drenching since European settlement, inundating vast areas of the country.”
Also take a look at the Katherine Flood of 1998. Tropical cyclone Les dumped 400-500mm of rain on areas of the Katherine, Roper and Daly River catchments. The BOM writes:
Such rainfall amounts falling over catchments already saturated from heavy rain earlier in the month had a dramatic impact. By the 27th the Katherine River had risen to more than 20 metres – the largest flood in Katherine’s history, eclipsing the previous record (set in 1957) by 0.7 metres.
You can go back in history and find floods that have been far worse. What what you won’t find was a media that ran around blaming it all on the sins of man to the extent done done today.
Just fixed a number of spelling errors – sorry!
Maybe there is someone interested in rainfall prediction in Australia for Sept/Oct/Nov 2010, see: Warwick Hughes (December 3rd, 2010), „#5 BoM Spring Outlooks – rain and temperature – more hopelessly wrong models“, at http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=712 ,
with a reference to
“The resolution and potential value of Australian seasonal rainfall forecasts based on the five phases of the Southern Oscillation Index”, at : http://www.publish.csiro.au/paper/CP08277.htm .
It all happened in the past and it will happen in the future.
With or without the damned lies, fabrications and endless spin.
Just ignore the media.
A growing number of readers and viewers ignore the MSM.
But it’s good to remind people why it is a good idea to ignore them. That’s what this post is about. I haven’t watched ZDF in years.
@R de Haan
ignoring the MSM doesn´t do any good.
Family, friends and co-workers are exposed to their desinformation on a daily basis.
In order to be able to counter the at least the most outlandish claims in private conversation, one needs to follow the MSM.
The floods we are experiencing are not even at record levels – they ARE close, but we have had worse, and just as widespread. We had German relatives on the ‘phone yesterday asking if we are still alive? Well, yes thankyou, nothing unusual, nothing to see here. We wondered why they were so worried – now it becomes clear.
We have more rain on the way, but again, it’s La Nina, so who’s surprised???
Tim
Check out Joe’s latest video:
http://www.accuweather.com/video.asp?channel=vbbastaj
Lots of global warming coming to the states!
Pierre,
yesterday, the German ZDF news added insult to harm.
http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/hauptnavigation/nachrichten/#/beitrag/video/1226590/ZDF-heute-journal-vom-3-Januar-2011 (from minute 23:40 on)
Following another report – this time a little more “sober” than the day before – about the Australian floods, they reported on natural disasters -“aided” by material and an interviewee from Munich Re (big insurance company). Honi soit qui mal y pense.
In this piece, the actually lumped together the deaths from the earthquake in Haiti with (statistical) deaths from the Russian heatwave and fires, and tried hard to establish a connection to climate change. Unbelievable example of inept pseudo-journalism.
This is the b+++***t one has to counter everyday at the office or in private.
It does help to show people Anthony’s SST page and point to the rather cold temperatures to make them think; or at his sea ice page and explain to them that the global sea ice hasn’t vanished. Usually, people are surprised when they see the data the first time. They don’t even know that such data is easily accessible for everyone with an internet connection.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/
Must I really watch this? Alright – here goes.
I sometimes wonder what drives a man like Ehrlich. Could it be that he just wants to please his public? Please, scientists, tell us about your horror stories. It does not matter whether these come true, if we sometimes get randomly a flood as reward. It is partial reinforcement,which also makes that people become addicted to gambling machines.
Good article. But this should be a work of journalists, to put such events into wider picture. There is NEVER any chart or at least list of floods shown, just the usual bullhsit – this one is the warmest, coldest, wettest, driest evah!
I do not let authors of too much BS articles go away with it here. I complained to our MetOffice twice about junk articles in their climatohysterical section, opened this year on their website. I have complained to chief redactor of major online newspaper about the shame and ridicule, what his amateurs in “scientific section” are doing to the newspaper. Still, it is a good fight.
It is a good fight, of heroic proportions ….and we’ll win.
Many lives will be lost unnecessarily, because of fuel poverty in cold climates, brought to a head by bankrupt politicians, biased journalists and greedy scientists.
We in the ‘new media’ have an opportunity to prepare people for 20 years of cooling, but we must present a scientific explanation (not necessarily peer reviewed) to explain what is really happening.
We must not give up until the MSM once again becomes the Third Estate.
For our German readers. Rahmstorf comments on flood. Does he see a connection to AGW…not to 100%, but a little less. 🙂
http://www.wissenslogs.de/wblogs/blog/klimalounge/mechanismen/2011-01-05/flutkatastrophe-in-queensland-australien
MSM is entangled in a closed circuit of Climate Change Seminars and the big Press Bureas like Associated Press and Reuters who together with Met Office are responsible for organizing these seminars and out comes the garbage.
But when a read the public comments to those articles (that allow comments), there is hope.
People know where to find the “good stuff” and the alarmism fails to create a political majority to save the planet.
That’s why the political establishment in Europe and the US is taking the back door to press on with their con policies.
When I look at all the observation camera’s popping up all over the place and the increasing number of high politicians driving armored cars I can only conclude that they exactly know what they are doing and that they prepare for the worst that can happen to them, a public outrage, a fury.
I think they are going to need their protection in the near future.
And it won’t help them much.
Making a plea for ecocide law the Guardian thinks keeping people warm and fed is equivalent to sending them to the gas chamber
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/guardian-thinks-keeping-people-warming-and-fed-is-equivalent-to-sending-them-to-the-gas-chamber/