I really wanted to walk out of the channel 9 television studio in Sydney last Thursday.
I was there because the ‘Sunday’ program had flown me all the way from Brisbane to be a part of a ‘water forum’ to discuss ‘the water crisis’.
Also there, on the very large forum panel, was federal Environment Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Anthony Albanese, Wentworth Group Member and Water Commission Commissioner, Professor Peter Cullen, Australian Conservation Foundation Executive Director, Don Henry and the list went on to also include Laurie Arthur from the Rice Growers Association and someone from the Bureau of Meteorology and of course there was Dr Mike Young from CSIRO and a few more.
I almost forgot. They also had Queensland Premier, Peter Beattie, on a video link up from Brisbane.
Before I could get a word in edge ways, Premier Beattie and Professor Cullen with some help from Minister Turnbull and others, had spun the usual story including that due to climate change, the Murray Darling Basin, not to mention the rest of Australia is in the grip of a water crisis.
I don’t dispute that there is a water crisis, but I do dispute that it has much to do with climate change.
Minister Turnbull had also falsely claimed that Australian irrigators are inefficient and need reforming and Don Henry had managed to explain that the Murray River is in ruin. Mr Henry has been making the same claim over and over for about 10 years.
I had naïvely thought it wouldn’t unravel as such.
It was, after all, only last year that ‘Sunday’ ran a feature story on the Murray River explaining that there was no environmental crisis and no salinity crisis. One of their film crews had traveled the length of the river with Ross Coulthart uncovering the extent of the ‘honesty crisis’ – as I described it at the time.
Just a few weeks ago, in advance of the water forum, I had sent more information through to channel 9 explaining that despite all the more recent hype, the river is still doing OK. I also sent them through Bureau of Meteorology graphs, including a graph showing that there has not been a gradual long-term decline in rainfall in the Murray Darling Basin, as is so often repeatedly and falsely suggested in the mainstream media.
But this time most of the evidence was just ignored.
The shows host, Ellen Fanning, let Professor Cullen and others repeatedly confuse inflows with rainfall, drought with climate change and suggest the new $10 billion National Plan for Water Security could solve “the water crisis”.
While Ellen was in complete control of where the cameras were pointing when, I did manage to make a few points in response to Premier Beattie’s claim that southeast Queensland’s water crisis was the fault of climate change and wait for it, local government, and I also managed to correct Professor Cullen when he suggested there was a direct link between the 30 percent increase in global levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and the current water crisis.
They filmed for 90 minutes and will edit this down to just 30 minutes. So, my efforts may have all been in vain.
There is ample opportunity, thanks in particular to Professor Cullen and Minister Turnbull, for the program to really hone the doomsayers message that we have a ‘climate crisis’ and that the government’s $10 billion plan can really fix it.
But I’m hopeful, if not optimistic, they might find a spot for some balance.
Anyway, the ‘water forum’ on the ‘water crisis’ should screen this Sunday on ‘Sunday’ some time between 9 and 11 am.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Oh dear; I can give it all big a miss cause it’s on me Sunday!
I don’t know what planet you are living on but I live on the Murray River and it is in the worst crisis I have ever seen. Hundreds of 300 year old River Red Gums are dying and salinity is a huge problem. Have you ever lived near the Murray? Irrigators in NSW & Vic are extremely inefficient. Flood irrgation needs to be stopped as it has been in South Australia where they have done fantastic things with effiency and stopping evaporation from open channels. You must really hate the environment to carry on as you do. It is unbeleivable.
In a confined space with that many spivs, Jen. Hope you took a quick shower as soon as you could. Have you noticed any rashes or consistent itches? Better get some cortisone cream just in case.
When they don’t have a crisis they must invent one. It is the only situation in which proper scrutiny is suspended. And it falls so neatly into their narcissistic assessment of their own place in history.
