The fact that the population has exploded this century is never brought up when talking about climate change.Originally Posted by Geckko
Lots of people living in areas that were sparsley populated for whatever reason in times past.
Its all tied to cheap energy and technology.
But what can you do?
Its only a chat, we ain't the world council.
In 2000 the Women's Institute in Britain gave Tony Blair the slow hand clap to demonstrate their contempt.
[COLOR="Red"]It was dignified, restrained and effective.[/COLOR]Doesn't Bertie deserve the same scorn. No shouting, no abuse, no agression just a relentless slow clap whenever he speaks in public would be enough to end that man's presidential fantasy.
-3.75,-3.23
DP xxxxxxxx
Last edited by shutuplaura; 28th May 2009 at 12:44 PM.
As the great warrior poet Ice Cube once said, 'if the day does not require an AK, it is good.'
So are you saying its cold and wet in Queensland(which is a three hour flight from Melbourne to Brisbane, southern Queensland. Its probably as far from me to Carins in the North as Dublin is from New York)?
Its the tropics, of course its wet up there. So unusually wet that there is flooding.
From this website:
Climate Change in Australia - Temperature, Rainfall, Humidity, Sea surface Temperature, Wind speed, Potential evapotranspiration, Downward solar radiation
"Rainfall
Since 1950, most of eastern and south-western Australia has experienced substantial rainfall declines. Across New South Wales and Queensland these rainfall trends partly reflect a very wet period around the 1950s, though recent years have been unusually dry. In contrast, north-west Australia has become wetter over this period, mostly during summer.
From 1950 to 2005, extreme daily rainfall intensity and frequency has increased in north-western and central Australia and over the western tablelands of New South Wales, but decreased in the south-east and south-west and along the central east coast."
Climate change is a problem affecting the continent in different ways, the south its too dry, the north its now too wet.
As the great warrior poet Ice Cube once said, 'if the day does not require an AK, it is good.'
The extreme rainfall in the mid and north east Aus is related to climate change.
So thats a fairly broad section of the country - the drought affected south and the tropical mid to north - both affected in opposite ways by climate change. Hardly cherry picking.
As the great warrior poet Ice Cube once said, 'if the day does not require an AK, it is good.'
The Thompson Dam was built in 1983 and doubled Melbournes water storage. Snce that time Melbournes population hasn't doubled - increased by about a third.
As the great warrior poet Ice Cube once said, 'if the day does not require an AK, it is good.'
Rain here is human caused climate change, drought there is human caused climate change. Cherries, cherries everywhere.
Like all these climate change "proofs" they are invariably backward looking. Predicting future outcomes (whether that is temperatures failing to rise over the last decade, sea ice extent failing to decline, lack of increased number and intensity of tropical storms) tend to fall flat as often as they approximate outcomes.
Australia has experienced nothing outlandishly unusual wrt climate over the last 10 years.
I have lived in the Austrlaian climate. I have lived through drought that I thought would never end and we had to truck in water.
If it rains twice as much in Ireland in future, then the climate of Ireland has changed - even though rain is "nothing unusual" in Ireland.
Never let the best be the enemy of the good.
I would compare recorded rainfall with rainfall over the past and form a view on how far this was outside past experience.
From that point, the extent to which I could say it was unusual would also depend on outcomes in other areas.
For example consider the statement:
Melbourne has experience little rainfall in the last 10 years compared with recorded rainfall over the last 150.
BUT
Given there are hundreds (probably thousands) of similarly defined regions across Australia, this might be the expected 1 in 200, or 1 in 1000 outcome across all the regions. (as an analogy, you might easily pick out this weeks lottery winner as an example of how you can predict a lottery win - but of course you would be ignoring all the other relevant data - in this case Sydney Rainfall, Brisbane rainfall, Tamworth rainfall etc.)
Then of course you need to consider this result and other outliers against the prior expectations. What were you saying 10 years ago about the predicted affect of human caused climate change on rainfall? You can't do this looking back in time - as you are doing here. You risk making backward-looking rationalisations as we now see with the global temperature record (after 10 years of no warming all of a sudden there is "research" that says we should expect this from AGW - when of course there was no such prediction 10 years ago; it was thought next to impossible that global temperatures wouldn't keep rising)
It is one of the dangers of looking at climate change in terms of any given weather event, and as you say there will always be an extreme weather event happening somewhere. However, it's extremely rare for anyone in the scientific community to try and pin any particular weather event on global warming.
As to what was predicted 10 years ago about the effects of climate change on rainfall, the answer would be that it's been an expected effect for longer than that - see for example here.
Never let the best be the enemy of the good.
Just because you lived through it doesn't make you an expert. And I'm living through it right now by the way.
Its the tropics up there - of course its wet. You don't get deserts in tropical areas like north Queensland. However the temperature has increased nationwide by an average of .9 degrees since 1950, according to the Australian Government themselves
Climate Change in Australia - Temperature, Rainfall, Humidity, Sea surface Temperature, Wind speed, Potential evapotranspiration, Downward solar radiation
And if I was engaged in cherry picking when talking about the drought (victoria is the size of the UK and Tassie the size of Ireland) or the threats to the Murray/Darling river basin (the bread basket of Australia) then fair enough, however it was in response to Dan who constantly uses the weather in his back garden or the state of Massachucetts (spelling?) to try disprove global warming.
I guess I was then cherry picking - the higher than average rainfall in the north that you point to though is ironically climate change related also.
As the great warrior poet Ice Cube once said, 'if the day does not require an AK, it is good.'
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