Andrew Bolt's Blog, page 1897

I'd take a free trip to play in Geneva's snow, too

As I've said before, if the UN was headquartered in Addis Ababa instead, we'd have fewer people flying over to tell foreigners about alleged problems here they neither understand not have a right to intervene over:

Recently retired Adelaide Crow Andrew McLeod will join Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission commissioner Mick Gooda and AFL official Jason Mifsud at the conference in Geneva, Switzerland.They will detail the AFL's role in combating discrimination, as European sport still grapples with racism....

"I was lucky I came into the AFL system when it was just after Nicky Winmar's actions and then Michael Long made his stance," McLeod said.

"Early on there was racism, mostly from opposition supporters rather than from players, but then the AFL took a stand and said, 'This is not acceptable', and then the players signed off on it, and it's something you just don't hear now. We are still not perfect, but you don't hear racism now."

McLeod, who retired last year, plans to use the occasion to mark a first.

"I have never seen snow before, so I want to have a bit of a look around Geneva. I just want to throw a snowball. It's a great honour to be able to go over and represent the AFL and be part of this."

Nice for McLeod, but is this the best way for the AFL to spend its charity dollars or help Aborigines other than McLeod? 

Wivenhoe: too little and then too much

Yesterday I wondered whether the Wivenhoe's decision makers were on duty on the critical weekend before Brisbane flooded. Somehow they'd let the dam's flood-protection reverse get half full by Monday morning, leaving the dam unable to cope with the deluge of rain from Monday.

It turns out that an SEQ Water engineer was indeed on deck, making decisions. The trouble is that the emails he sent out to stakeholders suggest too little was released until it was too late, when too much floodwater then had to be dumped to save the dam - with the releases of 1250 cubic metres per second over the weekend having to be ramped up to 8000 at the very peak of the flood:

LEAKED email communications from a Wivenhoe Dam engineering officer underline concerns that the Brisbane River flood was mostly caused by massive releases from the dam after it had held on to water too long over a crucial 72 hours before the severe rainfall that hit the region last week.

The emails, which become increasingly urgent in tone as the situation became critical as the dam's levels rise rapidly, were provided to The Australian by a source who said the stream of data had convinced him the river flood of Brisbane could have been largely avoided if the dam's operators had taken action much earlier.

A commission of inquiry will examine whether the dam's operators erred in permitting the dam's flood compartment to be severely limited for a major rainfall event because of their strategy to let the dam's levels rise over the weekend of January 8-9.

According to figures from Wivenhoe's operator, SEQWater, the dam's capacity went from 106 per cent full on the morning of Friday, January 7, to 148 per cent full on the morning of Monday, January 10, due to the limited weekend releases. Experts have said this severely compromised the dam's ability to store additional runoff.

UPDATE

This debate will have huge ramifications for the insurance industry, if the Brisbane flood can be put down in part to human miscalculation:

The Age understands that insurers have reached an initial view that home owners and businesses would not have automatic cover for flood damage in Brisbane and nearby Ipswich, while many in some of the worst hit parts of south-east Queensland would be in line for payouts.

The early finding, which is understood to have been reached at a board meeting of the Insurance Council of Australia this week, is likely to anger thousands of insurance customers given they face little in the way of payouts, or none at all, under the terms of their policy.

According to senior insurance industry figures, customers in Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley are expected to be covered by their policies, given damage in those areas was as a result of storm or run-off from stormwater.

However, the Insurance Council has concluded that damage in Brisbane and Ipswich was a result of flooding, something that is not automatically covered by most insurers.

The insurers will no doubt get the predictable populist backlash and political grandstanding for affirming what many insurance contracts plainly state - that storm-caused flooding and similar "acts of God" aren't covered. But a contract is a contract, and in this case the premiums were calculated with these exceptions taken into account. To given policy holders flood cover that they didn't pay for is an act of charity, not an obligation.

That makes the threats on intervention by the Gillard Government unjustifiable:

This came as the federal government put Australia's insurance industry on notice to reform its standard flood cover, and to broaden access to flood policies for all households, or face government intervention.

These men have the final say on what laws get through

The "new paradigm" of democracy promised by the independents who now hold the balance of power has us debating far more important things these days:

PARLIAMENT'S three amigos are no more, after Bob Katter accused one of his fellow rural independents of undermining him and the other "went his own way"…

"The independents' movement in Australia has failed, failed miserably," Mr Katter told The Australian, lifting the lid on infighting between the key crossbenchers.

