Saturday, August 6, 2011

The Rising Rates Of Higher Seas

IF YOU happen to be the sort of settled scientist who frets very loudly about climate change and demands your warnings be heeded -- someone like Tim Flannery, for instance -- there must be no small satisfaction when authorities do as they are bid. Coping with rising sea levels, for example, about which Flannery not long ago had this to say:: "Anyone with a coastal view from their bedroom window, or their kitchen window, or whatever, is likely to lose their house as a result of that change, so anywhere, any coastal cities, coastal areas, are in grave danger."

The sceptics scoffed, as sceptics do, but Hornsby Council was paying close attention, so much so that in 2009 it commissioned a voluminous and extensively footnoted consultant’s report on how best to protect ratepayers as bushfires roar, temperatures soar and the Hawkesbury’s estuarine banks slip beneath the surging tides. As the document explains it -- and with bold type for emphasis, no less -- the science is etched in stone:

Council has already undertaken measures to mitigate climate change impacts by increasing the energy efficiency of Council property .... Adaptation is the next logical step for Council to take in response to climate change. The purpose of adaptation is to prepare Council and the community for the inevitable changes to the climate that are at this stage unavoidable.
The report features a detailed map (fig. 10.1) showing where the waters will reach, and it is bad news on several fronts for Wiseman’s Ferry and a number of other locations, all marked with the cartographer’s red tide of doom.

Residents in those areas will just have to adjust. It’s unavoidable, because the report also announces the council’s intention to spend more money on more reports laying out the specific actions it intends to undertake. So if you are in Wiseman’s Ferry, building restrictions of the sort favoured by Byron Bay and Wellington Shire Council in Victoria could well be part of both your future and your property values. And if things follow the Victorian example, those values could suffer. But what can a ratepayer do? The planet is drowning and the science iron-tight, right? right?

Well, yes and no, because the sybil of the seashore, who just happens to be a Hornsby ratepayer and resident of a low-lying waterfront block, has amended his views on that “grave danger”. As  Flannery explained to today’s Weekend Australian, “There is no chance of it being inundated, short of a collapse of the Greenland Ice Shelf."

The report goes on to note that Flannery refuses to specify where he lives lest enemies drop by and do him a violence. And perhaps he is right, or half-right.

Given how much Hornsby Council has spent responding to his initial warning and the possibility of bylaws demanding lifeboat davits on front porches, the person most likely to punch him in the nose would be a fellow ratepayer.

7 comments:

  1. Hornsby SC receives $1700 of my money in rates each year. But they're not total loons. After "celebrating" the 50th anniversary of its tree preservation order, they subsequently revised it. Now you can cut down large trees provided they are not native to the local area. Much more sensible.

    Hornsby is currently in Liberal hands. Although it may be hard to tell as very few (if any) alderman advertise their party affiliation.

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  2. Prof, according to the Daily Telegraph, this is Flummery's waterside bolthole:
    http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/prof-tim-flannerys-waterside-getaway/story-fn6b3v4f-1226104010903

    Coba Point on Berowra Creek at -33.542199,151.143701

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  3. IF YOU happen to be the sort of settled scientist who frets very loudly about climate change...

    Speaking of loudly-fretting warmists, check out Tim Blair if you haven't already. Al Gore appears to be descending into something between paranoia and unhinged, incandescent rage.

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  4. Knowing Flim Flummery lives in Coba Point, it took me 5min to find his house.

    Clearly, he thinks the people's ignorance extends beyond bozo science into the realm on the interwebs.

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  5. Even at maximum resolution,your linked SLR map did not show any problems for Coba Point.

    The other bullshit is in that Tele article: Flannery bought at Coba in 1997,then bought the block next door in 2003...so he's been a river rat for 14 years,long before he took on the thankless task of being misrepresented by the propaganda clowns on the News Ltd 'opinion' roster.

    As if any of this is relevant,anyway. Flannery,and any lazy git who could be bothered looking at the various projections,knows that his property is unlikely to be severely inconvenienced by rising waters in his life time,even if the sea rises 30cm in thirty years. It's the folks on the open sea coast sites built on sand who face the earliest threat.

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  6. "...before he took on the thankless task..."

    "Thankless"? He's pocketing $720,000 of hard-working Australian's wages for his propagandizing, mate... plus whatever he gets out of corporate deals like Panasonic, Toyota, and whatever else he's got going on.

    If he doesn't want to be held to account by the people, he needs to stop taking their money.

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  7. How does making up stuff about Flannery equal 'holding him to account',Spot?

    And since when were News Ltd and the shock jocks 'the people'?

    Keep it real.

    Fact:Flannery was up there before he became mouthpiece on AGW.

    Fact: some media insinuates he wasn't.

    How would you like it if you were in that situation? Probably not a lot...

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