Page 2 story in Bild today! The first of a series.
“THE CO2 LIES … pure fear-mongering … should we blindly trust the experts?”

That’s what Germany’s leading daily Bild wrote in its print and online editions today, on the very day that renowned publisher Hoffmann & Campe officially released a skeptic book – one written by a prominent socialist and environmental figure.

This is huge. More than I ever could have possibly imagined. And more is coming in the days ahead! The Bild piece was just the first of a series.

Mark this as the date that Germany’s global warming movement took a massive body blow.

Read more here:
http://notrickszone.com/2012/02/06/body-blow-to-german-global-warming-movement-major-media-outlets-unload-on-co2-lies/

Large areas of Queensland and New South Wales are flooding again.

In New South Wales:

Flood Warning – Clarence River,
Flood Warning – Bellinger River,
Flood Warning – Hastings River,
Flood Warning – Manning River,
Flood Warning – Orara River,
Flood Warning – MacIntyre River,
Flood Warning – Gwydir River,
Flood Warning – Peel-Namoi Rivers,
Flood Warning – Castlereagh River,
Flood Warning – Culgoa-Bokhara-Narran Rivers,
Flood Warning – Warrego River,
Flood Warning – Paroo River,
Flood Warning – Barwon-Darling Rivers,
Flood Warning – Paterson-Williams Rivers,
Flood Warning – Nambucca River.

In Queensland:

Flood Warning – Burdekin River,
Flood Warning – Fitzroy River,
Flood Warning – Condamine-Balonne Rivers,
Flood Warning – Macintyre/Weir,
Flood Warning – Moonie River,
Flood Warning – Nebine/Wallam/Mungallala,
Flood Warning – Warrego River,
Flood Warning – Paroo River,
Flood Warning – Bulloo River,
Flood Warning – Thomson/Barcoo/Cooper Ck,
Flood Warning – Western Queensland Rivers,
Flood Warning – Gulf Rivers.

http://www.bom.gov.au

A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about “global warming.” Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

So began a recent opinion piece by sixteen scientists published in the Wall Street Journal on January 27, 2011. It is republished here with permission from Bill Kininmonth…

In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: “I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: ‘The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.’ In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?”

In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the “pollutant” carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific “heretics” is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 “Climategate” email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.

The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.

The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere’s life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.

This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.

Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word “incontrovertible” from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question “cui bono?” Or the modern update, “Follow the money.”

Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.

Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to “decarbonize” the world’s economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.

A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.

If elected officials feel compelled to “do something” about climate, we recommend supporting the excellent scientists who are increasing our understanding of climate with well-designed instruments on satellites, in the oceans and on land, and in the analysis of observational data. The better we understand climate, the better we can cope with its ever-changing nature, which has complicated human life throughout history. However, much of the huge private and government investment in climate is badly in need of critical review.

Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of “incontrovertible” evidence.

Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.

Available online here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

WHEN former Labor leader Mark Latham was campaigning to win the 2004 federal election, he promised to add 450 gigalitres of environmental flows to the Murray River in his first term of government and an extra 1,500 within ten years.

Australian Greens leader Senator Bob Brown said he would return 1,500 gigalitres within five years – in half the time.

Back then 1,500 gigalitres seemed like a lot of water.

In a June 2003 interview for ABC Television’s Four Corners, the late Peter Cullen from the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists also mentioned 1,500 gigalitres and indicated that volume was scientifically derived.

In their Blueprint for a National Water Plan, the Wentworth Group proposed the water be returned through an annual incremental increase of 100 gigalitres for environmental flow. Based on this 2003 plan, by last year at least 800 gigalitres would need to have been returned to the river.

In fact, when campaigning during the 2010 federal election Julia Gillard said over 900 gigalitres had already been recovered.

The Wentworth Group should be happy with progress.

But it isn’t.

The group now claims no less than 4,000 gigalitres must be returned to the Murray Darling river system. The Australian Greens are also now claiming that a minimum of 4,000 gigalitres must be returned to ensure the Murray River’s survival and 7,600 gigalitres if it is to be healthy.

What has precipitated such a momentous change in the volume of water required to save the river?

In 2003 the water was apparently needed because of declining water quality and rising river salinity. This was shown to be a furphy: river salinity levels had been falling since the early 1980s since implementation of the salinity management strategy of the Murray Darling Basin Commission.

So now less, not more, water should be needed. But the focus has switched to the bottom of the system with claims more water is now needed to keep the Murray’s mouth open.

