Tamino has a really fascinating post on Drought in Australia at Open Mind but before we go there I want to make a few preliminary comments.
The map above tells us how we have been faring for rainfall over the past 36 months in terms of deciles against the long-term average. I wish the Bureau of Meteorology would give us similar maps for, say, the past 7 years and the past 10 years, but it doesn’t. We could then look at how the so-called ‘Millenium drought’ stacks up all over Australia. I can tell you that at my place about 7km inland from the Brisbane GPO during 1992-1999 we got 113% of the 1970-2000 average. 2000 was a really bad year and since then we’ve been below average every single year. For the period 2000-2007 we are tracking at 71% of the 1970-2000 average.
Tamino opens with a trend map of rainfall from 1970-2007.
BOM gives an explanation of its trend maps but it’s not the full story. Visually the map gives the impression that a large part of the western half of the continent is doing rather well. It is usefully considered against the following map giving average rainfall.
Australians will of course know that the population hugs the coastal green strip from Cairns to Melbourne with outposts at Adelaide, Perth, Tasmania and Darwin. Also while there are cities up the Queensland coast north of the Brisbane area, the largest is Townsville. It has 143,000 people, which is small by world standards.
So very few people live where we are doing well, if well means a small increase in the incidence of cyclonic rain interrupting the brutal heat and dry.
Well here’s Tamino at Open Mind on the big dry down under. It has a remarkable amount of information with useful contributions by commenters, especially Luke who clearly knows a thing or two.
Update. Here are some of the useful links to BOM sites.
Recent rainfall maps (up to 36 months)
Daily weather observations eg Brisbane
Weather watch radar images eg Marburg
It seems it was the driest May on record.
Interesting to consider the state of the Murray R in light of the 2005-08 deciles map, which shows that most of the catchment had average to moderately below-average rainfall. It’s pretty clear that the state of the river should not be solely - or even primarily - attributed to climatic factors.
That’s right. It would however have something to do with the number of people that the river is now feeding compared to a few decades ago. The river system has not kept pace. Hopeless, unhelpful, uninnovative river system.
Nice info Brian, I’ll check it out carefully.
Recently, somewhere, I saw CSIRO predictions for Murray-Darling Basin expected inflows taking into account recent climate trends, predicted trends, changes in the landscape [dams, vegetation change etc] and human usage.
Result?
Significantly less water flowing in for [a] the river [b] human usage [c] irrigation in particular.
Yet considerably higher [ particularly if one continues to presume ‘normal’ rates of irrigation] rates of human usage.
A simple arithmetic problem.
Thanks, Hannah’s dad.
TFA, I’m not a full bottle on the Murray-Darling, but I think about 60% of the water comes from Victoria, and the percentage from the Australian Alps imay even be bigger. So that red blotch around the Alps may be the problem.
Also there’s that stuff about 10% less rain equals 50% less runoff (or similar).
Given the inherent variability in rainfall in most parts of Australia, the deciles near the mean do not indicate any real departure from business as usual. When interpreting this map, it pays to concentrate on the extremes - the dark reds and the dark blues.
Worth noting that cotton was still being widely grown on the Darling Downs in the middle of this period, despite the severe drought. Adelaide pays for Qld. irrigators’ profits.
Brian - I’m a bit sceptical about the rule of thumb equating rainfall & runoff. Might be reliable under specific conditions, I’m not confident that the rule would apply across soil types & evapotranspiration regimes etc. Can you provide any links to any empirical support?
I don’t know how much of the water comes from which part of the Murray-Darling catchment either - I imagine it varies considerably from year to year. In any case, doesn’t the map indicate that that the areas of major rainfall deficits in NSW & Vic were west of the Dividing Range?
Recently it has become possible to WALK across the Murray a few kms from me.
Wear knee high gum boots and you won’t get wet.
hannah’s dad, you wouldn’t want any excitable evangelical Christians to spot you walking across the Murray!
