Australia’s Darling River is running dry | Hacker News Reader

Australia’s Darling River is running dry

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137 pointshoward941165 comments

Australia has a serious problem with water, and it would have a serious problem even without climate change. The water in the Darling, and in any river, can be extracted free of charge if your land includes the river. This produces permanent drought conditions in a country that exports oranges.

Australia has limited water resources and laws that treat it as unlimited. It will be incredibly hard to square that circle. Imagine being told your entire business is toast because Sydney has no drinking water and you’ll have some idea of how toxic it’s going to be _before_ it get politicised.

It could be simply solved by selling water usage rights or incentivizing saving water wherever the river runs. This was done with success in some parts of the US.

Cities require relatively little water for the economic output they produce, compared to farmers.

If you require farmers to pay full price for the water they consume, they will never be able to afford it.

Cities also need food. The price of food would go up and some sorts of farming might become uneconomical, but food would still be farmed.

Indeed, some forms of farming e.g. cotton in Australia are literally unsustainable when exposed to market forces.

Doesn’t mean capitalism is wrong in this case, though.

> Doesn’t mean capitalism is wrong in this case, though.

Edit:

Wes it does, in this case. This is not some software startup. The water, which ostensibly belongs to all, is the input to this wealth.

Plus, that's a stupid use of water that should not be rewarded.

Original below ----------------

of course it does. It's "captialism" and we must bow down before it and not question any of the inputs to the money being made.

If market forces would make something which is already unsustainable untenable without subsidization, it is the subsidization that is the problem because it enables the unsustainable behaviour.

In other words: let the cotton farmers get stuck with paying for the water, and the business will simply dry up, and the water will be used for economically sound purposes.

Sure. But since the word "subsidization" is in play, are we now talking about socialism? :-)

This is the fun thing. If person X thinks the fair price for something is $1, person Y thinks it’s $10, and the government has to set the price, both of them can yell “Socialism” at the other and never actually address anything.

I'm specifically referring to the Government giving money or forgiving taxes to business in order to help them. That is not "Capitalism".

If there's a choice between producing more oranges for export or providing enough water to support your population, it doesn't make much sense to choose the orange export.

There are plenty of ways to manage water rights so that you have a reasonable amount of farming and other uses also get to exist.

Whilst this is a logical way forward, my point still stands that some will be big losers from this or any other sustainable policy.

From my perspective* the biggest challenge facing humanity currently isn't even the challenges themselves, it's the resistance to the growing pains associated with tackling these challenges.

It necessitates growth in the collective consciousness of humanity, similar to how addicts cannot give up their addictions without growing as people.

*edit

Until the amount of water available becomes less than the rights that have been sold. Then things get sticky again.

Then sell a %

The price should be obviously elastic. I never mentioned "fixed prices" anywhere.

No water "rights". It's fucked up the entire US West. Everyone pays the same $/unit water is the only just system.

That probably wouldn't work well either due to transportation costs; it's not a single market. Maybe it would work for people using the same river?

Weird. Every country I know of has a legal system for ownership of water extraction rights.

Though, come to think of it, that may only be two countries...

I think this is a bigger problem where downstream countries rely on a river that passes through their neighbour first.

I know, right? The crazy thing is, the Great Artesian Basin.

The problem with water in Australia, is the politics. Australians have one of the most heinous political systems around, yet seem adequately comfortable with their lot.

I mean, its the nation that sat by and watched the Great Barrier Reef die. Care of the land has not been a priority in Australia for about 200 years...

(Not trolling, Aussies! She'll be right mates!)

Do you have a source for this? I have a friend who is a farmer in Australia, they trade water rights, so these two concepts seem opposed.

[updated] As per a comment below, Australia and the Darling in particular have a water market https://www.mdba.gov.au/managing-water/water-markets-and-tra...

Ouch. I’m 20 years out of date. There is indeed a market in water rights now, but it has problems. Here’s a reference:

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/australia...

I read somewhere (can’t find the link) that the rights are allocated on the basis of the previous year’s flow. As you can see from the article, this still means people are pulling out water when there’s not enough water to go around. (There’s the usual complaints about speculation, but IME if you don’t have speculators you don’t have a functioning market. There’s plenty of data from regular financial markets about this.)

Apologies.

The market is a sham, with overallocation of water resources being done by the Minister responsible as favours for party sponsors.

Agribusinesses are growing rice, cotton, and almonds in the most arid farming region in the world.

The MDBA is a toothless regulator with the government deliberately reducing their budget any time policing or enforcement action is actually performed.

