Global warming just a parade

Water, water, everywhere: Bikini-clad girls found plenty of water to splash around in at the Miss Earth contest.

By Andrew Bolt

IT'S a toss-up as to who's making a bigger fool of themselves over climate change: our politicians or our Miss Earth contestants, Andrew Bolt writes.

At least the girls in the Miss Earth beauty pageant can afford to look stupid, since they aren't in charge of anything important, like the vanishing water supplies of our cities.

They've just wanted to preach green messages in a bikini and tiara, as they fought last week for the titles of Miss Earth Australia, Best in Swimsuit and Best Environmental Speech.

So, we could smile to read contestant Snezana declare that "Salinisation (sic) of land is one of the major environemtal (sic) crises facing Australia", and Kirra warn that "the biggest problem in our enviroment (sic) today is our lack of water".

At worst we'd have wondered how badly we teach English as Angelique demanded help for an "environmnet" in danger, and Natalia wept for an "enviornment (sic) that sustains us".

How cute, these earnest bikini babes, so keen to save something they cannot even spell.

But how scary, too, that many of these contestants want to save this thing they cannot spell from a threat they cannot understand.

You see, someone - a few of the girls dobbed in Al Gore - has filled their pretty heads with such wild fears of global warming that poor Amanda now wails that "the human race will eventually become extinct".

Scared silly, like so many children now, by professional panic merchants, it seems there's nothing these girls won't now blame on global warming; even tsunamis caused by earthquakes.

Christine, for instance, says she's been worried about global warming "from when the tsunami happened in Thailand back in December 2004".

"Hey! Me too," squeals Georgina.

"Aside from an increase in natural disasters such as the fateful tsunami of 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, smaller changes to weather patterns are slowly being recognised."

Of course, we mustn't blame the girls for believing something so stupid when even Great Guru Gore has falsely suggested global warming caused Hurricane Katrina, the melting snows of Kilimanjaro, the drying of Lake Chad, the immigration of Pacific islanders and whatever else he dreams up when flying here to tell us to cut the kind of emissions he just blew out the back of his jet.

And I ask again: Who really is making a bigger fool of themselves over global warming; these harmless beauty contestants or our politicians, now watching our dams drain dry?

The girls may think global warming causes earthquakes, but our politicians just as stupidly claim it's causing our cities to run out of water.

Here is New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma last Friday, explaining why Sydney is getting permanent water restrictions: "The changes brought by climate change are going to change the way we use water."

Victoria's politicians have used the same line. Here is our since departed Minister for No Water, John Thwaites, excusing water restrictions that are killing our playing fields and gardens: "So all the evidence points to a significant involvement of global warming in the present drought."

How handy, that global warming bogyman. Blame global warming for Melbourne's dams now being 7 per cent lower now than they were even last year, when things got grim.

Blame global warming for the Brumby Government having to reassure us last week that Melbourne won't run out of drinking water this year, at least. Gosh, don't blame the Government instead for having such a green phobia about a new dam that we may run out of water the year after.

What deceitful men. Or stupid.

For a start, no scientist can tell if any drought yet has been caused by the slight global warming of 0.7 degrees thought to have occurred last century.

Let's not forget we've had many droughts before in our "land of droughts and flooding rains". Indeed, the driest five years in NSW in the past century were from 1940 to 1944, and Victoria's past five years have been no drier than what we suffered then, too.

Bureau of Meteorology figures suggest we may just be returning to the drier weather of the first 45 years of last century.

In NSW, the average annual rainfall back then was just 475mm. Then came years of plenty, averaging 567mm, but since 1996 the annual rainfall has fallen back to an average of 511mm - still well up on the usual rainfall of the post-war years. So what drought?

Victoria's weather has followed much the same pattern: Dry years until 1945, followed by years of good rain until a decade ago, when the dry returned. Our average annual rainfall from 1996 has been 571mm, much less than the post-war average until then of 671mm, but not much less than the pre-war average of 603mm.

Droughts come and droughts go, and it's impossible to see the influence of any man-made global warming. So why should this make you furious with our politicians?

Because the history of this continent's weather should have told them to prepare for dry years of the kind we've had so often before.

Because it should have told them they were mad to waste dam water on environmental flows for rivers that had survived years far drier than these.

And because by blaming global warming instead of themselves, they make sweet girls like Miss Earth's Krystle shake on their stilettos, sure that "the ultimate end of existence of Earth and man is global warming".

Fear not, Krystle, stupidity will kill us more surely than global warming.

Source: Herald Sun