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GHOST CITY SOAKED

2004:

Perth will become a ghost city within decades as rising global temperatures turn the wheatbelt into a desert and drive species to the brink of extinction, a leading Australian scientist warns.

Australian paleontologist and popular author Tim Flannery said Perth was a city on the edge - isolated, dependent on energy and declining water supplies and more likely to feel the effects of global warming ...

2008:

Perth remains on track to break the record for the wettest April ever recorded ...

Before today, persistent lows have soaked the city with 107.8mm of rain since the start of the month and only 41mm of rain needs to fall to break the 1926 April record of 148.8mm.

Posted by Tim B. on 04/17/2008 at 10:29 AM
  1. I guess it is fairly well established that whatever Flummery predicts, the exact opposite will occur.

    Posted by Spiny Norman on 2008 04 17 at 10:36 AM • permalink

  2. Yeah, but millimeters are very small.

    Posted by Rittenhouse on 2008 04 17 at 10:42 AM • permalink

  3. ...a leading Australian scientist warns.

    Australian paleontologist and popular author Tim Flannery said...

    Talk about a non sequitur!

    Posted by ErnieG on 2008 04 17 at 10:54 AM • permalink

  4. What the hell does Paleontology have to do with the weather?

    Posted by mojo on 2008 04 17 at 11:42 AM • permalink

  5. #4
    Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones ...

    Posted by egg_ on 2008 04 17 at 11:56 AM • permalink

  6. April showers bring May flowers.

    Posted by rhhardin on 2008 04 17 at 12:01 PM • permalink

  7. The man has no shame.  What an idiot.  How he has any credibility with anyone is beyond my comprehension.

    Posted by Mystery Meat on 2008 04 17 at 12:16 PM • permalink

  8. Contra Flannery, I confidently predict that there will be no dearth of Perth for many, many generations.

    Posted by paco on 2008 04 17 at 12:22 PM • permalink

  9. Typical Australian Responds
    to Flannery’s Apocalypse:

    When Flannery predicted
    That Perth would die bone-dry,
    Mad Max bought a surf board
    And kissed his car goodbye.

    Posted by lyle on 2008 04 17 at 12:25 PM • permalink

  10. It’s Time for Eco-Therapy
    “Eco-Freaks: Environmentalism Is Hazardous to Your Health,” said eco-anxious people need to get a life and get the facts about the environment before freaking out.

    Hug a Tree

    Posted by jetson on 2008 04 17 at 01:42 PM • permalink

  11. The only ghost around here are Flannery’s predictions, and that’s because they are dead and buried.

    Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2008 04 17 at 03:03 PM • permalink

  12. You see! You see!!

    Who would have predicted this?

    The unpredictability of predictions is proof of Global Warming Climate Change.

    Posted by Toiling Mass on 2008 04 17 at 04:42 PM • permalink

  13. #4 - Mojo, you see, what you do is grab some dinosaur bones (preferably knuckles) and put them in a cup and shake it, then toss the bones onto the ground.

    The way the bones land on the ground - which way up they land, and their relationship to each other - is a very accurate way to forecast the climate over a 50-100 year timeframe.

    Posted by mr creosote on 2008 04 17 at 05:16 PM • permalink

  14. In the 24 hours to 9am Thursday 17/04/08, Perth received 23mm of Flannery drought… TimB must be dreading the day TimF becomes a Collingwood supporter.

    Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2008 04 17 at 05:32 PM • permalink

  15. Drought?
    Rain?
    Famine?
    Flood?
    Heat?
    Cold?
    Hurricane?
    Cyclone?
    Earthquake?
    Ice-caps melting?
    Ice-floes melting?
    Martian weather weirding?

    Climate Change!

    Get with the programme, folks.

    Posted by kae on 2008 04 17 at 05:36 PM • permalink

  16. it flooded on the plains last year,
    but t’was dry upon the range
    said Flummery “t’is all the proof we need-
    it MUST be climate change!”

    the doubters all were quickly silenced by the ecoistas and their mates
    Chairman Rudd sent his apologies-
    he had to visit Cate.