Professor Cullen was talking about the Murray’s mouth in that June 2003 Four Corners interview. Had he mentioned the need for a minimum of 4,000 gigalitres back then it would have been considered greedy.

Not any more! Expectations have changed.

I put the change down to two initiatives lead by former prime minister John Howard. In 2007 the Water Act became law, creating priority for environmental water. In the same year $10 billion was allocated for implementation of the associated Murray-Darling Basin plan.

Thanks to Mr Howard, Ms Gillard now has a legal obligation to send a volume of water about equal to the total current baseline diversions for the NSW Murray (1,812/year GL) and also the Murrumbidgee (2501 GL/year) to South Australia every year.

***************
First published in The Land newspaper on January 19, 2012

I will be speaking at the Sydney Institute on Wednesday 8th February on the need to restore the Murray River’s estuary.

More information here: http://www.thesydneyinstitute.com.au/functions/weekly-seminars/

My talk will be published in the on-line journal The Sydney Papers. The talk will be uploaded on to The Sydney Institute’s website as a podcast soon after the event. Also, it is possible that the talk will be filmed by APAC – Channel 648 on Foxtel and Austar – and will be shown in full soon after the event.

“ON the whole, the year 2011 was somewhat cooler than 2010…

In the Northern Hemisphere close to normal or relatively low surface air temperatures characterized most regions. Relatively warm conditions characterised northern Siberia and Russia, especially along the Arctic Ocean coast.

Conditions near the Equator were influenced by the cold La Nina situation, which has prevailed for most of 2011. Most of equatorial Pacific thereby experienced average surface air temperatures below the 1998-2006 average temperatures.

In the Southern Hemisphere surface air temperatures were close to average, or slightly below.

The Arctic was a region of relatively large contrasts. Most of the Arctic in 2011 had surface air temperatures near or above the 1998-2006 average, but along the northern coast of Siberia average 2011 temperatures were 3-4 C above the 1998-2006 average. In contrast, most regions just south of the Arctic experienced temperatures below the average.

In the Antarctic regions around the Weddell Sea experienced in 2011 above average surface air temperatures, in contrast to 2010, where the same regions were colder than average. The Antarctic Peninsula experienced relatively low average temperatures in 2011.

Please find below a link which will take you directly to a short newsletter (ca. 1.5 MB) with meteorological information summarised for the year 2011:
http://www.climate4you.com/Text/Climate4you_Year_2011.pdf

Ole Humlum, Professor of Physical Geography
Department of Physical Geography, Institute of Geosciences
University of Oslo, Norway

“When questioned, Jesus of Nazareth had this to say on the subject of the end of the world: ‘But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.’ (Mark 13:32) We don’t seem to have improved on that forecast since and not all the research associates and interns toiling at Mead GHQ crunching all the computers that money can buy have been able to come up with anything more precise.

“But whether or not we get the Big Bang or the Big Whimper, the new decade is going to be haunted by the specter of an approaching apocalypse; a lot of people will think the world is ending, or could end, and the mixture of hope, fear and apocalyptic energy unleashed by that perception will be affecting both national and international politics on an increasing scale as time goes by.” So, predicted Walter Russell Mead on his blog in January 2010, at the beginning of the new decade.

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/01/19/2010s-7-end-of-the-world/

But I’m not sure. The global warming scare appears to have almost run its course. What comes next or what just for this new year, 2012?

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?

Dear all.

Please find below a link which will take you directly to a monthly newsletter (ca. 1.3 MB) with meteorological information updated to December 2011:
http://www.climate4you.com/Text/Climate4you_December_2011.pdf

All temperatures in this newsletter are shown in degrees Celsius.

Previous (since March 2009) issues of the newsletter, diagrams and additional material are available on http://www.climate4you.com/

All the best, yours sincerely,
Ole Humlum

Ole Humlum, Professor of Physical Geography
Department of Physical Geography, Institute of Geosciences
University of Oslo, Norway

Hi Jennifer.

Following is a request for help!

Tonyfromoz kindly did an excellent article titled Wind Power Australia – The Musselroe Wind Farm Travesty in Tasmania

http://papundits.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/wind-power-australia-the-musselroe-wind-farm-travesty-in-tasmania/

It is a very good summary of the situation from both the viability and value claims for the energy and the obvious hypocrisy of The Greens, other environmentalists and groups.

