East Kootenay Residents Land Use Coalition

I’ve been reading about the Commission: the Climate Commission established to provide all Australians with an independent and reliable source of information about the science of climate change.

Two of the commissioners, Professors Will Steffan and Lesley Hughes, have just published a report stating that New South Wales is becoming hotter and heatwaves will become more severe.

My name is Mr Koala Bear and I’ve been studying their report ‘The Critical Decade: New South Wales Climate Impacts and Opportunities’. And that is not what the data says, not all the data.

Scientist Basil Beamish begins at the beginning. He has plotted climate data for two sites in NSW for which there is data back to 1890: Bathurst (pink line in chart) and Observatory Hill (blue line in chart). One of these is an inland site and one is coastal. One is to the east of Parramatta, the site favoured by the Cimate Commissioners and one is to the west.

This data suggests that that it was hotter back in the period 1910 to 1930. It was indeed very hot at Bathurst in 1919 with more than 31 days above 35.0°C (pink line in chart).   At Observatory Hill, the hottest year measured by days above 35.0°C was 1926 (blue line in chart).

If Professor Steffan and Hughes are going to make statements about temperatures trends they have an obligation to consider all the instrumental data that is available. I mean they have an obligation to begin at the beginning, not 1960 as they do in their very misleading report.

I am not keen on the idea of counting day above 35.0 °C by calendar year as a measure of global warming. A problem is that the calendar year separates the hot months in each summer; it arbitrarily splits this one discrete period into two repeatedly. But never mind, if the Commissioners want to do this they can. But they must start at the beginning.

Professors Hughes and Steffan have no business being Climate Commissioners.

I want to start a petition: Basil Beamish for Climate Commissioner!

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BSB 06 4449
Account Number 10376039

THE Heretic, a play about climate change by award winning British playwright Richard Bean, is currently on at the MTC Summer Theatre in Melbourne.

Outspoken warmist Clive Hamilton has reviewed the play with comment:

Richard Bean has swallowed, without chewing, all of the climate denier talking points favoured by the Tea Party. He must have spent a long time clicking from one denier website to the next, without ever bothering to look at any real science — you know, the science endorsed by every scientific academy in the world…
Diane Cassell is presented by playwright Richard Bean as the lone figure of integrity who has the courage to stand up to the climate science establishment, scientists who are cravenly manipulating their research to stay on the gravy train.

Today the play was reviewed by blogger and sceptic Andrew McIntyre at Quadrant Online:

http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2012/05/on-with-the-play

Mr McIntyre concludes with comment:

But how will Australian audiences react? As mentioned above, in the performance I attended last night, there were some long spots and not as much laughter as I thought it deserved. There was one saving grace. A long-standing warmist friend I happened to encounter at interval said that it “made her think”.

That is an improvement on being offended.

DARRYL Read is a fourth year psychology honors student at the University of New England in Australia. His research project involves surveying citizens near proposed or established wind developments, worldwide. His interest in this area of research began after speaking with rural residents living in Crookwell, New South Wales (NSW), which has the oldest wind project in Australia.

According to Mr Read the conversations enabled him to gain an understanding of the range of issues surrounding wind developments. Following those talks he says he began to read wind articles in the media and most of these stories failed to identify the issues and genuine concerns of the residents:

“IN the beginning my study was designed to gain an understanding of the structure and strength of both positive and negative attitudes toward wind energy developments. The initial plan was for the survey to be distributed throughout the renewable energy precincts in NSW. Following the launch of the questionnaire earlier this month, the study has caught the attention of various pro-wind organizations and individuals who have attempted to discredit the study.

Supporters of the wind industry have also been pushing to prevent the study continuing. To make a long story short, when I presented the questionnaire, the renewable energy coordinators and representatives from the Clean Energy Council (CEC) informed me that they would not support the project because they felt that the study was focusing on the negative aspects of wind energy. (This was probably subconsciously due to my meeting real citizens and listening to their concerns.)

When I began the project I had no idea that the issues were so politically motivated. In my view it appears that wind proponents (government, business, and academia) are not prepared to accept any criticism of wind energy. The issues these people had with the questionnaire relate to the questions regarding the possible impacts of wind developments, like property values, noise, environmental impacts, psychological impacts, etc. Despite significant resistance I have decided to continue with the study, and very much appreciate your passing it on to your network of good people.

Anyway, due to these developments, my research is now a completely independent project, not funded by the government agencies who support wind energy. This has the advantage that I now have more freedom, as the research is not restricted to achieve a particular outcome. In brief, the aim of my study is now to investigate the range of issues surrounding wind developments, and to provide an unvarnished account of citizens’ attitudes toward wind developments. A number of people I had contacted had expressed their personal stories of how these industrial projects have negatively impacted their lives. I believe I have a duty to tell the citizen’s side of the story and expose the practices of governments, which appear to be driven by political vs scientific agendas.

The first aim of the current study is to investigate the attitudes, perceived levels of stress and potential impact on mental health experienced by residents who live in close proximity to wind developments. As a consequence of the differing stages of wind turbine development, it is anticipated that mental health outcomes may be more negatively impacted with progressively more development.

The second aim of the study is to identify the factors which contribute toward oppositional behavior. The various negative impacts of wind projects such as perceived influence on property values, effects on surrounding environment, wildlife, effects of noise etc., will be analyzed. Further testing of variables such as place attachment, time perspective, environmental concerns will be conducted to investigate their influence on oppositional behavior.

In some media there have been suggestions that those who oppose developments are motivated by factors other than the shortcomings of wind energy. For example, It has been reported that those who oppose wind energy are not concerned by environmental problems, the lifestyles of future generations, or so-called global warming. I believe that such findings are used to discredit the genuine concerns residents have toward developments. It is anticipated that the mediation analyses (see below) will dismiss the myths, and put the focus back on the some of the legitimate reasons residents oppose developments, like noise, psychological impacts, etc. Above all, I want to highlight the fact that those who oppose developments are not psychologically unstable or driven by political interests. Their concerns are real and hopefully my study will highlight this.”

Residents who live near existing or proposed wind projects across the world are invited to participate in the study.

CLICK HERE:
http://unebcss.us2.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_3F4GKFxYmNIZSN6

When completing the survey please click the arrow at the bottom of each page to move to the next.

YESTERDAY his Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that Australia’s Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery has studied the climate record and discovered that the number of hot days are increasing in western Sydney, more koalas are falling out of trees, and people sitting in traffic jams are forgetting to turn on their air-conditioning. You can read everything here:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-14/heatwaves-bushfires-predicted-to-hammer-nsw/4009006

My name is Mr Koala Bear and I’ve been studying his report.

Naughty Tim has NOT told the whole story.

There are a lot of problems with relying on Parramatta for hot days for western Sydney. Parramatta is not a high quality site according to the Bureau of Meteorology, Parramatta only has temperature recordings from 1970 and Parramatta is jammed with more and more cars and especially air conditioners making it even hotter.

Luckily, I’ve found a high quality site west of Sydney with temperature recordings back to 1923. A much better site if we want to know about hot days and climate change.

I split my counts of hot days at Bathurst into 10-year intervals and counted the number of days in each decade above 35.0 °C.

Now I will tell the story of two Tims.

