Jennifer Marohasy

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Murray River

Emissions Not Making Rivers Run Dry: A Note from Stewart Franks

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IS the ongoing drought in the Murray-Darling Basin affected by climate change? The simple answer is that there is no evidence that CO2 has had any significant role. Like it or not, that is the science.

 

In fact, the drought was caused by an entirely natural phenomenon: the 2002 El Nino event. This led to particularly low rainfalls across eastern Australia. The subsequent years were either neutral or weak El Nino conditions. Significantly, neutral conditions are not sufficient to break a drought. In 2006, we had a return to El Nino conditions which further exacerbated the drought. What we didn’t have was a strong La Nina.

 

Last year finally brought a La Nina event but it was relatively weak. It produced a number of major storm events in coastal areas and some useful rainfall in the Murray-Darling basin and elsewhere. Approximately half of NSW drought-declared areas were lifted out of drought (albeit into “marginal” status) and Sydney’s water supply doubled in the space of a few months.

 

This was the first rain-bearing La Nina since 1999 but proved insufficient to break the drought. In short, the drought was initiated by El Nino, protracted by further El Nino events and perhaps more importantly, the absence of substantial La Nina events.

 

Despite the known causes of the drought, many have claimed that CO2 emissions are to blame. There have been arguments put forward to justify this claim, all eagerly adopted by various groups, but none of which have serious merit.

 

A key claim is that the multiple occurrence of El Nino is a sign of climate change. This is speculative at best. Recent analysis showed the nine-year absence of La Nina was not unusual. In fact long-term records demonstrate alternating periods of 20-40 years where El Nino is dominant, followed by similarly extended periods where La Nina dominates. Ominously, the data demonstrates that it is possible to go 14-15 years without any La Nina events. The consequent drought would be devastating but entirely natural.

 

The observation that El Nino and La Nina events cluster on 20-40 year, multi-decadal timescales is an important one. It demonstrates that Australia should always expect major changes in climate as a function of natural variability. When viewed in this light, the drought is most likely a recurring feature of the Australian climate.

 

A more recent claim is that higher temperatures are leading to increased evaporation of moisture. The weather bureau acknowledges that rainfall from September 2001 until now has not been the lowest recorded, however much has been made of the fact that consequent inflows have been the lowest. It has been claimed increased evaporation, driven by climate change, can make up this discrepancy. Indeed, Wendy Craik, the chief executive of the Murray Darling Basin Commission has stated that temperatures were warmer, leading to more evaporation and drier catchments.

 

This is disturbing to hear from the head of the MDBC, as it is completely at odds with the known physics of evaporation. While it sounds intuitively correct, it is wrong.

 

When soil contains high moisture content, much of the sun’s energy is used in evaporation. Consequently, there is limited heating of the surface. When soil moisture content is low (as occurs during drought) nearly all of that energy is converted into heating the surface, and air temperatures rise significantly. Consequently, higher temperatures are due to the lack of evaporation, not a cause of significantly higher evaporation.

 

Cloud cover also provides a major control on air temperatures. El Nino delivers less rainfall but also less cloud cover. This has a major impact on the amount of the sun’s energy reaching land; far greater than the trivial increase in radiant energy caused by increased CO2. Again, in the absence of soil moisture, air temperatures increase.

 

These are known and accepted processes of environmental physics and are not contentious. They are ignored because they detract from the simple message that we should sign up to the concept of “dangerous climate change” and an emissions trading scheme. After all, who would pay for carbon emissions if they were not proven to be detrimental? Who would provide extra funds for climate change science if it wasn’t a proven significant factor compared to natural climatic variability?

 

None of the above is to say that CO2 is not having some effect; the atmospheric CO2 concentration has risen and this is largely attributable to anthropogenic emissions. CO2 is a radiatively-active gas and leads

to a minor increase in downward radiation. However, there is no evidence that this is in any way significant, especially when compared to the naturally varying processes that dominate rainfall variability and evaporation.

 

We do know why inflows are so low and why various ecosystems of the Murray-Darling are in crisis: the system is over-allocated and has experienced a growth in groundwater extraction and in the number of farm dams preventing rainfall from becoming run-off. This is due to a failure of planning, management and leadership from the relevant authorities. Under these conditions, when a prolonged drought strikes, the system collapses.

This is a man-made problem but not one that is attributable to CO2.

 

Craik is not alone in her desire to view CO2-induced climate change as proven and affecting the drought. Numerous politicians, environmentalists and especially scientists have made spectacular leaps of faith in their adherence to the doctrine of climate change over recent years, too many to document here. However, the most literally fantastic claim on climate change must go to Kevin Rudd, who has guaranteed that rainfall will decline over coming decades; one can only assume he’s based his view on deficient climate models and bad advice.

