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   John Nicol

   (logged in via Facebook)

   It seems to me, that like all bureaucratically designed processes, the MDB plan is far too prescriptive. Surely what is need is flexibility which the farming community is used to and would welcome. No one wants to see the river deprived of water but to prescribe a quantity of water to be released each year is courting disaster - mainly because it will depend on where the rain falls in a particular season which will determine what water is required and where. There is no need to push an extra…

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   It seems to me, that like all bureaucratically designed processes, the MDB plan is far too prescriptive. Surely what is need is flexibility which the farming community is used to and would welcome. No one wants to see the river deprived of water but to prescribe a quantity of water to be released each year is courting disaster - mainly because it will depend on where the rain falls in a particular season which will determine what water is required and where. There is no need to push an extra 2750 GL down the river when it has had reasonalble rain along its length which has already delivered all the water which the system needs. Similarly, in drier years, when some paarts of the river miss out, it may be necesary to deliver more than the prescribed 2750 GL and farmers will accept that - some will whinge of course, as that is what farmers like myself do, but if they can see the rational application of a plan, rather than the stupid prescriptive detail contained in the first plan, they will in general accept it. After all, allocations of water are only maximums, not guaranteed supplies for all irrigators - if it doesn't rain, all farmers everywhere know that the water just isn't available. So lets have flexibility, not prescription. Finally, I don't believe climate change is an issue. The latest release from the IPCC admits at last that extreme weather conditions can not be shown to be caused by global warming and the release of yet more emaisls from CRU, indicates that most of the scare has been cooked up by scheming "propagandists", not "scientists". John Nicol jonicol18@bigpond.com

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      David Arthur

      n/a (logged in via email @fastel.com.au)

      Err, John, your dismissal of concerns about changing climate, based as it is on a misunderstanding of some IPCC statement, is less than convincing.

      For a clarification that will surprise and concern you, have a look at the Bureau of Meteorology's downloadable Fact Sheet on the subject: "Monitoring Australia’s Changing Climate" is at http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/docs/FactSheet3.pdf.

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         John Nicol

         (logged in via Facebook)

         Thanks David,

         I have looked again at the Bureau's fact sheets and find nothing particularly remarkable in any of their prescribed changes.

         There is certainly nothing to suggest that any of the recent "changes" which do not represent everything that has ever happened in Australia including the temperature and the rainfall on the first page only going back to 1910 and 1900 repectively when they are aware that some significantly extreme weather events happened in the period from 1840 to the turn…

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         Thanks David,

         I have looked again at the Bureau's fact sheets and find nothing particularly remarkable in any of their prescribed changes.

         There is certainly nothing to suggest that any of the recent "changes" which do not represent everything that has ever happened in Australia including the temperature and the rainfall on the first page only going back to 1910 and 1900 repectively when they are aware that some significantly extreme weather events happened in the period from 1840 to the turn of that centuty (1900) .

         These include four floods in Queensland which exceeded those in 1974 and 2011, major bush fires in Victoria, the Darling River stopping flowing in the 1850s for three years in succession with very little if anything being taken out for irrigation.

         You may not be aware that the IPCC has recently confirmed that none of the major climatic events can be suggested as being the result of climate change and that the severity of these things world wide, as well as their frequency is not shown to be consistent with recent changes in global temperature.

         Last year, the BOM issued a three month forcast in July and again in September for Australia which predicted continuing drought in the Eatern States and heavy rain in the West.

         Subsequently it was shown that the resultant floods in the Eastern States were exactly opposite of the forcasts as was the extreme dry in Western Australia. So I don't think their suggestions on this site shouold be taken too seriously either from a historic point of view nor of the likelihood of their being able to make acurate predictions.

         In the early days of global warming I used to believe in what the climatologists were saying and when I retired I decided it would be very interesting to find out how the models worked and what was the real basis for assuming that carbon dioxide increases were causing global warming.

         I approached Dr Penny Whetton, the head of the CSIRO Climate Group which I believed would be the pinnacle of the Australian groups working on the topic and aware that they had made some contribution to the IPCC. I had in earlier times worked in the field of molecular spectroscopy and had a lot of interaction with CSIRO physicists working in the same area.

         However, after spending two years corresponding with Penny and others in the CSIRO, during which time Dr Whetton was unable to answer a number of what I believe were very basic questions on the behaviour of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, advised me that the best she could say was that they belkieved carbon dioxide was to blame for the warming "in the second half of the 20th century, and directed me to a publication of theirs which she said contasined all of the basic information on the green house efect which they relied upon, only to find that it contained nothing but assumptions also, I naturally decided to look else where. I contacted members of three of the university climate units in Australia, UNSW, Melbourne and ANU and found the same lack of scientific confidence in the hypothesis of the Enhanced Green House Effect (EGHE) (as opposed to the basic green house effect which does contribute significantly to warming the earth but not uniquely, since wind cooling of the surface contributes 20% of the energy entering the atmosphere and evaporation over the oceans with 70% of the earth's surface contributes 80%, leaving 20% for the green house gases to pick up.)

