As residents of Northern New South Wales, a region known as the Northern Rivers, are still clinging to their rooftops awaiting rescue from emergency services and selfless fellow citizens in the wake of this week’s devastating floods, the ABC was playing politics with their lives.

While the façade of ABC news reporting sort to shine a light on the personal misfortune of thousands of affected residents and their local communities and businesses, the real underlying agenda was to weaponize this misfortune in its religious quest to proselytise Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) aka ‘climate change’.

Cue the NSW, Sydney-based edition of the 7PM nightly news bulletin on March 1. Those of us who are familiar with the ABC modus operandi of AGW propaganda know that slotting in the word ‘unprecedented’ at every available opportunity, whether factually correct or not, is foundational in spreading the word of their climate change overlords. And when ‘unprecedented’ doesn’t quite fit the historical facts, well why not alter the playing field so that an unsuspecting audience is none the wiser?

Approximately a third of the way through the bulletin, after fielding reports from reporters on the ground in northern NSW and beyond, the anchor brought the weather presenter into the frame to highlight rainfall totals for the town of Casino, located on the Richmond River, in a historical context. We were informed in a stern ‘you have been a bad boy’ kind of way utilising a bar graph visual prop, that the 2022 rainfall totals to date already represented over half the mean annual rainfall for Casino dating back to the seemingly arbitrarily chosen year of 1953. We were psychologically implored to be convinced that such a phenomenon was outside what could be attributed to a pre-AGW world. The implied pitch and tone were clearly aimed at convincing viewers that this was ‘unprecedented’. However, as is so often the case with the ABC, all is not what it seems or more specifically all is not what their ABC is seeking to have you believe.

Let’s start with rainfall data for the town of Casino itself. The nearest Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) weather station that is currently in service is the Automatic Weather Station (AWS -58208) at the nearby Casino airport which is located almost 4km from the town centre. Now that seems like a relatively central location to be representative of the greater Casino region. The February 2022 monthly total for rain at this station was a hefty 573mm adding to the January total of 155mm to register over 720mm for the year to date – well above average – but is that unprecedented when compared with historical data?

This is where we encounter our first significant issue with the ABC news report. The Casino AWS situated at Casino Airport has only been operational since 1995, hardly a comprehensive sweep of historical rainfall data for the region. The 2022 (January and February combined) totals above are certainly the most substantial in the period 1995 to 2022, with the next largest combined total for the first two months of a year being 574mm in 2008. Where did the arbitrary starting point of 1953 come from as referenced by the ABC news report broadcast to at least a quarter of a million viewers statewide at the time?

Well it seems data was merged for Casino from the old decommissioned BOM weather station (58063) that was located around 1km away at the Casino Airport from the current station and about 3km from the centre of town. This weather station has uninterrupted data commencing from 1858 through to 2011. What does this treasure trove of data reveal in regards to the ‘unprecedented’ nature of Casino’s 2022 rainfall to date? Those who retain the capacity for critical thinking may not be surprised to learn that the year to date 2022 rainfall totals for Casino have to take a back seat to 1893, which recorded a truly eye-watering 1005mm to the end of February exceeding the 2022 total by almost a third again. Other notable contenders were 1890 (644mm), 1959 (612mm), 1953 (597mm), 1947 (575mm), 1954 (563mm), and 2008(574mm). What of the highest daily totals for Casino across its 170 years of records? On February 28 the AWS station recorded 240mm, however on May 14, 1921, 279 mm was recorded in one 24 hour period and on February 22, 1954, 267mm was recorded. To be sure some weather stations recorded in northern NSW recorded over double these 24 hour totals in the last week, but again this is unlikely to be historically unprecedented in the wetter regions of Northern NSW of which Casino is not one of them.

So why did the ABC choose to cut off its historical lens on Casino’s rainfall in 1953 when the same data source extended back another 100 years from that point?

It would seem that the 1890s data represented a truth bomb to their ABC’s ‘unprecedented’ AGW rain bomb narrative. To add to their discomfort and difficulty the ABC has in addressing the real data in the face of cult-like adherence to AGW dogma, the wettest year on record for Casino was 1890 with 1955mm and the runner up was 1893 with 1844mm when atmospheric CO2 concentrations were thought to be between 280 – 300ppm. Go Figure!

All of this recent commentary around record rainfall in NSW and beyond has occurred in the aftermath of the ABC repeatedly reporting, especially since 2019, that Australia’s eastern seaboard was becoming hotter and drier and that this trend was ‘locked in’. Now, in the wake of two consecutive years of above-average rainfall across the eastern seaboard (indeed much of Australia), along with cooler than average temperatures, it’s as if that previous ‘settled climate science’ and associated prognostications never happened.

Ask yourself, how many of these same ABC journalists are willing to look the residents of northern NSW in the eye and guarantee them that if only, just only, we reach Net Zero CO2 emissions their towns will never flood again? Answer – net zero… So, the next time you hear an ABC presenter utter the words ‘Net Zero, it may well be a reference to the ABC’s credibility.