Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for May 24, 2006

Fudging Figures on Murray River Salinity: More Shame on CSIRO

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CSIRO, Australia’s largest scientific research organisation, released a two-part report* last Friday on ‘water’ in the Murray-Darling Basin, a region often referred to as the food bowl of Australia. The icon within this region is the Murray River and salt levels in the river have long been considered an indication of the region’s health and the sustainability of Australian agriculture.

The report reiterates “salinity … as one of the most serious environmental issues in the Basin” and suggests that “stream salt loads” and “stream salinity” will increase. Part 1 of the report is 48 pages and Part 2 is 29 pages but there is only one graph of Murray River salinity and it was drawn in 1988, some 16 years ago. It is computer-model generated and interestingly begins in 1920 even though first recording were not made until 1938.

Salinity Gph CSIRO Feb06.JPG

In my opinion it is both sad and deceitful that the CSIRO won’t show us what salinity levels really look like but instead keeps republishing a dated and misleading graph from a computer model.

Would you like to see what salt levels are really like?

Here’s a plot of yearly average stream salinity from when recordings where first made in 1938:

salinity Yearly Averages.JPG

This graph is based on data that I recently requested and received from the Murray Darling Basin Commission.

A plot of all the daily readings for Morgan, a key site as its just upstream from the off-shoots for Adelaide’s water supply, also shows a downward trend for the last 20 years:

Salinity all data May06.JPG

This data was also sourced from the Murray Darling Basin Commission and the last data point represents last Friday, 19th May 2006.

It’s good news that salt levels are falling. But no-one will acknowledge it!

A common ‘excuse’ given for the low stream salinity levels is that it’s been so dry, “It doesn’t rain so much in the Murray-Darling Basin anymore”. But hang-on, a plot of rainfall for the Murray-Darling Basin shows no recent drop-off. The last very dry year was 2002 and that wasn’t unusually dry in the scheme of things.

BOM MDB.JPG

The graph is from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, click here.

Perhaps so much funding is dependent on the perception that salinity is a continuing problem, and so many reputations have been made on the myth, that there is almost an obligation to repeat the falsehood?

I reckon it matters that CSIRO and others keep misleading the Australian public on this issue. I reckon it matters that the federal government just announced another $500 million for the Murray River on the pretext that river salinity is a continuing problem.

* The reports are titled ‘The Shared Water Resources of the Murray-Darling Basin’ by Kirby M et al. 2006 and ‘Risks to the Shared Water Resources of the Murray-Darling Basin’ by Van Dijk, A et al 2006 published by the Murray Darling Basin Commission, Canberra and prepared by CSIRO Land and Water as part of the Water for a Healthy Country National Flagship Program.

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This Sunday, Channel 9’s Sunday program is planning to feature at story on the Murray River and salinity. I’m hoping that Ross Coulthart from SUNDAY will go beyond the empty rhetoric and show that the emperor has no clothes.

So if you live in Australia, watch Channel 9 from 9am on Sunday.

I’ve written a bit about the Murray River which can be accessed online including an IPA backgrounder, click here, and something for Online Opinion more recently, click here, and for ABC Radio National’s Counterpoint with Michael Duffy, click here. I will in due course do a complete critique of the two-part CSIRO report.

Feeling Cold & Confused in a Warming World

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It was all over local radio here in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, this morning … that it was the coldest May morning ever, with temperatures down to -2C. That’s cold for subtropical Brisbane.

As I sat shivering in my little wooden house with no central heating or insulation, I was trying to reconcile this one off measurement and the colour of my hands, with new information on the Bureau of Meterology (BOM) website that says global warming is real, is here now, and that on average its a whole degree warmer in Australia.

Indeed, according to the Bureau:

“Australia and the globe are experiencing rapid climate change. Since the middle of the 20th century, Australian temperatures have, on average, risen by about 1°C with an increase in the frequency of heatwaves and a decrease in the numbers of frosts and cold days.”

But what is perhaps more interesting than this cold May morning in this world of global warming, is that most of the rest of the world has on average, according to NASA, only warmed by 0.6C over the last 30 years or so. I thought the IPCC models said that it was going to get warmer on average in the northern hemisphere before it got warmer down here?

