RPG,

In Applied Mathematics, System Dynamics, Cyclones must track according to Hamilton's principle of least time to dissipate. That means the final track must minimise cyclonic lifespan subject to external influences of heat intake and losses along the final track. To wit hurricanes never track towards overt LOW ENTROPY SOURCES like massive BP, low entropy oil spills unless there is no alternative higher entropy pathway. Calculus of variations offers ways to find solutions to such dynamic problems. It so happens that along the US east coast and Cancun and other Caribbean resort areas that human effluent offers tremendous High Entropy tracking opportunities for Hurricanes and they don't go into the US Gulf if low entropy oil spills are present.

For America to avoid Gulf framed hurricanes they must either create annual oil spills or encourage their neighbours to emit MORE effluent plumes during the hurricane season.

As neither option is likely the US Gulf will be hit hard this year post June 1st. On previous analyses of wastewater emissions, Galveston to Pt Arthur and Ft Myers to Tampa are the prime initial targets.

As for Qld the biggest river basin on the Nth coast will attract a mid to late March Cyclone. And next year, not 1/100 probability but 1/1, a similar event will unfold. Qld has the highest rate of land clearing on the planet. Ahead of the Amazon. If Anna Bligh and her cohorts want to see the Grand Canyon in 10 seconds, a Qld coast free of mozzies and stinky wetlands, then they will. But they cannot expect to be politically alive afterwards!

Julian - go back and look at what you wrote about that dodgy piece of CSIRO research where they put a doubling of CO2 into some models.
Then compare the CO2 levels now compared with then.

A further problem for your CSIRO forecasts is that neither the flooding nor Yasi were unusual in the sense that they had never happened before, and the floods had been forecast, in a way, with much greater precision by NASA using a climate cycle model.

In 2008 NASA pointed out that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation had flipped into its cool mode which meant that there would be more and more severe la ninas. It was also in cool mode during the 1974 floods in Brisbane and the 1950s floods around Maitland. High ocean temperatures may have made the flooding from the current la nina a little worse but the floods themselves were certainly not the result of those warm temperatures. The PDO flips regularly.

Climate cycle forecasting is becoming better established world-wide, as those who use it can point to a track record in rainfall, not just with the PDO. The only people who seem unaware of them is the activists.

The CSIRO forecasts which you trot out don't use cycle forecasting, so if they could be described as right in any way - which is unlikely - it was for the wrong reasons. Time to inform yourself.

There is no evidence that the recent cyclone was anything out of the ordinary. There is evidence that the 1918 cyclone that clobbered Innisfail was much worse and that the earlier Bathurst Bay cyclone may have been worse again. I have a hunch that when all the data is examined that the recent cyclone will get downgraded significantly. I reckon that there is plenty of evidence that Innisfail gets preferentially belted by cyclones; (three severe cyclones in 26 years). My view on that is doubtless caused by the fact that I live in poor old Innisfail. I am a victim at last!
To the article: it is poor and so replete with overstatement as to be rather counter productive. The comparison with Indian and Chinese health services with CO2 reduction is rather silly. I am disappointed in Julian Cribb, he is capable of much better work than this.
However, unlike the fascistically inclined ANZ I support absolutely his right to say it and for the article to be published on OLO. Furthermore I support absolutely the right of others to tell me that what I have said here is a load of total rubbish.

Julian may or may not be correct re his you aint seen nothing yet prediction re the weather in the years to come, but I would suggest that unfortunately he is most probably correct in his prediction re the coming global famine.

One of the triggering factors of which will be global climate change, and human activity via massive de-forestation.

And the possible disappearance of honey-bees. If that occurs it WILL be the end of the human story.

There was an item in the news 2 weekends ago re the failure of the grain crops in northern China, the complete lack of rain for three months, and the dropping of the groundwater table too.
Much of Russia's grain crop failed last year too. It was too hot with unprecedented high temperatures.
Australia's food production dropped significantly due to the recent storms and floods.

Re the dropping of the levels of groundwater, and of the shortage of water altogether. This is a world-wide problem and will be a contributing factor in future wars.

In fact it already is a key factor in various geo-political hot-spots on the planet. Access to, and control of water is a key factor in Middle Eastern politics, including the applied politics of the state of Israel.

Another one!

Julian, why now?

Why did your boiling pot not cause all this rain in the last 10 years?

Why did it decide to do it during the coolest spring summer season for many years in coastal Queensland.

Why do you quote only 4 papers in 15 years that agree with you?

Did you have trouble finding any amid the hundreds, from similar sources claiming we'd all be cooked?

Give it over mate, no thinking person believes any more. Do you?

You could be right, eyejaw, in suggesting that the recent cyclone was not anything out of the ordinary. It is hard to comprehend greater ferocity than that of the Bathurst Bay cyclone of March 1899; and the second cyclone of March 1918 (there had been earlier, in January) wreaked more havoc than Yasi.

The ordinary is any amount enough to worry anyone with a spark of sanity and concern for people living within a cyclone’s reach. Contemplate the thought of another Yasi sneaking up to the coast where it made landfall, and then stooging along south; just off-shore to keep warm water feeding it, eventually coming ashore at Coolangatta (same landfall as for a February 1954 cyclone).
That things might get worse is not a matter of cheer; and the vast bulk of reputable scientists working in the relevant field tell us indications are that it will; and that observations of the data for these indicators continue to reinforce the trend