For a time, feelings were so raw for the maverick Queensland MP that he refused to attend policy or legislative briefings by the government or opposition with Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, his former amigos. This has compounded the difficulty of managing the knife-edge numbers in parliament for both major parties…

Mr Katter, 65, particularly resented a tongue-in-cheek remark by Mr Windsor that he kept toilet paper in his work satchel. Separately, he concluded that Mr Windsor was behind an editorial in his local newspaper, Tamworth's Northern Daily Leader, that was critical of Mr Katter's refusal to participate in a fly-on-the-wall documentary on the trio by ABC television's Four Corners program after the election. Mr Windsor denies this.

Rudd searches Africa again for his UN job

Kevin Rudd continues to distort Australia's foreign policy to promote his own absurd United Nations ambitions:

KEVIN Rudd is set to travel to Africa in an effort to shore up votes for Australia's Security Council bid and harness the continent's growing economic potential for Australian investors.

The Australian understands Mr Rudd is due to fly to Ethiopia on Monday night as part of trip that will include the Africa Union meeting of foreign ministers, as well as numerous one-on-one meetings with African foreign ministers…

It is ... the clearest sign yet that Mr Rudd remains committed to securing Australia a seat on the UN Security Council, a controversial objective set in the early days of his prime ministership…

Africa represents a rich trove of potential Security Council votes, which Mr Rudd will be keen to harvest for the election, due to be held in October next year....

Since announcing the bid in 2008, Canberra has lavished diplomatic attention on Africa, opening an embassy in Ethiopia and frequently dispatching high-level officials on tours of the region, including then foreign minister Stephen Smith and Governor-General Quentin Bryce.

Among the criticisms levelled at Mr Rudd is the cost—which is budgeted to cost just over $13 million over the first three years of the bid, a figure that does not include ancillary expenses widely considered part of the effort, such as reopening the embassy in Addis Ababa.

It's also becoming obvious to many in Canberra that all this is not just to get Australia the hollow prize of a Security Council seat, but to get a position on the UN for Rudd himself.

Europe's carbon trading suspended after fraudsters hit - again

The trade in hot air is an open invitation to a fraudster:

The European carbon market has been thrown into turmoil after the scandal-hit scheme was suspended for a week over suspicions of fraud.

More than €2bn (£1.7bn) of trade is likely to be disrupted after the European Commission said it would prevent transactions until January 26.

The suspension follows allegations that 475,000 carbon credits worth €7m were stolen in a hacking attack on the Czech carbon register. It appears that the intangible allowances were bounced between eastern European countries before disappearing without a trace…

This is not the first challenge to the credibility of the €90bn annual market in carbon allowances

Under the flagship scheme, companies need permits to emit carbon dioxide as part of the global fight against climate change and polluters are granted a certain number of emissions allowances that can be traded.

But it has been plagued by fraud, with Europol estimating that carbon trading criminals trying to play the system may have accounted for up to 90pc of all market activity in some European countries during 2009.

(Thanks to many readers.)

And the very next year the rains returned…. and how

Yet the warmists will keep claiming they predicted this past year of heavy rain, and these huge summer downpours. This time let's quote The Age from 10 December 2009, when endless drought was predicted just weeks from the start of one of our wettest years:

Environmentalists were disappointed by the State Government's low ambitions for river health, particularly under the rainfall outlook described as the continuation of the past decade's conditions…

Environment Victoria chief executive Kelly O'Shanassy said rivers in northern Victoria were over-allocated, and the State Government should start a buyback regime of its own.

"The strategy… leaves our rivers to bear the brunt of climate change while continuing to allow too much water to be taken for irrigation,'' she said.

Sure, we promptly got floods rather than the drought the warmists predicted, but don't you dare say their theory is wrong.

UPDATE

The 2007 Synthesis Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - the Vatican of the warming faith - made no mention of more floods in Australia from heavy rain. Its predictions for us ran entirely the other way:

- By 2030, water security problems are projected to intensify in southern and eastern Australia…

- By 2030, production from agriculture and forestry is projected to decline over much of southern and eastern Australia, and over parts of eastern New Zealand, due to increased drought and fire.

That chapter was co-written by Australia's own Professor David Karoly, who now claims that the heavy rain we've seen instead was predicted, too:

Professor Karoly stressed individual events could not be attributed to climate change. However, he said the wild extremes being experienced on the continent were in keeping with scientists' forecasts of more flooding associated with increased heavy rain events and more droughts as a result of high temperatures and more evaporation.

(Thanks to readers Mark and Rick. No comments during break.)

Revenge is best served up in public

Todd Woodbridge will never text freely again, after what Kim Clijsters did to him today.

Gillard eyes off a new tax, now that she's spent what the Liberals left

Fabulous. The surplus squandered, the rainy day comes and there Labor goes again:

PRIME Minister Julia Gillard has warned that the economic impact from the flooding in Queensland could result in both spending cutbacks and a flood levy.