You may find this interesting:
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/7d12b0f6763c78caca257061001cc588/569770beee255ea3ca2572c6001d5a9d!OpenDocument
Its just for SA but covers a wealth of info on:
“annual proportions of water derived from the River Murray for SA Water customers;
amounts of water diverted from the River Murray for all South Australian users;
water storage at the beginning of summer in Murray-Darling Basin reservoirs for the years 2000-01 to 2006-07; and
the effects of a long-term drought in the Basin”
In fact too much info for me.
[I tend to just look at graph 2.]
Where it is interesting is that it gives ……actual amounts of water. As in GLs [gigalitres].
Not just rainfall but how much is in the dams, the river, how much is taken out for what purposes and so on.
So often the info is presented as ‘less’, ‘more’, ‘20% of something’ and so on. Vague terms.
If somebody wants to really look closely at this data and sum it up please do so.
And theree is actually a lot more of these types of reports out there in netland, just finding and understanding them is the problem.
Brian - thanks for this. Fascinating. FWIW, my brother-in-law is in the building game in Townsville and they’re expecting to be busy for a decade building more housing, including a new satellite city called Rocky Springs. When I asked him why so many people were moving up there, he put it down not just to the minerals boom, but to water - Burdekin Falls dam means that the city harvests all that “above average” rainfall in the catchments, and rarely has serious water restrictions any more. The drought really hasn’t been a factor in most of the north.
TFA, what I quoted was a ballpark form memory, not necessarily from the Murray-Darling, to illustrate the concept. I think it would depend on the circumstances in several ways.
In the Brisbane dam system they keep saying that it takes 50mm to wet the catchment. In summer if you have 40mm and then a week’s evaporation you have to start all over again.In winter there should be a bit of water left.
So it matters about the pattern of rainfall, at what intervals and what amounts. Here we don’t get large falls over the catchment lately except over the northern part of the Somerset catchment. In the larger Wivenhoe the water seldom runs, even when it rains enough to keep the grass quite green.
I like the maps showing percentages because it gives more gradations on the deficit side Here are the equivalent maps for Victoria and for New South Wales. Once you are into the live site you can play around with other perspectives and other parts of Australia.
My memory is that 62% of the water comes from Victoria and only 5% from Queensland. You need quite bit of rain for anything from Queensland to reach SA at all when the system is in severe deficit irrespective of whether any is taken out.
In Queensland there is another gigantic problem. Farmers are allowed to erect ‘turkey nests’, above ground water storages, without approval whatsoever as long as the wall is lower than a certain height. I think it’s 5 metres, which could empty in a couple of years from evaporation with little or no rain (depends on temperature and wind).
Farmers have large pumps which lift water out of drains that might be flowing over or past their property from elsewhere. So there’s a lot of water that doesn’t get into the system, but only within that 5%.
Not sure what happens in NSW, but farmers are offended that they should have to pay or be restricted in what they use that falls on their property, but in a rational system it should be taken into account.
Another element which needs to be considered is the impact of bushfires on water runoffs.
This is due to a number of factors: the destruction of moss beds in the Alps, meaning that water is not retained effectively and the regeneration of native vegetation are two that spring to mind.
The 2003 and 2006 bushfires are estimated to mean a reduction in run off of up to 20% in the next decade.
Bushfires also mean a reduction in water quality: flash floods following the 2003 fires carried a sludge of ash and silt down the river system which saw fish jumping on to the banks. Our river, usually crystal clear, has run brown for most of this past summer.
Given that climate change predicts an increase in bushfire events, this will become an even more serious impact on water supplies in future (and is part of the reasoning behind investment in the desal plant in Victoria).
Another advantage of percentages over deciles is that it breaks up the middle 4-7 category and clarifies what is below the midpoint. 60% over an extended period is quite a significant change and extended long enough would affect natural vegetation.
One interesting fact is gum trees don’t travel very quickly. Birds don’t carry the seeds so they have to rely on seed drop.
Jason, when Armageddon loomed, one of the serious options being considered was to tow large bladders filled with water from North Qld.
I have a brother who grows beef near Rockhampton and a bit north (4 or 5 properties).