    Posted by anonymous guest on 2008 04 17 at 06:00 PM • permalink

  17. A request for Tim.  Please state that Brisbane is headed for drought. 

    14 - swinish - perhaps it would be better for Tim B if Tim F predicts a premiership drought for Collingwood.  Nah stuff him!  Go the lions!

    ps Tim, 2001, 2002, 2003 .... great years :)

    Posted by peter m on 2008 04 17 at 06:00 PM • permalink

  18. Definition of ‘flan’: ‘A flan is an upscale, classy custard, yes. But it is more; it is an elegant, rich dessert that can be adapted to almost any occasion. No, they are not simple to make. They are not like instant pudding or jello, but you would not want them to be’.
    Definition
    So ‘flannery’: ‘the academic art of making yourself rich by producing popular, pretentious, highly adaptable, but intellectually unreliable and unnourishing books and talks.’
    See journalism and ‘fiskery’

    Posted by Barrie on 2008 04 17 at 06:13 PM • permalink

  19. Where is academia’s equivalent to a bottle of scotch, a Webley and a little privacy?

    Posted by lotocoti on 2008 04 17 at 06:17 PM • permalink

  20. Flannery: Ghost City? No no… I meant host city. You know… Uh… Like the Olympics and the Pope and stuff?

    Posted by Dan Lewis on 2008 04 17 at 06:19 PM • permalink

  21. ... popular author Tim Flannery ....

    Flannery’s books should be placed on the book shelves between May Gibbs’ Snugglepot and Cuddlepie and Norman Lindsay’s The Magic Pudding. It would a chance to group the villains of Australian fiction the Banksia Man, Possum and Wombat and Climate Change.

    Posted by Contrail on 2008 04 17 at 06:37 PM • permalink

  22. Does no one publicly call the Flanster out for his idiotic predictions!! He shouldf be publicly humiliated and degraded for this hysteria.

    Meanwhile, I have a coinversation today something along the lines of:

    “It’s going to be a bad year for hurricanes”

    “Why?” I ask.

    “The weathermen are predicting it”

    “If you predict a bad year for hurricanes every year, eventually you will be right” I respond.

    Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 04 17 at 06:37 PM • permalink

  23. Flannery’s our man
    he’s got it in the can
    he often talks to Stern
    to see what he can learn

    Flannery’s our man
    he loves the ABC
    where he gushes and gesticulates
    and cons our leading leftie primates

    Flannery’s our man
    but where is he today
    he’s preparing scripts inside a plane
    predicting there will be no rain

    But his predictions seem to be quite flaky
    his reputation’s now very shaky
    will his life become a play
    titled ‘Flannery our man of yesterday’

    Posted by mehaul on 2008 04 17 at 07:09 PM • permalink

  24. Puzzling. It’s almost as if water evaporates from the surface of the earth and comes down again as precipitation.

    Posted by Margos Maid on 2008 04 17 at 07:17 PM • permalink

  25. Cavemen colonised Sweden in SUVs

    Posted by Rob Read on 2008 04 17 at 07:33 PM • permalink

  26. #24
    SNORT!!!! COUGH!!! GASP!!

    Bugger you Margo!!

    New monitor needed. ;)

    Posted by Pogria on 2008 04 17 at 07:36 PM • permalink

  27. #25 Rob Read,

    that was an interesting article. I particularly enjoyed the last three lines.

    “The discovery also shows that it was much warmer in the region at the time than had been thought previously, perhaps even warmer than today, he added.”

    Posted by Pogria on 2008 04 17 at 07:39 PM • permalink

  28. Phew it must have been an awfully close run thing, disaster pending 2004, disaster averted 2008. Does Flannery know how we so narrowly dodged this bullet? Maybe it was Earth Hour?

    Posted by the nailgun on 2008 04 17 at 07:45 PM • permalink

  29. #10
    I know some one like her, maybe not as bad, but with similar tendencies, she is in a constant state of anxiety about something or other.

    If it wasn’t for CC it would be something else.

    Posted by Orion on 2008 04 17 at 07:51 PM • permalink

  30. Author Flannery cried “It grows hot!”
    “Yet the people are listening not.
    So I’ll forecast a dearth,
    Of water for Perth,
    Which will bring them around like a shot!”

    But alas for poor Tim, it did pour,
    Filling water reserves by the score.
    A new vision he’ll seek,
    Mayhap in a week,
    That the Greens will be sure to adore!

    Posted by Infidel Librarian on 2008 04 17 at 08:02 PM • permalink

  31. I was reading the exact opposite about W.A. last year. The article I read was saying that persistent increases in rain year by year were turning huge areas of W.A. into arable land.

    On another topic altogether the ABC reports today Australians became richer, smarter and healthierduring the 10 years of Howard government.  They couldn’t help but add: “these figures were collected before the recent spike in interest rates, the stock market corrections and the fall in consumer sentiment”. Which of course they failed to point out all happened on Kevin’s watch.

    Posted by allan on 2008 04 17 at 08:28 PM • permalink

  32. Orion, for God’s Sake, man, don’t tell her about Planet X…

    Posted by richard mcenroe on 2008 04 17 at 08:39 PM • permalink

  33. #24

    It’s almost as if water evaporates from the surface of the earth and comes down again as precipitation.

