Help Us To End This Ghastly Age Of Panic

By Andrew Bolt

TonyfromOz prefaces …..

I’ve added my own update at the bottom of this post with reference to the Tsunami Warning we were warned about yesterday.

Hold the panic merchants to account!

Tim Blair does his best:

(H)ere’s an ABC report broadcast in July:

A dire bushfire forecast has been issued for Victoria, with this summer’s season expected to be even fiercer than the Black Saturday bushfires that killed more than 170 people earlier this year. A leaked report from the state’s Department of Sustainability and Environment says a season with the “greatest potential loss to life and property” is now in sight.

We’re now at the end of summer. Nobody died.

UPDATE

Get the impression the scare-mongering is wearing thin?

A MAJOR tsunami warning for Australia’s east coast did little to deter people from flocking to beaches.

In Sydney, many travelled kilometres to try to get a glimpse of the “big wave” that never came…

Gabby Stevenot, 27, said she had travelled more than 20km from West Ryde, in Sydney’s northwest, to watch the tsunami and was “disappointed” she couldn’t see anything.

TonyfromOz adds …..

Yesterday, as a result of the horrific Chilean Earthquake, the East Coast of Australia was warned in great detail about the possibility of a a Tsunami. The Tsunami is an immense shock wave generated by the undersea quake. This shock wave travels through the water at a speed of 450 MPH. It forces before it an immense body of water. On the surface out in the depths of the Ocean, it is all but undetectable. As it approaches land, it sucks that water from in front of it and then proceeds to drive ashore. The speed is somewhat washed off as it enters shallower water but it still has an immense force. That resultant wall of water may only be ten feet high. The largest height recorded for a Tsunami was in the Alaskan Earthquake of 1964 when a vertical water displacement of 218 feet was recorded at Valdez Inlet. The Tsunami may only be in the vicinity of ten feet and travelling ‘relatively’ slowly but the force driving it will then drive that immense wall of water inland, taking all before it, and in some cases, driving miles inland, as shown during the Tsunami of 2004.

The Tsunami generated by the Chile Earthquake had a travel time to the East Coast of Australia of 18 hours. There was plenty of time for warnings to be broadcast to the public, and virtually every media outlet broadcast those warnings in great detail, warning people to stay away from the beaches, not to enter the water, and also informing them of safe points if the Tsunami caused any devastation.

Despite those warnings, here on the 20 mile strip of some of the best surfing beaches on Earth, people flocked to those beaches in droves. Every media outlet sent news crews to the beaches, and it was almost along the lines of a festive occasion. Every one of the fifty or more beaches in that 20 mile strip is patrolled by a dedicated band of Surf Life Savers, and in response to those warnings, those Life Savers then closed every one of those beaches for the whole day. In spite of this thousands went into the water. Surfers with their boards came from miles around to take advantage of what they perceived would be a good ride. One local radio station sent an Outside broadcast unit to one beach and was doing live interviews. When one woman was asked why she was there despite the warning, she said that she wanted to see what it was all about. When pressed as to what she would do if in fact there was a Tsunami, she said she would just go back to her car and drive home. Yeah right! Walk away from a wall of water being driven at around 450 MPH.

The fact that there was very little, if anything noticed was in fact a very fortuitous thing, with literally thousands at those beaches watching and waiting, without the slightest comprehension as to what might have happened, despite the constant and repeated warnings.

I’m reminded of the old fable of ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf.’ Warn the people of the worst possible scenario at every occasion, and the people will become blase about the whole situation, as Andrew explains above. All these warnings succeded in doing was to drive people TO the beaches to watch.

On a related matter, in the U.S. CNN anchor Rick Sanchez was discussing the Tsunami threat with an expert who said that a possible nine Metre wall of water was being pushed through the Ocean.

In a wonderful response showing his mastery of the situation, Sanchez then asked the expert ….. “What’s nine meters in English?’