The MDBA could be a self-funded statutory authority if it was allowed to collect water licensing fees directly, with approvals for dams and other water works going through the MDBA instead of the various states.

Ideally there would be no scope for ministerial direction, or at least any such direction would only be through publicly visible instruments.

Also the NDBA should have the authority to demolish illegal dams and water-affecting earth works. For the moment the worst it can do is write strongly worded letters.

And in the meantime we have Queensland farmers continuing to claim that all the water falling on their land should be theirs to do with as they please.

Here's some background information: The Darling River at Menindee (the town mentioned in the article) dried up 48 times between 1885 and 1960.

Are you driving towards the conclusion that we don't need to be concerned about management of water resources because this happens naturally?

That sounds close to the argument that we shouldn't do anything about climate change since the Earth naturally warms and cools.

> Are you driving towards the conclusion that we don't need to be concerned about management of water resources because this happens naturally?

Not at all. My point is that if this is taken as an example of climate change it does a terrible disservice to real climate science, because this is something that has been happening on a regular basis for as long as we have records.

As pointed out by others the article talks about water use not climate change:

"At Menindee, 830 km west of Sydney, despair has turned to anger as residents blame the government for exacerbating the drought by drawing down river water in 2017 for irrigation and other uses downstream."

Ironically in New Zealand, climate activists are the first to block any water retention infrastructure even after a series of very bad fires in my area, I'm guessing it's no different in Australia.

Did it dry up during the "dry" season as could be reasonably expected for a river in a desert region? What is the current situation? Is it dry during the "wet" season?

These are questions you'd expect the article about the river to answer.

The article really does a poor job at showing the actual mismanagement of the river ecosystem. Other sources cover active steps that humans have taken which have caused major damage to the flow rates and resiliency systems that nature had in place.

But how many times did it dry up between 1960 and 2019?

Doesn't include the increase in pesticide usage getting into the water way or the declining water quality. This is a man made disaster.

Edit: Also doesn't cover the fact that they diverted water from the lakes that supply the river in low water times. This leaves no water for dry times.

If only it was somehow possible to charge more for water, so that people would use less.

It's agriculture and industry that use the water up stream, for this particular issue. Drought in other areas not on the river can be an issue of local water management. Charging people in cities more for water for example, doesn't solve the problem. But for people in smaller, non-metro towns, drought policies are important because they often don't have external supplies.

Yes, so charge agriculture and industry more.

I imagine the prices would just flow on to the consumer. I would personally prefer water usage regulation, that's something we can pretty easily do since we already meter it to charge for it. If you just raise the prices, there's no guarantee it would actually lower water usage enough to help.

If prices flow on to the consumer, that's good. It motivates consumers to buy less water hungry alternatives and industry to find less water hungry production methods. It certainly would lower water usage.

> If you just raise the prices, there's no guarantee it would actually lower water usage enough to help.

Sure it will. If water costs these farmers $1,000,000/gallon, they would use 0% of what they do now, since nobody would buy a $4MM avocado. That's absurd, but it does demonstrate that there is a price for water that will lower its usage.

The goal should be to price water such that enough is left downstream for personal consumption. Doing so will raise prices on agricultural goods, which will decrease demand, also lowering water consumption.

The Darling river has a water market [1]

[1] https://www.mdba.gov.au/managing-water/water-markets-and-tra...

Nice! Perhaps the problem is that there's too much water on the market, due to the government handing out too much too cheaply?

Edit: Ah, looks like yes; the government was working on undoing this mistake by buying back water rights at large expense, but stopped because, errr, politics. Although it sounds to me like the real mistake here was maybe giving away rights to use water in perpetuity in the first place (which requires the government to "buy back" such rights), instead of selling non-renewable allocations by the litre (which would allow them to just raise the price depending on conditions, or auction the available water yearly etc).

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-23/water-buybacks-everyt...

> Nice! Perhaps the problem is that there's too much water on the market, due to the government handing out too much too cheaply?

No, the original design was done by CSIRO, the government scientific arm. AFAICT, is was pretty well done. The problem is entirely political.

The river system is about 3000km long, and passes through 4 states. The state politicians suffer almost no repercussions by white anting the agreement or just wilfully breaking it, but often get lots of kudos from their local constituents by shoving it to the other states and the federal government.

The media has done a number of exposés on farmers violating the agreement with no serious repercussions because the local state politicians - and the states run their respective police forces. It then degenerated into one state saying "if they are going to do that then we will too", aka tragedy of the commons.