Tim 1 was busy playing his vinyl Beatles records back in the swinging ‘60s when he looked at his data and became very alarmed because it showed that the number of very hot days for each decade had fallen from over 60 to about 20 in just 4 decades! The trend was very bearish.

Tim 1 was convinced that a new ice age was setting in and by the end of the century everyone in Australia would be living in igloos! Imagine koalas living in igloos!

Nearly 50 years later, Tim 2, the Climate Commissioner, was listening to Lady GaGa on his iPod, when he saw that the number of very hot days over the past 4 decades was rising very steeply. Tim predicted that EVERY day would be over 35C by the end of the century. The trend was very bullish: very scary for a bear.

Both Tims just looked at the last five decades and were alarmed.

The real story is that the climate changes.

Be careful not to fall into the Tim-trap of just following a trend for a short period and thinking that this will go on forever. It just does not happen that way with our climate.

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Jennifer Marohasy
BSB 06 4449
Account Number 10376039

IF you believe Australia’s Climate Commissioner, Tim Flannery, it is getting hotter and hotter in Western Sydney.[1]

But scientist Basil Beamish noticed that in the Climate Commission report they only show the trend of the number of hot days from 1970-2011. There is data for Sydney, measured at Observatory Hill, back to 1890.

Dr Beamish noticed that if you use all of the hot days data back to 1890 it is clear there is a different long-term pattern in play (see blue line in chart). In fact the year with the greatest number of hot days for Sydney is 1926 (12 days) and this has not been beaten since.

But instead of reporting on the long term trend for Sydney as measured at Observatory Hill from 1890, Professor Flannery has chosen to just focus on Western Sydney and in particular use only the data for Parramatta North (see red line in chart). This data set begins in 1970, which was a low point in the hot days cycle. By choosing Parramatta and beginning in 1970, Professor Flannery can make the upward trend in hot days look dramatic.

Parramatta is further inland than the Observatory Hill site and so the summers are warmer and the winter’s colder. But if there were data for Parramatta back to 1890 it would almost certainly show the same pattern as Observatory Hill. Indeed it was almost certainly hotter in Parramatta, in Western Sydney, in 1926 than anytime since.

Once again the observational data does not support the nonsense claims made by Australia’s Climate Commissioner, Professor Flannery.

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Basil Beamish provided the chart and many of the words. Thank you.

1. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-14/heatwaves-bushfires-predicted-to-hammer-nsw/4009006

THOSE committed to catastrophic global warming can keep finding new evidence for global warming while those sceptical keep attempting to debunk the new claims.

For example, the number of tornados in the US is increasing.

But the increasing count is due to better weather tracking technology recording more low intensity events, according to Alan Cheetam.

The charts are from Alan Cheetham’s website. Its a trove of information and data that helps puts the dire warnings about tornados and much more in some perspective. It can be accessed here: http://www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/
Tornado information here: http://www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/GW_4CE_Precipitation.htm

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Monday May 14th

After posting that those committed to global warming keep finding new things to scare us with, I wake up to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation claiming:

Heatwaves, bushfires predicted to hammer NSW
Updated May 14, 2012 08:18:14

The Climate Commission has released a report predicting record heatwaves, bushfires and rising sea levels in New South Wales because of climate change.

The report says the temperature in Sydney tops 35 degrees on just three days a year, but based on climate modelling, it will be 14 days per year by the end of the century.

Federal Climate Commissioner Professor Lesley Hughes says western Sydney is getting disproportionally hotter and drier than the rest of Sydney.

“If we compare western Sydney with the rest of Sydney, the number of hot days in western Sydney used to be three times as many as eastern Sydney, and now it’s four times,” she said.

“So what we are seeing is not only rising temperatures but some parts of the country are getting disproportionally hotter”…

The report, part of the Commission’s series titled “The Critical Decade”, predicts by century’s end that sea-levels will rise by 1.1 metres, putting more than 40,000 New South Wales homes and 250 kilometres of highway at risk.

Particularly vulnerable areas include Lake Macquarie and Wollongong.

Professor Hughes says there will also be more bushfires.

“The number of very high fire danger days could increase by over 20 per cent by 2020, by up to 70 per cent by 2070,” she said.

Chief climate commissioner Tim Flannery says some of the negative impacts of warmer weather in Sydney’s west are not immediately obvious.

“What happens when we get these very, very hot days is that elderly people and the very young particularly are vulnerable and people get a little bit confused because they’re heat stressed,” he said.

“People get angry as well, particularly if you’re sitting in a traffic jam and it’s stinking hot outside.”

IN June 2011 the Australian government halted all live cattle exports to Indonesia after ABC Four Corners broadcast disturbing footage of Australian cattle being mistreated in Indonesian abattoirs. 

Australians were lead to believe that this footage, that shocked the nation, was typical of what occurs inside many abattoirs in Indonesia: that the footage was real.

We were told the footage wasn’t taken by Four Corners or the ABC.  Lyn White from Animals Australia is the face of the campaign against live cattle export and she starred in the documentary. She was at pains to tell us it was easy enough to get the footage. So we were lead to believe she had taken it herself.

Of course professionals could have staged something like this. The footage could have been totally contrived. We could have been looking at a work of fiction: a setup, a horror film.

Interestingly there is an organisation that specialises in film production for environmental, conservation and animal protection groups. In the ‘Tracks Investigations, Annual Review 2011-12’ the UK-based directors, Gem and Ian, claim responsibility for the footage shown on ABC TV. They boast that their work was “aided” by the screening on “Australia’s main TV station ABC in May”. They also claim it was their most successful project in their 18 year history:

“Some 40,000 media stories followed, sparking massive public opposition to the live export trade and awakening the consciences of a nation to the plight of animals.”

What I’m curious to know is: if it was so easy to get the footage as claimed by Lyn White, why did Animals Australia contract Tracks Investigations to do the work? And if it was indeed Track Investigations, and not Lyn White, who were responsible for the shocking video clips, why wasn’t this declared in the ABC Four Corners program?

“LAST November, Prince Charles, as president of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) UK, flew to Tanzania to hand out Living Planet awards to five community leaders involved in WWF projects around the delta of the Rufiji River, which holds the world’s largest mangrove forest. Part of their intention has been to halt further damage to the forest by local farmers, who have been clearing it to grow rice and coconuts. This is because the mangroves store unusual amounts of carbon (CO2), viewed as the major contributor to global warming…

“Shortly before the Prince’s arrival, it was revealed that thousands of villagers had been evicted from the forest, their huts in the paddy fields torched and their coconut palms felled. This was carried out by the Tanzanian government’s Forestry and Beekeeping Division, with which WWF has been working. But Stephen Makiri, the head of WWF Tanzania, was quick to insist that WWF had never advocated expelling communities from the delta, and that the evictions were carried out by government agencies”.

Read more here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/9246853/How-climate-change-has-got-Worldwide-Fund-for-Nature-bamboozled.html

How climate change has got Worldwide Fund for Nature bamboozled
The Telegraph, May 5, 2012 by Christopher Booker

IS there any reason why Irish citizens should be paying for renewable energy contracts, which were awarded without proper authority or planning permissions, which were granted in a manner which was not legally compliant?

