Bishop Hill Of droughts and flooding rains
Mar 5, 2011 Climate: WG2 Clive James, writing in Standpoint magazine, looks at the shifting sands of the global warming narrative as presented to Australians.
Before the floods, proponents of the CAGW view had argued that there would never be enough rain again, because of Climate Change. When it became clear that there might be more than enough rain, the view was adapted: the floods, too, were the result of Climate Change. In other words, they were something unprecedented. Those opposing this view — those who believed that in Australia nothing could be less unprecedented than a flood unless it was a drought — took to quoting Dorothea Mackellar's poem "My Country", which until recently every Australian youngster was obliged to hear recited in school. In my day we sometimes had to recite it ourselves, and weren't allowed to go home until we had given evidence that we could remember at least the first four lines of the second stanza, which runs like this.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror —
The wide brown land for me.
Reader Comments (23)
Clive James's back in circulation. Wonderful!
Yes, sir, absolutely! I've lived in this country for more than 20 years now and I can attest to the fact that this massive piece of geography either suffers from drought or floods every bloody year. I've even heard the news of farmers complaining about drought right after the news of farmers suffering from floods. It is incredible that either Australian floods or droughts can be taken as signs of global warming, let alone both of them at the same time.
Though he is a self-described lefty, I've always had great respect for anything Clive James says or writes. As a teenager and early/mid 20's in the late 70's and 80's I used to love all his TV talk shows, not least "Saturday Night Clive". He doesn't stand for bullshit.
Wonderful to see this article.
Clive James' use of language is masterful - he really hits the mark with this:
"Pride comes from facing facts, and in Australia the facts are that the climate will starve you or wash you away, unless you build something."
In the past Clive James has been allowed to do some wonderfully politically incorrect pieces on the BBC. I'm not sure if they'd allow any more these days.
If you've got access, listen to this one on scepticism and climate change:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00n9lm3/A_Point_of_View_The_Golf_Ball_Potato_Crisp/
It's also described here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8322513.stm
sHx, I've done it the other way around. Oz, but spent 10 years (70s - 80s) in the old dart, mostly at QMC (now QM&W) Theoretical Physics Dept, Univ of London. Whilst there, I always liked Clive's TV appearances and written commentary. He could take the p*ss out of us Oz's (and anyone else) in a wonderfully humorous and sardonic manner. But it always made sense.
Many commenters on this blog write beautifully. It is not my forte. But to me at least this is a wonderfully written article and I hope readers here will read it in its entirety. I'm probably getting soft, but I became a wee bit emotional when I read it. It encapsulates what's beautiful about my country and what, at the same time, is wrong with what is happening at the moment.
I too learnt Dorothea Mackellar's poem at primary school in the 50's and as Clive says, the first few lines you never forget. Truth and reality. The title is also wonderfully apt, "the drumming of an army" from
I'm from Queensland. When it rains it rains. It is indeed “the drumming of an army”.
Come home Clive - we need you
Excellent. With him not having been on TV much in the last few years, I had forgotten that James was a sceptic. (I wonder if this is coincidence?)
Bring me the sweat of Gabriela Sabatini
For I know it tastes as pure as Malvern water,
Though laced with bright bubbles like the aqua minerale
That melted the kidney stones of Michelangelo,
As sunlight the snow in spring.
Bring me the sweat of Gabriela Sabatini
In a green Lycergus cup with a sprig of mint.
But add no sugar, the bitterness is what I want.
If I crave sweetness, I would be asking you to bring me
The tears of Annabel Croft.
So let me drink deep from the bitter cup.
Take it to her between any two points of the tie-break,
That she make shake it above her thick black hair,
A nocturne from which the droplets as they fall,
Flash like shooting stars.
And as their lustre becomes liqueur, let the full calyx
Be repeatedly carried to me.
Until I tell you to stop,
Bring me the sweat of Gabriela Sabatini.
Written in 1908 when Dorothea Mackellar was homesick for australia while she was in the UK.
Here is the rest of this lovely poem:
A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.
Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die -
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.
Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold -
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.
An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land -
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand -
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.
As I remember it, 1908 was well before AGW was thought of.
Whwn all of this scam of AGW is finally and completely proven to be wrong, will it be possible to take court action against the Greens, WWF, Greenpeace and many others for crimes against humanity?
No.
And there won't even be Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
As I've posted before, we in the UK got a VERY BRIEF shot of a pole in (I think) Rockhampton, showing the height of the flood water, and marks of previous floods (oh yes, there were some, despite the last one being 'unprecedented'..)
There was a marker at the top of the pole for (again I think) 1878 - which was FAR higher than the recent flood water - to the tune of about a metre and a half..!
But then according to the global warmists, history doesn't actually exist - its only the computer-modelled future which matters....
I like the 'ragged' mountain ranges. 'Rugged' would be a cliché.
Meanwhile, in California, the Land of Fruits and Nuts, we are having an exceptionally cold year, the coldest and snowiest since 1979, but remember that it was cold as this 30 years ago.
And back in the 1940's the same thing.
And don't anyone forget the Donner - Reed party got suck in the now Donner Pass in he beginning of November 1846. We almost NEVER have snow in the pass that early. However that year they got lots and lots. The story is that the rock column base of the monument to the group was built as high as the snow got, some 15 feet. And this is at Truckee, at the Donner Lake, a couple thousand feet below the actual summit.