I am trying to raise world awareness of the devastation that is about to be unleashed at Musselroe Bay, already a designated Conservation area and one of the most environmentally fragile environments in Tasmania. Together with the nearby Mt.William National Park, home to many species of native wildlife, plants, endangered birdlife including wedgetail eagles, and in the path of at least three migratory bird species including the legendary mutton bird, the whole area encompasses some of the most naturally beautiful places on Earth.
A documented template of what is about to happen was recorded by those locals who unsuccessfully opposed the Cefn Croes wind development, the largest onshore windfarm in Wales. They made a photographic record of the whole environmentally disastrous venture there.

Google “Cefn Croes campaign website” and check the photo gallery.

Tasmania is the current home of both Bob Brown, who led the successful “Save the Franklin” campaign and Christine Milne, the Leader and Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens. In a further twist, the Tasmanian Greens supported Labor after a “hung” election and Greens Leader Nick McKim and his partner Cassie O’Oconnor were rewarded with Cabinet posts. Cassie, who is Minister for Climate Change gained much of her public profile in the successful “Save Ralphs Bay” campaign.

What an incredible irony that these four prominent Greens are cheerleaders in a push that will destroy the Musselroe Bay Conservation area. Whilst celebrities and various leading environmental protestors flocked to Tasmania from all over the world to “Save the Franklin”, they are now conspicuously absent and silent while this travesty proceeds. Nothing could demonstrate more clearly the political and ideological selectiveness they use to decide whether they support or oppose desecration of pristine areas!

You may feel it worthwhile doing an article or commenting in some way but any help would be appreciated. As usual, our MSM are silent on any downsides of the development.

Best wishes to all,
Keith H.

RON Paul for President is not exactly what Daniel Kogoy, a Greens Councillor for Leichardt in Sydney, is suggesting in an article published today at On Line Opinion. But the article does explain some of the reasons why I would vote for Ron Paul…

“Debate raging between Left, Greens and Progressives on whether or not to support Libertarian Republican outsider Dr Ron Paul’s bid to win the Republican nomination for President.

Really, it is a no brainer, of course the left should be supporting Dr Ron Paul’s bid to win the Republican nomination and many are – see Blue Republican movement. All the other candidates are openly saying that the United States should bomb Iran, whose key allies include China and Russia. All of the other Republican candidates would do nothing to address Wall Street’s crimes. All the other candidates would happily attack civil liberties further.

Obama has done nothing to address Wall Street’s crimes. His administration is full of people from Wall Street and Goldman Sachs is his largest donor. Civil liberties have been further decimated, and tensions with Iran have been raised to dangerously high levels.

Read more here:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13140

ONCE upon a time there was a turkey that lived in a pen. Every morning a farmer brought food and water and talked to the turkey with soothing words.

The turkey thought it was special and would always be looked after.

Then one Christmas Eve, the farmer came with an axe instead of food.

Many organisations in rural Australia behave like turkeys. They are happily taking money from government believing they will keep getting fed. Of course government is handing out a lot of money at the moment.

In return, organisations might complain publicly just a bit about government. But mostly these organisations keep sending their representatives off to meetings and their leaders happily sit down with Ministers who feed them soothing words.

All the while, at the behest of environmental groups, Commonwealth and State governments, whether Coalition or Labour, have continued in the past decade or two to enact regulation and legislation that undermines food production.

It’s justified on the basis that environmentalists are the good guys, while farmers exploit natural resources for profit.

In the next few months there is an opportunity for some farm organisations to stop behaving as turkeys and instead bite the hand that has fed them so generously over the last year. It would involve calling the bluff of the Commonwealth Government over the Murray Darling water plan.

Instead of complaining politely about the plan on the basis industry might lose some water, what about rural leaders pointing out the obvious: that the plan will deliver no environmental benefit until something is done about the 7.6 kilometres of concrete barrage that sits across the bottom of the Lower Lakes?

Anyone vaguely familiar with this issue knows that Murray Darling Basin Authority boss Craig Knowles and Water Minister Tony Burke – and even Opposition leader Tony Abbot and Opposition water spokesman Barnaby Joyce – don’t want the issue of the barrages or the Lower Lakes raised in polite discussion.

It could cost them votes in South Australia. So industry and community leaders leave it well alone.

But with the New Year it’s time for a new approach: it’s time industry leaders took the high moral ground for once and confronted the issue of the barrages that have destroyed the River Murray’s estuary.

And while they are doing the right thing, they should sign the Rivers Need Estuaries petition of the Australian Environment Foundation www.listentous.org.au .

