jennifer

Rob Gourlay from Environmental Consultants ERIC, is calling for an independent investigation by the Australian Government to get to the bottom of the claims in today’s Channel Nine Sunday Program:

“The Channel Nine Sunday Program on Salt Solutions (28 May 2006) was a wake-up call to public workers involved in dryland salinity science and administration in Australia.

There is evidence that points to possible scientific fraud and deceit in salinity science and management that is controlled and manipulated by Australian and State government agencies.

Public workers have used a rising groundwater model based on claims that land clearing causes the groundwater to rise and bring salts to the surface. Computer predictions by government agencies during the 1990’s promoted a dramatic spread of salinity across southern Australia.

Public workers have operated as a cartel to control public funds on dryland salinity and exclude private industry R&D, innovations and services from funding schemes. Evidence now suggests that the public science and predictions were hopelessly flawed.

Many government agencies attempted to suppress contrary evidence from private industry and published false information about the capability of industry technology, while promoting their own mapping technologies and engineering solutions to attract public funds.

Environmental Research and Information Consortium Pty Ltd (ERIC) was one of the companies with an award winning technology in salinity mapping affected by the lock out within government agencies. ERIC has answered questions raised by public workers during the investigation by Channel Nine. These papers are at http://www.eric.com.au/html/news.html.

ERIC, along with many other independent scientists and farmers have demonstrated that degradation in soil health is the primary cause of an increase in dryland salinity from natural levels. This includes a significant loss of soil carbon and microbes, soil compaction and loss of soil structure (eg. hardpans); caused by conventional methods of agriculture. This degradation has caused less rainfall/irrigation percolation to the groundwater, soil salts to be released into the soil water and increased lateral flows of salts into drainage lines and low lying areas.
Public workers have been provided with this alternative evidence to the rising groundwater model since the 1950’s.

ERIC produced conclusive evidence in 1994 and provided further evidence to the National Dryland Salinity Program in 1997, including the House of Representative Salinity Inquiry in 2004 and Senate Salinity Inquiry in 2006. However, public workers have continually failed to produce evidence to support a rising groundwater model and actively denigrated ERIC’s evidence without disproving the evidence.

The Australian public needs to know the extent of the cover-up and protection racket by these public workers. An independent investigation is now required by the Australian government to get to the bottom of the claims in the Channel Nine Sunday Program.”

A full transcript of the program is available, click here.

It was not long after I started with the Institute of Public Affairs in July 2003, that Prof Bob Carter at James Cook University suggested I contact Brian Tunstall.

Bob knew I was struggling with dryland salinity issues, that I was feeling outraged by the methodology used by the National Land and Water Audit to propose that 17 million hectares of farmland in Australia was likely to become salt affected within 50 years. The actual area showing signs of salinity was estimated at 2 million hectares in 2002. This area was thought to be contracting. So government scientists may have overstated the aggregate dryland salinity problem by as much as 88 percent.

I contacted Brian Tunstall, and subsequently met his colleague Rob Gourlay. Both work for ERIC an environmental consulting company.

It was apparent to me back then, that government scientists had used a very simplistic and flawed methodology as a basis for successfully lobbying for $1.4 billion in funding. I didn’t have as much a problem with the model they were using, as the way they were applying it.

It was good to met Rob and Brian. They not only had a problem with the methodology but also with the actual rising groundwater model. Brian and Rob’s central thesis is that dryland salinity is really a soil health issue, a symptom of soil degradation not a result of rising water tables.

Brian is in the promo, click here, for tomorrow’s Channel 9 Sunday program. He’s the one saying, “It’s a disaster for farmers and its a disaster for science”.

Brian has put together some online articles that provide more background on dryland salinity, click here.

Following is an extract from one of articles at the ERIC website, explaining why one of the most publicised examples of dryland salinity in NSW is a consequence of overgrazing rather than rising groundwater. Obviously correctly diagnosing a cause, is usually the critical first step to finding and implementing an appropriate solution!

“The most publicised example of dryland salinity in NSW occurs at Dicks Creek just outside the ACT. This has long been used to illustrate the applicability of the [flawed] rising groundwater model and the seriousness of the dryland salinity problem.

The site is routinely visited by tours with the next stop being a site where the salinity problem is identified as having been solved through revegetation. Prince Charles has taken the tour and Mr Carr used the site as a backdrop for an announcement of new initiatives to address the environment.

With the rising groundwater model, tree clearing on hills is said to increase the percolation to groundwater with the adverse salinity occurring through this water rising to the surface on the plains. The rising water is said to bring salt to the surface from sub-surface stores. The water and salt are generally said to move vertically upwards on the plains although it is seldom clear whether the rising relates to upward movement or a failure to drain. However, in drained landscapes upward movement is necessary for subsurface salt stores on the plains to be bought to the surface.