According to Pat Sword the contracts are illegal along with the European Unions attempts at enforcing them. Mr Sword is a chemical engineer with considerable technical experience in the design and implementation of renewable energy projects. But now he’s spear-heading a legal challenge that has just had the The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) rule in his favour, in particular that the manner in which the EU is implementing its renewable energy programme (20% renewable energy by 2020) is not in compliance with the Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters.

Here is a Q&A Mr Sword did on the Convention after returning from a September 2011 Compliance Committee meeting in Geneva.

Mr Sword explains the situation today in the following letter:

Dear Jennifer

This has been a highly complex case of environmental law, for which the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee has issued its draft findings and recommendations today…

In a nutshell UNECE has ruled that the manner in which the EU is implementing its renewable energy programme (20% renewable energy by 2020) is not in compliance with the Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters, namely the citizen’s human and environmental rights, see introduction and three minute video clip: http://www.unece.org/env/pp/introduction.html .

Essentially the Convention defines the procedural rights of the citizen relating to the provision of information on the environment, the participation in the development of policies and individual planning decisions and finally the right to contest acts and omissions of the authorities in a legal system, which is fair, equitable, timely and not prohibitively expensive.

To repeat again, this case was complex. The EU ratified the Convention in 2005 and in order to do so brought in the necessary legal provision, namely Directives, which applied to the Member States and Regulations, which applied to its own Bodies and Institutions, Ireland was not only the single Member State, which has failed to ratify the Convention, but it failed also to comply with the necessary EU legislation implementing the Convention. While the UNECE Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee will investigate Communications from the public, they cannot do so in the case of Ireland, as it will not ratify the Convention, so a much more complex case had to be developed to bring the EU before the Compliance Committee. Furthermore, the Compliance Committee has only a limited amount of resources, so they will investigate only a limited number of test cases and will chose to investigate what aspects they consider important in improving general compliance with the goals of the Convention.

In this respect, they are not a regular legal court, so not all aspects in which EU and National law was breached will be addressed, only specific terms related to the Convention. In addition many of the issues were highly technical, which would be better understood by technical experts rather than a tribunal of legal experts with a limited timeframe.

However, this is a hugely important decision, which goes beyond the Irish situation to all the 27 Member States, the renewable energy programme as it currently stands is proceeding without ‘proper authority’, the public’s right to be informed and to participate in its development and implementation has been by-passed. The goal of UNECE is to achieve compliance with the Convention, a process will now be started to ensure that the recommendations are addressed, if ultimately they are not, then UNECE has the option of requiring the EU to withdraw from this UN Convention on Human and Environmental Rights.

Finally there is another ‘twist to this tale’, as the Convention is part of EU law, there is now a legal ruling that this law has not been complied with. There are long established legal procedures where if a Member State does not comply with EU law, the citizen can seek ‘damages made good’. http://ec.europa.eu/eu_law/infringements/infringements_dommages_en.htm
Electricity costs are soaring to implement these dysfunctional policies, which have by-passed proper and legally required technical, economic and environmental assessments. Not only is the landscape being scarred as thousands of wind farms are being installed, but people in the vicinity are suffering health impacts from low frequency noise, while birdlife and other wildlife is also adversely impacted. It is long overdue that a STOP was put to this type of illegal and dysfunctional policy development and project planning.

Regards

Pat Sword

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To spend billions of our money a ‘positive’ has to be proven

Wind and solar energy, when the weather is right, are effective for what is on the clothes line. This does not mean that Ryan air are going to buy gliders or sailing ships will deliver cargo into our ports. Yet we revel in the fact that billions are to be spent in ensuring that 37% of Ireland’s electricity is to be wind powered. Many engineers ‘spoil the party’ by pointing out that this technology is completely obsolete, is ineffective and can only be supported by massively inappropriate subsidies. Others argue that it is ‘free energy’ and our future wealth.

Pat Swords is a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers and a Chartered Environmentalist. He has not only designed high technology industry throughout Ireland and Europe, but over a decade on EU technical assistance projects helped implement EU environmental legislation into the new Member States. Pat, a specialist in environmental protection, will only tolerate expenditure on that which is cost effective and appropriate; Green and grandiose is out.

Pat’s point is clear, public opinion does not bestow Rights; only the law does. Pat and other similar professionals can demonstrate, that the approximately one thousand wind turbines installed to date in Ireland, have completely failed to deliver their claimed emissions and fuel savings. Furthermore, no additional savings will ensue; as we implement the Government and EU approved plan to increase the number of turbines to nearly four thousand, complete with a doubling of our high voltage grid by an extra 5,000 km.

However, to be clear Pat does not have to prove a ‘negative’. To implement such a plan, the Administration has to prove to us a ‘positive’. After all, even for a small project at home, one has to know how much does it cost and why are we doing it! So Pat started looking for the information, which should have been there by law. He is nearly three years later still looking, but now with the assistance of the United Nations Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee, who are well advanced on a compliance investigation (Communication ACCC/C/2010/54) against the EU.

To explain, while Irish law defers to that of the EU, the EU has also ratified International Treaties and Agreements. One such is the Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters. This is important, it is your Human and Environmental Rights, in particular your procedural rights to participate in the decision making around you. If one wants to implement a significant industrial policy or project, the public has to be provided with information related to costs / benefits / impacts and allowed to properly participate in both the policy development and individual planning decisions.

Ireland won’t ratify the Convention; its Administration does not believe in transparency or in providing its citizens with access to a legal system, which is fair, equitable, timely and not prohibitively expensive to contest acts and omissions of the authorities. So in Europe and Central Asia, we are essentially alone with Russia in this regard. However, the EU ratified the Convention in 2005, so it applies to Community legal order here in Ireland.

To clarify, with regard to public participation in decision-making, members of the public do not have a veto right, but the authorities must, to an objectively high standard, show that public comments have been seriously considered. Therefore they should be able to show why a particular comment was rejected on substantive grounds. Indeed in appropriate circumstances a member of the public, whose comments were not duly taken into account, should be able to challenge the final decision in a judicial proceeding. Elsewhere in Europe this is routine with a cost amounting to less than €5,000.

The Irish Administration has already been in and out of the European Court of Justice for a refusal to comply with the EU Directives implementing the Convention.

However, this is where things are getting interesting. The Treaty of Lisbon is clear, the Citizen has a Right to Good Administration and to have damages made good. Furthermore, the European Court of Justice has several decades of case law on citizen’s rights to damages where EU law was not adhered to.

Eirgrid engineers pointed out in 2004, the inefficiencies on the grid which would occur if the current level of wind energy, about one thousand turbines, was installed. They concluded a 15% increase in generation costs was not justified given other alternatives. They were ignored, so household electricity rates have gone from 15 cent per unit in 2006 to the current 20.5 cent per unit, while natural gas, which fuels 60% of our electricity, is still for industry consumers in the 2006 price range. If one installs lots of wind turbines from Denmark, where household rates are a whopping
29.5 cent per unit, then all these billions will have to be paid for.

Pat’s efforts in his private time are demonstrating that neither the Irish Administration nor the EU made the slightest effort to comply with the legally binding Convention.