After thinking about this particular recent drought in SEQ one could while one might argue there is some circumstantial evidence that there may be some AGW impacts on rainfall, one could equally say that such an event, even a record event which this event has now become in the dam catchment, could also also occur within the bounds of background climatic variation.
According to the ratings report, not that many will be watching Nine’s sunday program:
Ten’s Meet The Press at 8am averaged 45,000, Seven’s Weekend Sunrise the most watched of the morning programs with 378,000. Nine’s Sunday was down to 216,000. The ABC’s Landline averaged 311,000 at Noon. Insiders on the ABC at 9am averaged 150,000.
I just hope that the Channel Nine expert panel fix the water crisis down here in Tasmania. Christine Milne of the Greens warned us of a drought due to global warming, Bob Brown, her senatorial offsider warned of a 6m flood.
http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/climate/change/20070103.shtml
so are these guys just blatantly lying? Was 2006 an anomoly?
“I don’t dispute that there is a water crisis, but I do dispute that it has much to do with climate change.”
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/trendmaps.cgi
How do you explain this Jen? Looks very much like a shift in rainfall patterns across Australia. i.e. a water crises due to climate changing. Or do you mean you don’t beleive it has much to do with CO2?
and while you are thinking about it Jen, if you feel there is a water crises, could you actually detail what you think the crises is. Between the honesty crises, water crises and all the other throw away lines, I seem to have lost the logic of your argument.
“…You got to know when to hold em, know when to fold em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when youre sittin at the table.
Therell be time enough for countin when the dealins done…”
With all those big egos in a confined space there is bound to be some argy bargy, fine details like “is it climate change or a change in the climate” would be better left to a another time.
Thing is to appear to be positive and have some answers, everybody is looking for a way out, not for more grief.
Definitely flood irrigation should be banned, yesterday. Pivot irrigation is just so smart and so efficient, for horticulture in line drippers are the ants pants. All the options have been tested and tried and are out there and many irrigators have the cash, in Griffiths they are all loaded.
Big savings in water and big savings in weed control, fungicides and insecticides.
What’s the bet; none at 9’s water forum had a solution?
Dams are designed provide two services. The first is to regulate water flow by catching water in wet times, and releasing water in dry times. The second is to provide insurance against drought.
State governments have been actively encouraging increases in urban population for the past 20 years. However, they have not been increasing dam capacity at a rate commensurate with population growth. There has barely been a dam built in the last 20 years. That is, state governments have let the insurance element of dam rationale lapse.
Now when there has been a drought for a while, the insurance policy is not there to deliver.
So we have a water crisis for urban dwellers.
State governments are responsible for issuing permits for primary producers to draw water from watercourses across Australia. They employ experts to ensure that allocations are sustainable. However, state governments have been issuing water permits far in excess of capacity.
So we have a water crisis for the agricultural sector.
I have a wall chart produced by the Queensland Department of Natural Resources showing 100 maps of rainfall patterns across Australia for the past 100 years. I cannot see any pattern of change.
If I remember correctly, not long ago the state governments of Victoria and New South Wales released an environmental flow roughly equal to the volume of Sydney harbour. This was done while Australia was in the grip of drought. Had this not happened, there would be no water crisis for Sydney and Melbourne.
The CSIRO clearly stated recently that the present drought in Austrlaia is not related to climate change.
The IPCC clearly states in the FAR that temperature has increased globally by six tenths of a degree in the past 100 years. For anybody to lay the blame for the current Australian water crisis at the doorstep of a temperature increase of six tenths of a degree beggars belief.
Given that climate change is global in nature, surely drought and water crises in Australia must be mirrored by similar events across the rest of the world.
There is a fundamental principle in problem solving, and that is that the problem must be clearly and honestly stated. Often, what is seen as the problem is not actually the problem, but is a symptom of the problem. So with the present posturing by the parties involved, it is unlikely that the problem will be clearly and honestly stated, and hence the problem will not be solved.
Until the drought breaks.
I would really like Dan to explain this article.
