TC Yasi reaches Category 5

2 February, 2011 by

TC Yasi

Our thoughts are with the people of Queensland as Cyclone Yasi approaches – a monster storm indeed.

Check out its progress at the Bureau page here.

For those still tempted to use the words “unprecedented” or biggest/worst “ever”, nothing helps more than a look at history:

Tropical cyclone Mahina hit on 4 March 1899. It was a Category 5 cyclone, the most powerful of the tropical cyclone severity categories. In addition, Mahina was perhaps one of the most intense cyclones ever observed in the Southern Hemisphere and almost certainly the most intense cyclone ever observed off the East Coast of Australia in living memory. Mahina was named by Government Meteorologist for Queensland Clement Wragge, a pioneer of naming such storms.

Within an hour, the Thursday Island based pearling fleet anchored in the bay or nearby, was either driven onto the shore or onto the Great Barrier Reef or sunk at their anchorages. Four schooners and the manned Channel Rock lightship were lost. A further two schooners were wrecked but later refloated. Of the luggers, 54 were lost and a further 12 were wrecked but refloated. Over 30 survivors of the wrecked vessels were later rescued from the shore however over 307 were killed, mostly immigrant non-European crew members.

A storm surge, variously reported as either 13 metres or 48 feet (14.6 meters) high, swept inland for about 5 kilometers, destroying anything that was left of the Bathurst Bay pearling fleet along with the settlement.

Eyewitness Constable J. M. Kenny reported that a 48 ft (14.6 m) storm surge swept over their camp at Barrow Point atop a 40 ft (12 m) high ridge and reached 3 miles (5 km) inland, the largest storm surge ever recorded. However Nott and Hayne reviewed the evidence for this. They modelled the surge based on the 914 hPa central pressure and found the surge should only have been 2 to 3m height. They also surveyed the area looking for wave cut scarps and deposits characteristic of storm events but found none higher than 5 m. Of the 48 ft surge they suggest the ground level cited may not be correct, or that terrestrial flooding was also involved. (source)

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Greens blame Cyclone Yasi on "climate change"

1 February, 2011 by

Bunch of cynical ecotards

Does anyone really give a flying f**k what the Greens think any more? Why yes, the ABC does, which reports their every petulant outburst with wholly undue reverence. It was only a matter of time before the eco-totalitarians in the Greens, desperate to advance their Marxist agenda by any means possible, blamed the (yet to arrive) Cyclone Yasi on climate change. Tell me Senator Milne, where is your evidence for that ludicrous statement? Oh, yeah, I remember, we don’t need evidence, do we, just desperate appeals to ignorance and emotion.

I run these stories to demonstrate to my readers how irrelevant the Greens are in modern politics. I know it’s painful, but it has to be done.

The Australian Greens say Tropical Cyclone Yasi is a “tragedy of climate change”.

The party was heavily criticised after it linked the Queensland floods to climate change and blamed coal miners.

Greens deputy leader Christine Milne says the cyclone is another example of why it is important to cut carbon pollution.

“This is a tragedy, but it is a tragedy of climate change,” she said.

“The scientists have been saying that we are going to experience more extreme weather events, that their intensity is going to increase, their frequency.” (source)

To think that people have been stupid enough to vote these idiots into the balance of power in the Senate beggars belief.

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Media bias: Monckton and Delingpole stitched up

1 February, 2011 by

BBC is tied up with it…

Hands up who is in the least bit surprised by this? Two shows featuring climate sceptics by the BBC, both heavily biased against any kind of scepticism whatsoever (and in favour of gullibility, therefore). Earlier this week, James Delingpole was done up like the proverbial kipper in a documentary presented by new Royal Society president, Sir Paul Nurse [that should have rung alarm bells for a start – Ed]:

Nurse came to interview me at my home last summer, ostensibly – so his producer assured me – as a disinterested seeker-after-truth on a mission to discover why the public is losing its faith in scientists. “Not scientists,” I replied. “Just ‘climate scientists.’” But as is clear from the Horizon documentary Nurse had already made up his mind. That’s why about the only section he used out of at least three hours’ worth of footage is the one where he tosses what he clearly imagines is the killer question: Suppose you were ill with cancer would you wish to be treated by “consensus” medicine or something from the quack fringe?

