I can't vouch for the precise accuracy of the following, but the general perspective would be correct.
ETS tax for dummies
Let's put this into a bit of perspective for laymen!
ETS is another tax. It is equal to putting up the GST to 12.5% which would be unacceptable and produce an outcry.
Read the following analogy and you will realize the insignificance of carbon dioxide as a weather controller.
Pass on to all in your address book including politicians and may be they will listen to their constituents, rather than vested interests which stand to gain by the ETS.
Here's a practical way to understand Julia Gillard Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.
Imagine 1 kilometre of atmosphere and we want to get rid of the carbon pollution in it created by human activity. Let's go for a walk along it.
The first 770 metres are Nitrogen.
The next 210 metres are Oxygen.
That's 980 metres of the 1 kilometre. 20 metres to go.
The next 10 metres are water vapour. 10 metres left.
9 metres are argon. Just 1 more metre.
A few gases make up the first bit of that last metre.
The last 38 centimetres of the kilometre - that's carbon dioxide. A bit over one foot.
97% of that is produced by Mother Nature. It’s natural.
Out of our journey of one kilometre, there are just 12 millimetres left. Just over a centimetre - about half an inch.
That’s the amount of carbon dioxide that global human activity puts into the atmosphere.
And of those 12 millimetres Australia puts in .18 of a millimetre.
Less than the thickness of a hair. Out of a kilometre!
As a hair is to a kilometre - so is Australia 's contribution to what Julia Gillard calls Carbon Pollution.
Imagine Brisbane 's new Gateway Bridge , ready to be opened by Julia Gillard. It's been polished, painted and scrubbed by an army of workers till its 1 kilometre length is surgically clean. Except that Julia Gillard says we have a huge problem, the bridge is polluted - there's a human hair on the roadway. We'd laugh ourselves silly.
There are plenty of real pollution problems to worry about.
It's hard to imagine that Australia's contribution to carbon dioxide in the world's atmosphere is one of the more pressing ones. And I can't believe that a new tax on everything is the only way to blow that pesky hair away.
Pass this on quickly while the ETS is being debated in Federal Parliament.
05 March, 2011
MD Basin-Eucumbene
Letter published in The Land on 24th February-
"Max Talbot, Cooma makes an excellent point in his letter (Look outside basin-The Land, February,10). At 4,800 gigalitres, Eucumbene Dam is the largest single dam feeding the Murray Darling Basin (MDB). It is essential that its operation, and the operation of the other Snowy storages, be fully integrated in any comprehensive plan for optimising long term benefits from water management in the MDB.
It is quite extraordinary that for Eucumbene, the most important dam in the entire system, information on the amount of water in storage and releases, is not readily available. Does somebody have a vested interest in not having an informed market?
David Boyd"
I have followed up with the following-
"Each week you faithfully publish Dam Levels for all the major dams storing water for use in the Murray Darling Basin-with the notable exception of the biggest one of all-Eucumbene. Can you not get the information? If so, do you know why? Can this be corrected?"
"Max Talbot, Cooma makes an excellent point in his letter (Look outside basin-The Land, February,10). At 4,800 gigalitres, Eucumbene Dam is the largest single dam feeding the Murray Darling Basin (MDB). It is essential that its operation, and the operation of the other Snowy storages, be fully integrated in any comprehensive plan for optimising long term benefits from water management in the MDB.
It is quite extraordinary that for Eucumbene, the most important dam in the entire system, information on the amount of water in storage and releases, is not readily available. Does somebody have a vested interest in not having an informed market?
David Boyd"
I have followed up with the following-
"Each week you faithfully publish Dam Levels for all the major dams storing water for use in the Murray Darling Basin-with the notable exception of the biggest one of all-Eucumbene. Can you not get the information? If so, do you know why? Can this be corrected?"
