Now this is going to get real interesting real fast

That flooding in Australia that killed 30 people with another 90 people missing? There was the same level of flooding and loss of life in 1974. The dangers were known and a series of dams and levees had been planned to prevent this. Environment Minister Peter Garrett blocked the dam on the grounds that it would endanger a few fish. From James Delinpole:

Queensland floods: but at least the 'endangered' Mary River cod is safe, eh?
This is a guest post from one of our regular commenters, Memory Vault. He�s understandably upset about the Australian floods, which may have claimed more than 70 lives. But what really upsets him is that this disaster could have been prevented. He blames green campaigners so wedded to their ideology they never stop to consider the human consequences. It is to them his bitter letter is addressed.

Andrew Bolt has similarly harsh words for Australia�s eco nuts. Were it not for the actions of Environment Minister Peter Garrett, for example, the Queensland town of Gympie would not now be underwater. Unfortunately, Garrett took it upon himself to block the proposed dam that would have prevented it.

Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett on Wednesday said he made the interim decision to reject the controversial $1.8 billion plan to dam the Mary River because evidence showed it could kill off endangered species. He made the interim decision to reject the controversial $1.8 billion plan to dam the Mary River because evidence showed it could kill off endangered species.

�The project would have serious and irreversible effects on national listed species such as the Australian lungfish, the Mary River turtle and the Mary River cod � both of those endangered.

Here is Memory Vault�s post. It is addressed to the climate trolls who haunt this blog, forever assuring us with their characteristic shrill certainty, that the �science� is now settled and that we sceptics are greedy, selfish fools.

I am sitting here in my home in South East Queensland, watching the news come in about the flooding everywhere. Entire suburbs around Brisbane and several smaller towns are either isolated by flood-waters or have been evacuated. Highways are cut everywhere.

People have been dying. So far about 20 people have died in the past week � nine just this morning when a deluge went through the Lockyer Valley. Most of them children. Another 70 are missing. One could put it all down to �just� weather.

Except EXACTLY the same floods occurred in EXACTLY the same places back in 1974, with much the same tragic loss of life and destruction of property.

Back then we weren�t nearly as clever and learned as you think yourselves to be today. Back then we had this silly notion that climate was cyclical, and if we didn�t prepare for it, we would have a repeat of the same tragedies to deal with in �about thirty years�. That was the thinking of the scientists back then � that climate went in roughly thirty year cycles.

Flood mitigation programs were planned. A series of levee banks and diversionary dams would be built. Brisbane and SE QLD would NEVER suffer such devastation again. After all, we had thirty years to plan and build and improve.

And that�s what we did � or at least started. Wivenhoe Dam got built as the first step, but by the time it was finished clever people like you lot who �knew� that such things were never going to happen again had taken over. CO2 AGW madness had already taken hold.

Instead we had �post modern� minds like Tim Flannery �advising� the government that because of Anthropogenic Global Warming, SE QLD would be perpetually in drought from then on. �Forget dams and flood mitigation programs�, intoned the wise Dr Tim � �build desalination plants instead�.

So that�s what our government did. And that is why thirty five years later, we are once again suffering exactly the SAME tragic loss of life and destruction of property, pretty-much exactly where, and when, and how, those stupid scientists who foolishly believed climate was cyclical had predicted.

Meanwhile our billion dollar desalination plant is quietly being mothballed, and emergency crews are frantically trying to work out how they might be able to save nineteen thousand homes from destruction in the next couple of days, as the Lockyer deluge hits Brisbane. Wise Dr Tim Flannery has been made �Australian of the Year� for his contributions.

I google on the internet for climate extremes and climate-related disasters in the 1972 � 1979 period � the period of the last transition in the natural weather cycle, and I find that it wasn�t a good period in many places around the world. Record and near record high � and low temperatures, record and near-record precipitation, and so on. Floods and droughts pretty-much mimicking what is happening now, and in pretty-much the same places.

I also noted that the indicators of the �silly� theory of the cyclical nature , ocean and atmospheric, are pretty much exactly as they are now.

I have to admit it could all get a bit depressing. But then I remember that the world is in the capable hands of much cleverer people than those silly scientists back in the Seventies who believed climate was cyclical. Now the decisions are being made by clever people like Dr Tim Flannery

� and you.

That is when I weep for my fellow Man.