Not only has no verification been made of emission savings to date, but the costs and emission savings associated with the now legally binding 40% renewable energy target are completely unknown.

Indeed, under the original 2001 EU Directive on renewable energy, the EU Commission was legally required by 2005, to assess the environmental degradation cost associated with the greenhouse gas emissions from conventional power stations and the price distortion effects associated with public support for renewable energy. They simply decided not to complete the report and instead came up with an even bigger programme for renewable energy. This is a plan based completely on political ideology, which has by-passed the legally binding procedures in relation to assessment and democratic accountability.

As Ireland won’t ratify the Convention, the Compliance Committee cannot accept a Communication in relation to alleged non-compliances by Ireland. So Pat had to document a case against the EU. As the Compliance Committee pointed out after their September meeting after hearing evidence from both parties; on approval of the Convention, the EU declared that it would be responsible “for the performance of those obligations resulting from the Convention which are covered by Community law
in force”. They therefore concluded in their follow up letter to the EU Commission
with:

“Could you please explain why the Commission says that it is not responsible for the actions of the Member State in this case?”

The Compliance Committee met four times a year. They propose to issue their draft findings and recommendations after their March meeting. As Pat states; “the evidence of non-compliance is overwhelming, while one will have to wait for the ruling; non-compliance with the Convention is a breach of EU law. The Compliance Committee has already ruled that the EU has to provide better access to the European Courts for citizens to challenge acts and omissions of EU institutions.
There is no reason why Irish citizens should be paying for renewable energy contracts, which were awarded without ‘proper authority’ or planning permissions, which were granted in a manner which was not legally compliant”.

TIDES are a consequence of the gravitational attraction of the earth to both the moon and the sun with the moon generally being more than twice as strong as the sun because it is so much closer to the earth. The moon rotates around the earth with the lunar day approximately 50 minutes longer than then the mean solar day. When the sun and the moon are both pulling in the same direction higher tides, known as spring tides occur.   Really high spring tides are known as king tides.

Gradually the moon and the sun will fall out of step until their pulls are opposing resulting in neap tides.

The size of tides is not only affected by the direction of the gravitational pulls from the moon and the sun, but also their distance from the earth that changes because their orbits are elliptical. The astronomical phenomena while complex are predictable forming cycles that repeat with characteristics unique to each place on earth, tending to vary in predictable ways with topography and sea depth.

Controversial New Zealand-based weather forecaster Ken Ring has posted comment about the king tides associated with the full moon this Sunday:

“PERIGEE is the name astronomers give to the closest earth-moon distance for the month. On 6 May [2012] it is the May perigee. It will coincide with full moon. The moon will swing in 356,953 kms from earth, and will look extra-big and extra-bright as it rises at sunset. On the day of any full moon the moon rises above the horizon at the exact second that the sun disappears beyond the horizon, which in Auckland on 6 May will be 5.24pm.

“And not only does this month’s perigee coincide with full moon but this perigee will be the nearest to earth of any this year, as the distance of the moon’s close approach varies and the apparent size varies by up to 20%. The last closest was 20 March 2011 and the next time it will be as close will be January 2014. This month’s full moon is due to be about 17% brighter than average. In contrast, later this year on Nov. 29, the full moon will coincide with apogee, the moon’s furthest distance from earth, which will be relatively smaller and dimmer.

“There is always reason to be careful around all perigees, as they exaggerate whatever else is going on in weather. Closest perigees are even more reason to be vigilant. Last year’s closest perigee in March brought the Japanese tsunami earthquake and a 7-intensity earthquake in Christchurch. As usual, the normal sea tides around the world will be particularly high and low. This is because at perigee, the moon exerts over 40% more tidal force than during its next apogee two weeks later. King tides are primarily king tides in the land, and large earthquakes occur with double the frequency in the week of perigee.

“Closer perigees increase that seismic risk. Sea mammals have already started beaching in Peru which portends earthquake activity in that region. Perigees bring high winds because the extra gravitational pull on the atmosphere created by the moon’s proximity creates turbulence…

Read more here: http://www.predictweather.co.nz/ArticleShow.aspx?ID=398&type=home

ANTHROPOGENIC Global Warming (AGW) theory is currently the most fashionable climate theory and its proponents have risked much by predicting a continuation in what has been a 150-year general warming trend.

There are already some indications this trend is stalling with no increase in average global atmospheric temperatures for 15 years [1].

For those who subscribe to any one of the many theories that purport to explain natural climate variability the stakes are not so high: whichever way temperatures swing we can claim to be right. Indeed simply claiming that climate change is natural does not constitute a theory amenable to falsification.

There has been some arguing recently over ocean temperatures, in particular heat content, and how it is trending. I am happy to concede the AGW proponents might have one remaining residual warming trend to cling to here.

I’ve been watching the charts of sea surface temperature that have dipped recently [2]. Nothing for the warmists to promote here.

But sea surface temperature is not the same as ocean heat content.

Across at Jo Nova’s blog there is a chart ‘Climate Models versus Argo Data, Global Ocean Temperature’ that shows no increase in ocean heat content. But the chart only goes back to 2003 [3].

A new paper by Sydney Levitus and co-workers entitled ‘World ocean heat content and thermostatic sea level change (0-2000), 1955-2010’ is causing some excitement amongst warmists [4]. Key conclusions are:

1. A strong positive linear trend in exists in world ocean heat content since 1955
2. One third of the observed warming occurs in the 700-2000 m layer of the ocean
3. The warming can only be explained by the increase in atmospheric GHGs

I can see the linear trend and I’m prepared to trust that one third of the warming has occurred in the 700-2000 m layer of the ocean. But the last claim: that the warming can only be explained by the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases. This is an extremely speculative claim.

Clearly Levitus et al. are convinced that carbon dioxide is a key driver of climate change, but aren’t there other more compelling theories.

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[1] GWPF. April 2, 2012. No global warming for 15 years. http://thegwpf.org/the-observatory/5360-no-global-warming-for-15-years.html

[2] Climate4You Update March 2012 http://www.climate4you.com/Text/Climate4you_March_2012.pdf

[3] David Evans. The skeptic’s case. http://joannenova.com.au/2012/01/dr-david-evans-the-skeptics-case/

[4] Levitus S. et al. In press. World ocean heat content and thermosteric sea level change (0-2000), 1955-2010. Geophysical Research Letters, doi:10.1029/2012GL051106 http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/pip/2012GL051106.shtml

PASSIONATE about the wine industry, Philip White grew up in the Bremer Valley of the Lower Murray. He now lives on the opposite side of the South Mount Lofty Ranges at McLaren Vale. He tastes wine and writes about wine, and the wine growing regions of South Australia.

Today he was judging at the inaugural Currency Creek Wine Show. Currency Creek empties directly into Lake Alexandrina. Mr White describes it as, “A small, but very pretty appellation on an estuarine river system flowing into the lakes at the mouth of the Murray.”

And I love his description of the Currency Creek region more generally:

“Cross that range and you’re in rain shadow country, where Currency Creek and its neighbouring stream, the Finniss, flow out of Mosquito Hill country, Cox’s Scrub and Ashbourne, toward the south-east. Into the Murray estuary.