31 January, 2011
Murray Darling Basin Plan-New Broom
I sent the attached letter (so far unpublished) to The Australian on Saturday:-
Would someone please explain to Minister Burke and new MDBA Chairman Craig Knowles that:
1)the Murray Darling Basin was not suffering from "ill-health", but the natural results of extreme dryness,
2)these dry symptoms have, in recent months, been dramatically cured by Mother Nature,
3)the extreme variability of our inland rivers is dealt with by issuing irrigation licenses which are subject to seasonal allocations, when water is short allocations are minimal or non-existent,
4)buying back licenses when there are no allocations is buying "phantom water", activation of licenses , at times of plentiful water, could amount to flood mitigation,
5)if there truly is a problem of "over-allocation" when water is scarce, then it is the Water Sharing Plans that guide the allocations which should be reviewed,not the number of licenses on issue.
David Boyd
Would someone please explain to Minister Burke and new MDBA Chairman Craig Knowles that:
1)the Murray Darling Basin was not suffering from "ill-health", but the natural results of extreme dryness,
2)these dry symptoms have, in recent months, been dramatically cured by Mother Nature,
3)the extreme variability of our inland rivers is dealt with by issuing irrigation licenses which are subject to seasonal allocations, when water is short allocations are minimal or non-existent,
4)buying back licenses when there are no allocations is buying "phantom water", activation of licenses , at times of plentiful water, could amount to flood mitigation,
5)if there truly is a problem of "over-allocation" when water is scarce, then it is the Water Sharing Plans that guide the allocations which should be reviewed,not the number of licenses on issue.
David Boyd
28 January, 2011
Global Warming-Motives of Alarmists
The following is a quote from James Delingpole's blog. It struck me as a good summary.He is describing ideological differences with a "friend".
"The biggest of those ideological differences has to do with Anthropogenic Global Warming.In a nutshell, I think it has been greatly exaggerated by a number of special interest groups with an axe to grind:scientists in pursuit of the trillions of dollars worth of funding; eco-charities who depend for their donations on scare stories; leftists using environmentalism to further an anti-capitalist agenda; deep greens who believe man is a blot on the landscape and that he should be punished through tax and regulation; governments and NGOs who see it as a way of raising taxes, increasing control, and being seen to be addressing popular concerns;cynical corporations who wish to “greenwash” their image or make easy money through taxpayer funded scams like wind farms;and so on."
"The biggest of those ideological differences has to do with Anthropogenic Global Warming.In a nutshell, I think it has been greatly exaggerated by a number of special interest groups with an axe to grind:scientists in pursuit of the trillions of dollars worth of funding; eco-charities who depend for their donations on scare stories; leftists using environmentalism to further an anti-capitalist agenda; deep greens who believe man is a blot on the landscape and that he should be punished through tax and regulation; governments and NGOs who see it as a way of raising taxes, increasing control, and being seen to be addressing popular concerns;cynical corporations who wish to “greenwash” their image or make easy money through taxpayer funded scams like wind farms;and so on."
22 January, 2011
Conservatism and Inland Water Management
I think it was John Howard who once described a conservative as someone who did not believe that everything his grandfather said was necessarily wrong!
Nobody could accuse present day water managers (bureaucrats and attention seeking scientific advocates)of being conservative. They appear to approach current issues from the clear position that their forebears didn't really have a clue about what they were doing.
So much so, we now have a widespread "conventional wisdom" view that in the Murray Darling Basin (MDB) our rivers are all "over allocated" and that this has given rise to their "ill-health".(They conveniently overlook the fact that the "ill-health" was really the natural result of extreme dryness which Mother Nature has dramatically corrected over recent days.)
The much maligned forebears of these modern "dark green" commentators recognised the massive variability of the inland rivers of temperate Australia and devised a dynamic, adaptive, self correcting management system. Water licenses/entitlements were issued subject to seasonal allocations. Think of it sequentially-it rains, or it doesn't. Our dams have plenty in storage or they don't. Our water managers then, guided by long debated Water Management Plans, determine the percentage (if any) of the licensed amount which may be extracted.
This methodology allows account to be taken of environmental and critical human needs before any extractions for irrigation are allowed. It means that in a year when water is in short supply such as in 2008/9 only 3,500GL were extracted in the MDB, not the 13,700GL upper limit which the Guide to the Murray Darling Basin Plan keeps referring to.
Farmers understand the system and its logic and accept the risks involved. They also recognise the smoke screen of politicians talking about granting certainty. A concept totally foreign to Australian farming!
