Evidence of what Ms Rose (now married with a young son) said rained down recently on the people of the NSW mid-north coast.
As an even younger girl, Ms Rose, who has been a climate campaigner and advocate most of her life, was the co-founder of an organisation that became the Australian Youth Climate Coalition.
Later, she played a key role in the creation and establishment of the national group Farmers for Climate Action.
She was brought to Shepparton by the city’s climate activist group, Slap Tomorrow, and, along with former TV weatherman Rob Gell and the inventor and professor of materials science in the Faculty of Science at the University of NSW Veena Sahajwalla, spoke to more than 600 people.
And what was little more than a passing comment at the Shepparton event became torturous reality for the people of the NSW mid-north coast.
The Climate Council — which emerged after the Climate Commission, a federal government agency, was disbanded in a Trump-like move by former prime minister Tony Abbott — said it was critical to understand that the NSW disaster was no longer simply “natural”.
“Extreme rainfall events have become more frequent and intense in Australia, and communities are suffering the consequences,” it said.
“Again and again.”
The 2013 observation in Shepparton by Ms Rose seemed quickly forgotten by many, but now thousands from coastal northern NSW are wrestling with the reality of a warmer atmosphere.
A recent story in The Age said some climate scientists were critical of early claims blaming climate change for the hitherto unseen downpours, among them one who has been a frequent visitor to Shepparton, Professor David Karoly.
Prof Karoly, who had a virtual conversation with an earlier Greater Shepparton City Council, said in The Age article about a finding by the organisation ClimaMeter: “This was done too quickly, in some sense, to be careful about what was relevant. It was probably a too-rapid attribution analysis.”
However, he added that the primary drivers of Taree’s recent extreme rainfall were thunderstorms and upper-level disturbance in the atmosphere.
Considering whatever doubts some may have (I have none), we do at least need to factor into our thinking this observation from the Climate Council: “It is vital that emergency services, journalists and media outlets, governments and communities understand why these events are occurring with increasing frequency and ferocity so that we can tackle the root cause — pollution from coal, oil and gas — as well as prepare for more destructive disasters into the future.”
However, Prof Karoly, who is an emeritus professor at the University of Melbourne, was recently among guests on the ABC’s Country Breakfast radio program openly attributing blame for the NSW floods to damage humans had caused to the Earth’s atmosphere through the unregulated dumping of pollution.
So, although the people of Shepparton and, of course, the greater Goulburn Valley have clearly been warned about the dangers of using polluting energy sources, they appear, generally, impotent or unwilling to alter our destiny.
Federally, on May 3 the electors in Nicholls reaffirmed their faith in the Nationals’ Sam Birrell, although the voice of the LNP is little more than a squeak compared to the roar of the Labor Party.
That so-called roar was met with howls of disappointment from those who care when the newly minted environment minister, Murray Watt, gave the nod to a gas project in Western Australia that will still be dumping pollution into our atmosphere long after I’m dead.
Why do I care? My concern is for my kids, my grandkids, your family and the broader human enterprise.
History illustrates we have strayed many times, become entangled with hubris and arrogance, been distracted, veered ever so close to annihilation, but fortunately, and thankfully, the better nature of our angels has prevailed and so in this third decade of the 21st century we continue to strive.
For what, I’m unsure, but I do know that we need to think more deeply about what Anna Rose said in Shepparton in 2013 when she pointed out that a warmer atmosphere held more moisture and ask, as would the late Prof Julius Sumner Miller, “Why is it so?”
And listen to the advice of Prof Karoly, as did an earlier city council before declaring a climate emergency for the City of Greater Shepparton.
As an aside, just a few weeks ago, I interviewed the vice-president of science at the US-based ‘Climate Central’, Dr Kristina Dahl, who said we were all living in a climate-changed world, and even if not experiencing any impacts right now, we most certainly would within our lifetime.
Robert McLean is a former editor of The News.
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