Over that way the stones are more aggro and tortured, and vary from the heavily-mineralised metamorphic schists of Kanmantoo, where I grew up on the Bremer River, to the intensely-varied fruitcake of chaos some big glacier dumped where the Finniss escapes the hills. It’s highly picturesque, from the almost English pubbiness out Ashbourne way, with European trees (just outside the declared region), to the wild reaches of samphire and reeds between the old river ports of Milang and Goolwa.

The vineyards seem largely to have been planted on the alluvial sands and clays of the sedimentary flats, and some terra rosa over limestone, but some have been more adventurous. Dr. Berthold Salomon, the Austrian winemaker, planted upstream on a rocky fruitloaf of glacial moraine: the complexity of the many ancient geologies shaved up, transported and dumped by massive ice has given him a multi-epoch pudding of stones of myriad mineral flavours and water-retaining capacities. A moraine terrine terrane, if you like. In these ancient parts, these are my favourite geologies for viticulture. Gimme chaos; get complexity.

But I’ve been up and down that eastern side of the range with him, licking rocks, finding the ones with the flavours that best match home.”

Mr White is not only still excited by the topography and geology of this region that borders Lake Alexandrina to the southwest, but he is also fascinated by the notion of opening the barrages.

Just yesterday he wrote at his blog:

“While the debate about the Murray-Darling reaches anarchic crescendo, there is a persistent and increasingly laudible argument that the barrages be removed from the Murray Mouth.  These are a series of weirs which secure the freshwater coming downstream by holding the saltwater of the ocean out. It’s supposed to be like a dam, with the fresh river water flowing over the barrages and into the ocean.  Recently, it’s been the other way round, with seawater leaking back through to the dirty polluted puddle of droughtwater within.  Diluting it, if the truth be known…

“The history of our estuary has been a long string of unfortunate mistakes…

Now it has some reasonably fresh, if not exactly clean, water in it, the river system is being provided a short breathing space for these estuarine industries: down this end, dairying is also vital, but entirely dependent on a good supply of fresh river water.

The thing that scares me about all this is the ongoing popular presumption that the floods are somehow normal. These floods are not normal. Drought is normal. And ongoing.

I discussed this recently at Burra with the radical Natural Sequence Farming genius, Peter Andrews.

He pointed out that during the white exploration of its coastlines, Australia’s rivers were barely visible: there was no mighty Mississippi or Nile Delta emergent, and no surge like the hundreds of kilometers of freshwater that whoosh into the South Atlantic where the Amazon emerges from its jungle.

“The rivers here hardly ever made it to the sea,” Andrews said. “The water stayed in the country and kept it good. The rivers were explored from the interior. Somehow we’ve got to remember what it was like before us. We’ve got to learn to spread the water out, use it where it falls, take its energy and destructive force away, slow it down, and let it fill the country while cleaning and draining it in its own complex way. Slowly. If there’s any left to flow into the ocean, that’ll be good.”

And along these same lines I’ve written that if the current water reform process is truly about giving back to the environment, then we should be thinking back to a period before rivers and creeks became constricted by sheets of water running off compacted soils, before swamps were diverted, before river de-snagging and before the blasting of rock bars for paddle steamers.

As historian Bill Gammage notes in The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia  back in the dreamtime shallow streams and overflows flushed more of Australia, filling billabongs, swamps and holes, and recharging springs and soaks.

That was a time when the health of a landscape was measured less by how much water was in a river, and more by how many kangaroos it could support.

In 1901 James Cotton, a Cobar pioneer, wrote that before the district was stocked with sheep and cattle it was covered with a heavy growth of natural grasses and that the ground was soft, spongy and very absorbent.

Overstocking was a problem throughout the Murray Darling Basin particularly during the late 1800s resulting in significant land and water degradation. Overstocking transformed soils in many districts from soft and spongy to hard clay that, instead of absorbing water, caused the rain to run off in sheets as fast as it fell – to again paraphrase Mr Cotton.

In the past one hundred years there has been a gradual improvement in land management. Stocking rates have fallen, some native grasses are returning and there has been a move to minimum tillage conservation farming practices. This has resulted in a general improvement in soil structure.

The ground may not be as soft, spongy and very absorbent as it once was, but there is no doubt that when the rain now falls on the Murray Darling, much less water runs off into adjacent rivers and streams than it did one hundred years ago. This must have implications for the amount of water flowing to South Australia.

Indeed a truly healthier Murray Darling Basin would mean less water for South Australia and as I’ve argued repeatedly, don’t waste what’s left on the dammed Lower Lakes; certainly not on the Lower Lakes during drought. Instead let’s open the barrages, or at least remove the Mundoo barrage, and let these coastal lagoons fill with some seawater as once happened naturally each autumn and for longer periods during drought.

Mr White is not frightened of the idea.  And if the salt water should on occasions extend beyond the Lakes and as far up the river proper as Jervois, where the off-takes for the irrigation pipeline begins, Mr White suggests that:

“They simply shoved a pipe into another place further upstream where the water was better, pumped her down and kept irrigating…”

Why not!

******

Read about Philip White and good wine at http://drinkster.blogspot.com.au

More specifically at

Tasting the End of the River
An anticipatory Mediation
Of A Brand New Wine Region
By Philip White

read about the Barrage Removalists, link here

http://drinkster.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/up-next-currency-creek-wine-show.html

And you can post a comment.

********

PS

Interestingly the blog post by Mr White links to ‘A fresh history of the lakes: Wellington to the Murray Mouth, 1800s to 1935’. This 2004 report certainly provides a lot of useful historical information about the Lower Lakes and how they were often fresh before the barrages. But the same report omits so much information to the extent that it denies Lake Alexandrina was once the central basin of a wave-dominated barrier estuary. If you are interested in a longer history consider my report ‘Plugging the Murray’s Mouth: The Interrupted Evolution of a Barrier Estuary’ that is available for download here:

http://jennifermarohasy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Plugging-the-Murray-Rivers-Mouth-120212.pdf

And there is also my recent submission to the Murray Darling Basin Authority here:

http://jennifermarohasy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/MDBA_Submission_Marohasy_Abbot_April16_2012.pdf (sorry this is 10Mb)

SCIENCE was once about matching theory with reality. According to American physicist and historian Thomas Kuhn this perhaps more than anything else contributed to the phenomenal progress made by scientists over the last 400 years.

But many people appear to have a problem with understanding theory and considering it in the context of reality. Consider Anna Rose and her performance on the documentary ‘I Can Change Your Mind About Climate Change’ featured on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) this evening. Ms Rose was flown across Australia and around the world to talk with climate change sceptics but refused to engage constructively on issues of scientific evidence. Yet evidence is central to science and in particular determining whether theory and reality match.

Instead of listening to what Richard Linzen had to say about feedback mechanism and global climate she said he was not credible because of his views on passive smoking. When it came to Marc Morano, another person introduced to her as sceptical of anthropogenic global warming, Anna Rose point blank refused to talk with him because she said he was a liar. Clearly Mr Morano is influential, here was an opportunity for Anna Rose to apparently show him up as a liar, and she would not engage.

Nick Minchin, who travelled with Ms Rose and who had been specifically tasked with attempting to change Anna Rose’s mind, also tried with the evidence, but he didn’t see able to engage her either.