It’s from old redneck country news.
Alternativly since I’v been thinking lots about Gunn’s pulp mill proposal it’s about as far south as we need look.
http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,21206062-5007221,00.html
Jennifer: It’s just Furphy’s Law at work
http://www.csiro.au/resources/psrs.html
rog, why should flood irrigation be banned? Certainly seepage can be a dramatic loss on some soil types it isn’t on clay soils. Farming inefficiency with circles can more than offset the gain in water efficiency ie. no net financial gain/ML.
Once crops under flood irrigation get big enough(usually after one irrigation) they provide enough shade and humidity to negate surface losses, leaving the main loss to unavoidable evapotranspiration.
I’m definately not saying water can’t be saved by drip and pivots, they are just hard to justify. Especially when we can have so many years with little or no allocation amongst the good ones.
It is much easier for high security water users, like SA irrigators, to convert to drip or pivots, as they know(until this year) that they get full allocation 95+ years in a 100.
Some of us have had only 11% average allocation in the last 5 years. Hard to make such changes pay, on clay soils anyway.
Jen, I will watch “sunday” with interest but am disappointed to hear that Mr Turnbull thinks we are inefficient irrigators. A lot of time and effort has been expended by farmer/irrigator organisations to show the true picture of irrigation farming. If one believed the media we are just a bunch of hicks out here splashing water around because it’s so cheap. Nothing could be further from the truth. Large efficiency and production gains have been made over the last 20 years without using more water/ha.
Dan
IIRC, CSIRO did not state explicitly that the current drought is not linked to climate change, the standard line for scientists is that it is impossible to link any one event to climate change, big difference.
Jennifer,
have you thought that in a period (the moving average is not up to these years yet) when we have had two years of rainfall at roughly the lowest levels recorded, combined with years of average rainfall, which has only happened once before that I can see, that higher temperatures that cause higher evaporation would mean drier ground. That means less inflow, which is what appears to be unique about these past five or six years. Even when we get average rain, the ground is so dry it soaks up what we get, meaning record low flows into storage.
Previous not by Dan, but by me, screwed up the name.
What the actual ex-CSIRO scientist (actually retired) said was clarified here:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/rain-wont-end-our-problems-climate-expert/2006/12/28/1166895421393.html
It’s not possible to definitively say that there is a climate change impact to the current drought – there’s simply not enough data. Dan may notice however on his chart many El Ninos since 1976 and very few La Ninas.
And we also have major documented changes in the southern hemisphere circulation.
Anthony, these BoM maps are finely tuned crap, especially the ones showing rainfall flux in mm/10 years.
The first duty of any presentation is to make the data relevant but this crap shows a 15mm/decade (1.5mm/year) drop in rainfall in a place like Ingham where the annual mean is 2,046 and normal range is from 1,150mm to 3,227mm. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_032078.shtml
So the normal variation between a 9th decile year and the mean is 1,181mm and between a 1st decile year and the mean is 896mm. The amplitude of variation is 2,077mm or 101% of the mean.
The map will scare the kids but all it tells us is that climatologists like to scare the kids. So whats new?
Even in a place like Emerald http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_035027.shtml
where the trend is 10mm decline/decade we still have a mean of 639mm with 1st decile year at 398mm and 9th decile year at 903mm. And that means the trend could continue for 241 years and still remain within the historical range.
The BoM anomaly maps don’t allow us to see the percentage change which is a far better test of relevance.
And on flood irrigation, Rog, my brother was a very competent irrigation dairy farmer until they took 45% of his water off him. And he found that there was next to zero waste with 65mm waterings rather than the standard 100mm one.
In fact, the only time there was ever waste on his part was when it rained a day after watering. In those instances he had no choice but to pump the rainfall volume back into the chanel to avoid waterlogging. But no-one ever gave him a credit on the returned water.
The only inefficiencies are in the unlined chanels that leak out 65% of total water volume in some cases.
