Twisting Tornados into Climate Crises

by Viv Forbes

 

Already the climatists are spinning a carbon scare story out of the Oklahoma tornado. US Senator Barbara Boxer said in a speech on global warming, just one day after the Moore tornado: “You’re going to have tornadoes and all the rest.  . . . Carbon could cost us the planet.” 

There is nothing unusual about tornadoes in Tornado Alley on the Prairies, or hurricanes in the Caribbean, or cyclones in the Coral Sea – all have been creating extreme weather events long before Europeans arrived in these areas and long before the surge of industrial growth in the 1950’s. 

Cartoonist Dave Granlund

 

Despite the intensity of the news reports, the severity of US tornadoes is not increasing – there have been many US tornadoes with greater severity and more fatalities than the Moore tornado. One in 1935 resulted in 695 deaths in Missouri, Illinois and Indiana.  What is increasing is the population density in the threatened areas and the demand by some media outlets for a man-made climate scare every week. 

USA and Australia will continue to suffer intense tornadoes, hurricanes and cyclones but carbon dioxide is blameless. 

Instead of wasting billions on the mega-myth that man controls the climate, both countries should spend that money on building infrastructure that better withstands natural disasters.

 

Successful species are those that learned to cope with natural disasters

 

Image sourced from NetRightDaily

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Extract from the article Five myths about tornadoes published in the Washington Post

5. Climate change is producing tornadoes of increasing frequency and intensity.
There have always been F5 tornadoes, and we will continue to experience them regardless of whether the Earth’s temperature rises or falls. National Weather Service figures show, if anything, that violent tornadoes — F3 or greater on the Fujita scale — are becoming less frequent. There is no trend, neither up nor down, in the frequency of all tornadoes.
The Capital Weather Gang’s Ian Livingston tweeted after the Moore tornado: “Climate change people do themselves a huge disservice by running to that after every disaster.”
I heartily concur.
. 

Natures power

This is a quick post to reflect on the sheer power of flood waters. This is not meant to be a criticism of the CSG industry; ex cyclone Oswell caught a lot of people out and when you have to cross a flood plain and a heavy rain event occurs the proverbial can happen.

Photo sourced from Beef Central, Oswald leaves trail of delight and despair

 

This is a photo of 30 lengths 42 inch diameter gas pipes that were welded together across a flood plain at Calliope, inland from Gladstone, sitting on mounds of dirt in preparation to be buried. The wall thickness of these pipes are about 3/4 inch. Individually each pipe length weights about 4.4 tonne. Not only did the water shift the pipes across the flood plain but also kinked the pipe. 

 

That's right, kinked, there must have been an incredible amount of force in the water to do that!

 

The pipe construction company would know how much hydraulic force it takes to bend a pipe. They do come along with a machine to make up some of the lesser degree bends on the pipeline easement. They bend x amount of degrees then move along x inches to bend the x amount of degrees again. They keep doing this until the right size bend is created. They have to make it gradually and smooth because the industry sends "pigs" up inside the pipe for various reasons. 

Learn and construct to cope with future natural disasters

As the flood waters started to ease and a stocktake started on the damage caused by ex-cyclone Oswell that travelled down near the entire length of the Queensland coastline and well into New South Wales, two regular print columnists published articles on the 31^st January calling a visionary and practical approach of looking to how we can reduce the impact of natural disasters in the future.

Andrew Bolt wrote an article, Nation must learn from natural disasters, where he concentrates on towns and cities that flood regularly, where a lot of money is spent of repairing after a flood and helping people to get back on their feet but little spend on prevention measures such as levy banks.

Personally I don’t believe that all can be solved by levies or dykes as in Bolts nation of origin, Holland. Historically towns had to build down close to a major source of water; these days we have the means of moving the water to the houses. I don’t believe that in locations of high flood risk that sometimes the cost of constructing a big enough levies for the worst of floods would be far greater than shifting the people out of the worst impacted streets.

Senator Barnaby Joyce wrote in his weekly column in The Canberra Times, Acts ofGod, but not much remedial action in Parliament, where he made some very good points about Australia’s transport and communication networks and their current inability to cope with natural disasters.

 

Cartoon thanks to Broelmann

 

"The major infrastructure corridors along the coast are again under pressure or cut. The Telstra fibre providing the communication link for north Queensland was cut because of flooding.

The justifiable focus on the current problem of flooding should be accompanied by a long-term solution to alleviate some of the problem. 

The course of innovation is not lineal, it is more chaotic, but in the period of this government there has been no plan that has dealt with the year-in, year-out problems of floods, congestion and safety of moving goods along the same corridor as people, along the coast. It should not be a surprise any more that somewhere between Cairns and Melbourne at some point in summer there will be a flood, and generally at many points along the coast.

We need an educational system that does not leave Australia falling behind our Asian neighbours. More than two sealed roads from east to west across our nation would be very 21st century if we could manage it. We should plan to develop our nation's north so we evolve from the southern crescent economy of Lachlan Macquarie's day to one that can make the most of Asian middle class opportunities. The capacity to move product on long haul rail from our second biggest city, Melbourne, direct to our nation's third biggest, Brisbane, should have happened years ago"