Jo Nova, David Evans, Richard Lindzen and Marc Morano all provided data that would suggest the theory as promoted by Anna Rose does not accord with reality, but she would not engage.

I noted she suggested that there was something wrong with the sea temperature chart provided by Mr Evans, so why didn’t she provide an explanation and show us what the situation really is with respect to sea temperature?

Instead Ms Rose suggested that all credible scientists say we have a problem, that increasing atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are going to result in the destruction of our economy and the Great Barrier Reef, and we must believe them. Does she realize she is just appealing to authority and not engaging with the evidence?

It would have been easy enough for the documentary makers to nail a couple of issue of evidence. For example, what is the real story with global sea temperatures? But instead, by the end of the documentary it appeared they were keen to move from the science to issue of renewable energy and so was Anna Rose.

Tony Jones suggested, when he opened the Q&A session that immediately followed the documentary on our ABC, that he wanted to focus on renewable energy issues and that the science was no longer a central issue, but every time a sceptic began with some scientific facts, Mr Jones called on “his scientist” Matthew England who was ‘wired-up’ in the audience to put a particular perspective with respect to the science; the ABC perspective.

And according to Jo Nova:

“We did 4 hours of footage at our house, and they showed not one single point I made, not one answer to Anna Rose’s questions. I repeated my favourite lines about 28 million weather balloons, 3000 ocean buoys off by heart at least 4 times [which show no global warming and therefore a mismatch between reality and theory]. Obviously everything I said was too ‘dangerous’. But we have the full tape of the whole event, so sooner or later the world will see the parts that the ABC deemed to be not ‘interesting’ to the Australian public. So all in all, pretty much as we expected. They trimmed it down to the point where it’s tame, they gave the alarmists the last word (they always do)…”

Our ABC has no concept of evidence, or the importance of attempting to match theory with reality, as part of assessing the reliability of a scientific theory.

And it is disappointing that our ABC couldn’t bring itself to get even one sceptical scientist into the Q&A audience to provide some support for Nick Minchin – though he did well enough on his own.

REMEMBER Henrick Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen and cosmic ray theory [1]: the idea from these Danish physicists and climate scientists that global climate may be mediated by changes in the flux of galactic cosmic rays because cosmic ray are conducive to cloud formation?

Henrik Svensmark has just published a new paper: now available for download in full from the front page of the Royal Astronomical Society’s website [2] and the subject of a detailed post by Anthony Watt [3].

The new paper focuses on local supernova rates (rates of explosions of large stars) and suggests that high rates of explosion could coincide with colder conditions on planet earth. The paper draws a correlation between long-term changes in sea-level and supernova rates and marine biodiversity and productivity over the last 510 million years.

Dr Svensmark goes as far as to hypothesis that the biodiversity and primary productivity of the oceans depends on the supernova rate; somewhat counter intuitively that glacial conditions will result in increased primary productivity.

“A simple working hypothesis, suggested by carbon-isotope data for the past 4 Gyr (Svensmark 2006a), is that primary productivity increases in glacial conditions, perhaps because of better nutrient supplies, caused by a more vigorous mixing in the oceans during cold conditions. This hypothesis would predict the following.

(i) 
A drawdown of CO2 from the environment in glacial conditions. Since organic productivity consumes CO2, there should be an impact on the levels of atmospheric and oceanic CO2. High productivity draws down CO2, until ultimately the productivity rise is halted not only by exhaustion of nutrients, but also by the scarcity of CO2, which should prevent a total loss of environmental CO2. Conversely, low productivity should result in an accumulation of underemployed CO2.

(ii) 
Due to the increased organic productivity, an increase in the heavy stable isotope of carbon, 13C, is expected in the oceans during glacial conditions.

I’m fascinated.  But not convinced.

H/T Neville.

*******************

[1] Cosmic Rays, Clouds and Climate (Part 1) http://jennifermarohasy.com/2008/04/cosmic-rays-clouds-and-climate-part-1/

[2] Henrick Svensmark 2012. Evidence of nearby supernovae affecting life on Earth. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Links here:
http://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/219-news-2012/2117-did-exploding-stars-help-life-on-earth-to-thrive
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2012.20953.x/full

[3] Svensmark’s Cosmic Jackpot: Evidence of nearby supernovae affecting life on Earth at Watts Up With That? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/24/svensmarks-cosmic-jackpot-evidence-of-nearby-supernovae-affecting-life-on-earth/#more-61941

WALKING on the beach this afternoon I took some photographs of beach mounds. I’m referring to piles of shells and pebbles regularly positioned between, and parallel to, the high and low tide marks.

Are these beach mounds a consequence of the ebb tide dragging the sand away from the shells and pebbles or a consequence of swash action dropping shells and pebbles?

During periods of global sea level rise there is typically an overall increase in the amount of sand deposited along a beach.

But a small change in the relative strength of the ebb tide can presumably significantly change the patterns we see on beaches. How different would our beaches look if global sea levels were falling rapidly?

Large mounds dominated by a single shell species near Weipa on Cape York Peninsula (North Queensland) were once considered aboriginal middens but may in fact have been beach mounds. According to Tim Stone from the Australian National University they are not middens by rather a natural consequence of local chenier plain development.[1]

********
[1] Shell mound formation in coastal northern Australia by Tim Stone
Marine Geology, Volume 129: 77-100. 1995

Abstract
Shell mounds are late Holocene deposits typically dominated by a single shell species. In northern Australia these mounds are associated with prograding coastal plains. The largest and most numerous are at Weipa on Cape York Peninsula. Archaeologists claim that these mounds were formed by generations of shellfishing Aborigines. This hypothesis is false because most of the shells from the type-site are of a similar radiocarbon age. Mapping and augering of two contrasting shell mound environments along the Mission River at Weipa demonstrates that mound formation is a natural consequence of local chenier plain development. This is supported by shell ages from across the Weipa landscape. The shell mounds at Prumanung originated as a coarse shell berm. The large mounds on the Uningan plain originated as small shell cheniers. The only reasonable explanation for the transformation of these natural shell deposits into tall, steep-sided mounds is the mound-building behaviour of the Orange-footed Scrubfowl Megapodius reinwardt. Similar mounds composed predominantly of sand and gravel are also present at these localities. The strong likelihood that the shell mounds are natural shell deposits raises serious questions about basic principles of shell midden archaeology. New methods for distinguishing between cultural and natural shell deposits are needed.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0025322795001018

FORMER Labor leader, Mark Latham, is clearly not an empiricist, though he claims to be and he claims that another leading Australian advocate for anthropogenic global warming, Robert Manne, is also an empiricist and always quick to change his mind should the facts change.

Indeed the opening comments in his long opinion piece, published in today’s Financial Review, suggests that it’s all about evidence and that the evidence is on their side. But as the piece progresses Mr Latham shows that he has no concept of evidence, but that the average Australian just might. The piece is essentially an appeal by Mr Latham to a belief in experts while lamenting that ordinary Australians no longer seem to believe in global warming. Mr Latham writes:

“At face value, society’s small-talk about the weather is frivolous. But in the debate about global warming, it is a highly significant habit. Everyone is an expert on the weather, so why shouldn’t they have a strong opinion on climate, regardless of what the professional researchers say? This is a recurring problem for climate-change believers and lobbyists: how to separate, in the public’s mind, short-term events from long-term trends. Most people are inherently empirical, relying on the things they see around them was a way of gauging the future; the practicality of Aspirational Australia.

