The strategy, published ten years ago, includes comment that cold-water pollution abatement is a “clearly definable, tangible, cost-effective intervention” that can be completed for the major storages in the Murray Darling Basin within ten years, through a combination of engineering and operating changes. The strategy was to run from 2003 to 2013 with the objective of returning native fish to 60 per cent of their pre-European levels.

Hume Dam, like most of the dams throughout the Murray Darling, have outlets for irrigation positioned at depth, so water release occurs as a jet of cold water. Releases are typically made in spring and this is the same time Murray cod and other native fish like to spawn.

Ecological studies undertaken in the 1990s indicate that in the Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers, releases of cold water create an “eternal winter” making it impossible for spawning – for reproduction.

Everything published by the MDBC and MDBA suggests the problem could be solved by retrofitting dams with multi-level outlets.

There are other options, outlined in the many reports that have been commissioned and published over the years, including artificial destratification through mechanical mixing.

But absolutely nothing has been done.

The workshops and consultancies continue, but nothing has been done to help the fish in a practical way.

I found this curious. Indeed there has been no shortage of money.

Billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent: buying back water to improve the river environment; installing fishways so fish can swim up to just below the Hume dam; tonnes of micro-chipped logs have even been tipped into the Murray River immediately downstream of Hume dam to create the best possible habitat for Murray cod.

So why not address this remaining key issue, indeed the issue identified as the most important and the easiest to implement ten years ago?

After reading everything I could find I tried my usual option of last resort – phoning a government bureaucrat. After some haranguing from me, it was finally admitted that it’s the trout lobby, the fly fish lobby – stupid!

They don’t want the cold water pollution fixed. The “eternal winter” is good for the European fish.

What a farce!

So all the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars spent luring Murray cod up the river to just below Hume dam are to be wasted. Indeed they may simply hasten the decline of this majestic species because the river remains freezing cold – in an eternal winter – because the fly fish lobby trumps the native fish strategy.

***
The Native Fish Strategy is reviewed in a recent conference paper by Jennifer Marohasy and John Abbot entitled ‘Deconstructing the native fish strategy for Australia’s Murray Daring Catchment’ published by the Wessex Institute and available for free download at
http://library.witpress.com/pages/PaperInfo.asp?PaperID=24656

This article was first published as a column in The Land newspaper last Thursday.

The photograph is from Wikipedia.

Photograph of the Black-headed gull taken in Lymington, England about a month ago.

The draft decision is at: http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2013/whc13-37com-8B-Add-en.pdf

But what the final outcome will be is unclear. It is understood that the Australian government and the environmental NGO’s will be sending delegations to lobby individual committee members to overturn the recommendation to ‘refer back’ the nomination.

Such a refer-back would enable a proper assessment of the extension and allow a change in the new Federal Government after 14 September to examine all the facts. The decision of the World Heritage Committee will be watched with interest, and a web cast of proceeding will be available to see the UNESCO delegates in action at http://www.whc37cambodia2013.kh/news/press/01/42.html

The World Heritage Committee’s recommended position next week at its meeting in Cambodia will be to send this nomination back to the state party (Australia) on the basis of concerns in relation to aboriginal heritage, management and consultation. As a mixed property that has both cultural and natural values, any proposed extension must be considered by two advisory groups, ICOMOS on cultural, and the IUCN on natural values. Cultural values include both indigenous values going back 40,000 years as well as early European settlement.

Despite the ICOMOS finding, however, and the World Heritage Committee recommendation, the IUCN has recommended the extension proceed while acknowledging it is over a 12% increase and that it includes areas not contiguous with the existing boundary.

Confusing. Yes! But such is politics at the UN.

Only last year did the IUCN describe a 10% extension the absolute upper limit for a minor boundary adjustment, it also claimed that any adjustment involving mining must not be considered as ‘minor’.

“A notional cut-off of 10% increase has generally been considered to be the absolute upper limit for a modification to be considered via the “minor modification” process, considering the Operational Guidelines clearly define such modification as having a minor impact on the extent of the property.” see http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2012/whc12-36com-inf8B2-en.pdf stated on Page 75.

Having two recommendations from its advisers that include opposite recommendations should make this UNESCO committee cautious of accepting such a controversial nomination.

ICOMOS concerns were related to the failure to properly consult the aboriginal community, the Government appears to have not only ignored the aboriginal leadership, but new neighbours represented by the Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association.