         The result was the same with them sending me material at the level of Scientific American articles. I then came across an article from Prof Jack Barrett, an IR spectroscopist from Imperial College London, who showed from the spectra of carbon dioxide that the assumptions of enhanced warming by green house gas increases was quite wrong. Geological work from Professor Bob Carter and many others showed the same thing from historic temperatures and CO2 concentrations.

         I was forced to become reluctantly sceptical and have continued to be so, and to observe the emails from CRU which tell any scientist that these guys are advocates rather than scientists who shamelessly provide information exclusively which endeavours to incriminate carbon dioxide.

         I note also that from the IPCC reports the list of uncertainties is far in excess of what one would expect in any science project even for interst, but for a project which is providing advice to Governments it is a shocking indictment of everyone associated with it. The bold statements which have been made for many years by the IPCC and climatologists, particularly thise here in Australia, about severe weather events such as droughts, floods, cyclones and bushfires, when their latest report on this issue, after a two year study, tells us more honestly there is no evidence that these severe events have anything to do with climate change.

         In looking carefuly through the citations of the IPCC, one finds that the key issue of the behaviour of carbon dioxide is hardly listed apart from references to Tyndall and Arrhenius whose work preceded the development of quantum theory - a necessary factor for correct analysis of spectral behaviour in a mixture of gases - and high resolution spectroscopy which was not available until the mid seventies.

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            John Nicol

            (logged in via Facebook)

            Further to the above, which was accidently posted!

            All of this does not provide any confidence in those who contribute to the IPCC, when most of those citations relate to environmental factors and ecology which is or will be effected by warming not to the physics of CO2. None of this provides any evidence that CO2 is responsible for that warming and a much larger body of proper scientific analysis exists from other fields directly related to the behaviour of carbon diocixide, which demonstrates…

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            Further to the above, which was accidently posted!

            All of this does not provide any confidence in those who contribute to the IPCC, when most of those citations relate to environmental factors and ecology which is or will be effected by warming not to the physics of CO2. None of this provides any evidence that CO2 is responsible for that warming and a much larger body of proper scientific analysis exists from other fields directly related to the behaviour of carbon diocixide, which demonstrates clearly and scientifically that increases in carbon dioxide will not provide the additional warming claimed. So in spite of your "Err" noises, I am not about to become an advocate of the IPCC unless they can show that:

            1. Their models can reproduce the past climates from the last 40 years, something which the most recent IPCC report clearly stated they could not do - yet! 2. Account for the lack of statistically significant warming over the past fifteen years, which is so bothering the scientists at CRU.

            If the models could achieve those two things, it would restore my faith in the sole "evidence" which they promote as being able to show that doubling of CO2 will bring catastrophic temperatures to the earth. They admit that there are large errors in estimates of precipitation, cloud formation, and circulation. Are unable to model convection properly, and do not have a clue on the modelling of the major climate events of La Nina and El Nino, the SOI, the PDO....

            Can you show me where it is demonstrated that in these two requirements I can be satisfied already? If not, I am sure you would have to agree that there is no other evidence which is at all meaningful. The earlier much vaunted signature of green house warming, the warming of the upper troposphere, confirmed recently in the CRU emails as being iof great significance, has never been found, in soite of 25 years of intense measurements.
            John Nicol jonicol18@bigpond.com

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               David Arthur

               n/a (logged in via email @fastel.com.au)

               Thanks John.

               As I recall it, your scepticism regarding climate change are based on your scepticism regarding the work of the IPCC. If so, I suggest that you are putting the cart before the horse, and I have clarified the misunderstandings of someone called John Nicol in this very issue in other fora.

               Climate change itself is discussed in other articles on The Conversation, and I suggest you contribute to those discussions.

               For the purpose of this discussion, the above two points should suffice.

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            David Arthur

            n/a (logged in via email @fastel.com.au)

            On the Fact Sheet which I cited is a plot showing decline in average rain over the entire MDB, typically around 15 mm/yr, over the period 1950-2006.

            15 mm less rain per year is cause for concern, particularly where farms were valued for purchase assuming, say, 500 mm/yr rain, but they are only getting 485 mm/yr.

            Couple that with increased average temperature, (also shown on that sheet) and you've got a huge water deficit.

            You are welcome to Deny climate change. In fact, there are other articles on this website where you can so do. However, Denial of climate change that has already occurred seems, to say the least, Quixotic.