And Orchid, spare us the fairy tales on SA water efficiency. Come back when SA has removed the barrage on Lake Alexandrina so the water being evaporated from there is sea water like it used to be. At the moment that lake evaporates 1000Gl of fresh water each year for zero economic or environmental benefit.
Debating if climate change is real or not is a waste of time – you just have to deal with the situation as it presents itself.
On global temps;
“…But nature is not obliged to respect our statistical conventions
and conceptual shortcuts. Debates over the levels and trends in so-called global temperatures will continue interminably, as will disputes over the significance of these things for the human experience of climate, until some physical basis is established for the meaningful measurement of climate variables, if indeed that is even possible.
It may happen that one particular average will one day prove to stand out with some special physical significance. However, that is not so today. The burden rests with those who calculate these statistics to prove their logic and value in terms of the governing dynamical equations, let alone the wider, less technical, contexts in which they are commonly encountered…”
http://schwinger.harvard.edu/%7Emotl/global-temperature-not-exist.pdf
A well known newspaper’s editor recently opined that he saw his one of his paper’s roles as advocacy.
No embarrasssment or irony or reflection on the conflict with the overiding obligation to inform.
If there is a profession more desperately in need of reform than journalism , it’s difficult to nominate it.
Rog there’s an open book exam on the paper here:
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2007/03/open-book-test-in-comments-over-at.html
I don’t think it’s been well received somehow.
Rog
debating if smoking causes cancer or not is of no concern, you just have to deal with the cancer when you get it.
Hmmm, it seems that McKitrick cant add up…
re: the climate change debate is wasting time….it is wasting time!
It could take 15 years to ramp up infrastructure.
Gavin refers to the article in Hobart’s Mercury as an example of responsible reporting on climate change and its likely impacts.
in fact the article shows the current standard of as the article is a clone of Melbourne’s Herald Sun of the same day, http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,,21204676-24331,00.html
Comparing the two side by side is an eye opener.
It is based on a ‘leaked’ report from CSIRO. To be properly informed the readers of News.com should have been provided access to this CSIRO report. In this day of hyperlinks and the internet if you publish articles on line, you should also publish the source documents.
Cinders: It’s just Furphy’s Law at work
http://www.csiro.au/resources/psrs.html
The Essex McKitrick Andresen paper is correct. Any temperature at any location is only at a particular point in time. This is especially so at the poles where the summer temperatures may be sufficient to melt surface ice but the subsequent autumn, winter and spring temperatures are all low enough to freeze it again.
And as mentioned by myself on other posts, provided that melt water remains in situ then any rise in summer temperature will not mean a reduction in ice volume.
Once a temperature is below freezing the variations in that temperature have minimal impact on key physical factors like ice sheets.
Note also that those who claim to be able to calculate global temperature to an accuracy of 0.05C have ignored the fact that changes of just 1.0 degree at the change from night and day and back again (as in impacts of landuse change) will produce a change in mean of 0.0825C.
And all this is particularly problematic when one is attempting to project changes in the sum of all averages 100 years into the future because the sun will still rise and set at the same time, at the same time of year, and trace the same angles of incidence, as it has done for millenia.
And the fact that a midsummer mean might be higher and drag the annual mean higher does not allow us to conclude that the length of winter will be shorter.
The physical example of this is the melting of permafrost. It does not mean a significant reduction in the area of frozen winter soil because the area of summer surface melt has expanded north.
And of course, overlaying all of this is the wind chill factor which, I gather, is not measured in the temperature averages but is no less significant on the ground.
Dan McLuskey, when you say dams, do you just mean reservoirs or do you mean the structures that create them, which is my interpretation? At any rate, most of the electricity in our area is provided by dams, which is quite better than steam turbins running on coal.
