Beat me to it Mike...
Max,
Sorry but I am not a climate change believer, nor am I a hard-nosed skeptic.
What I do believe however is that weather patterns are cyclic and because of population increase we are more affected by them. In developed areas this is particularly problematic as areas that should never be built on have been.
We are seeing development of land around the fringes of Melbourne that was earmarked many years ago as green wedge land. A lot of the areas flooded to the southeast of Melbourne (massive tracts of housing estates) was/is swamp and land subject to inundation. I do not believe that any amount of engineering, retarding basins, re-routing of water flow etc will beat the natural water course when there is a lot of water. We are seeing the water go where it would otherwise have naturally gone anyway.
Even in our little sleepy hollow here I have seen the historical flood maps AND the changes made to accomodate the developers...there is a whole new industrial estate about to be built here and the land has spent the best part of last year either under water or boggy. Can't wait to see what happens when the rains hit there after the development is complete
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It would also help a whole lot if the bloody councils would maintain the storm water drains! There never seems to be any money for this now and there is a fear of policital incorrectness about flushing the system as used to happen when I was a kid. The fire hydrants used to be thrown open a couple of times a year and blocked drains were identified and cleared. That just doesn't happen now; plus the metro system is under stress due to population increase anyway.
As for fires and cyclones...well it's a big country and we all live primarily all around the coast as it's so dry in the middle. So we're going to live among the forests and in the tropics and keep developing areas that are at risk.
More than anything I see that we are going to have to find ways to live with the natural order of things and not try to beat this natural order. If this means we don't rebuild in areas that have been hit hard by fire, flood, cyclone etc then so be it. Equally if we're going to ignore the natural order, then we're going to have to deal with the cost both human and financial every time.