Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for March 2012

Minister Caica Ignorant of History of Lake Alexandrina

By

Following the release of my recent technical report, Plugging the Murray’s Mouth: The Interrupted Evolution of a Barrier Estuary [1], the South Australian water minister, Paul Caica, made public comment that Lake Alexandrina has been a “predominately freshwater environment for the last 7,000 years”. The Minister also indicated that my claim that Lake Alexandrina was once part of an estuary is “myth and not supported by science.”[2]

In fact the relevant scientific literature, as published in peer-reviewed journals, indicates that the Lower Lakes were estuarine prior to the erection of the viagra sea dykes, known locally as barrages. But it is also revealing to simply consider the history of the region. The first map of Lake Alexandrina, drawn by John Arrowsmith in 1838 based on reports of water quality from the famous British explorer Charles Sturt, shows the waters of Lake Alexandrina to transition from salt to brackish to fresh.


[This map has been copied from a zoom here http://nla.gov.au/nla.map-rm2633]

It appears that the South Australian government is also ignorant of the history of the lake with comment in important planning documents that: “The Lower Lakes have been predominantly freshwater for the last 7,000 years and that seawater ingressions, when they did occur, did not extend north of Point Sturt.”[3]

Point Sturt is clearly marked on the 1838 map. The map clearly shows that seawater ingressions extended into the main body of the lake turning the water brackish.

**********

[1] The report can be downloaded here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/publications/

[2] Water must mix in the Lower Lakes, says new Murray-Darling report. Adelaide Advertiser, February 24, 2012. Available online at http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/water-must-mix-in-the-lower-lakes-says-new-murray-darling-report/story-e6frea83-1226281052851

[3] Securing the Future: A Long-term plan for the Coorong, Lower Lakes and Murray Mouth, June 2010, Government of South Australia. Available online as a 13mb pdf.

 

About the Murray River’s Estuary: Full Text of My Address to the Sydney Institute

By

AT the very bottom of Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin is a vast coastal lagoon that was once connected to the Southern Ocean. The region was home for the Ngarrindjeri, who wore possum skin coats and loved to tell stories. One of their storiesii is about greed and the environment and also the consequences of telling lies.

Two men set off in their bark canoe for the Ngiakkung, a shallow, reed-filled corner of the lagoon their tribe favoured for fishing. That day thukeri, or bream, were so plentiful that the fish all but hopped into the canoe. Having acquired a substantial haul, one said, “Hey brother, we have plenty of thukeri. Let’s paddle to the shore before we sink.” But his friend, for whom plenty was never enough, wanted to keep on fishing. The fish piled up even higher in the canoe, which sank even lower.

Eventually, they paddled towards the shore, where a stranger stood. “Hey brothers, I’m hungry,” he called out, “Have you got any fish to share?”

The rapacious one replied, “No, we haven’t. Just enough to feed our families.”

As the stranger turned to walk away, the men started laughing behind their hands. The stranger heard them and said, “You have plenty of fish, but because you are greedy and don’t want to share, you will never enjoy the thukeri again.” When the men reached the bank, they found the fish they had caught were thin and full of sharp bones.

They told their families what had happened. The old people said that the stranger was the Great Spirit Ngurunderi. From then on, for all time, the Ngarrindjeri people would be punished. Today, whenever Ngarrindjeri catch a bony bream, they are reminded of long ago, when Ngurunderi taught them a lesson.

During the recent drought, the waters of Ngiakkung, a place now called Loveday Bay, dried up. No one could ever remember the lagoon, now called Lake Alexandrina, drying up before.

[Read more…] about About the Murray River’s Estuary: Full Text of My Address to the Sydney Institute

Dugong Slaughter: Finally Some Reporting of the Issue

By

Dugongs are large marine mammals that swim about northern Australian waters. Indigenous Australians are allowed to hunt dugongs even though their numbers are probably in serious decline.

There are two criteria that should be applied to the harvest of an animal species: 1. Are the numbers taken sustainable, and 2. Is the method of killing humane?

But these criteria do not apply to the slaughter of native animals under native title legislation in Queensland.

