Australia's worst alarmists link recent rains to climate change

Yep, climate change

UPDATE: Guess what? The ABC swallows the whole thing, with a fawning, completely uncritical report on AM.

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Following hot on the heels of the BoM/CSIRO climate report yesterday, today we have yet more scaremongering and alarmism.

David Karoly, Matthew England and Will Steffen are probably Australia’s three most hysterical climate alarmists. They have all featured regularly in these pages, and Will Steffen is one of the Labor government’s climate advisers.

And as we all know, any weather event, floods, drought, more cyclones, fewer cyclones, excessive heat, excessive cold, you name it, can be attributed to climate change. As has been said so many times, it is an unfalsifiable hypothesis – no event can disprove it – and therefore falls into the realm of pseudoscience. Bummer.

So when confronted with real world events which contradict their previous predictions, instead of admitting that there might be more to learn about the effects of climate on our weather, our three alarmists dig their heels in even further and make yet more extreme claims.

Put all those factors together, and you get this:

THREE of the nation’s leading climate scientists have linked the past two years of record wet weather to climate change in their strongest findings yet on the impact of global warming on the nation’s climate.

Professors Will Steffen, Matthew England and David Karoly, in a paper to be released today by the Climate Commission, find global warming may have contributed to the strength of the La Nina event and the heavy rainfall and flooding.

They also contend that the heavy rains do not contradict the trend towards drier weather for southern and eastern areas of Australia and find that despite two years of above average rains, southeast Australia continues to suffer from a cumulative rainfall deficit.

They reiterate warnings that global warming will produce longer dry spells, punctuated by heavier rainfall events, in southern and southwest Australia.

The release of the paper comes as Climate Commission chairman Tim Flannery faces increasing ridicule over his earlier predictions of water shortages in major capital cities due to drier weather resulting from global warming. (source)

Top three alarmists

And from the report itself, right on cue comes the now hackneyed “consistent with” excuse:

The wetter conditions experienced in southeastern Australia in the last two years are consistent with scientists’ knowledge and understanding of how the climate is changing in the long term. 

Because everything and anything is “consistent with” climate change, right boys? Here’s a challenge for our three heroes: what weather event would not be “consistent with” climate change? Answers on a postcard.

If you were a truly impartial scientist you would say, we don’t actually know how any changes in our climate will affect us, but these kind of events really help our understanding. Not spout yet more of the kind of alarmist nonsense that those three are all too famous for.

But that’s what happens when you are driven by an agenda – to prop up “The Cause” at all costs.

Don’t forget, the Climate Commission was set up by a government that has swallowed the IPCC line and wishes to enact a carbon tax, based on the threat of dangerous global warming… it would be highly inconvenient if dangerous global warming really wasn’t happening…

The full PDF report is here.