Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for July 2006

What Will Power Tomorrow?

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Last night Australian current affairs program Four Corners ran a story titled ‘Peak oil?’.

It began with the proposition that we might run out of oil soon and that this could be catastrophic, but then went on to outline a range of alternatives. The program reminded me of all the useful comments in the thread following my blog post of March 8 ‘We will never run out of oil: Philip Burgess’.

Four Corners even quoted Brian Fisher from ABARE suggesting that we could liquefy coal at US$40 a barrel which is cheaper than oil from the ground now at US$70 a barrel. Of course, while it might be affordable, liquefying coal will generate lots of greenhouse gases.

I wonder how many greenhouse gases the other potential options will generate including solar, biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel including from algae), hydrogen fuel cells, CNG (natural gas/methane), oil from tar sands, oil from shale … What else could be used to power cars, trucks and tractors?

Give Sweden is confident it’s economy can become ‘independent of oil’ by 2020 I am confident the rest of the world will also manage beyond peak oil. The Swedes propose to run their cars on ethanol and generate electricity from ‘rivers and nuclear’.

Just today new environment group the Australian Environment Foundation [1] put out a media release stating that our energy future will be “volatile and unpredictable” and called for a “significant expansion of the federal government’s inquiry into nuclear energy, as the current review will not produce a sufficiently accurate or useful comparison between the various energy generating options.”

It’s fair to conclude that there will be a worldwide transition from oil to something else, but we don’t know how rough or smooth that transition might be, nor how imminent.
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[1] I’m a director of the AEF.

More Interested in Crying ‘Water’, Than Buying Land & Water

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Television personality John Doyle (from Roy and HG) was on Australia’s Radio National yesterday afternoon talking about the environmental problems he observed as he ventured down the Darling River recently with another Australian celebrity Tim Flannery.

I gather the journey was undertaken in a small boat earlier in the year and is being turned into a television documentary lamenting the state of the river and blaming irrigation in south western Queensland.

Doyle suggested that one hundred years ago the river used to ‘dry up’ because of drought, now the problem is apparently cotton farmers upstream taking all the water.

Interestingly two very large irrigated cotton farms were auctioned just last Friday; Ballandool Station at Hebel and Clyde at Dirranbandi. Together they have a storage capacity of 220,000 megalitres which is huge.

I am surprised there was no interest from any government in buying the properties which were passed in at auction for $20 and $27 million respectively. The irrigation licences could have been cancelled and the water ‘returned’ for the Darling River.

Meanwhile, on Saturday the Sydney Morning Herald published a long piece by Daniel Lewis titled ‘Fat Ducks, fat cattle – fat chance’ [1] that quotes from my blog piece titled ‘Cattle killing the Macquarie Marshes?‘ [2]. This is the first time I’ve read something in the mainstream media acknowledging that there might be an overgrazing problem in the marshes. Usually the finger is only pointed at the irrigators.

Lewis also quotes Chris Hogandyk from Auscott suggesting that government would get a better environmental result by spending $33.2 million buying 82,000 hectares of core marshland than spending money on ‘environmental water’ that ends up fattening cattle.

Reference was made in the Sydney Morning Herald to the following photograph, first published at this blog in October last year:

marsh grazing aerial c.jpg

As I wrote in the original blog post, the photograph taken in 2005 shows the dramatic impact of grazing. The fence is the line of demarcation between an overgrazed private property and ungrazed nature reserve. The impact of grazing here is obvious and dramatic.

A very similiar photograph was taken three years earlier in 2002 and published by the Australian Geographic as explained at my second blog post on the Macquarie Marshes entitled ‘Marsh Graziers Don’t Pay For Their Water’.

I wrote last year that it seems incredible that flood-plain graziers are screaming so loudly for more water and yet the issue of overgrazing is being ignored by all.

Well, just maybe, overgrazing as an issue, in the marshes, is now starting to be acknowledged!

Thanks Daniel Lewis.

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[1] Fat ducks, fat cattle – fat chance
On one side of the river stand the irrigators, on the other the graziers. Both are pointing the finger over the demise of the Macquarie Marshes, writes Daniel Lewis.
Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday 8th July 2006
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/fat-ducks-fat-cattle–fat-chance/2006/07/07/1152240493862.html

[2] Cattle Killing the Macquarie Marshes
October 21, 2005. https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/000949.html

I’ve written two other pieces on the marshes:
Marsh Graziers Don’t Pay For Their Water, October 25, 2005
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/000958.html
and
Fat Ducks Equal Fat Cows, On Line Opinion 18th April 2006
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=4377

Whaling – Con & Pro: Klaus Barthelmess

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According to German historian Klaus Barthelmess it is “Pure presumptuousness!” to suggest that world opinion is against whaling. He writes:

“This opinion [against whaling] is almost exclusively found in densely populated urban Western societies, where people have become alienated from nature and where care for pet animals compensates for weakened family ties and social bonds. These societies – perhaps 20% of the world population – may be the most outspoken and influential, but by no means do they represent ‘World Opinion’.”

Barthelmess has just updated a brochure entitled ‘Whaling – Con & Pro’ that he wrote 12 years ago for the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission in Puerto Vallarta.

Judging from the content of the brochure the arguments for and against whaling have not changed or progressed much over the last 12 years.

The brochure now available online, passionately argues the case for whaling and is illustrated from Barthelmess’s collection of ‘whaling-related art’ including pictures of what he describes as the ‘fastest-killing device ever invented’, the Norwegian penthrite harpoon grenade.

