The South Australian based organisation "LakesNeedWater" have a clearly expressed introduction on their website which bears repeating:
"LAKES NEED WATER AND RIVERS NEED ESTUARIES
Since we started LakesNeedWater over one year ago, our core message has consistently been that the Lower Lakes should have, well, water. This is hardly rocket science after all. Why anyone would believe that holding back seawater and allowing the lakes to dry out is preferable to allowing seawater to mix with freshwater defies logic. Among the great rivers of the world, such as the Nile, the Amazon, the Yangtze, and the Mississippi, the River Murray is alone in being cut off from its mouth. Does anyone honestly believe it is healthy for a river to be separated from the ocean by kilometres of barrages, resulting in the loss of 90% of its historic estuary?
The scaremongers have it all wrong with their single-minded obsession with fresh water in the Lower Lakes. The River Murray needs a healthy estuary, not artificially maintained freshwater lakes. Rivers need estuaries. It really is that simple."
10 July, 2010
06 July, 2010
Water
I was recently pondering my obsessive interest in water and had a BGO (Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious)!
>Some 70% of the Earth's surface is covered by the oceans i.e. salt water.
>Nature provides us with the most wonderful re-cycling system whereby warmth over our oceans causes evaporation and cloud formation, winds moves the cloud around and as it cools (condensation) it falls as beautiful fresh water.
>There is no shortage of total water, but there are often shortages of fresh water.
>From earliest days, man has stored fresh water to deal with these shortages. We don't lie in the rain with our mouths open to meet our drinking needs-rather we store fresh water when it is available to cover for our future drinking needs.
>Storage methods for our drinking and washing requirements need to be "efficient". That mostly means avoiding evaporation. There is plenty of salt water in the oceans to meet cloud formation needs.
>Exactly these same principles apply to storing water for irrigation (food and fibre production)needs. Only the scale is different. We need to store and to store "efficiently".
>This is particularly the case in Australia where we have the most variable rainfall on Earth. Our predecessors did a great job in building water storages-dams.
>We need more, but they need to be deep (valleys)to minimise surface area and thus evaporation and have good catchments.
>Storages also need to be flexible so as to allow flows from smaller events to pass and to take "the top" off the bigger events, both for flood mitigation and storage for future needs.
>Some 70% of the Earth's surface is covered by the oceans i.e. salt water.
>Nature provides us with the most wonderful re-cycling system whereby warmth over our oceans causes evaporation and cloud formation, winds moves the cloud around and as it cools (condensation) it falls as beautiful fresh water.
>There is no shortage of total water, but there are often shortages of fresh water.
>From earliest days, man has stored fresh water to deal with these shortages. We don't lie in the rain with our mouths open to meet our drinking needs-rather we store fresh water when it is available to cover for our future drinking needs.
>Storage methods for our drinking and washing requirements need to be "efficient". That mostly means avoiding evaporation. There is plenty of salt water in the oceans to meet cloud formation needs.
>Exactly these same principles apply to storing water for irrigation (food and fibre production)needs. Only the scale is different. We need to store and to store "efficiently".
>This is particularly the case in Australia where we have the most variable rainfall on Earth. Our predecessors did a great job in building water storages-dams.
>We need more, but they need to be deep (valleys)to minimise surface area and thus evaporation and have good catchments.
>Storages also need to be flexible so as to allow flows from smaller events to pass and to take "the top" off the bigger events, both for flood mitigation and storage for future needs.
Climate Change-Famous Forecasts that Failed.
In 1969, Richard Nixon’s presidential advisor, Daniel Moynihan, summarised for the President the general concern of scientists about “the carbon dioxide problem". This report was recently released.
Moynihan’s memo reads, in part:
“It is now pretty clearly agreed that the CO2 content in the atmosphere will rise 25% by 2000. This could increase the average temperature near the earth's surface by 7 degrees Fahrenheit. This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Goodbye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter.”
These predictions were wide of the mark:
•Rather than increasing by 81 parts per million as the "pretty clearly agreed" experts feared, CO2 rose by only 45 parts per million.
•Rather than spiking by 3.9 C (7 degrees F), the actual temperature increase between 1969 and the year 2000 was a practically imperceptible 0.3 C. Which means the experts were off by 1200 percent.
•Most embarrassing of all, rather than rising 305 cm (10 feet), sea level increased by a paltry 10 cm (3.9 inches). Which means the experts overestimated that particular danger by 2950 percent.
Moral of the story: no one has ever been able to predict the future. Not even highly educated, highly regarded government advisors.
See: http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/07/nixon-was-told-sea-level-would-rise-by.html
Moynihan’s memo reads, in part:
“It is now pretty clearly agreed that the CO2 content in the atmosphere will rise 25% by 2000. This could increase the average temperature near the earth's surface by 7 degrees Fahrenheit. This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Goodbye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter.”
These predictions were wide of the mark:
•Rather than increasing by 81 parts per million as the "pretty clearly agreed" experts feared, CO2 rose by only 45 parts per million.
•Rather than spiking by 3.9 C (7 degrees F), the actual temperature increase between 1969 and the year 2000 was a practically imperceptible 0.3 C. Which means the experts were off by 1200 percent.
•Most embarrassing of all, rather than rising 305 cm (10 feet), sea level increased by a paltry 10 cm (3.9 inches). Which means the experts overestimated that particular danger by 2950 percent.
Moral of the story: no one has ever been able to predict the future. Not even highly educated, highly regarded government advisors.
See: http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/07/nixon-was-told-sea-level-would-rise-by.html
02 July, 2010
Climate Change
In the last few weeks I have been told by a leading geneticist and a retired physicist/nucleur scientist that there is no credible scientific case against the accepted alarmist global warming view. These two and so many others seem quite oblivious to the revelations from East Anglia, the IPCC and the work and views of the likes of McKittrick, Freeman Dyson, and many other highly educated and intelligent authorities.
In my view the claims of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have been brought into serious disrepute by the revelations of the emails from the Climate Research Institute of the University of East Anglia, the discrediting of Michael Mann's "hockey stick" theory and many other revelations.
In Australia we have even witnessed the Commonwealth Government having a meeting of public servants to train them in dealing with the sceptics views. How misguided, superior and condescending can you get!
In Australia we have even witnessed the Commonwealth Government having a meeting of public servants to train them in dealing with the sceptics views. How misguided, superior and condescending can you get!
I came across the linked paper which has particular relevance to my agricultural interests and expresses in very moderate language the fundamental views of those who question the so called "settled" science.
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