He’s reasonably OK because he irrigates (that won’t last as water is properly valued) but from a bit south of Mackay the problem starts.
hannah’s dad, there were lots of links at Open Mind, not all of which I followed up. I’ve got to go to work today, so I’m not sure whether I’ll do much searching. I was surprised at how much data is there if you know where to look.
Melbourne’s water catchments lie in the middle of that huge scarlet blob signifying the most extreme drying trend since 1970.
Anyone living in Melbourne can testify to the fact that we have received very little rain in the last ten years from frontal systems that used to blow with clockwork regularity from the southwest. These were the systems that once made Melbourne’s weather a by-word.
These days, what rain we do get comes from the remains of tropic systems blowing in off the NW Western Australian coast. (I imagine these same systems have made inland WA much wetter than usual.)
I’m no climatologist, but this change in weather systems must signify a huge reordering of convective energy that drives the earth’s climates.
Katz, those frontal systems used to clip us here in Brisbane on the way through in the winter months and we seemed to get rain about once a week. Now they largely miss and we have long dry periods interrupted by stronger systems that wander in occasionally. Where these come from is perplexing to me, but my ears prick up when they mention an upper system low. They don’t show on the charts, but seem to be our best chance.
I think the tightening of the Antarctic circulation patterns because of the ozone hole and the movement south of the ‘roaring forties’, part because of this and part because of warming of the Southern Ocean in a strip just south of us are pretty well established, I think.
Also the monsoons seem to be staying further north. Last summer they came down further than they had been since 1974. This opens up a dry band across the continent from the Tropic of Capricorn (Rockhampton) down.
This is consistent with the GW agenda. It’s very noticeable in the Mediterranean south of the ALPS, I believe, with higher precipitation then at higher latitudes, often in the form of floods.
But it’s all hugely complex, and if you can download a http://www.dar.csiro.au/css/Aug%20workshop%2004/CSS%20Presentations/marsland.css.110804.ppt” rel=”nofollow”>powerpoint by Marsland you’ll appreciate why we have scientists to explore climate science. If that doesn’t work, go here and grab the first one.
[Seems to work for me.]
Katz, you’ve given me confidence to write down my own perceptions. ISTR that pressure systems used to come up out of the Bight and arc across NSW. Now they come across from Perth and go up to southern QLD. Is that what you’ve been seeing?
Er …WARNING: Cold Shower / Reality check / “lessons of history” moments to follow:
Turn of century Oz drought patterns
This time, a century ago, Oz was beginning to move out of what is known as “The Federation Drought”. As in this one, rainfall tapered off in the Hence people who’ve spent a lot of time studying DOCUMENTED / SCIENTIFICALLY SUPPORTED history, especially ancient history & tried to keep up with advances in related archeological disciplines, have a hard time biting their tongues during “hothouse” beat-ups … but we do, because there are grimmer reasons for fearing atmospheric pollution (see below)
We still can’t grow, on Canada’s cold East Coast, the same grapes as we know, from scientific evidence, the Vikings did …
So of course the climate is going to get hotter - at least for the next couple of centuries; just as, in the last Middle Ages, it was getting colder, leading to “The Little Ice Age”
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-were-the-river-thames-frost-fairs.htm
The first indications that this cold spell was coming to an end were a series of unusually hot summers in the early 1750s (pre-summer 1757)- a few years characterised by the number of the period’s portraits & ceramic figures of men wearing their shirts unbuttoned, almost to the belly-button (no cravats, of course), with waist-coats also unbuttoned and often without coats. The Industrial Revolution, except in ceramics in the Stoke area, was in its infancy. Even tho advanced in England by 1820, it had not yet begun on the Continent; would not become a major force until post-1850.
What is the true impact of human actions?
The short answer is: given our lack of comparative weather data, we do not know. Our best climate & abnormal weather data come from tree-rings (dendrochronology); but, like most natural living things, trees & other plants can cope with & adapt to long-term climate fluctuations (dynamic equilibrium). Consider this historically valid statement: In 1788, early white settlers started to plant seeds bought from England (still in the grip of The Little Ice Age), and only some of those plants - mainly grains - had to be seasonally off-set, although England’s climate was much colder that Sydney’s.
