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.
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.
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.
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.
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, 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.