I receive a magazine named “dwell” in which the March issue featured an Australian home that has four 6,000 gallon tanks that store water collected from the house’s roof. It has other green technology, but the water storage impressed me. These tanks are also connected to sprinklers to protect the house in case of a brush fire. The magazine further back featured another house in Australia with similar storage capacities.
To me, this is quite amazing, but I have to give credit to these people. If you cannot count on government to deal with problems affecting lives, then take matters into your own hands.
Here are the links in case any of you are ready to remodel your homes to collect and store water.
http://www.dwell.com/homes/green/5601921.html
http://www.dwell.com/homes/new/3764247.html
Jen, don’t give up. Any of us who have been interviewed by Australian television news and current affairs on scientific matters can tell you that the producers always have a particular fixed position for the program item. If your opinons don’t match the pre-set story line and you don’t fall for their trick questions, you have a high risk of being edited out. However as a scientist you have a responsibility to continue to put your opinions and not be intimidated by their unprofessional and anti-science behaviour.
Ian,
of course it’s correct, to an extent. (Mostly it is an example why amateurs should not play with matches, they get burned). That is why global warming is measured by anomolies.
I like this comment from Tim Lamberts Blog.
http://timlambert.org/2005/11/telephone-with-temperature/
“PV=nRT found to be liberal fabrication!!!!”
Understand it Ian, really, try to understand it.
It was extremely difficult to figure out what Jennifer Marohasy was trying to say. Was she suggesting there is no drought, no climate change, no global warming? If so, she has no place on any media show. The Darling River Action Group has witnessed the death of the Darling River, slowly strangled by the Cotton Drought, in which so much water was sucked out of the river that the wetlands shrivelled and dried, the waterbird flocks disappeared, the fish disappeared, the floodplains stopped flooding and the dependent vegetation and animals died, and the toxic blue-green algae thrived. The slow strangulation of the river was finished off by the natural drought of 2006. That might have been due to global warming or part of a cycle, but it was real enough. Jennifer should take a drive to Wilcannia and see what is left of the once-mighty Darling.
Barney,
what would you expect to find at Wilcannia given the lack of runoff in the catchments in the last year.
Why would you say “witnessed the death” when this has happened many times before, particularly in the earlier part of this century. I hope I get to come back so many times.
There is no doubt irrigation has an impact on small and medium flows, but not on the big floods. Which are well overdue.
It is unusual, if not unprecedented, to have all the major darling catchment rivers so dry at once. Bourke had reliable enough water for permanent plantings to exist, only running into trouble in the last 5 years. There is only 1% of normal cotton area planted at Bourke. Infamous Cubbie has 2% of normal, and the other main valleys- Border rivers, Gwydir, Namoi and Maquarie have had ZERO allocation this year. Surviving only on saved water from last year.
The above rivers also happen to be embargoed from any off allocation pumping until Broken Hill resecures 24 months official supply. This water will have to pass Wilcannia on the way. When the rain arrives. The wetlands in the Gwydir and Macquarie Marshes have both received water this year, from the major dams. The Narran lakes don’t have a storage upstream. Are there other wetlands further down?
When I was down along the darling a few months ago I was told that the carp were disappearing and the cod were doing alright. It would be worse conditions now of course, since there has been no flow. Anywhere.
Under new water sharing plans(NSW) commence/cease to pump levels and/or volumes have been revised, the plans just haven’t had the opportunity to work.
Standard Lambert spin and sneer, SJT, and the usual lack of substance. And Lambert is not an amateur?
Barney Stevens, there is only one absolute certainty in environmental debate. That is the fact that anyone who uses the term “once mighty [add river of choice]” is either completely ignorant of the normal state of that river, or worse, is deliberately setting out to mislead the public about the state of that river.
The Darling River is very rarely “mighty” because it drains a basin with a mean annual rainfall of less than 500mm and that means there is rarely more than 25mm of run-off.
Get used to it, it is not a “dead river” it is just doing what inland rivers always do in dry seasons. It is biding its time until the next flush.
