The important thing about Black Friday 1939 is that far East Gippsland had lots of fires but no disasters in the same extreme weather because the bush was grazed and deliberately burnt. By coincidence John Mulligan who was there at the time visited us yesterday. His observations and a map are in this article. https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2020/05/the-truth-about-giant-trees-and-megafires/

Disagree with most of this. The government is stupid in the use of Memtech desal. It should do desalination with deionization dialysis desalination which produces four times the volume of water for the same energy outlay.

Moreover, this superior method removes much more than salt ions. And is cost effective enough to support broad scale agriculture.

One can hang out the biggest bucket in the world, but if it doesn't rain, worthless.

As for storage, there's a lot to be said for pumping it into underground aquifers to limit evaporation losses.

All made very economically viable by a transition to nuclear energy as MSR thorium energy. And PKWH prices as low or lower than 3 cents!

Something the dullards in power will resist until their last breath!
Alan B.

It sometimes seems that some people's memories don't go back 12 months, let alone over the decades and two centuries of the history of weather patterns in Australia.

Either that, or they are allowing themselves to be brainwashed by elites who, sans the epidemic, are now whipping up climate hysteria to control the unwashed.

The idea that the weather has changed dramatically because of a whiff of carbon dioxide will go down in history as the biggest confidence trick ever.

All the lies and tricks of the politicians and carpetbaggers won't make a jot of difference to the climate; but they will certainly bring Australia to its knees quicker than natural events that have always occurred, and will continue to occur.

Most Australians know this. Sixty percent of them showed that they are smarter than the political class when they rejected the Voice. It's a shame they are not given the chance to have a say on more crucial matters regularly. Just voting for the same no-hopers every 3 or 4 years is no help.

Citizen Initiated Referenda would get this country back on track - if we had politicians who actually believed in democracy, and not the self-serving rubbish people we have now.

Flood plains should be reserved for agriculture or caravan parks. What would places like the Gold Coast look like if sea levels rise by as much as 7 metres. Something which could happen if a large body of fresh water is released from Antartica if an ice dam melts or gives way.

Something The world should avoid by a transition now to nuclear Carbon free energy, as MSR thorium.

China has ironed out the bugs in this reactor type and has the for sale sign up for these reactors. We the people should buy a few dozen and operate them via funded and facilitated co-ops.

Co-ops were the only private enterprise business model that survived the Great Depression largely intact and will do so again in the coming/happening now, world-wide downturn!

As opposed to waiting for someone else to step in and save our bacon as they charge whatever the market will bear with government compliance/cooperation!?
Alan B.

John Oxley reported flood debris high in trees in the area of Roma Street in 1823.

Imagine if it had hit that level in any subsequent Brisbane flood!

The scientists at ORNL, Tennessee largely solved the technicalities of nuclear power from Thorium, but J.F.Kennedy closed it down because it didn't produce Plutonium to make bombs.

The elephant in the room is not the temperature increase that will cause the temperature to increase, it is the increase of the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere which is causing a lowering of the pH of the sea water. The effect is particularly troubling in the cold Antarctic waters, home to the krill which are at the bottom of the food chain. The skeletons of these krill are composed of calcium carbonate which converts to soluble calcium bicarbonate which in time will lead to the decimation of krill as a food source for all of the other species, up to and including whales.

Even if we manage to stabilise the temperature, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere needs to be drastically reduced because the clock is already ticking in the Antarctic and inexorably the total fish population will die when the krill have gone.