We can also say, on the basis of scientific evidence, that the current long-term climate fluctuations began c10,000 years ago, when the “HotHouse” Mesolithic ended and the cooler current cycle began - apparently quite suddenly. So almost all Australian fauna & flora, here before the First Fleet arrived, had already survived a “hothouse” era, and survived a major climate change when it ended.
Hothouse, Ice Age, nothing, ????
Given our lack of data - and knowledge that particulate build-up in our life-sustaining gas layers results in destructively dark, cold periods - the possibility that human intervention will have disastrous effects - and that intense cold is has proved more destructive to living things than “hothouse” heat - all sensible people are dedicated to stopping as much atmospheric pollution as possible so are happy to go along with all “climate change” initiatives, since critical levels of Particulates are even more of a threat than those of Co2 - and that, combined, particulates + “greenhouse gases” is a nightmare scenario.
Currently, the biggest threats to effective reduction in atmospheric pollution are:
(1) As day-time temperatures are normally cooler during wet periods than during periods of drought; so, if C21 weather patterns remain consistent with the early C20, they will cool during the 20s, warm during the 30s, cool again 50s-80s, then heat up running into the next “Turn of the Century” drought.
(2) That, in the 2030s, human efforts to stop Global Warming do not result in Global Cooling.
PS: I’ve tried to “turn off” most of that final “strong” but it doesn’t sem to be working on the “preview”.
PPS: For some reason, I seem to have deleted the rest of
“This time, a century ago, Oz was beginning to move out of what is known as “The Federation Drought”. As in this one, rainfall tapered off in the …”
Which was followed by words to the effect that
“in the 1890s, at its worst in the first half of the new century ..” followed by references to “Bulletin” news stories, poems, short stories etc on “The Red Page” by Lawson, Essex Evans & Steele Rudd (which reflect how long, dry & difficult it was..
And that we did better in the (worse) Fed Drought because river headwaters were not dammed, the artesian basin & other aquifers hadn’t been pumped dry to irrigate crops, and the population was very much smaller
Sorry. It’s been a morning of interruptions.
Not in my view, Chookie. The lows are much bigger than before and if they hit Perth at all they usually slide away to the south as they come across. When we get big rain in Brisbane like we’ve just had you are flat out seeing anything that might normally produce it on the surface chart. This time an upper low floated across the land and seemed to then form a surface low off Hervey Bay, which then moved south (more or less).
Another pattern in the south is the large highs which dominate summer and into the autumn. The lows used to come across seriatim alternating with the highs, but now are further south. The autumn drying has been a feature of the southern climes for decades, but only became really pronounced here about 5 years ago. March used to be the third wettest month, ahead of December. Now we get almost nothing most years.
DeeCee, it’s now at 17. You were in the spaminator, which has a mind of it’s own.
Gotta go now I’ll read it tonight.
DeeCee - you’ve really got two separate claims:
(1) Southern Australia’s long drought might be just normal climate variability
True, and that’s the reason I’m uncomfortable with people saying it’s linked to AGW. It may or may not be - we just don’t know. If it isn’t, then when it breaks those of us who want something done about AGW will have made a serious tactical mistake by denting our credibility.
(2) The warming trend worldwide is also just normal climate variability.
No - its far too fast, and there’s plenty of physical evidence its a greenhouse effect. Only industry shills and professional contrarians can argue against that.
DeeCee posits
This was true until recently, but it is now feasible to estimate the contribution of anthropogenic activity to global climate. There’s still a fair degree of uncertainty, but the most rigorous estimate I’ve seen puts the figure at 0.75 degrees C plus/minus 0.45 degrees.
And there are very good reasons to expect that the major consequences of anthropogenic activity won’t fully manifest for several decades.
I’ve had just on 50% of average rainfall this year on my 8 acres near Castlemaine in Victoria. Average rainfall here is 600mm per year. The place was an eroded horse paddock when I bought it six months ago and I’m revegetating it with natives. I’m mostly planting natives from the 250-500 mm rainfall per year zones as this area has been in almost constant drought for 12-14 years now. In the past it was easy for vegetation to expand and contract in response to environmental perturbations but human activity has now chopped natural landscapes up into parcels that aren’t necessarily well connected by corridors.