If you really give a rats ass about water you should do something about the 600,000 megalitres that is allowed to evaporate from Menindee Lakes to supply Broken Hill with 10,000Ml. Frankly, if that is all NSW can think of doing with 600,000Ml then it is much better off in Cubby Station.
What a show, what a panel discussion. Good to see Jennifer head to head with the Qld Premier.
There were sensible comment in there somewhere but also lots of theatre and media savvy statements.
It is a reflection of Jennifer’s increasing national profile to be invited to participate.
Jen.
Nice smack down on Beattie he had the report for three years that he bought and paid for and then threw in his desk. He could have had a rational debate on recycling he had time. Hard timely decisions are accepted by everyone but he mouths public need and then does politics.
He is a disgrace that he dares to lead still and use Petersen as a template., because on infrastructure Petersen and others decided if we grow the pop base. Then we build infrastructure first.
Not saying the ol Bastard Petersen was a saint but he did infrastructure,
not heading up near Kingaroy anytime soon (lol)
And given the experience at Toowoomba with their recycling vote, with a dam 99% full and no water restrictions – would not the populus have thought “haven’t experienced a major 7 year SEQ drought that’s cramped our lifestyles before ” – “dam is 99% full” – “drinking recycled water is yukky”. They would not have reacted well to recycling and new dams with no threat. You want to dam the Mary with a dam 99% full on the basis of “some” report?
Australis has a long history of seeing drought as an “act of God” – “highly improbable”. As soon as it rains again people forget.
It’s nicknamed “the hydro-illogical cycle”. Symptoms of the clock before midnight is talk of the Bradfield scheme and cloud seeding.
Government might have had the report but I bet we’d have all objected. Sadly a reflection of those who elected them.
It’s the drought you had to have.
So how how many like infrastructure issues are lurking out there waiting for an appropriate crisis to be demonstrated? Reports lurking unloved and unrespected in government files.
Luke,
I am first an Australian, second a Queenslander and third Sunnie Coaster.
The most people in Queensland are droughted are in the S.E corner. Fact. I dont see a different human when I look at a cockie or an urban or a green I see a human.
The Mary is a river that floods and floods well with water wasted at bottom end.
If we could pipe the water from the burdekin and further north economically I would support that proposition. But it is too expensive.
I actually support Beattie on his water plan model it makes sense, share for all residents, where it gets up my nose is expense because he has had money and if he hasn’t got it now he has squandered a lot of it.
As for recycling, if I was in a desert dieing of thirst I guess I’d probaly try drinking urine, and if they can get the treatment right I will accept but with Beatties history on managemnt by crisis cock up and catch up and apologise I am slightly skeptical on anything he promises to fix.
who were the two men who didn’t say anything on air, one dwarfed beside Peter Cullen and one beside Jen?
i thought the sunday “forum” reasonably balanced, recognising the drought severity and that having an irrigation entitlement does not guarantee any water delivery.
David Cambell, representing Mr Iemma, did not acknowledge that general security carryover was cut. He said if the water is not there it couldn’t be allocated, which is a correct statement, however as it was carryover it was already in the system. Very different to the main “mis-management” of assuming minimum inflows and allocating water that didn’t arrive.
We now have new minimum inflow statistics to use.
Sorry Dr Mike young, Adelaide has the option of desalination and full recycling. It need not die but may have to reduce it’s reliance on the Murray, which will be in pretty poor shape if it can’t provide 160GL over the next 12 months.
John – I support the infrastructure measures as well as including recycling andanyone who wants to use water tanks etc. The recycled water going back into the dam will be of a higher standard than what’s already in the impoundment so I personally don’t have an issue.
Of course the government has had the money but I believe people also want low taxes, low government borrowings and not having ANYTHING built in their backyards. So in this case we get what we pay for. Government corporate dividends more important than service.
Remember it’s not really Beattie’s plan. The plans have been sitting on government files for years waiting for a run. Practical advice for any administration of any colour needing options.