I’ve written on the issue before, but not much since 2008. [1]

There has been a campaign wagged out of Cairns to get this issue on the national agenda and finally tonight there was some reporting of the inhumane slaughter of dugongs in northern Australian waters by the ABC TV 7.30 Report.

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2012/s3448943.htm

Well done to Sarah Dingle and Lesley Robinson for following up on a story documented by Ruphert Imhoff.

*******

[1] https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/2008/01/ignoring-the-slaughter-of-dugongs-in-northern-australia/

Environmental Flows in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area: Debbie Buller

By

Following is a note and link to photographs from a Murrumbidgee farmer with a rice crop that is withstanding the deluge, but she can’t say the same for the orchards and vineyards that many misguided folk in Sydney would prefer to see growing in our land of drought or flooding rains…

Hi Jen,

Here are some photos showing the extent of the flooding in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area.

http://www.mirrigation.com.au/Flood_pictures_March2012.htm

I want everyone to know that this is clearly showing that the flood plains that we live and work on and that we are therefore custodians of, have precious little to do with the Murrumbidgee river.

The river is not flooding here yet, and the majority of what you see here will not flood when the river peaks at Narrandera and Darlington Point in the next few days. The exception will be the Roache’s escape photo because that may not clear before the river rises. It would not normally flood there but it may still remain backed up.

There is extensive damage here and the water will hang around for longer than the river flood waters.

I can already hear the PR babble from the ‘political agenda’ that this is unprecedented and that there is nothing that could be done other than follow their impractical rules.

Let me assure you that is not the case and those who possess generational knowledge knew exactly what was about to happen once those heavy rains started belting down onto the already saturated surrounding hills and ranges.

It has happened before and will no doubt happen again.

That is why it’s so flat here. That is why we have expanded and enhanced our flood plain wetland ecology here by developing the MIA.

That is why our forefathers had the vision to develop this area.

We will also clean up the mess and move on as we always invariably do.
I am very curious to know how the 3 major MDB rivers flooding yet again will impact those ‘end of system flows’.

I am also wondering how the Murray Darling Basin Authority, CEWH, New South Wales Office of Water, Snowy Hhydro Ltd et. al. will attempt to justify storing environmental water and enhancing flooding events under the current conditions.

I’m positive all those Ramsar birds are completely ignorant of the fact that they have apparently been assisted by the Federal government and actually I’m positive they never cared.

At the moment, our area looks like it could be used as a setting for the Hitchcock movie ‘The Birds’. Not one cent of taxpayer money or current water policy had anything at all to do with that.

Our own highly variable and highly unpredictable land ‘of drought and flooding rains’ has just proceeded to solve all the stated problems in the current political ‘water reform’ agenda all by itself.

They do not have a practical plan or a sensible management principle to cater for the blatantly obvious ‘other side of the coin’ let alone the fact that they can’t produce water out of thin air or run the Murray in a severe drought as if it was a pressurised pipe.

There is no joy however in claiming ‘we told you so’

It would be wonderful if our current crop of politicians and bureaucrats would actually recognise that most of what we already know and most of what we already have done recognises the need for flexibility.

Instead we are watching them all scramble to protect their position and protect their inflexible and counter productive rules.

Parochial politics is dismissing what we have all learned. It is also highlighting the mistakes we have not fixed yet instead of allowing us to fix them. I will also add that most of the mistakes, including over allocating unregulated river flows and refusing to upgrade or finish existing infrastructures (including those SA nightmares) were made by poor government policy, not by the people who live and work there.

The majority of the rice crops are fine. Ours look magnificent and they’re hosting a cacophony of native wetland species. Strangely, as we all knew, they all came back when the drought broke. Even the supposedly extinct ‘brown bitterns ‘ and numerous other supposedly endangered species of frogs, birds etcetera.

The same cannot be said for those ‘high value’ permanent plantings that the Wentworth Group et al have loudly claimed (until very recently) were much more efficient and cost effective crops to produce. Those crops are in severe trouble and some have been irreparably damaged.

As I said, there is no joy in trying to be smug. There is a part of me however that wants to dump those ‘concerned scientists’ right in the middle of Yenda.

There are a lot of people here who will need help and support. More still will be flooded out by our river in the next few days.

I sincerely hope the current political agenda does not further damage their fragile self esteem as it has done by misrepresenting them as ‘environmental vandals’.

