Archives for March 16, 2007

I really wanted to walk out of the channel 9 television studio in Sydney last Thursday.

I was there because the ‘Sunday’ program had flown me all the way from Brisbane to be a part of a ‘water forum’ to discuss ‘the water crisis’.

Also there, on the very large forum panel, was federal Environment Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Anthony Albanese, Wentworth Group Member and Water Commission Commissioner, Professor Peter Cullen, Australian Conservation Foundation Executive Director, Don Henry and the list went on to also include Laurie Arthur from the Rice Growers Association and someone from the Bureau of Meteorology and of course there was Dr Mike Young from CSIRO and a few more.

I almost forgot. They also had Queensland Premier, Peter Beattie, on a video link up from Brisbane.

Before I could get a word in edge ways, Premier Beattie and Professor Cullen with some help from Minister Turnbull and others, had spun the usual story including that due to climate change, the Murray Darling Basin, not to mention the rest of Australia is in the grip of a water crisis.

I don’t dispute that there is a water crisis, but I do dispute that it has much to do with climate change.

Minister Turnbull had also falsely claimed that Australian irrigators are inefficient and need reforming and Don Henry had managed to explain that the Murray River is in ruin. Mr Henry has been making the same claim over and over for about 10 years.

I had naïvely thought it wouldn’t unravel as such.

It was, after all, only last year that ‘Sunday’ ran a feature story on the Murray River explaining that there was no environmental crisis and no salinity crisis. One of their film crews had traveled the length of the river with Ross Coulthart uncovering the extent of the ‘honesty crisis’ – as I described it at the time.

Just a few weeks ago, in advance of the water forum, I had sent more information through to channel 9 explaining that despite all the more recent hype, the river is still doing OK. I also sent them through Bureau of Meteorology graphs, including a graph showing that there has not been a gradual long-term decline in rainfall in the Murray Darling Basin, as is so often repeatedly and falsely suggested in the mainstream media.

But this time most of the evidence was just ignored.

The shows host, Ellen Fanning, let Professor Cullen and others repeatedly confuse inflows with rainfall, drought with climate change and suggest the new $10 billion National Plan for Water Security could solve “the water crisis”.

While Ellen was in complete control of where the cameras were pointing when, I did manage to make a few points in response to Premier Beattie’s claim that southeast Queensland’s water crisis was the fault of climate change and wait for it, local government, and I also managed to correct Professor Cullen when he suggested there was a direct link between the 30 percent increase in global levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and the current water crisis.

They filmed for 90 minutes and will edit this down to just 30 minutes. So, my efforts may have all been in vain.

There is ample opportunity, thanks in particular to Professor Cullen and Minister Turnbull, for the program to really hone the doomsayers message that we have a ‘climate crisis’ and that the government’s $10 billion plan can really fix it.

But I’m hopeful, if not optimistic, they might find a spot for some balance.

Anyway, the ‘water forum’ on the ‘water crisis’ should screen this Sunday on ‘Sunday’ some time between 9 and 11 am.