Mike Carlton: a climate change primer for the simple-minded Lefty

Mike Carlton on what even the simple-minded should by now have noticed:

Pardon me for pointing out the bleedin' obvious but for those who have not been paying attention much of the planet has been devastated by extraordinary weather in the past year.

Climate change linked floods, droughts and blizzards are apparently ravaging the planet.

No reputable climate scientist claims the disasters listed above have been caused solely by global warming. Nor did the Green senator Bob Brown blame the coal industry for the Queensland floods; if you check the record, you will find he was thoroughly verballed on that one.

The argument, Brown's included, is simply that as the planet gets warmer, these rains and floods, droughts and blizzards will become more frequent and more destructive of life and the environment.

Carlton obviously wasn't paying attention to what Brown actually said:

It's the single biggest cause - burning coal - for climate change and it must take its major share of responsibility for the weather events we are seeing unfolding now.

Had Carlton done some research he'd be aware that floods and droughts – the really big killers – are today far less destructive of life than in the past, when natural disasters, unenhanced by human induced climate change, regularly killed millions.

And it could well be that with instant global communications, cameras in every mobile phone and 24/7 news reporting, natural disasters that in the past might have attracted little notice are now big news.

Also, as the population grows, floods and droughts that in the past would have affected few now affect millions.

It therefore seems likely that the perception of more frequent disasters is incorrect.

Update As cyclone Yasi approached the Queensland coast damn near every newscast and bulletin emphasised that the storm was the biggest, strongest, windiest, nastiest, most awesomest cyclone, not just in recent times, but in the whole history of the universe.

And Yasi was, of course, either attributed to, or linked to, global warming. The message is clear: either get those carbon emissions down or suffer more frequent extreme weather events – droughts, floods, cold snaps, you name it – which will become more common as the world warms.

Mother Nature, the fickle bitch, jumped the gun in 1899, however, a year of "unprecedented" weather extremes, amongst which:

• The Federation Drought

• The Indian famine of 1899–1900

• The Great Blizzard of 1899

• Cyclone Mahina (lower barometric pressure and higher wind speed than Yasi; an estimated 400 killed – the greatest natural disaster death toll in Australian history)

• And in 1900 Galveston, Texas was wiped slick by a hurricane.

People back then must have wondered what the Hell was happening, except that without either cable or the internet most people probably had no idea what was going on, unless they were directly affected. Best of all, the general public was not yet aware of climate scientists.