I’ve just found that comment from Gavin at an earlier thread which I interpreted, along with figure 18, to mean it should, in general, not warm as much here in Australia, as it will in the rest of the world, at least not for the moment:

“The basic mistake is to assume that hemispheric temperatures follow hemispheric forcings proportionately. This is incorrect. The biggest factor is the amount of oceans and the effective mixing depths in the southern oceans. This gives a much larger effective heat capacity in the south and so in any transient case the warming is always delayed in the south. This is actually exactly what climate models show. See http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/notyet/2005_submitted_Hansen_etal_1.pdf
(fig 18 for instance).”

In summary, according to the models from our best scientists it is going to get warmer on average in the northern hemisphere before it gets warmer in the southern hemisphere, but according to the Australian Bureau of Meterology (BOM) its a whole degree on average warmer here in Australia in the southern hemisphere when, on average, its only 0.6C warmer over the whole world.

And I just wish it would warm up a bit, today, here in Brisbane.

Dam the Yangtze, But Not the Mary?

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The largest dam in the world, The Three Gorge Dam on the Yangtze River in China, was completed, and ahead of schedule, just last week. And last week controversy errupted where I live in south eastern Queensland, Australia, over plans to dam the Mary River.

Interestingly the proposal to dam the Mary was not part of the blueprint for future infrastructure development released by the Queensland state government just last year, click here for the full report.

Right now, I don’t really have an opinion on whether the dam should or shouldn’t be built. But I would like some information about how much water it is going to deliver relative to other options including water recycling and desalination.

But I guess a problem for government scientists making forward projections is global warming. I guess there is an expectation that the dam will fill with water, yet the same Queensland government last year announced in parliament that we are going to have 40 percent less rainfall in 70 years (or was it 70 percent less rainfall in 40 years) as a consequence of global warming. [ Can someone find the link for me to the comments by Minister Stephen Robinson?]

For anyone interested in reading some of the opinion associated with a new dam proposal in Australia, I’ve been sent the following list of links by a reader of this blog:

http://www.qld.greens.org.au/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=243
http://www.savethemaryriver.com/
http://econews.org.au/story1_14.php?PHPSESSID=d0ba0bfd1dfdf5bb290ec2517a234e2a
http://www.themaryvalley.com.au/html/cms/103/traveston-dam-mary-river
http://www.qld.nationals.org.au/news/default.asp?action=article&ID=560

It is also interesting that the Queensland government just last year essentially banned dam building in northern Queensland through its Wild River’s legislation. Yet this is where the big rivers are in this big state. The Mary is really a little stream. Perhaps hardly worth the bother of daming?

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About the Three Gorges Dam, according to Xinhua News:

“The concrete placement of the Dam’s main section was completed 10 months ahead of schedule, which will enable the Dam to start its role in power generation, flood control and shipping improvement in 2008, one year ahead of designated time.

After the cofferdam is demolished on June 6, the dam’s main wall, often compared to the Great Wall in its scale, will formally begin to hold water, protecting 15 million people and 1.5 million hectares of farm land downstream from floodings, which had haunted the Yangtze River valley for thousands of years. Upon the demolition, a new landscape featuring a reservoir with a serene water surface behind the spectacular dam will gradually come into being along with planned rises of the water level.

The Three Gorges, which consist of Qutang, Wuxia and Xiling Gorges, extend for about 200 km on the upper and middle reaches of the Yangtze. They have become a popular world-class tourist destination noted for beautiful natural landscapes and a great number of historical and cultural relics. This section of the Yangtze has a narrow river course which is inconvenient for shipping but boasts abundant hydroelectric resources.

… As China’s longest and the world’s third longest, the Yangtze River, together with the Yellow River, nurtured the Chinese civilization. However, its floodings have since long threatened lives and properties of residents along its valley. The latest deluge happened in 1998, which claimed about 1,000 lives and incurred approximately 100 billion yuan (12.5 billion U.S. dollars) in economic losses.”

On the downside I understand more than a million people were displaced as part of its construction and it was to cost about $27 billion to build.