Alan Ashbarry
Hobart, Tasmania

****
This is the second in a series of blog posts, the Part 1 can be found at http://jennifermarohasy.com/2013/05/undemocratic-politics-again-determines-land-use-in-tasmania-alan-ashbarry/

“The number of honey bee colonies in the UK has halved in recent years. This is probably due to:
1. The use of agricultural pesticides and chemicals;
2. Varroa mites, blood sucking parasite which seriously weaken or even wipe out whole colonies; and
3. Cold wet summers which prevent bees from leaving the hives to gather food.”

I wonder how much evidence there is for the three possible causes and which might be having the most impact?

Interestingly there has been no review of the program of works over the last ten years against the original recommendations in the strategy. Yet such a review could throw light on why, despite all the money spent, Murray cod numbers are still apparently in decline.

Many fish experts met many times to make recommendations that underpinned the strategy. A key recommendation, repeated in the planning documents and then the final strategy, was that the issue of cold- water pollution from the dams needed to be addressed. Indeed the expert panel that oversaw development of the Strategy were confident that the abatement of cold water pollution was the most tangible and achievable of all the proposed interventions to the extent that this “threat could be largely removed from the Basin within 10 years”.

In reality nothing, absolutely nothing, has been done to address it.

The Hume and Burrinjuck dams, like most of the dams through the Murray Darling, have the outlets for irrigation positioned at depth creating a jet of cold water.

Government commissioned reports have considered different techniques for cold-water abatement including retrofitting with multi-level outlets, artificial destratification through mechanical mixing, trunnions (pipes hinged at the outlet drawing water from different levels), surface pumps (large fan-like propellers that pump warm surface water into existing outlets), and submerged rubber curtains to stop the flow of cold water to the outlets.

The strategy, launched in 2003, includes comment: “it [cold water pollution abatement] appears to be a clearly definable, tangible, cost-effective intervention that can be completed for the major storages in the Basin within ten years, through a combination of engineering and operating changes.”

Many workshops, technical papers and government reports have been written since the launch of the strategy and not one of these contradicts the original advice. However, not a single initiative that will practically address the issue of cold-water pollution has so far been implemented.

****
References/Links

1. Native Fish Strategy for the Murray-Darling Basin 2003-2013
http://www2.mdbc.gov.au/__data/page/65/Fish-Strat_ful.pdf

2. Edition 34: Bringing back native fish
http://australianriverrestorationcentre.com.au/riprap-is-back-edition-34-bringing-back-native-fish/

In January I asked the Murray Darling Basin Authority, MDBA, if there would be a formal assessment of the effectiveness of The Strategy ten years on. It was suggested that I consult Edition 34 of RipRap, a publication of the Australian River Restoration Centre dedicated to highlighting many of the achievements of The Strategy.

That edition of RipRap includes a variety of articles by leading scientists congratulating the MDBA, community and Landcare groups for their work helping to restore native fish populations as part of The Strategy. But many of the same articles include comment that native fish populations are still in decline and at no more than about 10 per cent of pre-European settlement levels. This 10 per cent is the same percentage estimated in 2003, when The Strategy was launched.

How could so much effort have been expended, so much money spent, for no gain?

A peer-reviewed paper published in 2011 explains that 12.89 million Murray cod have been produced at hatcheries since 1971 and released into the Murray Darling as part of a stock-enhancement strategy [3]. Surely one could assume that with all the effort to improve the in-stream habitat, combined with this tremendous restocking effort, there must at least have been an improvement in Murray Cod population numbers? But apparently we just don’t know. Indeed the technical paper by the Victorian scientists concludes that, “there is no information on the survival of stocked fish [Murray cod] to maturity.”

In 2003, the same year The Strategy was launched, Murray Cod was added to the national list of threatened species. There were media headlines referring to the species as “embattled” and its decline a sign that the Murray River was in trouble. We were told back then that more environmental flows would go a long way to returning Murray cod to sustainable levels.

As at 30 September 2012, the environmental water purchase program had already secured entitlements that will deliver, on average, 1,094 gigalitres of water each year worth $2.27 billion. The MDBA has also reported that more than 1,327 gigalitres of Commonwealth environmental water has been delivered.

All this water, and we don’t know whether Murray cod numbers have improved, but the best advice is that numbers are probably still in decline.

***

A version of this article first appeared in The Land newspaper in February 2013.

