Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for January 25, 2007

Climate Change Crusader Named Australian of the Year

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Australian Prime Minister John Howard has announced that climate change crusader Tim Flannery is the winner of the nation’s highest honour Australian of the Year.

At a ceremony in Canberra earlier today, Mr Howard said as an explorer, writer and climate change crusader Professor Flannery has helped millions better understand the environment.

In his recent book ‘The Weather Makers’ Tim Flannery makes various claims many of which are very fashionable, but appear to lack a scientific basis.

For example, he writes that animal species are vanishing as a result of climate change right now and that a dramatic decline in rainfall along the east coast of Australia may result in the extinction of various species of frog:

“In the early 1990s, frogs began to disappear en masse from the rainforests of northern Queensland and, as with the golden toad, these vanishings occurred in otherwise undisturbed rainforest. Today some sixteen frog species (13 percent of Australia’s total amphibian fauna), have experienced dramatic declines. The cause is still debated, but the climate change experienced in eastern Australia over the past few decades cannot have been good for frogs, for a persistence of El Nino-like conditions has brought about a dramatic decline in Australia’s east coast rainfall. The latest analysis suggest that at least in the case of the gastric brooder and day frog, climate change was the most likely cause for their disappearance.” (pg. 121)

Yet data from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology doesn’t show the claimed dramatic decline in rainfall.

Here’ the graph for eastern Australian from 1900 to 2006:

rainfall eastern aus _06b.JPG

In fact the 11-year running average looks pretty flat.

Australian PM Announces New Water Plan

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The Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, has just today announced a new plan for the management of water in Australia. He suggested a $10 billion budget for the following 10 point plan:

1. A nationwide investment in Australia’s irrigation infrastructure to line and pipe major delivery channels.
2. A nationwide programme to improve on-farm irrigation technology and metering.
3. The sharing of water savings on a 50/50 basis between irrigators and the Commonwealth leading to greater water security and increased environmental flows.
4. Addressing once and for all, water over-allocation in the Murray-Darling Basin.
5. A new set of governance arrangements for the Basin [Transfer of governance from the States to the Commonwealth].
6. A sustainable cap on surface and groundwater use in the Basin.
7. Major engineering works at key sites in the Murray-Darling Basin such as the Barmah Choke and Menindee Lakes.
8. Expanding the role of the Bureau of Meteorology to provide the water data necessary for good decision-making by governments and industry.
9. A taskforce to explore future land and water development in Northern Australia.
10. Completion of the restoration of the Great Artesian Basin.

Following is the transcript of the speech at the National Press Club, Great Hall, Parliament House:

“A National Plan for Water Security Thank you very much Mr Chairman. I’m happy again to address the National Press Club on some of the great challenges that face our nation in 2007. Last year I spoke about the great sense of balance in public life and public policy which have been a hallmark of the Australian achievement.

Today I want to address in a very direct and detailed fashion one of the great challenges of our time and that is water security. Before doing so let me, of course, remind you that whatever policies we may have, in areas as specific as water security, ultimately, for their effective implementation, they depend upon the continuing strength and growth of the Australian economy. And there is no greater single challenge in face of this government and of others in public life, than demonstrating a capacity to maintain the enormous prosperity of this nation at the beginning of 2007.

Our lowest unemployment rate in more than a generation, a higher level of business investment, a very pleasing reminder that inflationary pressures are tending downward rather than in the other direction; none of these things have occurred by accident. They are not some kind of automatic God given right, they are only achieved by the implementation of the right policies in the right fashion based on experience and a capacity to take the decisions necessary to maintain the prosperity of our country.

Water has always been at the very heart of the existence of the Australian nation. It influenced the life and the activity of the first Australians. It determined that the British settlement would occur at Port Jackson rather than at Botany Bay, and the great Federation drought of 1892 through to the early part of the next century inspired Dorothea Mackellar to pen those immortal words about droughts and flooding rains. As we grew and prospered as a nation after World War II, we placed heavy demands on our water resources, but that was a time when we invested heavily in infrastructure. We built the great Snowy Mountains Scheme, we invested heavily in dams and other ways of ensuring that our water resources were there and were available.

But by the time of the 1980s, policies began to change. Governments became reluctant, for a combination, in some cases of misguided implementation of environmental policies, became reluctant to invest in the construction of water conservation infrastructure, particularly dams. And that, of course, created understandable concern about the availability of water to look after us in the years ahead. In the last decade or so, we’ve begun to turn this around. Billions of dollars both at the state and a federal level have been set aside for projects individual projects. Our own $2 billion Water Fund is leveraging major investments in every state. And through the Living Murray Initiative, we are on the way to restoring six iconic environmental sites in our greatest river system. And with the National Water Initiative, a long-term framework is finally in place to increase the efficiency of water use, to service the needs of communities, and to return our river and groundwater systems to environmental health. Despite this, the current trajectory of water use and management in Australia is not sustainable. In a protracted drought, and with the prospect of long-term climate change, we need radical and permanent change.

I regard myself as a climate change realist…

Read the full transcript here: http://www.pm.gov.au/news/speeches/speech2342.html

I intend to post a critique in a day or two.