With the early harsh winter in Europe and North America, the floods in Australia, snowstorms in USA, bitter cold in China, alarmists never have problems finding creative, acrobatic ways of assigning blame on the most remote of factors (think Tucson and Palin).
According to the warmists, these recent weather events can all be traced back to the sins of man and conservatives.
Alfons Kaiser of Germany’s online Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) puts it all in perspective here, keeping a clear and cool head about it – unlike the rest of the catastrophist media in Germany – and attributes it mainly to the current strong La Nina which is now gripping the Pacific.
The FAZ writes about media reporting on the flood in Australia and other catastrophes:
To keep the interest of the distant audience awake, they are made bigger than what they are. Now it is being constantly claimed that in Australia an area as big as Germany and France combined is flooded – this is grossly exaggerated.
The FAZ then describes how this is attributed to the El Nino oscillations that occur every few years in the Pacific region, and how now a La Nina is running rampant and having an impact.
The temperature in the Pacific is sinking, warm moist air is moving over eastern Australia and the people – who up to now were basking in a semi-arid climate – have suddenly gotten 20 inches of rain within 4 weeks.
Naturally, some researchers are blaming climate change for enhancing this age-old weather-phenomena, a claim that the FAZ slaps down.
But even if this is the strongest La Nina phase since 1917, it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with climate change because there was a La Nina that was just as strong back in 1917. Not even complex meteorological models can determine how the CO2-induced temperature increase can enhance the anomaly in the Pacific Ocean. For this reason we should not just immediately doubt the connection, but we also cannot fabricate a causal effect where one doesn’t have to be.
The floods of the 1890’s in the same region seem to support a “120-year” cycle in climate.
Similarly, there were strong rains about 60 years ago … and substantial floods in 1974. Bigger than the current ones. It would be a mistake to think thatthisis the end of flooding. The rain isn’t going to stop for months until the end of the wet season. Fingers crossed that it’ll be more moderate and within drainage capacity.
Rain and local flooding also aren’t unheard of during “summer” in the South-East. They’re roughly decadal.
As for the area flooded, I understand that they’ve taken the area between the flooded ones as being flooded, even when they’re above the water. They can still be flood-affected when they are cut off from the rest of the world by conventional surface transport; road and rail.
As those in flooded areas point out; everybody needs friends in high places.
According “longpaddock” (Queensland Gov) there was a La Niña 1916 (11.9), and 1917 (25.03). The figure for 1917 is extreme high. http://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/products/australiasvariableclimate/ensoyearclassification.html.
Now to any correlation, ignoring the La Niña 1916 and the Europe winter 2009/10. The winter 1916/17 was very cold throughout northern Europe, and the third coldest on record in the UK., and a record cold winter on Spitsbergen. But few weeks later more was to happen.
In April 1917 the North Atlantic sea ice cover did not retreated as usually, but increased in April and May, remained at a high level during June and decreased only in July which has happened only once during the last century in summer 1917. Further details is a Jan/2010 paper: “Did the North Atlantic play a role in the tumultuous weather conditions and the Indian drought in 1918?” at: http://www.arctic-warming.com/indian-drought-1918-north-atlantic.php
Further ‘tumultuous events” followed as discussed by Giese et al (2009) „The 1918/1919 El Niño“ ; at: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/gilbert.p.compo/Gieseetal2009.pdf,
It was also the Australian government who suggested that they stop using the term “climate change” as public skepticism increases with its frequent use, so they now want to use “climate challenges”, right? Tomorrow, the term will be “climate uncertainties” or “climate fireball”, http://funwithgovernment.blogspot.com/2011/01/weekend-fun-7-climate-fireball.html