If all those roofs blown off had been covered with solar panels, the damage bill would have been even greater. 
Assessing the severity of an extreme weather event according the amount of damage done to lives and property is an understandable emotional reaction, but it is not scientific.
As populations expand, and the authorities fail to impose appropriate building standards to protect citizens from the very likely repetition of previous, known, extreme weather events, it follows, as obviously as night follows day, that the next major storm will cause even greater damage.
Blaming such increased damage on rising CO2 levels is not only a type of scapegoat, it actually makes the problem worse by 'letting the authorities off the hook' and focusing attention on the imaginary cause of rising CO2 levels, instead of the real cause of inadequate building codes.
By failing to tackle the real cause, the problem remains unsolved. A very graphic example of this situation is the city of Brisbane in Australia, which is situated close to both sides of the Brisbane River.
The last time we had a major flood in Brisbane was early 2011, following a significant period of drought. At the time, the flood was described in the media as the worst flood ever, the worst in living memory, a once-in-a hundred-year event, and so on. It was described as yet another example of a worsening climate due to human emissions of CO2.
I imagine that those false media reports will stick in the minds of many people, because the media tends not to correct itself later on, when everything has settled down, and apologize for its earlier misleading statements.
When one looks at the best 'scientific' record we have, from the Bureau of Meteorology, it's obvious that in terms of flood height, that 2011 flood in Brisbane was not even close to the worst on record. It was the 7th worst on record. It wasn't even the worst in living memory. 37 years earlier, in 1974, there was a major flood which was a full metre higher. Check out the attached graph.
However, what does appear to be true, is that the 2011 flood resulted in damage to the greatest quantity of houses and infrastructure, by far, in the entire history of the city, due to continuing population expansion, and economic development without sufficient regard to the historical context of major flooding events in the area.
Ray is correct!
The flooding of the Brisbane River was definitely a man-made event but CO2 had nothing to do with it!
Unbelievably stupid and short-sighted decisions were the root cause of the problem.
This river has always had a potential for major flooding.
After the carnage of the 1974 event it was decided to try and prevent a similar flood in the future.
So, the Wivenhoe Dam was built well upstream from Brisbane and Ipswich (another major city just inland from Brisbane) as a flood mitigation measure.
However, over time several issues coalesced to make the flood mitigation role of that dam basically irrelevant.
Firstly, the false sense of security afforded by the building of the Wivenhoe Dam seduced town planners and property developers to crowd development along the very banks of the river.
What had been industrial land and warehousing (low value land because of the flooding risk) all along the extensive flood plain of the Brisbane River and its tributaries rapidly became the focus of a property boom.
Many of the most significant property developments of the 30 years following 1974 in Brisbane were located on flood-prone land.
Furthermore, Brisbane, and South-east Queensland saw economic development and population expansion on a par with the Asian Tigers further north in Asia.
As a result the demand for water rose hugely.
The demand for water more than subtly changed the role of Wivenhoe Dam from flood mitigation to a primary water storage facility (in other words it was kept as full as possible rather than low for flood mitigation).
The problem with water supply became even more acute during the 2000's when Australia in general and Queensland in particular suffered catastrophic drought. I will put it this way: it is hard to think about about flooding for the average punter when there are severe water restrictions, farmers are committing suicide, and travelling inland from Brisbane one could go a thousand kilometres without seeing a blade of grass.
The emphasis was well and truly on water conservation!
Then, in 2010, the situation changed dramatically.
The strong El Nino that had been present for several years abruptly cycled into one the strongest La Nina events recorded.
From midway through 2010 the whole of Eastern and Central Australia was subject to heavy unseasonal rains that continued into the Summer Monsoon. Large, huge, parts of Australia were under water for days or weeks at a time. Some areas had repeated flooding events.
Along the East of Australia heading into December of 2010 there had been good rains that progressively filled dams and rivers that had previously been empty or close to empty. This included the Wivenhoe Dam and several other water storage dams around the area as well. The ground was saturated due to months and months of consistent rain every couple of weeks. Then throughout December of 2010 a series of rain events all up and down the extensive east coast and adjacent interior of Queensland began. No attempt was made to revert back to flood mitigation with respect to the Wivenhoe Dam.
When the floods came affecting the Brisbane River catchment around the end of December 2010 the hydrological engineers had no choice to but to open the gates in order to prevent the likely destruction of the dam.
It is true that if the dam had been destroyed the effect of that flood in 2011 would have been much greater.
As Ray has indicated the overall height of the flood war about a metre less than in 1974 but the damage was orders of magnitude higher. All the new development along the river was affected.
Areas that had not previously been flood-prone went under because all the new development affected the flow dynamics on the flood plain.
Most industry and warehousing had contingency plans in place but all the fancy commercial and residential development all suffered from the blind and false belief that a flood of this magnitude was not possible anymore.
The result was catastrophic!
All man-made...
Tony Jay