Barthelmess killing devices whales.jpg
[Norwegian penthrite harpoon grenade, prototype parts and models. Photo Barthelmess 2005]

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Apologies to those who unsuccessfully tried to post a comment at this blog over the weekend. We were all (me included) accidentally ‘locked’ out over the weekend when some files on the server where ‘cleaned up’ on Friday. All is working again now.

New Dams to Be Built in Queensland

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A year ago I criticised the Queensland Government for not telling us how much water would be delivered by the then newly released infrastructure plan and the proposed $2.3 billion budget allocation [click here for that bog post].

A lot has happened over the last year. Government has changed its plan and yesterday the Premier provided estimates in terms of how much water the new options will deliver at the same time announcing that two new dams will definately be built, the Traveston and Wyalarong Dams.

Here are some extracts from one of the media releases:

“The new water projects for the Logan/Albert River and Mary River will be essential to fill the future gap of water supply need in south east Queensland, Premier Peter Beattie said today.

Mr Beattie said the current estimated water supply capacity in south east Queensland was 450,000 megalitres a year.

“Our goal is to reduce demand through water efficiency measures such as fixing leaky council pipes, reducing water pressure, and encouraging changes in consumption by homes, business and industry,” Mr Beattie said.

“However, even if we meet these water saving targets we expect our water use to grow to 750,000 megalitres a year by 2050.

“Therefore we need to fill the gap of approximately 300,000 megalitres.

“We expect investigations on desalination and our work on industrial recycling will deliver 110,000 megalitres per annum

“However these projects alone will not be enough.

“We need to build new water storages to meet the capacity needs of another 190,000 megalitres per annum.”

Mr Beattie said the four new water initiatives on the Logan/Albert River were expected to deliver an extra 42,000 megalitres into the system by the end of 2011.

He said the three stage process for the Traveston Dam would deliver up to an extra 150,000 megalitres per annum. The first stage of Traveston will deliver up to 70,000 megalitres per annum, the raising of Borumba Dam an extra 40,000 megalitres per annum and the completion of Traveston, if required, an extra 40,000 megalitres per annum.

“Dams are able to provide relatively large volumes of reliable water supplies in an economical way,” Mr Beattie said

“It is true that climate change has affected the reliability of rainfall to supply dams, however, that is why we are developing a water grid to connect our water storages throughout south east Queensland.”

“We can share supply between the dams and other water storages through an inter-connected set of pipelines and transfer mechanisms.

“That way if it rains in one part of the region but not in another we can move water around the region to meet demand in the highest areas of need.”

Now that’s interesting. Is the Premier suggesting that climate change is not now anticipated to affect the overall amount of water falling in south eastern Queensland, just how its distributed?

It is now proposed that the dam for the Logan/Albert River be built at Wyalarong. Following is a rainfall record for parts of this catchment put together about a year ago by Warwick Hughes.

wyalarongVer2.GIF

Not so many years ago a dam was to be built in central Queensland on the Fitzroy River. It was to be called the Nathan Dam. Construction was blocked when an action was taken by conservation groups in the federal court under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. It will be interesting to see whether or not the same fate befalls the proposed new dams for south eastern Queensland?

It’s Been Unusually Cold & Dry In Australia

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Last year it was hot in Australia and the Bureau of Meteorology cried implicated ‘global warming’ [1] .

This year it’s cold and the Bureau of Meteorology is also crying implicating ‘global warming’ [2].

This is how the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper interpreted what Grant Beard from the Bureau of Meteorology had to say:

“AUSTRALIA is in the grip of a nationwide cold snap – and paradoxically, it could be another result of global warming.

Last summer was the hottest on record. But last month many parts of Australia reported record or near-record cold nights. The average minimum temperature was 1.69 degrees below the long-term average, making it the second-coldest June since 1950.”

A reader of this blog John McLean recently emailed me:

The [Australian] April average mean temperature was the 2nd coldest since 1961, surpassed only by 1974 (5th coldest since 1950), The May average mean temperature was 4th coldest since 1961, surpassed by 1968, 2000 and 1979 (7th coldest since 1970), The June average mean temperature was 3rd coldest since 1961, surpassed by 1982 and 1971 (5th coldest since 1950).”

And here’s more comment emailed from another reader of this blog:

“June has been drier than usual in South Australia with some parts of the state experiencing the lowest rainfall on record. …Adelaide has had its third-driest June on record.

The latest figures collated by the Bureau of Meteorology show Tasmania has recorded one of the driest months of June ever. … “Launceston Airport in particular has record its lowest rainfall total for June on record,” he said.

“Just 24 hours after its coldest day on record, Perth has recorded its driest start to winter. Perth has not recorded one drop of rain in the past 18 days, making it the driest start to winter since records began in the 1880s.

…”It’s also the driest start to the year to date in history as well,” he said.”

But hey, its raining in India:

“Mumbai commuters wade knee-deep as monsoon rains lash city. Commuters in India’s financial hub Mumbai waded knee-deep through water to reach their offices as torrential monsoon rains disrupted rail and air links and forced schools to close.

Municipal workers used shovels to clear clogged drains in the western city of 18 million people that has been pounded by heavy wind and rain since late Saturday.

“More than 40 domestic flights were cancelled and another 10 had to be diverted to other destinations,” a Government official said in New Delhi.

…The rains, which advance across the country from the southern tip, have stirred memories in Mumbai of last July when more than 400 people were killed by flash floods in the city.”

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[1] Click here for my blog post entitled ‘Last year: hottest on record’.
[2] Click here for the Sydney Morning Herald piece titled ‘Cold Spell’s Weird Cause’, 4th July.

This blog post was modified at about 5.30pm on 6th July following emails from several readers. As Dennis suggested in a comment earlier today, I was having some “fun” in the original post and at the expense of the Bureau of Meteorology.