 

Perhaps our leading climate authorities who have played such a prominent role in fomenting speculation about climate change, and who apparently adhere to the notion that climate is amenable to prediction, should also point out that these models cannot reproduce the observed multi-decadal variability of El Nino and La Nina in anything like a realistic manner.

 

Given the uncertainty of El Nino and La Nina behaviour, one clearly cannot predict the future.   There is no direct evidence of CO2 impacts on the drought, nor is there any rational basis for predicting rainfall in 30 years time. One just hopes that sensible and sustainable management from our leaders will enable struggling rural communities to weather the vagaries of climatic and political extremes.

 

Steward Franks

Newcastle, Australia

 

 

Stewart Franks is a hydroclimatologist and an associate professor at the University of Newcastle School of Engineering. He is president-elect of the International Commission on the Coupled Land – Atmosphere System.

 

This article has been republished from The Australian with permission from the author.

 

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Emissions not making rivers run dry, The Australian, Stewart Franks, September 12, 2008

 

Saving the Coorong By Restoring its Native State

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The Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is in Adelaide today for a community cabinet meeting. Various media reports suggest there will be pressure on the government to “save” the lower lakes with a special water allocation from upstream.

As part of the meeting the federal cabinet will be briefed by the Murray Darling Basin Commission on following this advice, Mr Rudd has said, “Cabinet will then look at what further measures will be possible to reduce the pressure on the system.”

Online Opinion published a piece by me this morning suggesting the solution for the lower lakes lies in opening the barrages, but saving the Murray River is a potentially more difficult proposition.

Read the piece, entitled ‘Saving the Coorong by restoring its native state’ by clicking here.

Wong is Right: Not Enough Water in the Murray-Darling for the Lower Lakes

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The Australian government is currently in the process of finalising the purchase of just 35 gigalitres (billion litres) of water from the public tender process announced on 26 February 2008 whereby $50 million was allocated in the 2007-08 budget to buy back water in the Murray Darling Basin.

This is a very small amount of water at least relative to the 500 to 3,500 gigalitres that politicians from the different sides of politics promised over recent federal elections.

Nevertheless I applaud the government for releasing the figures and maybe through the process there has been a realization that water is expensive and also that purchasing a water licence doesn’t necessarily guarantee water. Indeed a licence only means an allocation when there is some water in storage.

Yesterday, Water Minister Penny Wong announced that there is not enough water currently in the Murray Darling system to fill South Australia’s Lower Lakes.

“Even if we did make a decision to not give any allocation, there is insufficient water currently in storage, less the critical human needs issue, for us to viably manage the lower lakes with the amount of water we have.”

At last the Water Minister is speaking sense.

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The $50 million is part of $3.1 billion in the National Action Plan first announced by then Prime Minister John Howard as an emergency measure to save the Murray River in early 2007.

Interestingly, according to Farm Online: “The departmental report shows the Government paid an average of $2124/ML for high security water and $1131/ML for NSW general security and Victorian low reliability licences.”

You can watch the ABC Online video clip in which the Water Minister states there is not enough water for the lower lakes here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2008/08/06/2326382.htm.

The commentary from the ABC journalist, Josie Taylor, is full of errors including the claim that building a weir “would flood the lower lakes with salt water.” Of course the lower lakes should be flooded with sea water now. A weir would simply limit the upstream movement of seawater. Furthermore the announcement by Minister Wong to not send more water down to the lakes is not the “kiss of death”, as suggested by Ms Taylor, there are alternatives including opening the barrages as discussed at earlier blog posts including Stop Complaining About the Lower Murray And Open the Barrages posted on June 18, 2008.

A New Plan for The Red Gums of Northern Victoria

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Yesterday I was at the Victorian Parliament in Melbourne to launch a new plan for the management of the River Red Gum Forests of the mid-Murray in northern Victoria.

The comprehensive plan is contained within a 150 page report by the Rivers and Red Gum Environmental Alliance; a group of 25 community and environmental NGOs representing over 100,000 people.

This is what I said:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

What a privilege it is to be here today to launch a comprehensive plan for the river red gum forests along the Murray River; a plan put together with the aim of not only looking after the forests but also the communities who live, work and play in them.

There are some who argue that the only way to look after a forest is to exclude people. But they are wrong and particularly when it comes to river red gum forests.

Red gums are fire sensitive and the large forests along the Murray, including the Barmah Forest, have always been tended by people. The Barmah forest, the largest river red gum forest in the world, is only about 6,000 years old as it came about following a geological uplifting that changed the course of the Murray River.