Donner Pass Pioneer Statue
So, the amount of snow that can fall is cyclic, with some really bad years possible. This winter has been one of the worst for 30 years. Five years ago I was at the monument in February and there was no snow on the ground and was told it was due to Global Warming by one of the rangers. I went back this year but couldn't get into the park, it was snow bound.
because the govt believes in CAGW, they spent $9bn in south-east Qld to drought-proof the State. ratepayers are paying the cost in exorbitant water bills. the govt/councils pretended to set up an independent water company, Allconnex, which is, in reality, owned by three councils and there's been a furore for months over the every-increasing price of water.
how's this? the CEO of Allconex says the breaking of the drought was unfortunate:
3 March: Courier Mail: Greg Stolz: 'Water is too cheap'
Kim Wood, CEO of Allconnex Water, says Queenslanders have been getting their water too cheaply for too long and should get ready to pay much more...
He said the State Government had bravely tackled the drought by investing $9 billion in the southeast water grid but "unfortunately, it rained".
"The state has done a brave thing, the outcomes are good, it did rain and money's tight . . . that's regrettable," he said.
Mr Wood voiced concern about the potential impacts of more rain on Allconnex's revenue, but said the company was on track to exceed budgeted returns to its shareholders, the three councils....
http://www.couriermail.com.au/ipad/water-too-cheap-says-utility-boss/story-fn6ck51p-1226014992008
"California, the Land of Fruits and Nuts"
:-)
David,
It was 1918.
And, Peter Walsh, 1908 was just after the particularly savage 'Federation Drought'. It has always struck me as convenient that the BOM considers the records before 1910 to be insuffiiciently reliable for talking about climate change. Which leaves the question: how do the HadCRU and other global records handle this lack of reliability?
Clive James skewers Tim Flannery with delightful parsimony. It is worth noting that the government has hired him for $180K pa to sell the punters in those cities he predicted would run out of water on the idea of a carbon tax. Pure comedy gold! They must think they are unaware of Tim's past pronouncements of doom.
The biggest mistake inspired by this enthusiasm is probably the decision of the previous Victoiran state government to invest in a desalination plant, rather than a dam (because there would no longer be enough water to fill a dam'). Because it is a public-private partnership, they signed take-or-pay contracts with the project operators that are likely to cost $24 billion regardless of whether any water is produced.
The real killer: construction has been delayed by rain. Who said Gaia lacked a sense of irony?
I love a star-blessed sidewalk,
A land of fruit and nuts,
Of sequoia mountain ranges,
Of many frozen butts.
I was going to make a sarcastic post about how our politicians and public servants and scientific mandarins can and will dance to what ever lunny tune the IPCC Pr machine demands.
But reading Dorothea Mackellar's poem has brought tears to my eyes again and I can't do it.
The first verse is very evocative as well, anybody remember it?
It was written while she was living in England in a cold, wet winter:
The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.
She then goes on:
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!
My family came from the country (grandfather arrived in 1855).
Anybody with farming relatives just knows that the climate always changes but that the changes always stay the same.
Humans have nothing to do with it.
Australians just endure, as we learn to love the climate in its many moods.
We are the living proof.
Hi Aynsley Kellow, your wrote:
QUOTE
And, Peter Walsh, 1908 was just after the particularly savage 'Federation Drought'. It has always struck me as convenient that the BOM considers the records before 1910 to be insuffiiciently reliable for talking about climate change. Which leaves the question: how do the HadCRU and other global records handle this lack of reliability?
UNQUOTE
I spent a considerable amount of time last year, argueing fruitless with an otherwise extremely helpful person from the BOM.
I pointed out that, for example, the standard variance from the mean annual maximum temperature at Sydney Observatory Hill for the period 1866 to 1909, was less that that for the period after that.
I alos pointed out, from internal BOM papers that I was given, how careful the old timers were with their measurements.
In that, as in all other "difficult" matters, I received no answer.
We just went on to the next matter to discuss.
I concluded that I had hit the target, whenever I was give the silent treatment.
The email conversation was very lengthy and very polite.
I was given a large amount of useful data and documents.
You can't expect public servants to go against government policy,
or even to begin, to start, commencing to think for themeselves.
Not unless they are indispensible, like Dr. Roy Spencer.
Clive James writes that the poet Dorothy wrote of her love for her country's rough edges, while visiting Britain.
Here is another poet, singing of her wanting to go back home.
Thanks a million, Lerogue for posting the Sabatini song. It so happened that I was out on a business trip, visiting local monuments because I had the time. Away from home, in the warm afternoon sun I just remembered, of all people in the world, Gabriela Sabatini. I have no idea why.
Speaking of songs, here is one I stumbled across:
lapogus: "With him not having been on TV much in the last few years, I had forgotten that James was a sceptic. (I wonder if this is coincidence?)"
I think not - he disappeared from R4 very shortly after taking an overtly sceptical line on climate in one of his broadcasts. He was then disappeared, never to be heard of again on Radio 4.
Shub:
Starblind by Iron Maiden. I do love the Iron Maiden lyrics. Released 13 August 2010, by the looks.
I guess the guys are keeping up to date with current news.