References/Links

1. Native Fish Strategy for the Murray-Darling Basin 2003-2013
http://www2.mdbc.gov.au/__data/page/65/Fish-Strat_ful.pdf

2. Edition 34: Bringing back native fish
http://australianriverrestorationcentre.com.au/riprap-is-back-edition-34-bringing-back-native-fish/

3. Impact of stock enhancement strategies on the effective population size of Murry cod, Maccullochella peelii, a threatened Australian fish. BA Ingram, B Hayes & ML Rourk 2011. Fisheries Management and Ecology 18: 467-481

Reading it, I could not but reflect on my own observations of water levels and on the accretion and erosion of mud banks in the Swan River over my life-time. I have known the river intimately since the early 1940s when as a toddler I first paddled in the waters of Freshwater Bay. Over the years I have swum and fished in, and canoed, rowed and sailed on the river. I have cycled around the riverside paths, explored the river’s shores and bushland, walked my dogs at the river’s edge, and enjoyed the wildlife – some of which (like the river cobbler) seems to have disappeared, while other species (like the black swans) appear to be flourishing. I have known the river from Preston Point at East Fremantle to the Perth Causeway and beyond for over 60 years, and since 1980 I have swum regularly at the old Bicton Baths.

Over all this time I have seen the river rise and fall with the ocean tides, respond to flood waters coming down from the Avon, and fill to its brim with the run-off from heavy rain storms. But I have also seen the Point Walter sand spit so far above the water that it has grown a small-vegetated island. And only last summer there were occasions when the water was so low at Bicton Baths that the bottoms of the swimmers’ ladders were exposed and there were acres of temporarily exposed mudflats west of Alfred Cove and along the Como foreshore.

I have also observed the wave-cut benches in the limestone cliffs along Blackwall Reach. These indicate river levels at least 2 metres higher at some time in the geological past, while the current benchmarks do not appear to have changed for decades, perhaps a century.

The literature on sea level rise suggests that global average sea levels are rising at a rate of about 2 mm per year, a trend going back for 150-odd years to the Little Ice Age. But the picture is confusing because in some places sea levels are falling, while in others there is only an apparent rise because the adjoining land is subsiding. In other places still, the rate of rise is much slower. For example, according to the Swan River Trust’s website, the sea level at Fremantle Harbour has risen at a rate of only 1.5 mm/year over the last 100 years (or about six inches in total) and the Trust does not report any sudden recent rise in levels, or in the rate of increase.

Within a tidal estuary connected to a vast inland catchment (as is the case with the Swan River) the picture is particularly complex because of the way mud flats and sand spits are eroded by tides, floods and boat wash, or built up by sedimentation. And if anyone wonders about sedimentation, they need only look at the colour of the river after winter rains inland – the water is stained brown from the topsoil carried down from wheatbelt farms. Much of this goes out into the ocean, but tonnes are also deposited in the estuary.

I do not dispute the data on sea level rises measured over the last 150 years. However the evidence of my own eyes is that there has been no sudden, recent rise in water levels in the Swan River as reported in The Fremantle Herald. It seems to me that the average river level today is pretty much where it was when I first knew it, and that the variation around that average is the same as it has been over the last half-century, a response to predictable and well-known factors such as ocean tides and rainfall in the catchment.

It is possible, of course, to speculate about the future, even to design future scenarios using computer models, and I am well aware of the belief some people hold that sea levels will rise many metres (some say 100 metres) due to the phenomenon of ‘global warming’. I don’t wish to discuss this here, but I would appreciate the presentation of actual data on river levels to help me to understand the true picture. This will enable me to either validate or deny my own experience and observations over more than 60 years, which appear to be different to (or at least less dramatic than) those reported in The Fremantle Herald.

In closing, it is interesting to compare two photographs taken of a well-known feature of the Swan River – the Crawley boatshed.

The first was published in George Seddon’s book Swan River Landscapes and is a photo taken by Professor Seddon in the late 1950s. The second, of the same scene, was taken fifty-three years later by me.

Apart from the colour scheme, and the absence of the elegant old boats in the Seddon photograph, the river water levels half a century later appear to be virtually the same.

There is an amusing postscript to this story. It was submitted to The Fremantle Herald as a follow-up to the concern that migratory bird habitat was being submerged by rising water levels in the Swan River. It was never published. When I asked why, I received a classic response from Steve Grant, the paper’s Chief of Staff: he queried my qualifications as a climate scientist.

