A GREEN/LEFT FOOT-SHOT

Australia recently had one of its recurrent doughts, though it was only really bad for about a year. The Australian public were told at the time by all sorts of wise-sounding people that it was all because of global warming -- quite ignoring the fact that Australia's worst recorded drought was around 1901, long before most of the industrial activities that Greenies identify as "causing" global warming.

For about a year now, however, Australia has been affected by more and more flooding. Dam levels have approximately doubled in many places. It rains just about every day where I am. I was moved to write this by one of our many sudden downpours, in fact. The rain has finally been enough to stop the talk of drought (which went on for some time after the floods began) but there has not been a PEEP of a suggestion in the media to say that the floods might indicate global cooling -- DESPITE the fact that the world HAS cooled recently and despite the fact that the cooling has coincided with a period of reduced activity on the sun, which could explain the cooling. So we have a new form of "logic": Drought is caused by warming but floods are not caused by cooling.

Background: I have noted on GREENIE WATCH some of the many stories about disastrously cold Northern Hemisphere winters that have been appearing recently and they are very regularly noted on Astute Bloggers. One episode that I have not seen mentioned came to me in an email recently. A reader told me that earlier this month Baku (Azerbaijan) had it's coldest night for 75 years (-8.6C). There is also a report just in from China saying that China has had one-tenth of its forest resources wrecked by snow damage. And last Southern Hemisphere winter was exceptionally cold too -- particularly in Argentina.

The supposed connection between warming and drought always was a huge stretch. Warming should cause the seas to evaporate more and thus cause more rain to fall. So in a way the Greenies should be rejoicing at the current flooding. The flooding really COULD be a sign of warming. But it seems that even the Greenies are too embarrassed to turn around and march in the opposite direction straight away. No doubt they fear the ridicule that would attract. It's rather a delightful form of justice, actually. It shows how their own dishonesty ultimately defeats them

In truth, of course, Australia's cycles of drought and flood will go on as they always have. As one of Australia's best-loved poems (first published in 1908) reads:

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.