“Weather events are commonly extrapolated into discussions about climate change, even though this is akin to using daily sharemarket bulletins as a way of comprehending Kondratiev economics (50-year patterns in the business cycle). Five years ago, at the beginning of the debate, Australia’s drought conditions were seen as synonymous with global warming. It was a simple equation: dryness equals heat. Now, with record rainfall and flooding along the east coast, this notion has lost credibility. Wetness equals coolness.”

Yep. We have climate cycles in Australia and when it’s wetter, it’s cooler.

Conditions have changed, many so-called experts proven wrong, but many of the arrogant and ignorant appear incapable of an honest reassessment of the evidence.

More here: http://afr.com/p/lifestyle/review/climate_change_denial_not_just_for_sFAw16a7QU34KIj2tmN4eJ

LATE last year several of my friends sent off postcards as part of the Australian Environment Foundation’s Rivers Need Estuaries Campaign. You can still send a postcard and sign the petition here:

http://listentous.org.au/

There is a choice of message, for example:

Dear Senator,

Maintaining artificial freshwater lakes using 7.6 kilometres of concrete barrages has:
1. Destroyed the Coorong-Murray River estuary;
2. Diverted water from upstream environments and communities to keep these artificial lakes supplied;
3. Not improved the water security of Adelaide.

I ask you to support moves to:
1. Remove the barrages from the Lower Lakes to restore the Coorong-Murray River estuary; and
2. Relocate Adelaide’s water take-off to a proposed lock downstream from Tailem Bend.

Signed K. Smith
******

Just today there has been a flurry of responses from Simon Birmingham Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray-Darling Basin to postcards sent last December. The Senator is mostly replying with a form letter as follows:

Dear Ms Smith

Thank you for your email regarding the Lower Lakes.

Firstly, in regards to basin reform, I encourage the Gillard Government to return to the reform process put in place by the previous Coalition Government. Labor has spent only a fraction of the $5.8 billion set aside by the Coalition to invest in efficiency upgrades. A sustainable solution to the Basin requires the Government to get serious about investing in the efficiency of the Basin.

Australians deserve a plan that gets the balance between the environment, communities and jobs right. Before the election Prime Minister Gillard promised to implement whatever the MDBA presented. I hope Minister Burke will take a more pragmatic position and ensures that we get a good plan based on robust evidence – not just any plan.

The Coalition is listening to people across the Basin and is working hard to ensure a sensible outcome is found. An outcome which restores the health of the environment, provides a strong future for regional communities and sustains Australia’s record as a food producing country.

In regards to the Barrages however, I must strongly disagree. There exist very real and very serious environmental consequences if the river does not, with at least some regularity, flush through the Lower Lakes and expel chemical, salinity and sediment build ups (much of which are the result of agricultural run-off) to the sea.

Many people that advocate removing the barrages separating the Lower Lakes and Coorong, which would essentially turn the lakes into a permanent saline state, do not extend the argument about natural state upstream. When Charles Sturt sailed down the river in 1832 there were no locks or weirs and minimal diversion for irrigation.

There were, no doubt, during periods of drought, occasions when the Lakes and Lower Murray did have sea water incursions, however, when drought passed, the volume of water which regularly flowed through the system and into the Lakes pushed salt water back through the mouth. Man’s management of the system and use of water nowadays prevents such regular flushing as nature would have done.

Turning the lakes into a saline ecosystem ignores that they have been largely freshwater, even before the barrages were built, and are of great ecological importance. I encourage you to download the 75 page document entitled ‘A Freshwater history of the Lakes’ available at http://www.gwlap.org.au/docs/A%20Fresh%20History%20of%20the%20Lakes%202004.pdf

If the barrages were removed and lakes were flooded with seawater without significant additional fresh water flows, it is highly likely that they would turn into a dead sea and, during periods where there is little water to flush the salt and sediment through the mouth, the ecosystem may collapse, with salinity and problems spreading up into the main channel.

The recent drought has shone a spotlight on a problem that should have become evident with the closure of the Murray Mouth back in the early 1980’s. Fixing this will require trade-offs – there is no going back to the natural state of the river, but equally maintaining healthy communities along the river requires us to keep it healthy from the mouth up.

It is our responsibility to ensure that we get the balance between the demands of social, economic and environmental needs right. I will certainly be judging the MDBA Basin Plan against all of these criteria.

Once again, thank you for bringing your concerns about the Murray-Darling Basin reform process to my attention.

Yours sincerely

Simon Birmingham
Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray-Darling Basin
******

Several of my friends have emailed me pleased to receive this response and asked how they might best “engage” the Senator in discussion. Others have indicated to me they are angry that the Senator dared quote ‘A Freshwater history of the Lakes’ by Sim and Muller to them.

I am providing the following information for those wanting to reply to the Senator. And I encourage detailed replies. In fact consider emailing the Senator on this issue even if you haven’t received an email from him – or sent him a postcard. His address is senator.birmingham@aph.gov.au. You might consider copying your reply to your local federal member and also Tony Burke, the federal water minister. His address Tony.Burke.MP@environment.gov.au

Suggested information that could be included in a reply:

Dear Senator

The Lakes Don’t Have a Freshwater History

I am surprised that the best information you can provide in support of keeping the 7.6 kilometres of barrage across the bottom of the Murray River is the report by Sim and Muller ‘A Freshwater history of the lakes’.

This report is essentially a compilation of historical anecdote from early European visitors and settlers suggesting that the lakes contained fresh water. This is not disputed, but the same lakes were often full of brackish water and occasionally seawater. In estuaries water quality is always changing: with the tides, with the seasons and with the climate in the upper catchment. To say that the lakes were predominately fresh and therefore must be always kept fresh is to suggest a steady state when none existed.

Charles Sturt Found Salty Water

You quote Charles Sturt sailing down the river in 1832, it was in fact February 1830, and that this was before locks, weirs and diversions for irrigation. Exactly! And what did Captain Sturt report? He wrote that Lake Alexandrina changed from initially fresh to suddenly salty as he sailed across it and that the Mouth was closed over with sand bars and shoals. Indeed before irrigation the lake was not always fresh and before irrigation the Murray’s Mouth often closed-over. So we should not be concerned by these events and there is no reason to blame them on upstream irrigation.

Without the Barrages the Lake Would Not Become a Salt Marsh or Dead Sea

Like many South Australians you appear concerned that without the barrages, and given current upstream diversions for irrigation that the lake could turn into a salt marsh or at least a dead sea.

There are many very salty lakes in South Australia. But unlike most lakes in South Australia that are dependent on local rainfall, in contrast the Murray is feed from the Snowy Mountains in NSW and Victoria. This provides a regular flush of freshwater each spring.

Lake Alexandrina, even with upstream diversions, still has what is called a “positive hydrodynamics” meaning freshwater inflows are greater than evaporation. In fact freshwater flows into the Lower Lakes are still very significant. So there is no risk that the lakes will become a dead sea.

