Not to mention that even if AGW IS real, if China continues with its industrialisation, all the billions wasted on Australia's carbon tax will delay our thermal Armageddon by exactly six days.

I hope the warmists enjoy their extra week, because it's going to cost us a fortune.

It's possible the sceptism generated by the floods may be as long lasting. The long term effects are what's going to hold not short term events. The truth will stick, because it is the truth.

But I won't make any predictions, I know how you are about that.

Despite their failures has any Scientist put their hand up and admitted being wrong? Don't think so. Maybe wet is the new dry.

Jon ,
that was a silly thing to say. More extreme weather events are a consequence of global warming. The extreme floods come after many years of extreme drought.

Also China is making huge changes in energy production especially renewable energy. Modern power stations using ancient high density coal make that possible.

IF Australia, China and others do not succeed in limiting temperature and sea level rises hundreds of millions of people will die. Australia will have to cope with mass unemployment and social unrest.

Then millions of refugees will come with modern weapons. Get real, 110 million people been killed in wars since 1910 and an alliance of desperate countries will desperate populations will come with war ships and container ships full of military hardware.

The National security risks of climate change is ignored by denialists, who do not understand that risk management is necessary. When the poo hits the fan their evil advocacy will have a name ; treason

Keep bashing Mark….since the failure of the Copenhagen climate talks in 2009 and the ‘Climategate’ debacle of early 2010, media interest in climate science has declined, and the public become somewhat more sceptical about its veracity. Yet the evidence base itself has only become more robust in that time. Conveying the certainties and uncertainties of climate science to the public – through a media that has become much more polarised about the subject – is a recurrent challenge. You are a classic case in point.

In relation to flooding and climate change, there is a systematic influence on all of these weather events now-a-days because of the fact that there is this extra water vapour lurking around in the atmosphere, this is one manifestation of climate change. Looking only at individual extreme events will not reveal their cause, just like watching a few scenes from a movie does not reveal the plot. We should continue to expect increased flooding associated with increased extreme precipitation because of increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas.

The comments above are based on science not economics, any intelligent person knows economics is not science. How about writing something related to economics, apparently this is closer to your true calling. Let the scientists do their work and how about sticking to something you really know about!

What a great article Mark, full of common sense & reason. Of course all these bureaucrats are pushing the story they are told to push by their masters in Canberra. No thinking person pays any attention to them, or the ABC any more, as we all know the truth, & their pronouncements have no association what ever.

You are slightly off the mark, at least as far as south east Queensland is concerned, with rainfall.

One of the things about Beattie that used to infuriate me was his bull about drought. Yes the dams were going down, but that was because of how the rain fell, not how much. Small regular rainfall events will never fill large dams.

I was an irrigaor living on, & irrigating from a little river, south of Brisbane. I was down at the river at least daily for 20 years. I have records of the daily river height, & rainfall records on my property, both for that period.

The 90s were quite a bit drier than the 2000s in this area.

In the 90s my river stopped flowing [totally dry] 12 times, for up to 6 months at a time.

In the 2000s it only stopped flowing 3 times, never for more than a couple of weeks.

Not only were their projections wrong, but their statements about the amount of rain that did fall can only be called lies.