"This is going to require some difficult decisions, spending cutbacks and there may even a levy," Ms Gillard said on ABC's 7.30 Report tonight.

Forget the levy. Slash the waste, from the "cash for clunkers" and solar power programs to the National Broadband Network, which alone is worth the price of two Queensland reconstructions.

Did Wivenhoe's operators check the dam levels over the weekend?

Reader Greg has a question about the Wivenhoe dam meant to save Brisbane from flooding: did the dam operators knock off during the critical weekend before? 

In reading the following, bear in mind that the dam level of 100 per cent refers to that part of the dam that supplies drinking water and not the 125 per cent capacity above that which is meant to be empty to save Brisbane from floods, but which became so full so suddenly that a great torrent had to be released from Monday last week, and especially from Tuesday - which then hit the city just at the wrong time:

This maybe nothing, but I was having a look at SEQ Dam levels (see above).

If you just choose Wivenhoe and squeeze up the sliders it will give you last few months…

Couple of interesting things

1) (The dam levels are not) taken back to 100% or below 100% at any stage except now after the recent flood event, then only to 99%

2) there are NO READINGS on weekends or public holidays. Iif they do them they don't record them.

3) When it was read on Friday 7 Jan it was 106.3% and that would explain the small releases over the weekend 8th and 9th January.

The next reading was 9am Monday 10 January, the dam was at a massive 148.4%, this is 74 hours from Friday morning reading at 6am.

4) It would be interesting to know what the readings were on 8th and 9th January, if it was read.

Maybe I am thinking the worst here, but I am thinking no readings are done through the entire grid on weekends and public holidays.

It certainly looks that way I cannot find a reading on those days over all the grid. Surely if they do them they display them.

There are 7 readings missing in first 16 days of January.

I hope Brisbane hasn't gone though all this heartache and tragedy because they work 9 to 5 M-F.

I do not know how much there is to this speculation, and I make no allegations. If someone has an insight into this, I'd appreciate an email on bolta at heraldsun.com.au/

UPDATE

Reader David:

I presume that the table of data in your latest blog entry was derived from the SEQ Water website; which states (and has stated for as long as I can recall):

"… Information about the major dams is updated Monday to Friday around 9am, the smaller dams at least weekly. Dam levels are not updated on weekends."

It does not say that dam levels are not measured at the weekend; my point being that measuring the dam level is not the same thing as updating the data provided on a web site.

My hunch is that measurement of dam levels is an automated process, whereas updating the web probably needs human intervention – and that SECQ Water records are far more detailed and complete than what is publically available.

That may be so, but the point is that negible releases were made over the weekend, leaving the dam dangerously full by Monday, and leading to huge and panicky releases from Tuesday that helped to flood Brisbane. That suggests no decision-making on the weekend.

David also suggests I should not keep writing about this issue, and just leave it to an inquiry. My experience tells me that what the media won't discuss, an inquiry won't be directed to check.  It also suits governments to have the media politely wait its turn until an inquiry reports many months later, when attention has wandered again and political control of the message is much easier.

Just see how the lack of controlled burning in Victoria was almost killed off as an issue before the inquiry into the Black Saturday fires finally got around to checking on perhaps the biggest human factor behind the ferocity of the flames.

So the warmists must be wrong about that drought or these floods

And reported without a skerrick of scepticism by The Age, that Bible of Global Warming:

It's not drought, it's climate change, say scientists

Melissa Fyfe

August 30, 2009

SCIENTISTS studying Victoria's crippling drought have, for the first time, proved the link between rising levels of greenhouse gases and the state's dramatic decline in rainfall.

A three-year collaboration between the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO has confirmed what many scientists long suspected: that the 13-year drought is not just a natural dry stretch but a shift related to climate change....

''It's reasonable to say that a lot of the current drought of the last 12 to 13 years is due to ongoing global warming,'' said the bureau's Bertrand Timbal.

''In the minds of a lot of people, the rainfall we had in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was a benchmark. A lot of our [water and agriculture] planning was done during that time. But we are just not going to have that sort of good rain again as long as the system is warming up.''

Three conclusions suggest themselves as the good rains return and flood large parts of the country:

1.  Maybe "the system" isn't warming up, then.





2. Maybe man-made global warming isn't causing these floods.

3. Maybe man-made global warming didn't cause that drought.

At least one, and possibly all, of the above must be true. What's also true is that newspapers such as The Age, which for so long deliberately stifled questioning of the global warming faith, must now apologise for not just bad and unethical journalism, but for misleading so many of its trusting readers for so long.

(Thanks to reader Chris. No comments during break.)