Scientists and commentators make heavy weather of the Queensland cyclone

ABC presenters and Fairfax contributors search for a climate change connection.

Tony Jones interviews professor Jonathan Nott on Wednesday:

JONES: Can you or other scientists make a link with climate change?

Nott: Yes, well, we know that as oceans warm, tropical cyclones will increase in intensity, but we really need to see some years of data and a change in the trend of cyclones before we can actually state that these tropical cyclones are being influenced by humans in that sense.

Heed the bureau. John Quiggin in The Australian Financial Review yesterday:

TRAGICALLY, while only a few people have been silly enough to ignore the Bureau [of Meteorology]'s warnings about this cyclone, a great many have ignored equally dire warnings about the long-term impact of climate change, including more extreme weather events. Climate models that have predicted the warming of the past two or three decades are dismissed as spurious. Worse still, the bureau and other bodies have been accused of faking or fudging data to promote their case for motives that range from the venal (more funding for climate research) to the sinister (obscure plots for global domination).

BOM website:

SINCE [the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2001 report] there has been a growing number of studies that indicate a consistent signal of fewer tropical cyclones globally in a warmer climate.

Not giving up. ABC Radio 702 Mornings with Deborah Cameron:

CAMERON: Is this the pattern that climate scientists have been telling us about?

Australian Conservation Foundation's Professor Ian Lowe: While you can't say that cyclone Yasi, or the Queensland floods, or the 2009 Victoria bushfires by themselves demonstrate that climate change is happening, the overall pattern is exactly what the science was saying 25 years ago we could expect.

Cameron: John Quiggin [says] in today's Financial Review he is concerned about the denigration of climate science and trusted sources. He's talked about even the Bureau of Meteorology coming in for criticism as though it's become the puppet of a political push. Who do you trust?

Lowe: Not a failed British politician or, as John Quiggin put it, an agitator who wouldn't know a T-statistics if it bit them.

Cameron: Now, turning to those sceptics and outright attackers, some of them in this debate around the Queensland flood have said the likely cause is the mismanagement of a single dam, the Wivenhoe Dam. Now is that a realistic explanation for a giant flood?

Lowe: It's complete nonsense. The Wivenhoe Dam had some moderating impact on the flood. I've been alarmed that in Queensland the government seems as concerned about the slowing down of coal exports as about the impacts of flooding and cyclones.

Clive Hamilton in The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday:

AS alarm among scientists about runaway global warming intensifies, so do efforts by the coal industry and its backers in government to stifle citizen protests. Yet Labor governments have been as willing as the Howard government was to silence dissenting voices, especially in defence of the energy industries. Big Coal has taken the gloves off.

Changing climate? Ross Garnaut at the National Press Club Address, July 4, 2008:

THE draft report has a rather prosaic title, Draft Report. It almost had an exciting title. When our team in Melbourne finished the draft of the draft a few weeks ago, we held a naming competition and the winner by acclamation was No Pain, No Rain. But we are a conscientious lot; someone said, No Pain, Greatly Reduced Rain and someone else: No Pain, Probably Greatly Reduced Rain.

Or changing forecast? Garnaut yesterday:

THE odds seem to favour the proposition that cyclonic events will be more intense in a hotter world.

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