Subsequently The Fremantle Herald has published a story about the impending demise of the Little Penguin due to “a marine heatwave” in the Indian Ocean. Neither the story about rising river levels or the one about endangered penguins drew on the expertise of a climate scientist, nor were any references given to climate science data… but then these were stories that supported the Herald’s position on climate change, and mine did not.

Roger Underwood
March 10, 2012

***
Picture of a nesting box taken near Stratford-on-Avon yesterday.

Regards, Cohenite.

1. Distinctive climate signals in reanalysis of global ocean heat content. By Magdalena A. Balmaseda, Kevin E. Trenberth and Erland Kallen. Published in Geophysical Research Letters, 2013. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50382/abstract

Kevin Trenberth and his researchers have never been able to find the ‘missing heat’. Trenberth still insists it is at the bottom of the ocean. This is despite sea surface temperatures declining, demonstrable reasons why back radiation, the Deus ex machina of AGW, cannot heat the oceans and the top 700 meters of the ocean not warming, at least since the accurate measurement of Ocean Heat Content [OHC] began in 2003, as David Evans has shown.

Trenberth ignores all this and the basic point of how the bottom can heat while the middle and top don’t and explains why the deep ocean heat content is increasing: “Sensitivity experiments illustrate that surface wind variability is largely responsible for the changing ocean heat vertical distribution.”

So has there been increasing wind variability in the surface winds? Not according to the data!

2. Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature. By John Cook et. al.  Published in Environmental Research Letters, 2013 http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article

The consensus is the mainstay of AGW ‘science’.  According to Cook et. al. and many others it’s always the case that AGW is true because the majority of scientists say it is. But this is not science! It only takes one contradiction to disprove a scientific theory as Karl Popper’s swan analogy shows.  John Cook’s latest paper promoting the ‘consensus’ has been critiqued by Jo, Watts, some German guys and by Lucia. Lucia and Brandon Schollenberger analyse Cook’s methodology and Guidelines for classifying climate papers into ‘support’ and ‘reject’ AGW categories and find that Cook’s paper disproves the consensus. That is, analysis of Cook et. al. suggests that more climate papers reject AGW. So has Cook disproved the consensus theory of AGW?

3. Influence of Urban Heating on the Global Temperature Land Average Using Rural Sites Identified from MODIS, Classifications. By Charlotte Wickham, Judith Curry, Don Groom, Robert Jacobsen, Richard Muller, Saul Perlmutter, Robert Rohde, Arthur Rosenfeld, Jonathan Wurtele.Unpublished.  http://berkeleyearth.org/pdf/berkeley-earth-uhi.pdf

It has been claimed that Richard Muller was once a ‘sceptic’, before seeing the ‘truth’ about AGW.  But Muller was never a sceptic. At Berkeley, Muller and his team have self-published a number of papers on temperature and other aspects of AGW. Peer review on these papers is incomplete, so in effect they are draft papers but they have had great influence even head-lighting the options at wood-for-trees. Major defects ranging from statistical methodology to ignoring or not allowing for UHIE have been levied against Muller. So what does his latest paper do? It purports to show there is NO UHIE. This is ridiculous. In a contemporaneous draft paper Watts employs the updated Leroy method to account for UHIE. Leroy 2010 used a new criteria for heat sinks based on their total surface area rather than distance from them. This gives a truer representation of UHIE since as urban centres grow the surface area of the heat islands increase. Muller however, simply attempts to distinguish between rural and urban areas. The problem is, as the incomparable Willis Eshenbach describes, Muller’s distinction between rural and urban is meaningless since his criteria classifies airports as rural; that is, some if not most of his rural sites are urban sites with UHIE.

4. Global Temperature Evolution 1979-2010. By Grant Foster and Stefan Rahmstorf. Published in Environmental Research Letters, 2011. http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022

Continuing the theme of meaninglessness Foster and Ramstorf’s 2011 paper was meant to be the last word on climate sensitivity to CO2 increase. They removed all the natural factors that may have contributed to temperature increase and were left with a range of 0.014 to 0.018 K yr⁻¹   as the ‘pure’ AGW forcing. This rate was constant from 1979. This should have set the alarm bells ringing for a start since CO2 was increasing exponentially during this period; if the dominant forcing factor was increasing the AGW temperature effect should also have been increasing. But it seems that their methodology was also flawed. By including a linear trend for warming in their analysis as an independent variable, Foster & Rahmstorf  have demonstrated that global warming is well correlated with global warming.  Futhermore Bob Tisdale shows Forster and Ramstorf were wrong to consider ENSO as an exogenous factor and to exclude it from their analysis.