8/8/2019 What Was the Role of Warmists in the Queensland Flood Disaster

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What was the role of warmists in the Queensland flood disaster?

… Last week’s most disturbing revelation, however, was the contribution toBrisbane’s flooding by the South East Queensland Water company’smassive release of water from its Wivenhoe dam upstream from the city.

Instead of controlled releases through the previous week, the companyallowed the level to rise to within a few inches of the top of the dambefore releasing a vast volume of water , with devastating consequencesfor Brisbane 36 hours later…

Industrial flotsam forms a deadly logjam in the Brisbane River Photo: AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Australia was told to prepare for droughts as a result of climatechange, and let down its guard against flooding, writes Christopher Booker 

By Christopher Booker 7:29PM GMT 15 Jan 2011

Ever more alarming facts are emerging to show how Brisbane’s floods weremade infinitely worse by cockeyed decisions inspired by the obsession of theAustralian authorities with global warming. Inevitably, the country’s warmistlobby has been voluble in claiming that such a “freak weather event” (as theBBC called it) is a consequence of man-made climate change. But far frombeing an unprecedented “freak event”, the latest flood was nearly a foot

below the level of one in 1974 and 10 feet below the record set in 1893.

8/8/2019 What Was the Role of Warmists in the Queensland Flood Disaster

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For years, Australia’s warmists have been advising the authorities that thedanger posed to the country by global warming is not floods but droughts: nottoo much rain but too little. One result, in Brisbane, was a relaxation of planning rules, to allow building on areas vulnerable to flooding in the past.As long ago as 1999, this was seen as potentially disastrous by an expert

Brisbane River Flood Study (which was ignored and for years kept secret).Instead of investing in its flood defences, Australia spent $13 billion ondesalination plants. (Queensland’s was recently mothballed because of theexcess of rain.)

Last week’s most disturbing revelation, however, was the contribution toBrisbane’s flooding by the South East Queensland Water company’s massiverelease of water from its Wivenhoe dam upstream from the city (for detailssee “Brisbane’s Man-Made Flood Peak” on the Regionalstates blog). Insteadof controlled releases through the previous week, the company allowed thelevel to rise to within a few inches of the top of the dam before releasing avast volume of water, with devastating consequences for Brisbane 36 hourslater.

Last spring, Queensland’s prime minister, the drought- and warming-obsessed Anna Bligh, ordered the water company not to allow any releasesfrom the dam because water was such a “precious resource” that none mustbe wasted.

Unsurprisingly, on Friday, the city’s Lord Mayor asked for a full judicial reviewof what had happened. But it is time our Australian cousins carried out a verymuch more wide-ranging inquiry into all the other decisions made by their gullible politicians in recent years, under the spell of a pseudo-scientificideology which now looks utterly discredited.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/8262064/What-was-the-role-of-warmists-in-the-Queensland-flood-disaster.html

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