    Seems to be An Inconvenient Truth for the AlGorithm.

    Alleged AGW to Al only seems to bring rising sea levels thru melting ice and more frequent hurricanes (i.e. all piss and wind) ... yet he also states that disruption of the ocean currents can cause an Ice Age in as little as a decade.

    Would’ve thought the latter would be more of a threat to you higher latitude types, Al?

    Posted by egg_ on 2008 04 17 at 08:41 PM • permalink

  34. #10
    Eco-Super-Freaky?

    Posted by egg_ on 2008 04 17 at 08:50 PM • permalink

  35. Snow is predicted for Seattle this weekend. It will be the latest snow in 100 years. Must be all the Warmening taking place here. My guess this is Gaia’s response to the Washington States Democrats proposal to annually tax all cars based on engine size.

    Posted by swassociates on 2008 04 17 at 09:21 PM • permalink


  36. O/T. I know there was a lot of controversy about Rudd apologizing to the aboriginals, but sometimes a national apology is the right thing to do. So, on behalf of the U.S., I apologize for this guy.

    Posted by paco on 2008 04 17 at 09:37 PM • permalink

  37. re #37, paco, I apologize for that goober still stealing oxygen.

    Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2008 04 17 at 09:52 PM • permalink

  38. So, Al, does Global Warming mean we’ll be getting wetter?

    ‘Depends ...’.

    Posted by egg_ on 2008 04 17 at 09:54 PM • permalink

  39. OT. In light of various Governments decisions to ban or apply a levy to plastic bags, is there a rule of thumb as to what the likely Government costs will be to administer such intervention.

    Is there some poor man’s equation that one can apply to assessing the cost of the new tax.

    Posted by mehaul on 2008 04 17 at 09:55 PM • permalink

  40. Somebody check on the number of cyclones this season.  I may be wrong but it appears to have ben pretty quiet.  I though it was supposed to get worse!!

    Posted by Razor on 2008 04 17 at 10:18 PM • permalink

  41. Speaking of OT - yesterday it read like this but now it reads like this so it’s like the correction never happened and the chap quoted from the observatory sounds like a goose. This is not a proper correction - dummkopfs.

    Posted by Margos Maid on 2008 04 17 at 10:26 PM • permalink

  42. 41 - seemed to be a quiet season.

    link

    Posted by peter m on 2008 04 17 at 10:32 PM • permalink

  43. mmm - a better link is here.

    Seems we have fewer cyclones but of the few, we keep our strong ones strong!

    Posted by peter m on 2008 04 17 at 10:34 PM • permalink

  44. Sorry to be OT as well but what is the assessment of the Dem Debate from the US readers? Has Obama hit the wall as Capt Ed seems to think at Hot Air?

    Posted by the nailgun on 2008 04 17 at 11:04 PM • permalink

  45. #40, as far as I know, the only state going ahead with a ban on bags is SA. See:

    No national plastic bag ban

    The article mentions that Victoria will be trialling a levy in partnership with the retailer’s association but that’s only in 1-2 stores (I believe).

    If you want an indication of how much a ban or levy would have cost the community, this would be a good start:

    Plastic bags impact statement

    I think the lack of agreement seems to be due to Rudd telling Garrett that he couldn’t impose even more costs on ‘working families’.

    Posted by Art Vandelay on 2008 04 17 at 11:05 PM • permalink

  46. The resaon that garret couldn’t get cabinet apporval for a levy on bags would no doubt be because it would have cost more to administer the program than the money raised.  The other options probably involve state governments making the decision- hence they get to wear the angst. 
    Of course, who gets to wear the angst was the key reason agreement was not reached, not any logical reason like the proposed ban was a load of cobblers.  So much for unity of purpose across jurisdictions now they are all one party.

    Posted by entropy on 2008 04 17 at 11:24 PM • permalink

  47. 24 November 2007 will go down in history.

    Australia went from Democracy to Dope-ocracy.

    Nincompoop has a good ring to it, but I didn’t think it’d work.

    Posted by kae on 2008 04 17 at 11:29 PM • permalink

  48. By now you would think that the proponents of global warmening/global wetting/climate change would have noticed the articles in most forms of communications proving at least that the “science” is not settled.
    Are they so blind that they don’t even look at our scribblings even as a push to go and investigate elsewhere?
    Anyway what happened to the basic tenets of the Conservation Laws of energy and matter/mass?
    They have to notice sooner or later - don’t they?

    Posted by Turbine on 2008 04 17 at 11:57 PM • permalink

  49. Awwww… Ain’t love grand

    Posted by Margos Maid on 2008 04 18 at 01:02 AM • permalink

  50. #49 They have to notice sooner or later - don’t they?