A photograph of the highly publicised site (see above) shows appreciable woody vegetation on the hills. Moreover, those familiar with landscape hydrology recognise that the water is draining down the hill slope over and through the soil. There is an incised drainage gully which drains water from the soil profile and prevents water from moving vertically upward. The water associated with the impact is not part of any groundwater system and the flow is primarilylateral with all vertical movement being down.

Further issues arise when measurements are obtained of salinity. The electrical conductivity (EC) of a 1:5 soil water suspension is around 2.9 ms/cm for the surface soil and 2.3 ms/cm for the subsoil. There is excess salt but the agricultural rating for such levels is slightly saline with yields of sensitive crops being affected.

The land degradation at the site has arisen through grazing. Livestock have disturbed the surface soil and the lateral flow of water down the slope has eroded the dispersible soil. It is a typical example of hill slope erosion where the erosion is occurring through seepage of water through the soil as well as surface runoff. Salt is an issue but in terms of composition rather than amount with sodium promoting the dispersion of clay.”

Brian goes on to ask the question, “Why the misrepresentation?”.

Brian then quotes from a paper by CSIRO scientist John Passioura titled ‘From propaganda to practicalities – the progressive evolution of the salinity debate’ (.Aust. J. Expt. Agric. 45, 1503-06).

This is perhaps the first paper in which a CSIRO scientist acknowledges the extent to which the rising groundwater salinity model has some major flaws. In the paper John Passioura suggests that, “Our only defence against the charge of charlatanry is that before deceiving others we have taken great pains to deceive ourselves.”

Tunstall comments,

“This identifies that the deceptions associated with dryland salinity have arisen from public research scientists.

The difficulty with the suggested defence is that self deceit is a fundamental characteristic of charlatanry. As self deceit is integral to charlatanry it is no defence and the comment attempts to justify the unjustifiable.”

I know of scientists within CSIRO who were not at all decieved, but they couldn’t see how to speak up. Afterall, to suggest the problem might not be as bad as suggested was to invite the wrath of many so-called experts.

“Unless you’re prepared to redo thirty years of scientific research yourself, the debate on this point [the salinity crisis] comes down to a pure question of comparative credibility,” wrote Professor John Quiggin in April 2004, click here. John Quiggin was suggesting that I had no credibility on Murray River issues because my thesis contradicted “thirty years of scientific research”.

In my discussions with John Quiggin over the Murray River, he has been reluctant to consider the evidence. For him, and many others, it’s been a case of backing the orthodox view, also known as ‘the consensus’.

Anyway, some months ago a producer at Channel 9’s Sunday program contacted me. Nick Farrow said that he had heard that I had information showing that salinity levels in the Murray River were falling, not rising. I sent him a copy of ‘Myth and the Murray’.

Some weeks later I was interviewed by Ross Coulthart, also from Sunday, and in the following video clip, click here, which is an advertisement for this week’s program, I am seen stating that we don’t have a salinity crisis, but rather an ‘honesty crisis’.

Peter Cullen (a Director of the National Water Commission), Wendy Craik (head of Murray Darling Basin Commission), John Passioura (CSIRO) and others, are quoted in the clip suggesting the Murray River is not dying and that the problem of salinity may have been grossly overstated. The television reporter, Ross Coulthart, describes it as, “Misguided pessimism”.

To John Quiggin, who has relentlessly attacked me, and my credibility, over this issues, I say:

Maybe I was just a bit ahead of my time.

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Following is the media release from Channel 9:

Australia’s Salinity Crisis: What Crisis?

The SUNDAY Program
Nine Network Australia
Sunday 28th May 2006 – 9am

Reporter: Ross Coulthart
Producer: Nick Farrow

It’s an apocalyptic story of environmental disaster we all know so well.

The Murray Darling basin is being poisoned by salt. Adelaide’s water supply is threatened, along with some of our most productive farmland – and our beautiful rivers are dying.

It’s a frightening scenario. But is it true?

In this week’s SUNDAY programme, reporter Ross Coulthart takes a look at the real threat posed by salinity – and finds things are going badly wrong in public science.

As Coulthart reveals, some of the claims being used to support calls for billions of dollars to be spent on fixing a ‘looming salinity crisis’ are simply not true.

Salinity is a problem. But it seems nowhere as bad as we’ve been told by environmental groups, government departments and many in the media.

Claims that an area of land twice the size of Tasmania is under threat are false. The reality is a fraction of that. Even top scientists now admit the predictions of a disaster have been exaggerated.

They say this may be because the theory about what causes salinity in non-irrigation areas is flawed.

Worse still, scientists suggest a cheaper and easier solution for salinity problems is being ignored – for very unscientific reasons.

“It’s a disaster for science. It’s a disaster for farmers,” one former CSIRO scientist tells SUNDAY.

Taxpayers have now given Government scientists billions of dollars to spend on efforts to understand and tackle salinity. But how solid is the science behind it?

Watch the SUNDAY Program this Sunday 28th May at 9am to find out.”

And here’s the link to the video promo: http://www.nextgenmedia.com/nine/promo/sunday_060528_vid_300.asx

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.

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:

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:

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.

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.