Climate Change Australia – Warmists Washed Out

Posted on Wed 01/25/2012 by PA Pundits - International

By Andrew Bolt ~

Well, this news in Queensland is a surprise to some warmists:

DOZENS of people have been evacuated from their homes, hundreds of streets closed and Australia Day celebrations cancelled as drenching rain continues to fall across the state.

Conditions are expected to worsen with creeks already breaking their banks, sending floodwaters into homes and businesses.

More surprises in NSW:

Widespread rainfall of 50-150mm has caused major flooding in parts of NSW… These very high rain totals have led to major flooding on the Bellinger River at Thora, with river levels continuing to rise this morning.

Still more surprises:

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Meteorology has confirmed 2011 was Australia’s third-wettest year on record and the wettest year since 1970.

And, look, no real shortage of rain anywhere:

How strange. I mean, remember the claims that we faced a “permanent drought”, thanks to man-made global warming? Here’s just some of those warnings:

Greens leader Bob Brown in 2006:

From melting polar ice to the spectre of permanent drought in previously productive farmlands, the (World Meteorological Bureau’s) report makes clear that climate change is not just a future threat, it is damaging Australia now.

Brown in 2008:

Already, (Rudd government adviser Ross Garnaut’s) daunting data of a 10 per cent chance of no flow at all in the Murray-Darling river system in future years is being overtaken by data indicating that drought is the new norm across Australia’s greatest food bowl.

The Sydney Morning Herald in 2008:

This drought may never break

IT MAY be time to stop describing south-eastern Australia as gripped by drought and instead accept the extreme dry as permanent, one of the nation’s most senior weather experts warned yesterday.

“Perhaps we should call it our new climate,” said the Bureau of Meteorology’s head of climate analysis, David Jones….

“There is a debate in the climate community, after … close to 12 years of drought, whether this is something permanent. Certainly, in terms of temperature, that seems to be our reality, and that there is no turning back….”

Jones to the University of East Anglia in 2007:

Truth be know, climate change here is now running so rampant that we don’t need meteorological data to see it. Almost everyone of our cities is on the verge of running out of water and our largest irrigation system (the Murray Darling Basin is on the verge of collapse…

The Age in 2009:

A three-year collaboration between the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO has confirmed what many scientists long suspected: that the 13-year drought is not just a natural dry stretch but a shift related to climate change…

‘’It’s reasonable to say that a lot of the current drought of the last 12 to 13 years is due to ongoing global warming,’’ said the bureau’s Bertrand Timbal.

‘’In the minds of a lot of people, the rainfall we had in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was a benchmark. A lot of our [water and agriculture] planning was done during that time. But we are just not going to have that sort of good rain again as long as the system is warming up.’’…

Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery in 2007:

Flannery predicted cities such as Brisbane would never again have dam-filling rains, as global warming had caused “a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas” and made the soil too hot, “so even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and river systems … “.

But here’s the rainfall data from the Bureau of Metereology:

And rainfall data for the supposedly stressed Murray Darling River Basin:

Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.

Andrew Bolt’s columns appear in Melbourne’s Herald Sun, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Adelaide’s Advertiser. He runs the most-read political blog in Australia and hosts Channel 10’s The Bolt Report each Sunday at 10am. He is also heard from Monday to Friday at 8am on the breakfast show of radio station MTR 1377, and his book Still Not Sorry remains very widely read.

Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog . http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/