Likewise, they recognise the nonsense of asking the CSIRO to calculate the Sustainable Diversion Limits for each of the rivers. If "sustainable" means the "annual" amount that can always be extracted, then given the fact that all of our inland rivers,including the mighty Murray, sometimes actually stop flowing, then the limit must be placed at nil.
Faced with these variability issues the modern water managers then revert to using averages. Given the massive spreads around the average such mathematics quickly becomes meaningless.
All of this was well understood by those who devised the system. It is clearly not understood by those who glibly state that our rivers are over-allocated and advocate correcting the perceived problem by having the Government buy up water licenses without ever mentioning the role of seasonal allocations.
Oh for more conservatives!
Nobody could accuse present day water managers (bureaucrats and attention seeking scientific advocates)of being conservative. They appear to approach current issues from the clear position that their forebears didn't really have a clue about what they were doing.
So much so, we now have a widespread "conventional wisdom" view that in the Murray Darling Basin (MDB) our rivers are all "over allocated" and that this has given rise to their "ill-health".(They conveniently overlook the fact that the "ill-health" was really the natural result of extreme dryness which Mother Nature has dramatically corrected over recent days.)
The much maligned forebears of these modern "dark green" commentators recognised the massive variability of the inland rivers of temperate Australia and devised a dynamic, adaptive, self correcting management system. Water licenses/entitlements were issued subject to seasonal allocations. Think of it sequentially-it rains, or it doesn't. Our dams have plenty in storage or they don't. Our water managers then, guided by long debated Water Management Plans, determine the percentage (if any) of the licensed amount which may be extracted.
This methodology allows account to be taken of environmental and critical human needs before any extractions for irrigation are allowed. It means that in a year when water is in short supply such as in 2008/9 only 3,500GL were extracted in the MDB, not the 13,700GL upper limit which the Guide to the Murray Darling Basin Plan keeps referring to.
Farmers understand the system and its logic and accept the risks involved. They also recognise the smoke screen of politicians talking about granting certainty. A concept totally foreign to Australian farming!
Likewise, they recognise the nonsense of asking the CSIRO to calculate the Sustainable Diversion Limits for each of the rivers. If "sustainable" means the "annual" amount that can always be extracted, then given the fact that all of our inland rivers,including the mighty Murray, sometimes actually stop flowing, then the limit must be placed at nil.
Faced with these variability issues the modern water managers then revert to using averages. Given the massive spreads around the average such mathematics quickly becomes meaningless.
All of this was well understood by those who devised the system. It is clearly not understood by those who glibly state that our rivers are over-allocated and advocate correcting the perceived problem by having the Government buy up water licenses without ever mentioning the role of seasonal allocations.
Oh for more conservatives!
14 January, 2011
Murray Darling Basin Plan
Letter published in "The Land" of 13th January:-
Your article ("Floods won't stem Basin reform" The Land January 6) attributes remarks to the MDBA CEO, Rob Freeman, where he claims the existing planning systems allocate too much water during dry periods. If this is so, which I doubt, it is the Water Sharing Plans which guide seasonal allocations, that should be addressed not the total licenses/entitlements on issue. This is not the first time Mr Freeman has made this ambit claim.
In my view the entire Plan and the Water Act are based on two false premises and a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of our inland rivers in temperate Australia.
The first false premise is the belief that our rivers are "unhealthy". We have confused lack of health with the natural results of extreme dryness, a condition which has been dramatically corrected by Mother Nature in recent months.
The second false premise is that this "unhealthy condition" was the result of excessive extractions by irrigators.
Nowhere in the Plan Guide does it acknowledge that in the last two years for which we have figures available, total extractions were only 3,500GL in 2008/9 and only 3,000GL in 2007/8.
In other words, the allocations governed by the water sharing plans for each major river, would seem to be working well and this self-correcting mechanism is doing just what it was designed to do.
The Plan Guide constantly refers to the total extraction limit of 13,700GL without explaining that licenses/entitlements without allocations amount to phantom water.
The fundamental misunderstanding is in not recognising that the key characteristic of Australia’s inland rivers is massive variability. The last 7 to 10 years of drought and the recent "big wet" is a classic example.