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               John Nicol

               (logged in via Facebook)

               Thanks for your response David and for pointing out the emphasis on the shorter record of 60 yearshown there by the BOM in place of their more usual 110 year record. It actually helps my case quite considerably. If you look at figure 9 at http://www.ipe.net.au/pdf/GW%20-%20Econ%20Society%20-%20Almanac%20of%20Slides%20-%20Oct%2009.pdf you will see a plot which goes from 1900 to 2010 which shows no statistical change.

               There are other plots on the web by the BOM which actually show a running average…

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               Thanks for your response David and for pointing out the emphasis on the shorter record of 60 yearshown there by the BOM in place of their more usual 110 year record. It actually helps my case quite considerably. If you look at figure 9 at http://www.ipe.net.au/pdf/GW%20-%20Econ%20Society%20-%20Almanac%20of%20Slides%20-%20Oct%2009.pdf you will see a plot which goes from 1900 to 2010 which shows no statistical change.

               There are other plots on the web by the BOM which actually show a running average of the MDB rainfall from 1905 to the present from which one sees a slow and significant increase from 1905 to the fifties and a decline since which doesn't quite get down to the level of the period of around 1900, rather than the straight line in this one. The usual BOM plot shows that the variation over this period is obviously part (about half in fact) of the well known 190 year cycle in weather/rainfall which is found in nearly all regions of Australia such as the Northern regions around the Gulf of Carpentaria which depends on a quite different weather system, the Monsoons for major rainfalls - cyclones to a lesser extent and early summer storms from the Gulf. The Murray darling on the other hand relies on major lows coming across from the west but shows a similar variation. .

               I believe this plot from 1950 to the present which you refer to is in the same spirit as I mentioned before. It is an attempt to make the records look more convincing on the matter of declining water, just as they have omitted the other events from the previous century.

               There is nothing unusual as you will see, in the average rainfall falling by the 15 mm per year which you quote as it just gets back to what it was 100 years before and will undoubtedly rise again in time. Using a misleading plot of records is perhaps somewhat "Quixotic" by the BOM, I would believe, but I would not be inclined to use that expression towards a person. As an ex-farmer for seven years on the Darling Downs with my son, and having been raised on a property in the Gulf, for the first thirty years of my life, I do not believe that 15 mm per year would even be noticed in an average fall of 485 mm. Often the lighter years by an inch or teo, are significantly more productive than a very wet year - it is much more about when the rain falls than the total amount. John Nicol . .

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                  David Arthur

                  n/a (logged in via email @fastel.com.au)

                  Thanks John. You make a good case that BoM rainfall records do not, as yet, justify any hysteria.

                  However, over the period of BoM records, there are two factors that justify considerable concern.

                  1. Increased human draw on MDB water resources.
                  2. Ever-increasing temperature, hence increased evapotranspiration.

                  Each of these factors result in decreased water availability.

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                     John Nicol

                     (logged in via Facebook)

                     I agree with you David that the draw down by irrigation has been excessive in many years when rainfall has been low. State Governments were veruy keen during those wetter years in the fifties and sixties to make money by selling water licences which were possibly OK at the time but not sustainable.

                     That is why I am so keen that the management should be flexible and I believe that farmers would, in general, be happy with that flexibilty. However, if the bureaucrats are in charge and operate…

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                     I agree with you David that the draw down by irrigation has been excessive in many years when rainfall has been low. State Governments were veruy keen during those wetter years in the fifties and sixties to make money by selling water licences which were possibly OK at the time but not sustainable.

                     That is why I am so keen that the management should be flexible and I believe that farmers would, in general, be happy with that flexibilty. However, if the bureaucrats are in charge and operate by a rule book, no one will be satisfied and the Murray Darling won't be as well looked after either.

                     In Queensland for example, it is now very difficult to be allowed to put in contour levi banks to protect farmland from runoff - because the rule book says no. The farm land can be sacrificed provided there is no impedimen for water running into the creek, which will also fill with sediment.

                     The levi banks do not hold back much water, they simply slow down its rush. Also building a small dam is prohibited without huge piles of paper work and abourt three years of applications.

                     One farmer whom I know applied to be allowed to shift a very small dam on a gully to a point a bit lower down to make it more convenient and less costly, using less power for pumping. But no, you can't do that. Rediculous.

                     I accept that if the climate becomes warmer there may be more evaporation, but not very much since we are dealing with only a degree or two.

                     It would also depend on the effect on rainfall which the IPCC used to say would be reduced, then said it would be increased but now doeesn't know what will hapen but says it is not going to change, most likely, because of climate change.

                     Since I am a sceptic, I don't believe tha watming will necessarily continue and certainly not because of CO2. You appear to feel otherwise and I respect that. We will have to wait a few years ans see what happens.

                     It is intersting to note that most of the global warming which has taken place so faris in the Northern Hemisphere, with little if any in the South, which is another part of the puzzle and also one of the reasons why I am not too concerned about the drastic forcasts from BOM..

                     Cheers, John