Andrew Bolt's Blog, page 1910

Fancy, a dam turns out useful in a flood

The newest dam in Australia has been built just in time for the massive flood-causing rains that former Premier Peter Beattie three years ago feared had been dried up by global warming:

Australia's newest dam, conceived in a record dry spell, is now starting to fill with flooding rains.

Small lakes have begun to pool in the 130,000ML Wyaralong dam, about 90km southwest of Brisbane, spurred on by the highest rainfall the region has experienced in a decade.

The $348 million dam was announced at the peak of southeast Queensland's drought crisis in 2005 and built this year at a rate Queensland Infrastructure Minister Stirling Hinchliffe described as "nothing short of amazing".

The pipe diverting Teviot Brook away from the dam was plugged on Friday, allowing the water to begin accumulating up the 45m high wall.

Wyaralong dam will be the region's fifth-largest dam, the first in a generation, and is connected to southeast Queensland's new $6.9 billion water grid. The grid, an interconnected network of dams, water recycling plants, and the $1.2bn Tugun desalination plant, is capable of supplying 58ML a day to residents. The desalination plant—which can be brought to full operation of 138ML a day within 72 hours—was mothballed because consistent rainfall makes it unnecessary at this stage, while the Beattie government's planned Traveston "megadam" was scuttled last year on environmental grounds.

That was the story 10 days ago. Every day, the dam fills higher, and Victoria must now wonder why its own Labor Government refused to build a cheap dam, too, opting instead for a $5.7 billion desalination plant to deliver a third of the water on the grounds that global warming was - yes - drying up the rains:

Unfortunately, we cannot rely on this kind of rainfall like we used to...

(No comments during holiday break.)

Let me know if you spot it first

It's now 2011. Any day now, three years after we voted Labor, we'll finally see some delivery, as promised last year by Julia Gillard:

2011 is the year of delivering high-speed broadband. 2011 is also the year we deliver historic health reform. So 2011 will be a year of delivery. And 2011 will be a year of decision as well.

2011 is the year Australia decides on carbon pricing. In 2011 there will be nowhere to hide, and 2011 is a year where workforce participation will come to the fore. In 2011 the debate needs to move from the problems to the solutions.

I intend for 2011 to be defined less by politics and more by government.

So 2011 will be a year of delivery—and decision. Methodical.

Making steady progress on our plans, day by day, week by week. Modernising.

Any day now. Just you wait. 

Winters are sure colder than they predicted

This latest northern winter is not the only unusually cold event to confound the predictions of global warming alarmists.

Dr Madhav L Khandekar, former research scientist from Environment Canada and an Expert Reviewer for the IPCC 2007, says the evidence suggests winters have become colder and possibly longer in the past 10 years.

Since the new millennium, there have been four winter seasons in the northern hemisphere which can be assessed as significantly colder and longer as well. As mentioned earlier, the 2002/03 winter was very severe over eastern Canada, the US eastern sea-board and in parts of Europe. The last three winters (2007-2010) have been significantly colder than normal in Europe, parts of North America and east Asia. The entire continent of South America witnessed one of the coldest winters during July 2007 and again this past winter in July 2010. A listing of cold weather extremes of the last six years is provided below for ready reference:

1. Winter 2009/10: Scotland suffered some of the coldest winter months in almost one hundred years; cold weather in Germany and eastern Europe caused several deaths and major disruption in transportation system; Bulgaria reported a low temperature of -29C, lowest in fifty years; Siberia suffered perhaps the coldest winter ever, according to Russian scientists.

2. Winter 2007/08: The snowiest winter over northern hemisphere since 1966; severe cold spells in the Middle East, eastern Europe, China and mid-western states in the US; mean temperature between December 2007-February 2008 was coldest over the earth since 2001; Watson Lake, Yukon, Canada had a low temperature of -52C on February 1; sea-ice between Greenland and northeast Canada was highest in 15 years;

3. Winter 2005/06: very cold in parts of Russia with long cold spell in Moscow; Europe had a very cold New Years' Day with temperatures well below normal in many areas; Poland reported 22 deaths from hypothermia in December 2005; parts of China was very cold and Tokyo and other cities in Japan received record-breaking snowfall

4. Winter 2004/05: Long, snowy and much colder in eastern Canada, several blizzards with heavy snow accumulation in central Canada; heavy snow in Himalayan foothills & in Kashmir valley in India. It should also be noted here that the 2004 summer was one of the coldest summers over US and Canada in almost one hundred years!