In any case, the point about the rainfall drop over the Alps is spot-on, and the key issue WRT the state of the Murray-Darling.
The majority of the runoff in the Basin occurs in that relatively small area.
I’d like to see a map of average yearly rainfall in similar format to Goyders rainfall charts superimposed on the B of M Aust Rainfall Deciles because the large areas shaded average are in very low rainfall areas [NSW east coast excepted]. Areas of 800mm p.a. are firmly in the Very Much Below average areas. And in my part of the country that amounts to a drought for the last 11yrs. It is as if the series of deserts to the northwest have spread several hundred kms southeast.
Brian.
You ask about run-off collection allowed for NSW landowners. It is 10% and came in about six years ago to much controversy. Turkey’s nest dams are not permitted but on the western slopes of the Great Dividing Range where all rivers/creeks flow south westward there are allegedly many illegal earthenworks.
Can I ask a really stupid question about Australian water issues? Since water seems like it’s a perennial problem, I have to assume that means there aren’t any giant underground aquifers in remote parts of the continent. But why aren’t there? Shouldn’t there be accumulated rainfall aquifers from thousands and millions of years ago? Is there a reason they haven’t formed, or did they exist and get tapped into and used already? (That seems unlikely.)
The Great Australian Artesian Basin (Google it) is the biggest of its type in the world.
The trouble is that much of the water is saline. And in any case, if water is introduced via irrigation to many parts of Australia, the ground salt is liberated and renders the land useless.
Ironic, huh?
The Great Australian Artesian Basin (Google it) is the biggest of its type in the world.
The trouble is that much of the water is saline. And in any case, if water is introduced via irrigation to many parts of Australia, the ground salt is liberated and renders the land useless.
Ironic, huh?
In reply to j_p_z:
Do a websearch on the phrase “Great Artesian Basin”. That will probably answer most of your questions
Thanks, T. and K.
DeeCee
On other issues, I’m generally a fellow traveller with you but not on this.
One of my closest friends is on IPCC and is regarded as one of the world’s experts on global warming.
In the early days, I asked her questions on many of the issues you raise. As an historian, I was aware of the earlier climatic fluctuations you mention. I was also very aware of the shortness of our time on this continent and the danger of making assumptions about climatic conditions in this context.
She provided totally convincing answers, backed by scientific evidence, for all of my queries.
So, to go through some of them:
(i) Federation Drought: it may be a shock, but climatologists are aware of the FD. Look at the map again: there’s a lot of ‘lowest on record’.
Local farmers here have records going back well over a hundred and fifty years. These show that the last few years have the lowest rainfall and lowest river levels recorded.
This drought is also different for other reasons. Higher temperatures mean higher evaporation: a long dry spell combined with low temperatures does not have as much impact as the same dry spell combined with high temperatures. We’re looking at the second scenario. The combination of record low or dramatically below average rainfall AND high temperatures makes our present drought more severe.
(ii) Variation in climate is part of the natural cycle (implied by your comments re Little Ice Age, Middle Ages Warming Period etc): yes, it is, and according to the natural cycle, we should be in a cooling period now. There were indications we were heading that way in the fifties, but it petered out. This was one of the signs which alerted climate scientists that something was going wrong with the climate.
Variation in climate also usually happens over a long period of time; it gradually gets colder or hotter, allowing plants and animals to adapt. (There were many signs that the Greenlanders were in trouble; they ignored them and tried to stick to business as usual).
The present climate changes are happening far more quickly than is usual and thus is much more of a threat to the survival of life on this planet (I’m not worried about the planet itself, it’ll be fine).
(iii) We don’t know enough about climate variations over the centuries.
Wrong - we do.
Scientists NEVER rely on one source of data when making major hypotheses, and this is a big one. (One of my favorite scientific books is on continental drift. It looks at at least ten different pieces of evidence, says what they should indicate if cd is true, shows that they all do and then concludes that the theory is not proven. True scientists are a tough bunch to convince).