There will be a video of the forum, eventually
http://sunday.ninemsn.com.au/sunday/feature_stories/article_2153.asp
Luke : Agreed.
Tanks need work though, have lived on rainwater for three years no prob until one day the water goes black. We were lucky, might not have gone black might have gone invisible with dead kids.
My wife swears by that water to this day, when we moved I had to buy a purification set for fridge water.
But with the right tanking systems and there are some beauties athsetically you could even fence with them if you have enough roof area for pool and garden, toilet and washing machine etc.
But retrofit looks huge.
Tanks are fine for potable water in rural situations but in suburbia – forget it. The blowback on public health authorities could be enormous.
Hi, I have been travelling and didn’t see ‘Sunday’ this morning. I am in Newcastle now, will hopefully be able to see it tomorrow night when I get home to Brisbane or when the video is uploaded to the internet (see above link provided by Rog).
From the above commentary it sounds like I could have been a bit more optimistic?
Regarding a couple of queries in this thread about what I was trying to say/my thoughts on the issue …
I am not disputing that the Murray Darling Basin is in drought.
Rainfall over the last few years has been low (see above comment from SJT), but inflows have been exceptionally low.
The non-linear relationships needs to be acknowledged.
And it’s not enough to assume the issue is increased evaporation.
Reduced inflows could be a consequence of regrowth from the 2003 bushfires, more farm dams and bores, artificial dehydration of the landscape from salt interception schemes (see earlier Sunday program and comment about Pyramid Hill), new plantations and the list goes on. And improved on-farm water use efficiencies are also likely to have contributed to reduced inflows and inflows to rivers are likely to be further reduced with improvements in water infrastructure and irrigation technologies as proposed in the new $10 billion plan.
I would like to see some discussion of these issues, rather than the constant focus on ‘climate change’ which as Luke indicates in the above thread is a maybe, rather than a fact.
Jennifer: You can’t dismiss ‘climate change’ unless you can prove our current severe drought and rapid polar ice melts are unrelated conditions.
Gavin,
Why do you think our current severe drought has anything to do with climate change? Wouldn’t the above graph of rainfall in the Murray Darling Basin (see above post) be more consistent with natural variability?
Jennifer: With due respect to BoM, rainfall measurements as shown tell us nothing about evaporation rates, stream flows or soil moisture levels. In fact why you continuously refer to this chart remains a mystery given the mean variation from go to woe is only about 100 mm.
One of my most interesting observations after living in the ACT region for twenty years is the visual surge in evaporation after any rain. This seems to be getting worse year by year. Clag is also absent.
Gavin, I will rephrase my question: On which specific data set do you base your assessment that this drought is due to climate change?
If this drought is due to climate change what caused the Federation drought?
from Jen’s rainfall graph the severe droughts are characterised by at least one year where rainfall is sub-300mm. The wetter years seem to have averages above 500mm, an average not exceeded since 2001(my reading of the graph)
Peter Beattie seemed to use climate change as a convienient excuse for population outpacing infrastructure. Records are meant to be broken, with or without climate change.
Jen: I don’t depend on any specific scientific data set as the legend on climate is essentially written in rocks, soil and trees for all to see.
Key signals in drought are smoke and haze, snow fields and dam levels. BoM data need to include all of these.
Gavin, But dam levels, for example, are influenced by much more than climate, they are also influenced by the amount of water extracted. So you might have a full dam one day (like Peter Beattie had) and then an empty dam the next (like Peter Beattie has) because of all the water being used by the growing population.
And did you know that just 18 months ago 500 gigalitres of water (equivalent to a Sydney Harbour of water … also described as the largest environmental flow release ever) was let out of Hume Dam to water two forests in the Murray Valley?
I reckon your approach, like Peter Beattie’s, is a bit undisciplined.
Now I am sure Madame L has missed a secret calling elsewhere.
