Andrew Bolt's Blog, page 1900

And he's the one they say is a gentleman

I thought Agassi was better than this:

Using a rather unorthodox sales technique, the former tennis great managed to get $7,000 for a porcelain plate at a charity auction earlier this month in Taiwan.

"You pay more than $4,000, and I will show you a picture of my wife — on my phone — naked," Agassi told the crowd.

True to his word, Agassi gave highest bidder Franz Chen a peek at a photo on his phone while on stage at the auction.

Chen said Tuesday that the picture showed the naked back of a blond woman who may or may not have been Agassi's wife, Steffi Graf.

Another expert suspects the Wivenhoe was left too full

Professor Andrew Dragen also suspects the Wivenhoe dam was too full, given the (continuing) likelihood of heavy rain during a La Nina:

The BOM warns that a strong La Nina weather pattern exists. Heavier rains and possibly cyclones are expected. Hydrologist Aron Gingis has warned of the problems of holding too much water in Wivenhoe and Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman saw it coming.

What have the Wivenhoe Dam operators been doing for the past couple of months? According to SEQ Water Grid chief Barry Dennien, dam levels were managed according to the rules and strictly by the operating manual. Dennien is comfortable that "everything happened the right way".

It seems the manual and the operator do not differentiate between the weather outlook of an El Nino (dry drought) and a La Nina (rain, flooding). After the drought, Wivenhoe reached 96 per cent of its supply capacity on March 16, 2010, and has been maintained at that level or higher since.

Despite the La Nina weather, the operator has chosen not to vary the supply capacity one degree....

Since last October the Wivenhoe operator has had three warnings. On October 13 the dam reached 126 per cent of capacity, on October 21 it reached 111 per cent, and on December 29 it reached 123 per cent. In each case the operator reduced the water level only to 100 per cent.

With the rainfall outlook, why didn't the operator reduce the capacity further? As former dam project supervisor Ian Chalmers observed, a dam operator "would have to have large balls to . . . reduce the supply capacity in the face of the weather warnings, after 10 years of drought".

Ironically, with the huge investment in securing the region's water supply with a desalination plant and water recycling facilities, the risk of wasting water would be small as against protecting for a serious flood.

Hallelujah: premier contradicts his warmist governor on the floods

I've warned before that Victoria's Governor is misusing his position to preach his absurd global warming catastrophism, and here he goes again:

VICTORIAN Governor David de Kretser has put himself at odds with the Premier by suggesting climate change is to blame for the nation's catastrophic floods.

Discussing the floods and the Black Saturday fires during an interview on 3AW yesterday, Dr de Kretser said: ''I'm sorry, I'm one of these believers in climate change, I'm afraid, and … I don't think it's going to go away.

''There's too many of these events, not only in Australia but throughout the whole world that are happening now … Everyone says this week [is a] one in 100, one in 200 years [event] but they are happening pretty much more frequently now.''

But what's new and - to me - as unexpected as it is welcome is that the state now has a Premier prepared to contradict him:

Premier Ted Baillieu later disagreed with the Governor's linking of the floods to climate change. ''I don't think we are in any position to make a comment on that, frankly,'' he told The Age.

He said he had been told yesterday that Melbourne Water was now saying Victorians should expect 30 per cent more rainfall in the next 10 years.

''You've only got to go back 12 months ago and they were saying Victorians should expect 30 per cent less,'' Mr Baillieu said.

It has been a long time since any Premier in Australia openly contradicted the standard warmist alarmism, and Baillieu must be congratulated.

But this incident highlights even more the foolishness of de Kretser to play politics while holding a position that demands he be avowedly apolitical. We have here the makings of a political crisis.

Another reminder to the Governor:

As former governor, Labor stalwart and judge Richard McGarvie wrote, a governor or governor-general must be a "respected person who remains entirely above partisan politics and exerts a unifying influence".

"100 metres" Williams is already four metres down in four years

It's four years since this exchange with the ABC's science guru and leading warmist, Robyn Williams:

Andrew Bolt: I'm telling you, there's a lot of fear out there. So what I do is, when I see an outlandish claim being made...so Tim Flannery suggesting rising seas this next century eight stories high, Professor Mike Archer, dean of engineering at the University of NSW…

Robyn Williams: Dean of science.

Andrew Bolt: Dean of science...suggesting rising seas this next century of up to 100 metres, or Al Gore six metres. When I see things like that I know these are false. You mentioned the IPCC report; that suggests, at worst on best scenarios, 59 centimetres.

Robyn Williams: Well, whether you take the surge or whether you take the actual average rise are different things.

Andrew Bolt: I ask you, Robyn, 100 metres in the next century...do you really think that?  Robyn Williams: It is possible, yes. The increase of melting that they've noticed in Greenland and the amount that we've seen from the western part of Antarctica, if those increases of three times the expected rate continue, it will be huge.