5. Winter 2003/04: Unusually cold and severe in eastern Canada, city of Halifax received close to 100 cm of snow in 24 hours in February 2004; New York city and vicinity received all time record snow, ~50 cm at earliest date, 5 December 2003.

6. Winter 2002/03: severe cold in parts of Europe, over 200 deaths in Poland in January 2003; long cold spells in northern India, Bangladesh & Vietnam with several hundred people dying of exposure to cold in January 2003; temperature in some areas of Mongolia fell to -50C in January 2003; by March 2003, over 90% of the Great Lakes region in US/Canada were frozen and Lake Superior (the largest and deepest of the lakes) was almost 98% covered with ice.

There are numerous other cold weather events of recent years which have been archived by a US-based project ICECAP (International Climate & Environmental Assessment Project: http://www.icecap). What is of interest here is that cold weather extremes seem to be occurring with greater frequency in the last ten years than what has been reported in media or in scientific literature. IPCC climate change documents do not mention anything about cold weather extremes and their trends and/or changes in future climate projections.

(No comments during holiday period.)

If the evidence were so strong, there'd be no need for such untruths

Dennis Ambler checks the statistics behind recently claims that 97 per cent of climate scientists believe man is heating the planet and finds evidence of some exaggeration:

However a headline of "0.73% of climate scientists think that humans are affecting the climate" doesn't quite have the same ring as 97% does it?

Er, no.

Why import such hate?

Stricter controls on Muslim immigration are inevitable, at least until this insane jihadism blows out:

SCANDINAVIAN intelligence agencies say they have foiled a plot by Islamic extremists to massacre staff at a Danish newspaper which published caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

Denmark's PET intelligence service said five suspects had been arrested, preventing an imminent "Mumbai-style" assault on the Copenhagen offices of the Jyllands-Posten daily in which as many staff as possible would have been killed.

Four men were arrested in Denmark while a spokeswoman for Swedish intelligence agency Saepo said a fifth was arrested in Sweden in connection with the same international plot.

"It is our sense based on intelligence that this is a militant Islamic group with links to international terrorist networks," PET head Jakob Scharf told reporters…


The man arrested in Stockholm is a 37-year-old Swede of Tunisian background.

Danish intelligence said the four men arrested in Denmark, in the Herlev and Greve suburbs of Copenhagen, were a 44-year-old Tunisian, a 29-year-old Swede born in Lebanon, a 30-year-old Swede and a 26-year-old Iraqi asylum-seeker.

The first three were all living in Sweden and travelled to Denmark overnight.

Meanwhile, in London:

Nine men arrested in Britain on terrorism charges last week found inspiration and bomb-making instructions in an English-language Internet magazine published by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, British investigators reportedly said.

The revelation, relayed by British newspapers, provided the first purported link between the nine British-based suspects, some of Bangladeshi origin, and an anti-Western terrorism campaign being waged by Yemen-based jihadists of Yemeni, Saudi, U.S. and other nationalities under the aegis of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula…

A statement issued Monday by British police said that between Oct. 1 and Dec. 20, the day of the arrests, the nine suspects were "researching, discussing, carrying out reconnaissance on, and agreeing potential targets" for a terrorist bombing as well as "igniting and testing incendiary material." A State Department official in Washington said the U.S. Embassy in London was among the targets under discussion.

London's Daily Telegraph allows itself to reflect the growing unease at an immigration policy designed by people too polite to even imagine the consequences, now beyond repair:

Two points need to be made.

First, that Muslims have migrated to Britain in enormous numbers over the past 40 years; one of the heaviest waves of immigration was encouraged by the last government. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life estimates that there are 2,869,000 Muslims in Britain, an increase of 74 per cent on its previous figure of 1,647,000, which was based on the 2001 census. No demographic statistics are reliable in an era of open borders, but such an expansion is unprecedented.

The second point is that – different political traditions notwithstanding – Britain is beginning to experience French-style anxiety about Islamisation. The fact that many terrorists are Muslims may lead to unfair assumptions about the loyalty of British Muslims. But, at a time when – according to some surveys – around 40 per cent of the Muslim community support the establishment of Sharia, fears of social fracture are understandable.

(No comments during this holiday break.)

You can't make a humane refugee policy without killing a few dozen people

Here's a quick test to see if you are a compassionate Left-winger.

If someone condemns reckless policies that lured another 50 boat people to their deaths, he has:

A: Damned inhumane policies


B: Forgotten his own humanity.

Policies that have up to 170 or even more people to their deaths are:

A: A scandal


B A relatively minor issue.