So in looking at climatic patterns over the millenia, scientists have used core drills - not only into ice, but into soils and rocks - to measure CO2 levels over hundreds of thousands of years. They’ve used tree rings from a variety of regions; they’ve used historical records…and numerous other sources of information that I’m not aware of but could google if you can’t.
1500 scientists who work in the same area in the same room doesn’t produce consensus unless each and every one of them is totally convinced that the data stands up.
I’m not a scientist like my friend, and my ability to recall all that she told me is thus seriously flawed. All I know is that she was totally convincing and had an answer for every question I raised.
On the Great Artesian Basin, I grew up just off the eastern edge in Queensland. As far as I know it was mainly used for stock watering and some town water supplies further west. Generally it is insufficient for irrigation on any significant scale. There has been a lot of concern about uncapped bores in recent years and there is an effort to cap them. Pressures are not as good as they were in the 19th century.
Anyway here’s Wikipedia.
I was interested in finding this article from ABC Science. I’d heard Professor Emeritus Lance Endersbee on the radio a few years ago with his idea that the water was not replenishable. Rather it was trapped there when the earth’s crust was formed. Anyway it seems that they have looked at the carbon 14 and the isotopes and shown that the water at the induction areas near to edge is younger than the water at the centre. It moves a couple of metres a year. So it would only take 750,000 years to travel 1500km.
I’ve done an update to give some of the useful links to BOM sites.
Recent rainfall maps (up to 36 months)
Climate change trend maps
Daily weather observations eg Brisbane
Latest satellite image
Weather watch radar images eg Marburg
BOM news
It seems it was the driest May on record.
TFA at 22, thanks for the link.
I’ve been looking for a direct quote I saw the other day, and can’t lay my hand on. Roughly, I think the latest thinking goes like this. Half of the climate change effects from a CO2 pulse appear within 25 years. These involve the Charney short-term feedbacks the IPCC uses in climate sensitivity modelling and hence in their temperature forecasts. Of the slow feedbacks, principally ice sheet response and vegetation changes, half show up in the next 75 years and half thereafter.
DeeCee at 17, if you see global cooling in the 2030s as a threat from “human efforts to stop Global Warming” does this mean that you accept that human activity makes a difference?
Hey Brian,
In relation to the GAB, how much longer can BHPB can get away with not paying a single brass razoo for the 30-40 million litres of water per day they extract considering their net profit was umm, the same as the entire nation’s surplus.
“In 1982 the Parliament of South Australia ratified an Act called the Roxby Downs (Indenture Ratification) Act that: Confers the right to draw water”.
Thankfully, Rann kyboshed them extracting a further 80-100 million litres per day from the GAB for the proposed Olympic Dam mine expansion.
This is old news announced in early 2006, BHPB instead of taking water from the GAB are looking to build a desalination plant at Port Bonython in the upper Spencer Gulf and pumping the water 330klms up to Olympic which in case anyone doesn’t know has the word’s largest uranium, 4th largest copper and 5th largest gold reserves and a huge silver deposit in one massive mine site.
Not sure how they are going power their desal plant and then pump the water to the mine, to mine the minerals that powers the plant to pump the energy to the house that Jack Built.
This recent article suggests that the expansion may not go ahead at the projected $6-$20 billion price tag, which was first mentioned in crikey earlier this month, which also mentioned taking extra water from the GAB again…so maybe that hasn’t been put to bed after all.
http://adelaide.yourguide.com.au/news/local/news/business/olympic-dam-not-an-open-and-shut-case/771703.aspx
With your wide ranging interest in all things climatic and energy related, you may be interested in this 2007 report by Dr Gavin Mudd from Monash – looking at the sustainability of mining by analysing historical mining data, assays and current reserves etc. A graph on page 129 projects the years of reserves left of oz metal/minerals based on current known reserves etc. It’s also got a lot of interesting historical info. about the mining of every metal and mineral in Australia.
http://civil.eng.monash.edu.au/about/staff/muddpersonal/SustMining-Aust-aReport-Master.pdf
Brian - Should you locate it, I’d be interested in seeing that link re 50% of climate effects in the first 25 years. Sounds interesting.
