Originally blogged at Realclimategate

In the Guardian – Germaine Greer writes an excellent article about the causes of the Brisbane flooding and the failures of the public and local government (covered up warnings)  to do anything about it when they were forewarned.

Basically an entirely predicted La Nina event, an example of weather not climate

Meteorologists warned Australians six months ago to prepare for a soaking. And nobody did a thing …

Guardian:  Australian Floods: Why were we so surprised? by Germaine Greer

Germaine writes an article of total clarity and sanity….

We all learned the poem at school, about how ours is “a sunburnt country  of droughts and flooding rains”.

And yet we still don’t get it. After 10 years of drought, we are having the inevitable flooding rains. The pattern is repeated regularly and yet Australians are still taken by surprise.

Six months ago the meteorologists thought it was worthwhile to warn people to “get ready for a wet, late winter and a soaked spring and summer”. So what did the people do? Nothing. They said, “She’ll be right, mate”. She wasn’t.

……. and the Guardian commentors do not like it..

Germaine will be in one of Monbiots Halls of Shame next,(in the Guardian  and at the Campaign Against Climate Change – George is Hon President) don’t worry Germaine think of it as a  ‘badge of clarity of thought’ and make sure you send the them a nice photograph.

To summarise the article; meteorologists predicted it months ago, there was a worse flood in Brisbane in 1893, quotes that poem ‘ the land of drought and floods’, mentions that the dam used to manage the water flow, was not used properly, because they did not want to waste the water, etc, etc

At Watts Up With That there is an article about suggested re-education about ‘climate change’ for meteorolgist and weathermen by the NSF and GMU.  I suggest those involved with that read Germaine’s article, only a passing mention of AGW, about where the weather men got it right.

Yet because of decades of preaching by ‘climate scientists’ and CAGW advocates to the Australian government about drought. Instead of  the dam being used to control the flood and preventing the predicted flood, the local government were more concerned with  preserving all that water, that shouldn’t even be there according to the drought predictions due to CAGW.

Also billions of dollars of taxpayers money have been spent on desalinisation plants (now being mothballed) because the future of Australia was drought according to the CAGW advocates. Yet some  senior CAGW advocate ‘climate scientists’ like Kevin Trenberth even link this event to ‘global warming’ (man made) quietly forgeting the past predictions for Australia.

According to the article, Germaine Greer was born in Australia and spends 3-4 months there a year. Thus a little local knowledge, trumps opportunistic CAGW alarmism.

An interesting quote:

“Professor Neville Nicholls, president of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, believes that “the Queensland floods are caused by what is one of the strongest (if not the strongest) La Niña events since our records began in the late 19th century”. He was asked if the intensification was a consequence of global warming, and declined to comment. Other people have been rather too quick to claim the extreme weather as a direct consequence of global warming. (It will surprise many readers of the Guardian to learn that in Australia there is still a bad-tempered debate about whether global warming is happening or not.)”

Could someone email the article to Damian Carrington and George Monbiot 😉 and those Australian CAGW activists that keep appearing on Australian television, blaming the Brisbane floods ‘global warming’ instead of human incompetence in the face of 6 months warning by those much derided (by climate scientists) meteorologists and ‘weathermen’.

Update: to be fair to Damian Carrington, he has an article about La Nina to blame, yet in it, rent a quote Vicky Pope (Met Office) links it to global warming with ” a warmer world, is a wetter world’.  The Australians however have been warned for years  that AGW will and has been causing drought.