The Tides of the Southern Ocean Could Flush Out Chemicals and Sediment Build-up

Senator, why would you want to use precious freshwater to flush the lakes and expel chemical, salinity and sediment build-ups when the tides of the Southern Ocean could do the same job with seawater? Back in 1856 South Australian Surveyor General George Woodroffe Goyder suggested that the natural rock bar across the Mundoo channel be removed to improve tidal inflows and outflows along the Mundoo channel and thus improve natural scouring of the Murray’s Mouth.

Why not remove the barrages and let the tides of the Southern Ocean flush the Lower Lakes of chemicals and sediment build-up. This is the natural solution and the solution for every other major river system in Australia.

Yours sincerely
K. Smith

The UK government on Tuesday backed the exploration of shale gas nearly one year after it temporarily banned the drilling method which triggered two earthquakes in Britain but that has also revolutionised the U.S. energy market. An expert report commissioned by the government said shale gas fracking, a process where pressurised water and chemicals are pumped underground to open shale rocks and release trapped gas, was safe to resume with tighter rules on seismic monitoring and drilling surveys. –Alessandra Prentice, Reuters, 17 April 2012

Lancashire is set to become the centre of Britain’s energy future, after regulators gave the green light for fracking to return. A report published today by the Department for Energy and Climate Change said that energy giant Cuadrilla Resources should be allowed to restart work at its drilling rig in the Lancashire countryside. –Lancashire Evening Post, 17 April 2012

Chris Huhne in particular is renowned for his uninhibited antagonism towards natural gas. At the Liberal Democrat party conference in Birmingham last week he promised to halt a new “dash for gas” because it would undermine the UK’s unilateral climate targets. David Cameron would be well advised not to allow his green minister to squander Britain’s golden shale gas opportunity. –Benny Peiser, Public Service Europe, 27 September 2011

Ministers have been advised to allow the controversial practice of fracking for shale gas to be extended in Britain, despite it causing two earthquakes and the emergence of serious doubts over the safety of the wells that have already been drilled. The advice of the first official British government report into fracking, published on Tuesday, is all but certain to be accepted by ministers, with the result that thousands of new wells could be drilled across the UK. Some groups – including The Global Warming Policy Foundation, the climate-sceptic thinktank led by Lord Lawson – have been enthusiastically advocating the take-up of the technology. But residents in the areas affected have been mobilising against the plans. –Fiona Harvey, The Guardian, 17 April 2012

Many of those who oppose fracking do so not on the basis of the evidence, but out of a more general hostility to fossil fuels. Yet shale gas is relatively clean, and far more secure than other supplies. Sadly, our enthusiasm (in contrast to the Americans’) has been distinctly half-hearted. –Editorial, The Daily Telegraph, 17 April 2012

Can the green lobby win the shale gas argument over environmental objections? I don’t think it can. Ten or 20 years ago it could have won when governments were willing to burn billions, but the economic climate has changed, we’re facing the biggest crisis in decades. No government in the world would give up this opportunity, not even the British government, which is very green indeed. I don’t think the Greens have a leg to stand on when it comes to shale. Shale shouldn’t have any big problem and in all likelihood the government will grasp it with both hands. I cannot foresee a situation where Europe will forgo this golden opportunity. –Benny Peiser, Natural Gas Europe, 25 October 2011

From the gwfp.org newsletter.
Subscribe at http://thegwpf.org

I’ve just sent off my submission, with John Abbot, on the Proposed Basin Plan.  You can download the document [10MB] here:

http://jennifermarohasy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/MDBA_Submission_Marohasy_Abbot_April16_2012.pdf

We conclude:

The Proposed Basin Plan is seriously flawed because it has been developed from false assumptions that there is always a shortage of water in the Murray Darling Basin, there is no potential for significant flooding within the Murray Darling Basin and that any change to natural flow regimes are detrimental to ecosystem health within the Murray Darling Basin.

The Proposed Basin Plan is ostensibly about the environment, yet there is no plan to restore the Murray River’s estuary.   A vast coastal lagoon, Lake Alexandrina, once dominated the estuary but since the building of 7.6 kilometres of sea dyke in the 1930s this area has been managed as an artificial freshwater reservoir to Lock 1.  The reservoir is completely dependent on freshwater stored over 2,000 kilometres away in the upper Murray and Murrumbidgee catchments and is arguably the most degraded of all environments within the Murray Darling.

There are no plans to restore the estuary because the Murray Darling Basin Authority now claims Lake Alexandrina was never part of the Murray River’s estuary and has always been a freshwater lake.  This claim denies a significant scientific literature concerning not only the origin of Lake Alexandrina, but also similar Holocene formations around the southern Australian coastline.  A consequence is that best practice management developed in other parts of Australia for other intermittently open and closed lagoons is ignored.  The current political solution of using water worth several billion dollars to keep the Murray’s Mouth open would be dismissed as absurd if suggested for the management of any similar barrier estuary system.

ON Friday, the leader of the Australian Greens, Senator Bob Brown, announced he was stepping down and also retiring from Australian federal politics.

Miranda Devine has a piece in today’s Herald Sun that begins:

“THE intergalactic phones still didn’t ring on Friday after the earth-shattering news that Greens Leader Bob Brown had resigned.

Was that nutty speech to his ‘Fellow Earthians’ in Hobart last month a sign that he was on his way out the door?

Was it a final mad explosion of pent-up hubris that had him calling for a one-world government, an ‘all-of-the-Earth representative democracy’?

It was certainly time to go, Brown told a press conference on Friday, flanked by his successor, Christine Milne, and his handsome, bearded partner Paul Thomas.

People had taken to stopping him in Hobart’s Salamanca Place to say, ‘Thank God for the Greens’.

With a desperate Labor minority government belatedly turning on its Greens partners, and the Greens vote going backwards in state elections, Brown, 67, had passed the zenith of his career.

Best to get out while the going is good, with his legacy intact and before anyone notices the decline of the party he has led as a senator of 16 years.

As usual, a woman is left to clean up after the party, formidable and not to be underestimated though Christine Milne is.

In her first comments at Brown’s farewell press conference, Milne, 58, made a pitch to rural and regional voters, claiming “the Greens and the bush” simply misunderstood each other.

‘I’m going out there as a country person to say to other country people it is time that the Greens and country people worked together.’

Good luck with that, considering greenies are the chief cause of grief to the bush.

Let us count the ways. Forestry towns destroyed by irrational green tree worship. Uncontrollable bushfires caused, not by global warming, but by green opposition to hazard reduction.

National parks left to feral animals that rampage though neighbouring farms. Dams never built thanks to greenie protests. Wind turbines plonked all over bucolic hillsides. A live cattle industry brought to its knees…

Read the entire article here: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/greens-country-girl-christine-milne-is-no-friend-of-the-bush/story-e6frfhqf-1226326602622

I’ve written many blog posts cranky with Mr Brown for being such a hypocrite and for so often telling made-up stories and trying to pass them off as ‘saving the environment’.   Remember my blog post of June 2009 ‘The Already Bankrupt Brown Green’ about the pristine forest that was once a thriving timber town known as Wielangata…

Read more here:  http://jennifermarohasy.com/2009/06/the-already-bankrupt-brown-green/