Resisting Climate Hysteria

[Smurf1976]

Always interesting to see how many times a deliberately twisted 20 year old comment can be resurrected to justify climate change denial.

Regardless of what Flannery intended with his infamous comment, governments at the time interpreted his and other similar high profile comment around that time to mean they needed to invest on that basis.

The 5 mainland states all built desalination plants and Tasmania built a gas-fired power station. In all cases the logic was to meet essential needs in the absence of future rainfall.

With the bizarre twist that, with the exception of WA, this amounted to effectively having scared them off from pursuing alternative supply schemes with lower fossil fuel use and thus CO2 emissions. WA being the exception simply because it didn't really have any alternative options.

In SA there was an alternative option to raise the height of an existing dam and increase total metropolitan water storage by about 75%. Sydney had the option to simply complete the Shoalhaven scheme. Brisbane and Melbourne both had the option to build new schemes based on surface water resources. Tasmania had the option to rely on wind energy as long as it was confident the hydro system wasn't going to fail.

I'm not saying Flannery directly caused all that, but governments did become somewhat convinced of a "never rain again" scenario that turned out to be far from the truth.

 

[basilio]

This is the current scientific reality of global warming that Climate scientists understand and attempt to live with.

‘It looks more likely with each day we burn fossil fuels’: polar scientist on Antarctic tipping points​

4-Louise Composite: AP / Guardian Design
Despite working on polar science for the British Antarctic Survey for 20 years, Louise Sime finds the magnitude of potential sea-level rise hard to comprehend
Jonathan Watts
Fri 27 Jun 2025 07.00 EDT


For more than 20 years, Louise Sime has worked at the British Antarctic Survey specialising in polar climate dynamics. She uses ice cores to reconstruct past conditions and predict future changes. She now leads several international Earth modelling projects.

... West Antarctica appears to be the area of greatest concern. Why?
This is the location of two huge and vulnerable glaciers: Pine Island and Thwaites. We know that their buttressing gate glaciers on the shore are thinning and retreating. That allows more of the ice sheet to flow into the ocean. Satellite images show this has been going on for some time and has accelerated at least since the year 2000.

All of those glaciers are connected together so if they slipped into the ocean that would add about four metres to global ocean levels. But the key question is how long this will take. Looking at past records of change in Antarctica, it’s likely to take hundreds of years. But a very large acceleration would be felt almost immediately and it would result in the global sea level going up much, much faster in the near future.

How does this compare with the situation in the Arctic?
The potential for Antarctica to increase global sea levels is scarier than for Greenland. Right now, they’re both contributing similar amounts to sea-level rise, but in future, it could be Greenland goes up a bit and then Antarctica goes up catastrophically.

Greenland has the potential to raise sea levels by five or six metres, but we don’t expect this will come in the form of an absolutely catastrophic, abrupt loss. Most of the ice in Greenland is not below sea level so we can see what is happening and we expect it will melt in a linear fashion.

By contrast, Antarctica has 80 metres of potential sea-level rise. We don’t expect all of that, but it is harder to know exactly what is happening. Much of Antarctica is below sea level and affected by the ocean, which means it is less stable and harder to observe. We also know there are parts of Antarctica where warm water is encroaching on to unstable shelves and we know that ice could retreat in some of the sloping basins – for example in East Antarctica and Wilkes Land. We don’t know where that tipping point is, but if we hit it, there will be an irreversible retreat of the West Antarctic sheet.

‘It looks more likely with each day we burn fossil fuels’: polar scientist on Antarctic tipping points

Despite working on polar science for the British Antarctic Survey for 20 years, Louise Sime finds the magnitude of potential sea-level rise hard to comprehend

www.theguardian.com