The wood cutters and cattlemen who now live and work in the region have gone to great lengths to keep fuel-loads in red gum forests low through controlled grazing and the collection of firewood. This, combined with a network of rural fire fighting brigades, has made it possible to stomp out fires started from lightning strikes or camp fires.

And this may explain why some aboriginal elders call river red gums ‘white fella weed’ and why areas which were described by the early explorers as open woodland are now covered in trees including part of Barmah.

Whether open woodland from burning, or dense forest from fire exclusion, bush users, both indigenous and non-indigenous, know that the beauty of what many regard as wilderness is often the consequence of a particular approach to land management.

Indeed the idea of a forest without people is a Romantic European notion of wilderness.

In 1820 English poet and Oxford graduate Percy Shelley wrote,

“Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and downs,
To the silent wilderness,
Where the soul need not repress
Its music.”

For Shelley, wilderness was a place far away.

The late American writer J.B. Jackson has suggested that once upon a time wilderness was the domain of the nobility, an environment where they alone could develop and display a number of aristocratic qualities and that friction arose between the “peasants” and the “nobles” and persisted as long as the peasants felt excluded from that portion of the landscape they believed their right by heritage.

There are more contemporary notions of wilderness that include ordinary people.

A fellow who comments at my weblog under the pen name Travis has written,

“Wilderness has no gods or one almighty. All is equal in life and death and just simply being. The rich tapestry of a wilderness includes the naked ape – but does not sustain those that want to dominate it. It then becomes something else.”

And so the beautiful river red gums forests along the Murray can sustain the communities that currently harvest them, and graze them, and camp in them, as long as no one group dominates.

This is the big difference between the VEAC plan and the community plan; The Community Plan for the Multiple use of Public Lands in the River Red Gum Forests.

VEAC is the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council. The council is comprised of a small group of people without a mandate from the local community and without any particular expertise, who have decided, a little like the English Aristocrat of the 1800s, that the forest is best protected through the exclusion of people. Thus, their plan focuses on changes to land tenure, management and use.

But the problem right now for the forests is water, not ordinary people.

Indeed many of the problems facing the red gum forests along the Murray stem from a chronic lack of water from the protracted drought.

But VEAC, with their outdated European notion of wilderness, seem to think that by excluding people they can somehow make things better; that they can somehow save the forests.

But they can’t. Furthermore the people who know how to practically and efficiently deliver water to the forest are the very people who live and work in the forests and who understand how the forest floods.

Some of the locals know how to piggyback environmental flows on to managed flows for irrigation, they know how to push water down creeks when the Ovens River floods. They know where the on-river regulators are, and they know how the on-river regulators, in conjunction with the distribution works located on flood runners through the forests, can deliver small quantities of water efficiently to the most stressed parts of the forest.

There is a rich oral history within not only the indigenous, but also the white-fella communities along the Murray.

But this potential for ‘within forest’ water management, to efficiently distribute this increasingly precious resource is largely untapped. This is partly because organisations, including VEAC with their outdated European notion of wilderness, falsely assume they can save the environment “naturally” and want overbank delivery of water which is neither practical nor efficient – at least not in these dry times.

In November last year, I stayed with friends on the Murray River. I saw a lot of river red gums – I saw some beautiful old habitat trees, many thickets of young saplings, some healthy forests, some water-stressed forests, some bushfire-damaged forests, some trees ready to be made into railway sleepers, others into veneer.

Some of the forests were suffering from the drought and some of these forests really needed thinning.

Commercial timber production is currently permitted within less than 45,000 hectares of state forest which represents just 16 percent of the total area of public land in the VEAC investigation area.

Environmental flows require a water allocation and the possibility for this are limited until the drought breaks. In the meantime, there is evidence that some forests can be at least temporarily ‘drought proofed’ through thinning.

While VEAC proposes an 80 percent reduction in the area of state forest there is no scientific basis for such a proposal and the benefits of thinning to reduce competition between trees for the limited available water – the benefits of active management – have been ignored.

An Ecological Grazing Strategy was undertaken by the Department of Sustainability & Environment concluding in June 2005 – just two months after the VEAC investigation started – and determined that grazing could be managed to minimise impacts on native flora and fauna while controlling introduced weeds.

A key recommendation in the new community plan is the establishment of Ramsar reserves along the Murray River to provide for sustainable multiple use and bio-diversity protection under the ‘wise use’ principles of the internationally accepted Ramsar Convention.

Ramsar is a term for ‘Wetlands of International Significance’ following an international conference, held in 1971 in Ramsar in Iran. Ramsar provides a practical and internationally recognised mechanism for protecting forest and wetlands. The Ramsar convention endorsed ‘wise-use’ as a key plank in conservation whereby the use of wild, living resources, if sustainable, is an important conservation tool because the social and economic benefits derived from such use provides incentives for people to conserve them.

