Thank you for your thoughtful and kind words excelsior. In many ways I agree with you. Evidence linking extraordinary weather events to anthropogenic climate change can easily be missed in the random chaos. The natural background variability in climate is obscuring the subtle but accumulating changes that AGW is bringing. As you say, we have had "worse" events with unambiguously natural causes.
What saddens me a little is when a post on this forum is acclaimed for identifying the ongoing catastrophe at Brisbane with "There is nothing extraordinary about our current event.".
I suggest there is much that is extraordinary. The courage and commitment and sacrifice and generosity of everyday people has been extraordinary. The damage has been extraordinary. The images have been extraordinary. The fact that these events are unrelated to tropical cyclone activity is extraordinary too.
The cyclone season is not over yet and the possibility of cyclone related flooding remains very real.