In such circumstances it is really nonsense to ask CSIRO to calculate “Sustainable Water Yield” which I take to mean the annual amount that can always be extracted. Likewise the setting of Sustainable Diversion Limits makes no sense unless these are set at zero. Irrigators understand and live with these risks and the Minister's call for certainty is really a smoke screen.
I firmly believe that the Water Act (2007) should be repealed (not fiddled with and only amended) and we should start the whole process again.
DAVID BOYD
St Ives
Your article ("Floods won't stem Basin reform" The Land January 6) attributes remarks to the MDBA CEO, Rob Freeman, where he claims the existing planning systems allocate too much water during dry periods. If this is so, which I doubt, it is the Water Sharing Plans which guide seasonal allocations, that should be addressed not the total licenses/entitlements on issue. This is not the first time Mr Freeman has made this ambit claim.
In my view the entire Plan and the Water Act are based on two false premises and a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of our inland rivers in temperate Australia.
The first false premise is the belief that our rivers are "unhealthy". We have confused lack of health with the natural results of extreme dryness, a condition which has been dramatically corrected by Mother Nature in recent months.
The second false premise is that this "unhealthy condition" was the result of excessive extractions by irrigators.
Nowhere in the Plan Guide does it acknowledge that in the last two years for which we have figures available, total extractions were only 3,500GL in 2008/9 and only 3,000GL in 2007/8.
In other words, the allocations governed by the water sharing plans for each major river, would seem to be working well and this self-correcting mechanism is doing just what it was designed to do.
The Plan Guide constantly refers to the total extraction limit of 13,700GL without explaining that licenses/entitlements without allocations amount to phantom water.
The fundamental misunderstanding is in not recognising that the key characteristic of Australia’s inland rivers is massive variability. The last 7 to 10 years of drought and the recent "big wet" is a classic example.
In such circumstances it is really nonsense to ask CSIRO to calculate “Sustainable Water Yield” which I take to mean the annual amount that can always be extracted. Likewise the setting of Sustainable Diversion Limits makes no sense unless these are set at zero. Irrigators understand and live with these risks and the Minister's call for certainty is really a smoke screen.
I firmly believe that the Water Act (2007) should be repealed (not fiddled with and only amended) and we should start the whole process again.
DAVID BOYD
St Ives
08 January, 2011
Dams
Letter published in today's Weekend Australian:
"At last a senior politician has had the political courage to tell it like it is.("Dam them -- Abbott's solution to harness flooded rivers", 7/1). The last seven to 10 years of drought and the recent "big wet" is a classic example of Australia's natural variability.
We need to conserve water from the big wet events, when retention has minimal environmental impacts and in many cases is flood mitigation. In these circumstances a tiny proportion of the flow amounts to a lot of water.
It should be recognised that during the recent drought years, if it were not for the storages in the catchment of the Murray, the Snowy diversions and restrictions on irrigation, the Murray River would have stopped flowing as it has done several times since white settlement.
This fact demonstrates the value of dams in a country with such variable rainfall and we need more of them.
David Boyd, St Ives, NSW
The following sentence at the end of the second paragrph was omitted from the published letter-"Such storages need to be efficient (read deep for evaporation minimisation), and built in a manner which allows smaller flows to pass when there are real environmental or critical human needs downstream."
"At last a senior politician has had the political courage to tell it like it is.("Dam them -- Abbott's solution to harness flooded rivers", 7/1). The last seven to 10 years of drought and the recent "big wet" is a classic example of Australia's natural variability.
We need to conserve water from the big wet events, when retention has minimal environmental impacts and in many cases is flood mitigation. In these circumstances a tiny proportion of the flow amounts to a lot of water.
It should be recognised that during the recent drought years, if it were not for the storages in the catchment of the Murray, the Snowy diversions and restrictions on irrigation, the Murray River would have stopped flowing as it has done several times since white settlement.
This fact demonstrates the value of dams in a country with such variable rainfall and we need more of them.
David Boyd, St Ives, NSW
The following sentence at the end of the second paragrph was omitted from the published letter-"Such storages need to be efficient (read deep for evaporation minimisation), and built in a manner which allows smaller flows to pass when there are real environmental or critical human needs downstream."
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