As you’ll see in the programme, this took me rather by surprise. Nurse had come posing as an open-minded investigator eager to hear why Climategate had raised legitimate doubts about the reliability of the “consensus” on global warming. Instead, the man I met was a parti-pris bruiser so delighted with his own authority as a proper Nobel-prizewinning scientist that he knew what the truth was already. And to prove it, here was a brilliant analogy which would rubbish the evil climate deniers’ cause once and for all!

But Nurse’s analogy is shabby, dishonest and patently false. The “consensus” on Climate Change; and the “consensus” on medical care bear no similarity whatsoever. (source)

But what does it matter? The aim is to smear the filthy deniers at any cost, right? We need to shelter the viewers from their opinions [because they are so damaging to our beloved consensus… – Ed].

The second example in a week did the dirty on Christopher Monckton. This time, “independent” filmmaker Rupert Murray ingratiates himself with the sceptics and convinces them that he’s sympathetic to their cause – but then dumps on them from a great height. As Dellers reports again:

Murray’s documentary is another hatchet job. This time the man designated for the chop is Lord Monckton. Except, knowing Monckton as I do, I don’t think he’s going to let this one lie. Sure he’ll probably be made to look a fool, but then as Richard North explains in this superb essay, this means nothing.

This is the practice of modern documentary makers, who can gather huge amounts of material and then edit and assemble the material in a way that they can present a message, the message the producer wishes to convey. This is irrespective of what is actually said, and what interviewees actually intended.

The process, North explains, works like this:

You write the script first, setting out what you want to say. Then you go out and find the talking heads that will say the words you need to fit the script. You (in this case I) interview them, collect up the words on the tape and then go back to the edit suite and pull out the words that fit.

Murray, it seems likely, had made up his mind what his angle was long, long before he inveigled his way into the sceptics’ circle and passed himself off as a decent fellow just trying to find out the truth. I’ll say one thing for him: he’s very plausible. I only twigged last week, when I rang him up to find out what his documentary would look like and how much I was in it.

“We’ve decided to concentrate on Monckton I’m afraid,” he said.

“Oh never mind,” I said. “I quite understand. Christopher is way more colourful and exciting than I am.”

We then had a chat about peer-to-peer review, in the course of which Murray quoted approvingly one “Dr Trenberth.” “Well Dr Trenberth says….” he began, in a way which suggested regular contact and great admiration.

Anyway, at least I’m not in it, I don’t think. When Calum asked me to sign the release form for my interview, I said that I would quite like to see the programme beforehand. Funny, I haven’t heard from them since. (source)

Monckton went so far as to seek an injunction preventing broadcast without a right of reply. Unfortunately, it failed.

Media bias at its absolute worst.

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NSW climate fund raided to ease electricity prices

1 February, 2011 by

Raiders of the Lost Climate Fund

Thanks to pointless green policies, electricity prices were set to soar [even further – Ed] in New South Wales, so what better way to avoid such increases than by taking money from other pointless green policies? Makes sense really! As the worst Labor government in living memory stumbles to its inevitable election defeat in March, the Premier is trying to do something, anything, to please the long-suffering electorate:

KRISTINA Keneally is promising to axe electricity bill rises of $100 in a $1.5 billion bid to calm voter anger over power prices.

The Premier also flagged she would soon announce an electricity rebate for households earning less than $150,000 a year.

The moves come after months of revelations and campaigning by The Daily Telegraph to ease the pain on working families around the state.

“I can’t make bananas any cheaper, I can’t make the cost of petrol any cheaper but I can do something as the Premier of this state about electricity prices and that’s what I’m doing,” she said yesterday.

Ms Keneally said the Government would pay the entire cost of its $1.5 billion solar bonus scheme, until 2016, rather than all electricity users being charged.

To pay for the promise, the Government will strip its Climate Change Fund almost entirely of money for green projects until 2020, including scrapping its long-running rainwater tank rebate. (source)

Feel good story of the day.

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