TIM Flannery has just been hired by the Gillard Government to scare us stupid, and I can't think of a better man for the job.

This Alarmist of the Year is worth every bit of the $180,000 salary he'll get as part-time chairman of the Government's new Climate Commission.



His job is simple: to advise us that we really, truly have to accept, say, the new tax on carbon dioxide emissions that this Government threatens to impose.



This kind of work is just up the dark alley of Flannery, author of The Weather Makers, that bible of booga booga.



He's had years of practice trying to terrify us into thinking our exhausts are turning the world into a fireball that will wipe out civilisation, melt polar ice caps and drown entire cities under hot seas.



Small problem, though: after so many years of hearing Flannery's predictions, we're now able to see if some of the scariest have actually panned out.



And we're also able to see if people who bet real money on his advice have cleaned up or been cleaned out.



So before we buy a great green tax from Flannery, whose real expertise is actually in mammology, it may pay to check his record. Ready?



In 2005, Flannery predicted Sydney's dams could be dry in as little as two years because global warming was drying up the rains, leaving the city "facing extreme difficulties with water".



Check Sydney's dam levels today: 73 per cent. Hmm. Not a good start.



In 2008, Flannery said: "The water problem is so severe for Adelaide that it may run out of water by early 2009."



Check Adelaide's water storage levels today: 77 per cent.



In 2007, Flannery predicted cities such as Brisbane would never again have dam-filling rains, as global warming had caused "a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas" and made the soil too hot, "so even the rain that falls isn't actually going to fill our dams and river systems ... ".



Check the Murray-Darling system today: in flood. Check Brisbane's dam levels: 100 per cent full.



All this may seem funny, but some politicians, voters and investors have taken this kind of warming alarmism very seriously and made expensive decisions in the belief it was sound.



So let's check on them, too.



In 2007, Flannery predicted global warming would so dry our continent that desalination plants were needed to save three of our biggest cities from disaster.



As he put it: "Over the past 50 years, southern Australia has lost about 20 per cent of its rainfall, and one cause is almost certainly global warming ...



"In Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane, water supplies are so low they need desalinated water urgently, possibly in as little as 18 months."



One premier, Queensland's Peter Beattie, took such predictions - made by other warming alarmists, too - so seriously that he spent more than $1 billion of taxpayers' money on a desalination plant, saying "it is only prudent to assume at this stage that lower-than-usual rainfalls could eventuate".



But check that desalination plant today: mothballed indefinitely, now that the rains have returned.



(Incidentally, notice how many of Flannery's big predictions date from 2007? That was the year warming alarmism reached its most hysterical pitch and Flannery was named Australian of the Year.)



Back to another tip Flannery gave in that year of warming terror. In 2007, he warned that "the social licence of coal to operate is rapidly being withdrawn globally" by governments worried by the warming allegedly caused by burning the stuff.



We should switch to "green" power instead, said Flannery, who recommended geothermal - pumping water on to hot rocks deep underground to create steam.



"There are hot rocks in South Australia that potentially have enough embedded energy in them to run Australia's economy for the best part of a century," he said.



"The technology to extract that energy and turn it into electricity is relatively straightforward."



Flannery repeatedly promoted this "straightforward" technology, and in 2009, the Rudd government awarded $90 million to Geodynamics to build a geothermal power plant in the Cooper Basin, the very area Flannery recommended. Coincidentally, Flannery has for years been a Geodynamics shareholder, a vested interest he sometimes declares.



Time to check on how that business tip went. Answer: erk.



The technology Flannery said was "relatively straighforward" wasn't.



One of Geodynamics' five wells at Innamincka collapsed in an explosion that damaged two others. All had to be plugged with cement.



The project has now been hit by the kind of floods Flannery didn't predict in a warming world, with Geodynamics announcing work had been further "delayed following extensive local rainfall in the Cooper Basin region".



The technological and financing difficulties mean there is no certainty now that a commercial-scale plant will ever get built, let alone prove viable, so it's no surprise the company's share price has almost halved in four months.



Never mind, here comes Flannery with his latest scares and you-beaut fix.



His job as Climate Commission chief, says Climate Change Minister Greg Combet, is to "provide an authoritative, independent source of information on climate change to the Australian community" and "build the consensus about reducing Australia's carbon pollution".



That, translated, means selling us whatever scheme the Government cooks up to tax carbon dioxide, doing to the economy what the floods have done to Flannery's hot-rocks investment.



See why I say Flannery is the right man for this job? Who better to teach us how little we really know about global warming and how much it may cost to panic?

Originally published as It pays to check climate predictions