The red dot marks the date that Williams claimed the seas could rise 100 metres this century, or a metre a year on average, thanks to man-made warming.

If the rest of the century is like the four years that followed, he'll be about 99.98 metres short.

MTR today, January 18

On our MTR 1377 show today, I play an excerpt from Greens leader Bob Brown's deceptive defense of his wild claim that coal miners caused the Queenesland floods. Five misleading statements in just a couple of lines - how can anyone take Brown seriously?

I also play what I think could be broadcast by all stations on Australia Day to the benefit of the nation - a bit of culture and also a reminder not to fall for the Browns of this world.

Niki Savva, author and former Costello staffer, tells us she's not embarrassed to have been so tough on Julia Gillard's lousy performance during the floods now that the Prime Minister's partner has been stung into defending her.

And more, including Gillard's new business round table.

Listen here.

Johns Says it, not me

Keating Government minister Gary Johns, now a professor at the Australian Catholic University, says what I dare not, given a court case:

People now being recruited to university as indigenous are frankly embarrassing. Many of these students would not have suffered any prejudice whatsoever and are generations apart from traditional society. "They are heralded as part of the success of a 'program' purely to keep up the numbers. The harm this sort of activity does is to undermine the work of those who actually have to change people's behaviour, not simply recruit those who would have made it regardless. The net impact of such programs is near zero.

If Afghanistan is this safe, then why are they coming?

We're now into housing development in Afghanistan to stop what Labor's softening of our boat people laws has encouraged:

FAILED Afghan asylum seekers face deportation under a new agreement between Australia and the war-torn nation. In return, Australia will pay for a new housing project outside the capital, Kabul.

Australia will also fund reintegration support for those returning and improvements to the country's passport system.

Those Afghans considered genuine refugees will be free to stay in Australia but the agreement means potentially hundreds could now be turned away.

But here's the question that this deal raises: If parts of Afghanistan are safe enough to build a new housing project to house rejected asylum seekers, why do we take any Afghan refugees at all? Isn't it Afghanistan's responsibility to find new homes for its citizens fleeing less peaceful areas?

And that, in turn, raises a question about precisely why so many Afghans do come, and whether they are driven out or lured in.

(No comments during break.)

Surplus promise washed away

Gillard's most solemn promise was always hostage to events:

PRIME Minister Julia Gillard's commitment to return the federal budget to surplus in 2012-13 is coming under more pressure as the likely damage bill from the most devastating series of floods in Australia's recorded history continues to mount.With the still unfolding crisis in Victoria adding to a colossal damage bill in Queensland, Ms Gillard and Treasurer Wayne Swan yesterday conceded that the budget would be stretched by flood recovery and rebuilding costs for years.

Pointedly, when discussing the financial implications of the floods, Ms Gillard did not repeat assurances earlier this month that the promised schedule for a return to budget surplus would be unchanged.

''We will be managing the federal budget so that we can meet the needs of recovery and rebuilding,'' Ms Gillard said…

As Ms Gillard and Mr Swan avoided direct speculation on the surplus timetable, a leading economist discounted their chances of meeting the 2012-13 target. AMP head of investment strategy Shane Oliver cited predictions that flood recovery could cost $20 billion, and noted that for every dollar the states spent on rebuilding, Canberra must pay them back 75¢.

Another broken promise seems almost inevitable. With money so badly needed, it hardly seems the right time to impose a growth-choking "carbon tax" or emissions trading system, either.

(No comments during break.)

It's about enabling rather than imposing

Rosemary Johnston, head of education at the University of Technology, Sydney, chooses a collective noun instead of the right one in describing a new education project:

Addressing questions such as these will help Australians find new and ethical and elegant ways of flourishing as Australians.

I'd say a nobler aim of education would be to help Australians find new and ethical and elegant ways of flourishing as individuals.

If it had been emptier, they'd have released less

Perhaps the Brisbane flood was man-made, after all, but not in the way Bob Brown claims:

MORE than 80 per cent of the flood in the Brisbane River at its peak last Thursday was the direct result of a critically urgent release from the Wivenhoe Dam of up to a third of its entire capacity.Data obtained by The Australian shows that, without that release, which peaked at an unprecedented rate of 645,000 megalitres a day, flooding in Brisbane would have been minimal.

Data from Wivenhoe Dam's owner and operator, the Queensland government-owned SEQWater, shows the peak flow in the Brisbane River when the river hit a height of 4.46m in the early hours of last Thursday was about 9000 cubic metres per second. Hydrologists and engineers said a release at a peak rate of 645,000ML a day would produce an estimated peak flow of almost 7500 cubic metres per second, leading to the conclusion that the flooding occurred because of the massive release from the dam.