******
First published in The Land, page 13, Thursday, January 5, 2012

Decline in the extent of Arctic sea ice may have more to do with changes in circulation patterns of fresh water entering the Arctic Ocean from rivers in Russia than changes in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide according to a new article in Nature:

“FRESHENING in the Canada basin of the Arctic Ocean began in the 1990s and continued to at least the end of 2008. By then, the Arctic Ocean might have gained four times as much fresh water as comprised the Great Salinity Anomaly of the 1970s, raising the spectre of slowing global ocean circulation. Freshening has been attributed to increased sea ice melting and contributions from runoff, but a leading explanation has been a strengthening of the Beaufort High — a characteristic peak in sea level atmospheric pressure, which tends to accelerate an anticyclonic (clockwise) wind pattern causing convergence of fresh surface water. Limited observations have made this explanation difficult to verify, and observations of increasing freshwater content under a weakened Beaufort High suggest that other factors must be affecting freshwater content.

Here we use observations to show that during a time of record reductions in ice extent from 2005 to 2008, the dominant freshwater content changes were an increase in the Canada basin balanced by a decrease in the Eurasian basin.

Observations are drawn from satellite data (sea surface height and ocean-bottom pressure) and in situ data. The freshwater changes were due to a cyclonic (anticlockwise) shift in the ocean pathway of Eurasian runoff forced by strengthening of the west-to-east Northern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation characterized by an increased Arctic Oscillation index. Our results confirm that runoff is an important influence on the Arctic Ocean and establish that the spatial and temporal manifestations of the runoff pathways are modulated by the Arctic Oscillation, rather than the strength of the wind-driven Beaufort Gyre circulation.

*****
From: Changing Arctic Ocean freshwater pathways
By: James Morison, Ron Kwok, Cecilia Peralta-Ferriz, Matt Alkire, Ignatius Rigor, Roger Andersen & Mike Steele
In: Nature 481, 66–70 (05 January 2012) doi:10.1038/nature10705
Link: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v481/n7379/full/nature10705.html

THE Australian government is under pressure to secure the release of three Australian activists detained after boarding a Japanese whaling security ship the Shonan Maru No 2. But it is more likely the men will be taken to Japan to face legal action.

Prisoners don’t usually get a lot of choice in what they have for dinner. Minke whale is probably on the menu.

Some people worry about whether a particular food tastes good, others whether it is healthy. Activists are often concerned with the ethics of food production and consumption.

There are two criteria that I consider valid when it comes to ethical food choice: 1. Is the harvest of the animal sustainable, and 2. Is the killing humane.

Whaling by the Japanese is undertaken in accordance with a strict quota system to ensure populations are not depleted and every effort is made to get a quick and painless kill including through the use of a grenade tipped harpoon.

So I had no problems with the ethics of eating free-range, organic whale when I visited Tokyo… and the right cut, properly cooked, tasted like an exceptionally tender eye fillet.

I wonder how whale meat is served to prisoners on the Shonan Maru No. 2?

**********
Whale on the menu in Tokyo: http://jennifermarohasy.com/2008/09/eating-whale-in-tokyo/

David’s blog: http://david-in-tokyo.blogspot.com/

THERE are a lot of comments in the thread following my blog post ‘Healthy Country Means Less Water for South Australia’. In that thread Peter R. Smith OAM has claimed that if it weren’t for the barrages Lake Alexandrina, a terminal coastal lake at the bottom of the Murray Darling catchment, would become hyper-saline. In the same thread Sean Murphy has replied, but Lake Alexandrina was once tidal, so how could it become hyper-saline?

It could become hyper-saline if the Murray’s sea mouth closed over completely, something that engineers warned in 1903 could happen if the barrages were built stopping inflows from the Southern Ocean – stopping the tide.

Soon after Europeans started farming on the shores of Lake Alexandrina they began devising plans to preventing it from becoming salty. The first such plan was presented to the South Australian parliament in 1890. Prepared by the Engineer in Chief Alex B. Moncrieff it proposed the building of a lock on the Goolwa channel and barrages across the other channels to prevent seawater from entering the lake.

Federation, and the 1895-1902 drought, focused the attention of the communities along the River Murray on the need for cooperation if they were to develop the waters of the River Murray. In 1902 the Corowa Water Conservation Conference led to an Interstate Royal Commission with the purposes of “To inquire and report on the conservation and distribution of the Murray and its tributaries for the purpose of irrigation, navigation and water supply.” It was another twelve years before the River Murray Waters Agreement 1915 was ratified which created water sharing principles for New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia including an annual water entitlement for South Australia to be met in equal share by Victoria and New South Wales, and the development of a program of major works including the construction of dams and weirs which the three states and the Commonwealth where to jointly fund.