In this statement the undisciplined are apparently everywhere “more farm dams and bores, artificial dehydration of the landscape from salt interception schemes” and Premier Beattie definitely needs a lash hey.
Poor beaten Polly Beattie!
Moving on in the challenge, I want to know who started the furphy of sudden water take up after serious bushfires when the evidence is clearly all about flash floods and massive debris shifts downstream for years after each major event.
Ask any outback farmer about the state of his on site storage too. Although thousands of ACT residents are now experiencing drought breaking rains probably due to those much warmer waters just off the southern coast and in the Tasman Sea: ask them about what grass they are planting in their back lawns.
Given I grew up near high rainfalls, massive land cover change from mining and agricultural then huge dam building operations over a century of hydro power development then I can surely say some here are chasing moonbeams in the dust.
The best check on any theory is to look at the extremes first then worry about its solidarity in detail.
Gavin,
It is not a furphy that water use by regenerating forests is increases after bushfires. The Melbourne Board of Works have a particularly fine dataset dating back near on 100 years for the inflows in to its dams. After the 1939 bushfires burn out vast areas of those catchments it took just over 50 years for the inflows to once again reach pre- 1939 fire levels. It was the trees, in this case Eucalyptus regnans or Mountain Ash (Swamp Gum for Tasmanians, a species well known to have zero ability to regulate its water requirements.
Basic plant physiology tells us that young actively growing trees take up greater amounts of water then mature, over mature or senecent trees. This is not an urban myth but well studies across the world. I would expect that in the ACT the regenerating forests of the Brindabella’s will take what they require during the active post fire regeneration phase, leaving precious little for inflows into the upper Corin, Bendora or Cotter Dams.
You are of course correct in you observation that post fire floods and debris shift occurs, including massive siltation of our water ways and reservoirs. These of course happen prior to the forest regenerating.
Thanks Peter for your input on MMBW catchment studies. As a one time contractor to MMBW systems control including remote telemetry etc I was aware of many studies. Hovever the issue here for Jen and the rest of us is the Murray Darling catchment.
Now let’s hear of all the post bushfire / ground cover studies in this catchment that may lead to a better impression re the obvious lack of recent inflows.
ACT dam levels (perhaps Snowy scheme and Burrinjuck dams too) this month will tell us all about young regrowth takeup of current falls hey.
Let’s bet Peter can’t find a mountain ash sawlog or a significant young crop exploiting our water in the Murrumbidgee. I accept mountain ash as once we had in Tasmania could be about the fastest growing tree on the planet though.
Readers should also note much of SE Australia now has a terrific number of dead trees as a result of the most recent fires and drought.
I am a UNI Student researching the consequences of the Australian way of life and after much reading it seems very logical.
90% of the problem. So, we have a set amount of water in Australia, and the world, give or take. When you get a mob of agriculturalists pumping it all out on to the land you get less in under ground reserves, dams and rivers. Then add to that every other citisen with a rain forest in their back yard in urban areas. The result is we end up with plenty of irrigation and gardens and no water to do drink because it has all been used else where. So it looks like there is less.
Then ‘shock horror’ where did all this salt come from. Water ,even with very little salt in it, when you strain a few million litres through soil you get salinity. This is a problem farmers were aware of from the beginning and personally I think it should be atleast partially their cost to fix, they did in fact cours a great percentage of it. This would means the someone would have to shell out to fix a problem they have solved and most Australians are quite aware of farmers short answere to that.
10% Could be attributed to Carbon emissions having climatic affects and changeing rainfall patterns. You can’t alter the earths atmosphere and think that it is going to have no effect. At this point in time however, the changes are minimal at best.
On the proactive we, as Australians can’t just sit on our haunchs and say “its the climate there nothing we can do”. We need to ratify some kind of change in agricultural pratices and stop thinking Australias environment can just support what ever amount of agriculture and population we choose to throw at it.
This is all of course completely a personal opinion after much reading and researching a broad range of facts.