Tim Dunlop, the very model of a modern Left-winger, now supplies the correct answersL

Around 50 people die as a boat sinks off our shores and before the bodies are cold News Ltd journalists Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair are calling for the PM to resign and accusing her of having blood on her hands. It is a measure of just how badly distorted this debate has become that two mainstream journalists could so easily forget their humanity.

But they are hardly the only ones with the F-for-fail stamped on their forehead where asylum seekers are concerned. Both political parties have turned a relatively minor issue into a disgraceful policy debacle.

I don't think the warmists' models are working

Britain's warmists in 2000 predict the end of snow:

Britain's winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.

Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain's culture, as warmer winters - which scientists are attributing to global climate change - produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries…

According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event".

"Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.

But Britain in 2010:

After weeks of chaos caused by snow, ice and Arctic temperatures, weather men are predicting rain, rain and more drizzle until January…

For the second winter running, a severe month-long big freeze has cost the economy billions and this December is expected to be the chilliest since records began 100 years ago.

US warmists of the Union of Concerned Scientists in 2007 predict the decline of snow in US Northeast:

FROM thundering Niagara Falls to bustling Manhattan, the climate of New York is changing. Spring is arriving earlier, summers are growing hotter, and winters are becoming warmer and less snowy. New state-of-the-art research shows New York can expect dramatic changes in climate over the course of this century. Snow is an iconic characteristic of New York winters and an integral part of many favourite winter activities and traditions. But rising temperatures over the past few decades have caused snow to become wetter (or more slushy), and decreased the average number of snow-covered days across the state.

But the US in 2010:

New York commuters and travelers face further disruptions today as winds hinder efforts to clear roads and runways following the heaviest December snows in six decades.

Queensland warmists in 2007 predict the end of dam-filling rains:

(Queensland Premier Peter) Beattie said the effects of climate change on our region meant we could no longer rely on past rainfall patterns to help us plan for the future… "Given the current uncertainty about the likely impact of climate change on rainfall patterns in SEQ over coming years, it is only prudent to assume at this stage that lower than usual rainfalls could eventuate.

Ditto Australian of the Year Tim Flannery in 2007:

Over the past 50 years southern Australia has lost about 20 per cent of its rainfall, and one cause is almost certainly global warming....Desalination plants can provide insurance against drought. In Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane, water supplies are so low they need desalinated water urgently, possibly in as little as 18 months.

But Queensland in 2010:

A massive rain system has caused record flooding in southern and central Queensland, with parts of those regions declared a disaster zone… On the south-east coast, up to 200 homes are expected to be inundated at Bundaberg today when the city experiences its highest flood peak in 50 years.

Some excuses.

Don't tell the children what faith built their society

Professor David Daintree on a dishonest and dangerous omission that leaves children ignorant of the faith that bred their most crucial freedoms:

THE draft national curriculum for history opened an exciting prospect.

Here was a chance, I thought, to defend the honour of Christianity amid the cut and thrust of educational theory, pitting myself against the intricate arguments of those who would deny, or at least downplay, the greatness of the influence of Christianity in the unravelling of the great events of the ages.

Yet the compilers of the draft curriculum have chosen the simplest strategy of all: deliberate, pointed, tendentious and outrageous silence. In its 20 pages, the draft ancient history curriculum mentions religion twice. There is no reference to Christianity anywhere in the document.

The draft modern history curriculum is 30 pages long. Christianity is simply never mentioned, at least not explicitly. The word religion appears twice, the first occurrence in the context of Indian history, the second in the context of Asian and African decolonisation. However the precise phrase in which it is found discloses the agenda of the compilers: "The effect of racism, religion and European cultures."

And a big difference we'd make on our own

Labor is looking increasingly like the sole lemming on the cliff:

JAPAN'S decision to postpone its plans for an ETS by 2013 has increased pressure on Julia Gillard over her goal of pricing carbon next year…

The decision by the world's fifth-largest greenhouse gas emitter and Australia's second-largest trading partner to postpone the scheme for a year comes after the US also stepped back from a national emissions trading scheme and as international firms remain concerned about lax pollution controls in China, which has no obligations under the Kyoto Protocol…

The Japanese government move came after pressure from business, which was concerned an ETS would add to costs and limit their ability to compete against rivals in China and India who would not face the same restrictions.

The same considerations apply to us, of course.

(No comments on posts during holidays.)

The great Nicolai Gedda casts his magic

And singing Kol Slaven again at 80:

Can any singer have made a more beautiful sound at that age?