The recommendation by the Rivers and Red Gum Environmental Alliance, if adopted by government, would create the largest Ramsar reserve in the world; the largest Ramsar Reserve in the world – an area of 104,000 hectares.

In short the Conservation and Community Plan is a well researched and referenced document that provides a credible alternative for government to consider; particularly as it provides a strong focus on bio-diversity conservation and also community well being. In short, the plan is contemporary and practical and rejects outdated notions of wilderness where people are excluded.

The new plan assumes a concept of wilderness which includes people recognising we are a part of the landscape and we can live in harmony with the red gum forests.

So without further ado, let me declare

“A Community Plan for the Multiple Use Management of Public Lands in VEAC’s River Red Gum Forests Investigation Area” launched.

Thank you.

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Members of the Rivers and Red Gum Environment Alliance Outside the Victorian Parliament House, Melbourne, Thursday July 31, 2008. Photographed by Jennifer Marohasy. Members of the Alliance in the photograph from left to right are: Jodie O’Dwyer, Paul Madden, Rod Drew, Max Rheese, Barrie Dexter, Ian Lobban, Sandy Atkinson, Marie Dunn, Colin Wood, Peter Newman, Shelley Gough. In the background you can see members of the Rheese family from Benalla – Kyra, Michael and Samuel – cheering.

History can be undone – Remove the Barrages and Save the Coorong: A note from Peter Martin

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The installation of the barrages across the bottom of the Murray River is the greatest single change that has adversely affected the health of the Coorong.

Prior to 1940 Lake Alexandrina, at the bottom of the Murray River, was a mix of seawater and freshwater, and was under tidal influence through the Murray mouth, and fully connected to a much healthier Coorong.

The Murray River barrages were completed by 1941 and separated the Coorong from Lake Alexandrina and Lake Albert.

Before the barrages, fish could move between the lakes and the Coorong. Lake Alexandrina was an important fish nursery for replenishing the Coorong. After the installation of the barrages the Coorong was cut off.

The barrages have shut off 90 percent of the tidal effect, and as a result have made the Murray mouth much more prone to closing over.

The barrages have caused much greater deposition of silt above and below the barrages, and have caused a sand island called Bird Island to form directly in front of the Murray mouth on the landward side.

The barrages were designed to hold Lake Alexandrina up to a maximum of 75cm above previous levels, and as a result shoreline erosion has accelerated. The higher level of Lake Alexandrina has prevented an enormous quantity of fresh water reaching the Murray mouth.

But now, because of the drought, sea level is 45cm above the level of the lake with plenty of sea water leaking into the lake despite the barrages.

The salinity at Goolwa is currently around 20,000 EC units. This is very high. The sea is about 45,000 EC units and the upper limit for drinking water is just 800 EC units.

In short, the barrages were designed to turn a saltwater lake into a freshwater lake, but they weren’t successful.

At best Lake Alexandrina remains brackish, with current salinity at Milang which is about the centre of Lake Alexandrina is about 4,000 EC units.

Furthermore, the barrages that were meant to hold Lake Alexandrina at a higher water level, have resulted in a requirement of up to 1,000,000 megalitres annually just to cover the evaporation loss. This loss has to be supplied from Hume and Dartmouth Dams and at times from Lake Menindee. If the barrages were to be opened, this quantity of water would be immediately saved annually.

Whether our climate scientists are correct or not, the need for this quantity of water to cover evaporation is simply unsustainable.

The value of that water to irrigation at the end of last season was in the order of $400 million.

The South Australian government should now open the barrages, particularly the Goolwa barrage, which is responsible for regulating 70 percent of the Murray River flows, and the Mundoo barrage which is responsible for 10 percent, as these two barrages would have the greatest impact on keeping the Murray mouth open, and improving the health of the Coorong.

In summary, just because the barrages were put in does not mean they have to stay there. It is wrong for South Australians to keep demanding the upper states of Victoria and New South Wales empty their dams to unsuccessfully keep a saltwater lake fresh.

Peter Martin
Finley, NSW

Reforming Water Policy Won’t End The Drought: Jennifer Marohasy Speaks with Michael Duffy on Counterpoint

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Last week the Council of Australian Governments signed an Intergovernmental Agreement for reform of the Murray-Darling Basin. The new plan involves spending $3.7 billion on water projects across the basin. Is this money well spent and how effective will it be ?

Michael Duffy invited me onto his ABC Radio National program ‘Counterpoint’ to discuss the issue this afternoon. You can listen here: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/counterpoint/stories/2008/2296327.htm.

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Sheep near Junee, Murray Darling Basin, Photograph by Jennifer Marohasy, July 4, 2008