    It’s going to take a temperature plunge to shake this thing. You’d think that the absense of the apocalypse would be enough to open eyes, but unfortunately people are very good at seeing what they want to see. Apocalypse is always just around the corner.

    The problem is if we don’t get a sudden cooling period. We might, but we might not. If instead the world just keeps bumping along as it has been, then this “global warming” myth will stick around for years like a fart that won’t die.

    Posted by daddy dave on 2008 04 18 at 01:18 AM • permalink

  51. Here’s a comment made by a reader at Bolta’s blog. He quotes Dick Cheney’s belief in Global Warming.

    “Vice President Dick Cheney doesn’t think much of climate change either.

    At the annual Radio and Television Correspondents dinner yesterday he said,"I have no doubt that we are in the midst of a global warming, or, as I prefer to call it, spring. And, I don’t want to sound like an alarmist, but it’s going to get a lot warmer before it gets cooler.”
    Gordon H (Reply)
    Fri 18 Apr 08 (02:28pm)”

    Bloody Brilliant!!!

    Posted by Pogria on 2008 04 18 at 01:52 AM • permalink

  52. Man, I don’t know about you guys, but with Rudd’s summit soon to be thrust upon us, and the hinted-at webdiary coverage, I’m not sure how how I am going to get any sleep.

    Posted by Margos Maid on 2008 04 18 at 02:22 AM • permalink

  53. He still has 6 years to be right.

    Posted by Old school on 2008 04 18 at 03:17 AM • permalink

  54. c/- Bolta:

    ‘An inconvenient truth can be found in the official NEMMCO (National Electricity Market Management Company) market data which showed that Victorian electricity demand during Earth Hour averaged 5390 megawatts, some 2.5 per cent higher than for the same hour the previous Saturday.’

    Vindication.

    Posted by egg_ on 2008 04 18 at 03:44 AM • permalink

  55. #50 - I thought we in the decadent West had the monopoly on the trade-in marriage routine.

    Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2008 04 18 at 05:18 AM • permalink

  56. #56 Hello, is that the Russian Brides ‘n Poontang Co.?

    My good friend Nicolas sent me and would like to claim his bottle of absolut - say, got any young gymnasts?

    Posted by Margos Maid on 2008 04 18 at 07:39 AM • permalink

  57. Sort of on topic…

    Anyone seen this?

    From the merely ridiculous to the borderline obscene.

    Posted by WingDynasty on 2008 04 18 at 01:02 PM • permalink

  58. #36 Richard, it gets better for cricket when you know that the new form of 20/20 that is being described here is all over in about 3 hours of walloping by the batsmen.
    It’s sort of baseball where there is one innings of 120 pitches and 11 batters, followed by the other team.
    Eat your heart out baseball fans - most of these games will produce about 10 to 15 ‘homers’

    Posted by Barrie on 2008 04 18 at 06:30 PM • permalink

  59. Gee, I hope a few silly Greenies didn’t prevent them from building a dam to catch all this precious water in.

    Posted by Brian on 2008 04 18 at 09:18 PM • permalink

  60. #60, Brian, oh dont be silly.  We need all the dams we can get now the desal plant has had its output slashed.

    That pipeline from the Fitzroy looks better ever year doesnt it?

    Posted by The_Wizard_of_WOZ on 2008 04 18 at 09:56 PM • permalink

  61. Perth is dependent on energy.

    As opposed to...?

    Posted by Hanyu on 2008 04 19 at 12:59 AM • permalink


  62. 63 - Hoo boy.
    And he (Sam Mostyn) asks that the spirits of the local traditional owners “guide us.”
    Those local traditional owners had a fairly limited number of ideas, Sam. Do you really intend to take up the nomadic lifestyle, if that’s their advice? Do the women attending the summit agree to become sexual chattel, should the spirits so decree?
    What about infanticide as a means of population control? I’d love to hear Cate Blanchett’s views on that, Sam.

    Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2008 04 19 at 03:38 AM • permalink

  63. Someone’s mentioned it in the latest thread, Bolta’s liveblog of the Summit that is.
    I put the link here because there were so many comments and I thought it’d be noticed quicker…

    Tim must be watching the footie, can’t say I blame him!

    Posted by kae on 2008 04 19 at 03:43 AM • permalink

  64. #64 Is there anything more cringeworthy?

    Imagine if someone opted for a thanks to Christ.

    Wouldn’t that bring out the pinkos? Yet some PC bullshit acknowledgement of the original wanderers is put up on a pedestal.

    Puts it in the same ‘god like’ category of green worship.

    And it is the same people who say we are not suffering a spiritual vacuum.

    Posted by mehaul on 2008 04 19 at 06:27 AM • permalink

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