{"id":379760,"date":"2025-05-24T20:12:37","date_gmt":"2025-05-24T18:12:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=379760"},"modified":"2025-05-24T20:12:39","modified_gmt":"2025-05-24T18:12:39","slug":"if-only-wed-built-those-offshore-wind-turbines-eaten-more-cricket-burgers-we-could-have-stopped-the-floods-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=379760","title":{"rendered":"If only we\u2019d built those offshore wind turbines, eaten more cricket-burgers, we could have stopped the floods, right?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From JoNova<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Jo Nova<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Major flooding has struck New South Wales with 50,000 people evacuated and three deaths. Even as one person is still missing, The Sydney Morning Herald and the Climate Council are already milking the disaster as a Witchdoctor Psy-Op for the Blob.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our thoughts are with everyone in the major flood areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shameless: The Climate Council is already exploiting floods in NSW as a climate scare<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\n

Climate pollution is fuelling more intense rainfall that triggers bigger floods, like the ones overwhelming towns on the NSW Mid North Coast right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Footage credit: Mmu At<\/p>\n\n\n\n

#NSWfloods<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/XdF73KkE9L<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 Climate Council (@climatecouncil) May 21, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The Sydney Morning Herald reads the tea-leaves of climate seance<\/h4>\n\n\n
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The intensifying climate driver behind the coastal deluges and inland drought<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Caitlyn Fitzsimmons, The Sydney Morning Herald<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note the spooky tea-leaf reading in the second paragraph \u2014 pay attention to the psychological operation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This dichotomy of drought and flooding rains is not new to Australia, but<\/strong> for it to occur simultaneously on opposite sides of the Great Dividing Range<\/strong> is a phenomenon that scientists say is likely to increase<\/strong> with climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Firstly they say the obvious, lulling the reader into thinking they are sensible \u2014 then there\u2019s the \u201cbut<\/strong>\u201d \u2014 followed by a bizarrely trite, and largely unknowable tea-leaf pattern. It\u2019s that \u201csimultaneous rain on opposite sides of the mountains\u201d, which turns out not to even be an actual observation of a cherry-picked 10-year-trend, but the vaporous emptiness of a \u201cphenomenon\u201d that someone predicts might happen. In other words, they have nothing at all, but they say it anyway in hushed significant tones, like tribal sorcerers have for thousands of years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They all wheel out the line that climate change increases humidity \u2014  the same line they promptly forget the minute there is a drought or a fire:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cClimate change is increasing the amount of moisture the atmosphere can hold by about 7 percentage points of humidity for every degree of warming.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If humidity doesn\u2019t prevent a single drought how do we know it causes any floods? They never mention that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, buried under 21 paragraphs of fortune-telling-sages winding up the audience, they find one semi-honest scientist who says it\u2019s impossible to say it was climate change:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr Chiara Holgate in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Weather of the 21st Century at the Australian National University, said Australia had a highly variable climate, and without an attribution analysis, it was impossible to say that climate change was the cause<\/strong> of any particular drought or floods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A very<\/em> honest scientist would also mention that rampant flooding has happened many times before, like in the 1820s, in 1857, 1866, 1893, 1949 and 1955 and CO2 had nothing to do with any of them. And a half decent cub scout reporter would ask these obvious questions. Where are they? We should do up charity rescue package for SMH readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, the not-so-great journalist could have just googled, I\u2019ve written this all up before.<\/a> In 1857 floods were so bad one boat was washed out to sea and the people on board spent ten days trying to get back, surviving on biscuits. The beaches were piled high with furniture, goats, pigs, melons and \u201cfive years of wood\u201d. Then the Manning River flooded again in 1866,<\/a> this time rising so fast overnight people went to sleep not realizing they were in danger and the losses were terrible because they had no time to prepare. There are heart-wrenching stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From my post on the 2021 floods<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The more money we put into government funded science the more it looks like witchcraft<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Does CO2 cause floods? It takes 3 minutes in the historic Trove archives to test this theory. In a surprise to climate models everywhere, getting CO2 back to 310ppm (even if it were possible) would return Australia to 1950, so we already know how this works out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were a spate of floods in Eastern Australia in the 1950\u2019s and 1960s when La Nina\u2019s were more common and the world was cooling. For example, in 1949, 8 people were killed and 20,000 were left homeless in New South Wales by flooding. The Adelaide Chronicle<\/em> June 23, 1949<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In Maitland in 1955,<\/a> 25 people died, 2,000 homes were inundated and 58 homes washed away. This was only three years after the previous floods when The Hume Highway at Camden was under 30 feet of water.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were floods in New South Wales in 1857 even before coal fired power was invented<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

A quarter century before<\/em> the first coal power plant was built anywhere in the world, devastating floods washed over New South Wales.<\/a>  There were three separate floods in 1857, \u201ceach worse than the one before\u201d. The floods and storms were described as afflicting an area from far north of Taree down to Goulburn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Hunter River Floods, 1857<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFive years of firewood\u201d washed up:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What amount of property was destroyed by the flood it is impossible to ascertain. The piles of wood, which of themselves would supply the inhabitants of both East and West Maitland with firewood for the next five years, have buried in, without doubt, some hundreds of pounds\u2019 worth of property. Many families are left entirely destitute of food and raiment. It is impossible to give an accurate description of this desolate scene.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the Hawkesbury \u201cWindsor was almost an island, there was no escape by dry land.\u201d In Mudgee, the \u201cconsequences were most disastrous \u201c.  .. the rain fell in torrents\u2026 \u201d \u201cOther floods occurred at Penrith, Camden, Gouldburn and Cassilis.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read the story of boats trapped for days, including one \u201csmall trusty craft\u201d that was \u201cdriven off course by the violence of the tempest some thousand miles\u201d and out of sight of land for ten days, while the people survived on biscuits. The beaches were covered to \u201can incredible height with the trophies of some devastating flood\u2026\u201d the debris included the sides and roofs of houses, furniture, cabbages, pumpkins, goats and pigs. Mail was stopped, and at least three boats were seen wrecked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Part a Floods, NSW, September 10th, 1857, Manning River, Trove, NSW.\u00a0 \u00a0Sydney Morning Herald| Click to enlarge.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Part b. Floods, NSW, September 10th, 1857, Manning River, Trove, NSW. Sydney Morning Herald| Click to enlarge.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 2025,<\/a> as with 2021, among other things, cows are even being rescued from the surf<\/a> on beaches, which probably makes them a lot luckier than the ones that got washed downriver in 1857.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thoughts and best wishes for everyone caught in this awful natural disaster. We hope a generation of farmers hasn\u2019t been wiped out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related:<\/p>\n\n\n\n