In the meantime a more substantial plan was developed to prevent Lake Alexandrina becoming salty, as it had during the federation drought. The plan was presented to government in 1903 as a joint report by T.W. Keele the Principal Engineer of Harbors and Rivers of New South Wales, W. Davidson the Inspector-General of Public Works of Victoria and Mr Moncrieff who was still the Engineer in Chief in South Australia.

The report, dubbed, the “Report by Experts” begins with reference to why the best option for securing “the impounding of the fresh water” should involve the blocking of several channels from the lake that converge on the Murray’s sea mouth rather than placing a barrage across the actual sea mouth of the river. The report also explains why the barrages should be placed such that they exclude the Coorong from the Alexandrina lake system because the Coorong represented “an evaporating area of 90 square miles additional to that of the lakes”.

The report details and quantifies the tidal influence through each of the channels relative to a tidal gauge at Milang. The opening between Mundoo and Hindmarsh Islands is referred to as the most direct outlet from the lakes to the sea and with a tide that rises considerably higher than the tide through the Goolwa channel. Different barrage structure were proposed for each of the channels with a permanent earthen wall pithed with stone across Boundary Creek, while for the Goolwa it was proposed a sheet-pile structure be built with a lock large enough for river steamers.

The Report by Experts includes two important warning: that after construction of the barrages the Murray’s mouth would be expected to close over completely; and before erecting the barrages a more regular supply of fresh water from the river would first need to be secured or the lakes would dry-up during periods of drought. These important caveats have been subsequently ignored by state and commonwealth governments and are never referenced in the very many reports published with increasing regularity by the Murray Darling Basin Authority.

**********
Report by experts. The Murray Barrages. August 20, 1903. The Advertiser p. 8 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article4987833

“2011 was another wet year for Australia, with data collected by the Bureau of Meteorology showing that the Australian mean rainfall total for 2011 was 699 mm (234 mm above the long-term average of 465 mm), placing the year at the third-wettest since comparable records began in 1900. Back-to-back La Niña events led to a two-year rainfall total of 1402 mm which is the second-highest total on record behind 1407 mm in 1973-74.

“The 2010-11 La Niña, one of the strongest on record, continued to dominate climate patterns during the first part of 2011 before decaying in autumn. A second La Niña developed in spring 2011 and, although weaker than the first event, was associated with rainfall significantly above average across much of the country. It is likely that a record warm eastern Indian Ocean also contributed to above average rainfall in 2011.

“From January to March, rainfall was generally very much above average in most areas, and April was rather wet over the north of Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Falls greater than 300 mm across much of the tropical north led to the wettest March on record for Australia as a whole, with average rainfall of 149 mm topping the previous 1989 record by 23 mm. The period from May to September (when La Niña had receded) saw rainfall below average for most of the country. October was very wet in the western half of the country, with Western Australia experiencing its third-wettest October on record. November rainfall was above average for most of the country, while December was wet for the southwest and parts of Queensland. For the year as a whole, the majority of Australia received above average rainfall; the only regions with below-average rain were patches of southwest Western Australia, western Tasmania and pockets of New South Wales and southeast Queensland.

“The Australian area-averaged mean temperature in 2011 was 0.14 °C below the 1961 to 1990 average of 21.81 °C. This was the first time since 2001 (also a wet, La Niña year) that Australia’s mean annual temperature was below the 1961-90 average. Even though, when taken over the whole country, the mean temperature was below average, the southern half of Australia was warmer than usual.

“In 2011, maximum temperatures averaged 0.25 °C below normal across the country, while minima averaged 0.03 °C below normal. Contrasting this, the global mean temperature in 2011 was the highest for any year which began with a La Niña. Australia was one of the few places on the globe to experience cooler than average temperatures in 2011.
Despite the slightly cooler conditions in Australia in 2011, the country’s 10-year average continues to demonstrate the rising trend in temperatures, with 2002-2011 likely to rank in the top two warmest 10-year periods on record for Australia, at 0.52 °C above the long-term average…

Read more at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology website:
http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/climate/change/20120104.shtml

Steven Goddard has published the following list of New Year’s Resolutions for Climate Scientists:

1. I will admit that warming has been much slower than we expected
2. I will admit that recent sea level rise is nothing unusual or threatening
3. I will admit that our forecasts of declining snow cover were wrong
4. I will admit that Arctic temperatures are cyclical, and that we have no idea what will happen to Arctic ice over the next 50 years
5. I will admit that our forecasts of Antarctic warming have been a total failure.
6. I will admit that Polar Bear populations are not threatened
7. I will admit that climate models have demonstrated no skill, and are nothing more than research projects
8.  I will admit there was a Medieval Warm Period
9. I will admit that that there was a Little Ice Age
10. I will stop pretending that we don’t have climate records prior to 1970
11. I will admit that the surface temperature record has been manipulated and is contaminated by UHI
12. I will stop making up data where none exists
13. I will honestly face skeptics in open debate.
14. I will quit trying to stop skeptics from being published
15. I will admit that glaciers have been disappearing for hundreds or thousands of years
16. I will stop telling people that the climate is getting more extreme, without producing any evidence
17. I will admit that hurricanes are on the decline
18. I will admit that severe tornadoes are on the decline
19. I will admit that droughts were much worse in the past
20. I will admit that efforts to shut down power plants have potentially very serious consequences for the future
21. I will pay for my own tickets to tropical climate boondoggles  like Cancun, rather than improperly using taxpayer money for political activism
22. I will admit that there is no missing heat
23. I will admit that temperatures have been cooling for at least the last decade
24. I will publish the raw data and not lose it.
25. etc. etc. etc.

From http://www.real-science.com/new-years-resolutions-climate-scientists

Hi Jennifer,

Longtime reader etc etc and I must thankyou for your always interesting blog.

I could find no mention of Emma Marris and her new book ‘The Rambunctious Garden’ on there so I wondered if you were aware of it. I thought it would generate some debate as it has with my group of friends, so I thought I’d pass it on.

The first link is to an article she co-wrote and the second a review of sorts. She is a superb writer and I commend it to you.

Best wishes for the season and the new year!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/opinion/the-age-of-man-is-not-a-disaster.html

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/living-with-natures-original-sin-20111209-1oo3n.html

Regards Ross

DAVID Wroe from The Sydney Morning Herald has written a well balanced article on the waste of money in buying Toorale (pronounced Too-rally) Station at Bourke: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/station-buyout-a-waste-of-money-20111223-1p8ln.html.

I attempted to leverage this with a letter to the Editor which failed to make the final cut:

Congratulations to the SMH (Station buyout a waste of money- 23rd December) for “outing” the Commonwealth and former NSW State Government for the total waste of $23.75m in purchasing Toorale Station. Not only was this a waste of taxpayer’s funds for negligible environmental benefit, it also took out of production the hard hit Bourke community’s most productive enterprise. How downstream grazier Justin Mc Clure can argue that a 0.01% increase in flow can generate downstream environmental benefits is a real mystery.

The episode has wider ramifications in terms of the Draft Murray Darling Basin Plan. The Commonwealth Water Act 2007 and the approach of the Murray Darling Basin Authority is deeply flawed and the Toorale outcomes represent a good example of the likely consequences-negligible environmental benefit, but significant negative economic consequences. When flows are low, license conditions prevent extractions and diversions, when flows are significant the impacts of extractions and diversions are minimal. Dorothea Mackellar was absolutely right in describing inland Australia as a land of “droughts and flooding rains”, she could have added and “not much in the middle.

In using absolute numbers as the MDBA has done, to prescribe acceptable extractions/diversions limits without gearing these to actual flows (availability) is really nonsense. To argue that these numbers are “averages” doesn’t help, given the enormous spreads around the averages. Our current water bureaucrats could do worse than studying how the existing control system operates. It works rather well.

J.D.O.(David) Boyd
St Ives NSW 2075
(Former Chairman and CEO of Clyde Agriculture, the previous owner of Toorale Station)

************

And sign the petition here please http://listentous.org.au/

Dear all.

Please find below a link which will take you directly to a monthly newsletter (ca. 1.3 MB) with meteorological information updated to November 2011:
http://www.climate4you.com/Text/Climate4you_November_2011.pdf

All temperatures in this newsletter are shown in degrees Celsius.

Previous (since March 2009) issues of the newsletter, diagrams and additional material are available on http://www.climate4you.com/

All the best, yours sincerely,
Ole Humlum

Ole Humlum, Professor of Physical Geography
Department of Physical Geography, Institute of Geosciences
Norway