The other aspect is that some of the biological and biogeochemical consequences of climate change will take much longer to become apparent, particularly in regions where populations of long-lived organisms are no longer able to maintain themselves because replacement of senescent individuals cannot occur under altered climatic conditions.
I’d also add that the link I provided at [22] illustrates mackenzie’s [32] important point about multiple lines of evidence. Contrary to the view of some who hold to a naive understanding of Popperian falsification, this is a legitimate inferential strategy that is particularly valuable under circumstances where controlled replicated experiments are not feasible.
TFA, I thought the quote I saw was Hansen citing Caldeira or Climate Code Red quoting someone. What I found is not, I think, the one I remembered and is a bit different, but along the same lines. It’s from the recent Hansen et al paper Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim? (pdf)
I also found Caldeira citing Caldeira
Sorry for the length but it’s important. I don’t fully understand stabilisation, but I think he’s saying that if you want to stabilise, say, at 450ppm you have to reach a point where your emissions are zero. It used to be thought that the planet could absorb a certain amount of CO2. That was variously given as 4 or 5Gt of carbon (multiply by 3.67 to get CO2e). Now he’s saying that the planetary system is in balance without human input and anything we put up is going to alter the balance. This implies back to 280ppm if we don’t want melting ice caps - and stuff.
jo, there’s not much I can usefully add to BHP Billiton and Olympic Dam. I had heard that their use of the aquifers was adversely affecting some local sensitive sites where there were oases or something. I did hear a BHP guy saying they wouldn’t do the desalination plant unless there was no effect on the environment. But he would say that.
Re the info on p129, gold is interesting. Only 17 years supply left and it’s either second or third by export value after coal.
Brian - thanks very much for those links. The Hanson et al paper in particular will need time to digest.
Re Roxby Downs & the GAB; according to ABC news a couple of days ago, BHP is rethinking its plans for desalination in the upper gulf. Looks as though they’re no longer looking at generating potable water, with the possibility that it may be sourced from the western Eyre Peninsula.
Re mine reserves; I suspect many mining companies only prove up sufficient reserves to satisfy bankers in order to minimize the risk of takeover. Hence long-term reserves tend to be seriously underestimated.
Hi,
Your blog came up in one of my Google Alerts and I was interested in your comment that BHP might be sourcing water from western Eyre Peninsula. I work for the Port Lincoln Times and am following the desal issue and had not heard that before. Where did you hear that from?
Thanks for your help,
Stacey
Hi Stacey - my wording could have been clearer. The story is that BHP is changing its plans re a desalination plant, and the Greens’ Mark Parnell is suggesting that Ceduna might be a better spot.
There may also be an unreported angle if there are moves for a joint project with Iluka to supply water for their big rutile/zircon mine in the region - last I heard Iluka were still looking at a range of options to supply & dispose of processing water.
jo, I suspect that Rann has a vision for Roxby Downs becoming a major industrial centre with water being supplied by desalination and power from the geothermal province not too far away. If successful “hot Rocks” will only be supplying significant quantities from 2015 onwards. I’m sure Rann doesn’t want to see everything go to China.
I’d bet that the workers wouldn’t want to live there, though.
There is another water story that I can’t get a good handle on. In the Darling Downs there is a huge flurry to extract coal seam gas. There is a side story to do with water. Apparently the methane is compressed into the coal with water, which then is ponded and let dry because it’s too saline to let run down the waterways.
I did see or hear a story recently saying that it could be used fairly simply to supply Toowoomba and elsewhere. I can’t find a reference, so I can’t get a handle on the possible scale.
Anyway, here’s a map. The action is around Dalby, Chinchilla, Miles. The area is on the northern limits of the Murray-Darling and on the eastern edge of the GAB. I get a bit excited because I grew up about 50k north of Miles, just off the edge of both. Our water mostly headed for Rockhampton, except for 300 acres where it headed south to the Murray.