Any who read this and are struggling with the flooding, I am thinking of you and hoping that you and your hard won assets manage to get through and survive so that you can continue to be the productive custodians of our beautiful but harsh land that you always have been.

Debbie Buller
Murrami, Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area

The Moon and Rainfall in Eastern Australia

By

Dear Jennifer,

My paper ‘Lunar Tides and the Long-Term Variation of the Peak Latitude Anomaly of the Summer Sub-Tropical High Pressure Ridge over Eastern Australia’ has been published at:

http://www.benthamscience.com/open/toascj/articles/V006/49TOASCJ.pdf

It can be down loaded for free!

The main take-home conclusions from this paper are that:

1. The most important influence upon the climate of Northern NSW and Southern Queensland after the La Nina/El Nino phenomenon is the Peak Latitude Anomaly for the Summer Sub-Tropical High Pressure Ridge over Eastern Australia (L(SA)).

2. The interannual variability of L(SA) is major mechanism influencing inter-annual rainfall variability in Eastern Australia. It has also been shown to be connected to the inter-annular variability of the annual mean maximum temperatures, zonal westerly winds, meridional winds and mean air temperature.

3. The long-term (i.e for periods of 2 to 20 years) variations of L(SA) are dominated by (significant) periodic signals at 9.4 (+0.4/-0.3) and 3.78 (+/- 0.06) years.

4. L(SA) systematically moves away from the Equator as the angle between the Earth-Sun axis and the line-of-nodes of the Lunar orbit (at the time of perihelion) decreases. The magnitude of the movement of the mean summer peak latitude anomaly can amount to 1 degree of latitude over the 9.3 year semi-draconic spring tidal cycle.

5. L(SA) systematically moves towards the Equator as the number of days (to the nearest full day) that New/Full is from Perihelion decreases. The magnitude of the movement of the mean summer peak latitude anomaly can amount to 0.7 degree of latitude over the 3.8 year peak spring tidal cycle.

6. The 9.4 year signal in L(SA) is in-phase with the draconic spring tidal cycle, while the phase of the 3.8 year signal in L(SA) is retarded by one year compared to the 3.8 year peak spring tidal cycle.

7. This paper supports the conclusion that long-term changes in the lunar tides, in combination with the more dominant solar-driven seasonal cycles, play an important role in determining the observed inter-annual to decadal variations of L(SA).

8. The IPCC does not take into account the important effects upon climate of long-term
lunar atmospheric tides.

Cheers,
Ian Wison
Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia

The Fiction World of Rajendra Pachauri: Tony Thomas

By

HOW much do you really know about IPCC Chief Rajendra Pachauri and melting Himalaya Glaciers?

‘The Fiction World of Rajendra Pachauri’ by Tony Thomas is an easy to read, informative and insightful piece of investigative journalism available here:

http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2012/3/the-fictive-world-of-rajendra-pachauri

It includes comment that:

“The IPCC’s Himalaya forecast was based on nothing more than speculation by an Indian scientist, Syed Hasnain, in an Indian eco-magazine in April 1999, recycled into the New Scientist and then into a report in 2005 by the activist group WWF. The grey-lit WWF report was then cited in the IPCC’s draft glacier chapter in 2007…

Six IPCC experts reviewed the draft chapter and none saw anything odd. Twelve reviewers looked at it again in second draft. One of them (from Hebron University) said caustically that two elements in the forecast contradicted each other. Another, (from Newcastle University in the UK) told the authors to look up certain contrary references that cited glacier expansion (the IPCC authors’ brief is to assess the full range of scientific views on a topic). The reviewers’ comments were ignored. None of the total eighteen reviewers found anything untoward about the lone WWF citation for the dramatic forecast…

Later, the second draft was taken up and run in the all-important Summary for Policy Makers. The draft summary was reviewed line-by-line by 190 government representatives (if the politicians’ changes clash with the science sections, the science sections are altered retrospectively). Only one commented, hitting the bullseye: “This is a very drastic conclusion. Should have a supporting reference otherwise should be deleted (Government of India).”

Even then, IPCC rigour was not to be seen. The summary was watered down, leaving untouched the howlers in the source text.”