Jennifer Marohasy

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No Global Warming For 15 Years: David Whitehouse

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NEW UK Met Office global temperature data confirms that the world has not warmed in the past 15 years.

Analysis by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) of the newly released HadCRUT4 global temperature database shows that there has been no global warming in the past 15 years – a timescale that challenges current models of global warming.

The graph shows the global annual average temperature since 1997. No statistically significant trend can be discerned from the data. The only statistically acceptable conclusion to be drawn from the HadCRUT4 data is that between 1997 – 2011 it has remained constant, with a global temperature of 14.44 +/- 0.16 deg C (2 standard deviations.)

The important question is whether 15 years is a sufficient length of time from which to draw climatic conclusions that are usually considered over 30 years, as well as its implications for climate projections.

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Time to Celebrate Coal not Candles: Viv Forbes

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Coal not candles should be the symbol of Earth Hour.

It was coal that produced clean electric power which cleared the smog produced by dirty combustion and open fires in big cities like London and Pittsburgh. Much of the third world still suffers choking fumes and smog because they do not have clean electric power and burn wood, cardboard, unwashed coal and cow dung for home heat.

It was coal that saved the forests being felled to fuel the first steam engines and produce charcoal for the first iron smelters.

It was coal that powered the light bulbs and saved the whales being slaughtered for whale oil lamps.

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Media Watch Under Scrutiny

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MEDIA Watch contacted me on Friday with a barrage of questions concerning my work on the need to restore the Murray River’s estuary. Their line of questioning suggested that I was misleading the Australian public on the important issue of water reform in the Murray Darling. Indeed, the implication was that I am but a stooge for vested interests.

It appears Media Watch is contemplating asserting or implying that my professional judgement and integrity as a scientist has been influenced or corrupted by personal financial gain. Accordingly, I have sought legal advice on the matter, and include this in my full response that can be downloaded here:

https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/JenniferMarohasy_ReplytoMediaWatch_Amended12March.pdf

My responses to their specific questions also follows:

Media Watch: Do you accept that the vast majority of recognised experts on the natural history and hydrology of the Lower Lakes disagree with your conclusion that they were estuarine immediately prior to the erection of the cialis Murray Mouth barrages, or at any time in the past 2000 years?

Jennifer Marohasy: No. The relevant scientific literature, as published in peer-reviewed journals by recognised experts, indicates that the Lower Lakes were estuarine prior to the erection of the Murray Mouth barrages.

The following quote from a scientific paper published in the journal Marine Geology by Professors R.P. Bourman, A.P. Belperio, C.V. Murray-Wallace and N. Harvey, citing E. Barnett, seems to sum up the conclusion of these recognised experts:

“Originally a vibrant, highly productive estuarine ecosystem of 75,000 ha, characterised by mixing of brackish and fresh water with highly variable flows, barrage construction has transformed the lakes into freshwater bodies with permanently raised water levels; freshwater discharge has been reduced by 75% and the tidal prism by 90% (Bourman and Barnett, 1995; Harvey, 1996).”

Professor John Cann and co-workers have studied fossil foraminifera – tiny protozoa with shells of calcium carbonate preserved in the sediments of the Lower Lakes – concluding that the changes in the foraminiferal assemblages over the most recent 2,000 years indicate a general trend of increasing marine influence, up until the construction of the barrages that now block the natural ebb and flow between the Lower Lakes and Southern Ocean.

Professor Peter Gell writing in the recently published The Sage Handbook of Environmental Change has commented that the natural state of the Lower Lakes was tidal, that the lakes have been incorrectly listed as freshwater in the International Ramsar Convention, and that until their natural estuarine character is recognised it will be difficult to reverse the long-term decline in their ecological health.

Geoscience Australia classifies the Lower Lakes as part of a wave dominated barrier estuary with positive annual hydrodynamics.

UPDATE: I have been informed by Media Watch that they will NOT be running their intended program tonight (“This item will not be on this week’s show”). It would appear that the possibility of a defamation action coupled with a solid explanation of the science and history of the Lower Lakes has caused Media Watch to change their program. I would like to particularly thank those people who sent emails to Media Watch this morning.

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Environmental Flows in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area: Debbie Buller

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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

Sustaining Australia on 2,500 Gigalitres of Water

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Yesterday a Murrumbidgee food producer, Virginia Tropeano, had a letter printed in the local Murrumbidgee ‘Area News’ explaining that in an average rainfall year it take 5,000 gigalitres of water to keep the Lower Lakes artificially fresh.

Because of the sea dykes across the bottom of the Lower Lakes, they are totally dependent on water from upstream. In drought years this makes the Lower Lakes completely dependent on water in upstream storages. The only really large and reliable storages in drought years are in the upper Murray and Murrumbidgee catchments because they are the only snow fed catchments.

The Premier of South Australia, Jay Weatherill, wants 4,000 gigalitres more freshwater each year for South Australia as guaranteed supply. Because the Lower Lakes are Ramsar listed and because of the way the Water Act has been written, he is likely to get this water even if he has to take the Murray Darling Basin Authority to the High Court.

I think that in a good year, the most water that is ever allocated for food production in the Murrumbidgee is 2,500 gigalitres. Can someone verify this figure for me? Assuming I’m about right, Mr Weatherill wants all of this water and more.

If you have continued to read this far, and you are not an irrigator, you are probably getting bored with my use of these meaningless figures of thousands of gigalitres. So help me make this a more interesting story.

How much food can 2,500 gigalitres produce?

Farmers in the Murrumbidgee use about this volume of water to produce food.

What types of foods do they produce and how could the total volume, or caloric equivalent, be described in a meaningful way.

For example, can someone let me know for how many weeks or months the population of Australia could survive on food produced from 2,500 gigalitres of water?