But, ask any politician and they will tell you it can only be fixed in a drought, when farmers all over the country are going broke and leaving the land in droves, and it's plain to every one if you want to avoid a repeat there are no other solutions bar a compromise that everyone follows. This is the first country wide drought since the one that gave rise to the original agreement. It will need to go on for a bit longer before some sensible things happen, but we live in hope.

So despite how it's painted in the article, it's really an opportunity to put our house in order.

The problem is always political. By "violating the agreement" you mean drawing water without paying for the required allocations (eg. disconnecting water meters), or?

And the state politicians allow this because of competition, basically subsidizing local water by letting people draw it for free, while externalizing the cost to other states?

I heard that most water consumption comes from farming and industry use and that personal use is only a very small percent of global water use. It seems that industries and farmers see water as a nearly free resource and have no problem drying up water supplies. The avocado industry is an example of an industry that through greed has contributed to many ecological problems.

Agriculture and farming are killing us.

We produce more food that we use, and the food we consume is so processed it is killing us.

I am not optimistic about man's will to change.

So you're saying subject a fundamental basic need for human life and existence to capitalism? That's an absolutely terrifying proposition.

Do you think it's a problem that food is priced?

If I disagree with the price of a potato, I can buy rice. Food is price elastic in so far as I have options in what food to buy for what purpose. That said, indeed in my country and a number of others there are certain food stuffs which may not be legally taxed via VAT as they are considered necessary for daily survival.

Water is completely price inelastic economically. There is no alternative to it and it is essential to the persistence of life. Should it be priced? If it requires labour or other external factors that bear cost, sure. Should its price be tweaked as an economic lever? Even if that worked (it wouldn't for something inelastic like water anyway) I would still say no.

Using water's price as a disincentive can only possibly work in non-essential use cases, which doesn't seem to be the case in this Australian example.

This exactly.

Demand for drinking water is inelastic. That's a tiny fraction of a fraction of usage. The majority of fresh water is used for farming, as coolants, solvents, reagents in industrial processes. These uses certainly do have alternatives, whether switching to alternative crops, developing more efficient manufacturing methods, building desalination plants. If that happened there would be more water available for essential use cases like drinking.

Absolutely, this is the ideal. All the examples you mentioned are what I would class in my previous comment as non-essential use cases (as in there are alternatives).

Certain alternatives such as desalination and water reclamation in industrial processes don't change the elasticity of water economically; it's still required. They just increase the amount available in the pool (excuse the pun) and even then these too bear cost for implementation and maintenance and would not be provided free (which makes sense).

You can literally grow food in your backyard. It's a renewable resource. You can't `create water` in your backyard. Freshwater is effectively a non-renewable resource. So the supply is limited but the demand is infinite, which makes capitalistic rules not apply. So if you attempted to apply capitalism, you would get horrible exploitative results.

You can definitely make fresh water: desalination. You can do it with just electricity or heat, though reverse osmosis is more efficient. It's not even that expensive: all the water you can drink, for pennies a day.

Interesting that you think desalination is 'making' water. When I wash food I brought back from the grocery store did I just 'make' food?

It makes "fresh water" out of undrinkable water. There are enormous amounts of the latter.

Enormous amounts for people on the coasts. Should the people inland pay a premium on water just because they can't afford to live on the coast? I personally don't think so which is why a capitalism driven water supply is a terrible idea.

Water is already subject to capitalism, both in the sense that you literally pay money for it (more than industry does, note), and in the sense that wasteful and profligate use of it due to lack of appreciation of its value (because its price is too low) directly damages water security, putting this "fundamental basic need" at risk.

Water is not subject to capitalism. It's managed by policy, There's no profit motive.

It is not priced too low, it is priced so that EVERYONE has access to water.

Water security is not damaged. Government manages things better than capitalism does. For example the telecommunication monopolies..Capitalism can't get the INTERNET right and you want to apply that to water? Also see American the boondoggle healthcare system....

Resources having the properties of infinite demand but limited supply do not follow the normal rules of capitalism and should be regulated by policy instead.

Not everything fits into the rules of capitalism, and the fact that you believe it's the solution for our most precious resource is terrifying.

Australia has plentiful uranium reserves, relatively dry climate, a well-educated population, and huge amounts of empty space. Seems tailor made for nuclear powered desalinization.

context: I lived in Australia for a few years in South Australia. There was talk of building one, maybe two desalinization plants near Adelaide.

I think the consensus across the board is "yup, it does, and it would help massively" though it always came down to money and how it was going to get funded.

Side tangent: I cannot for the life of me understand the argument for "well, yeah, climate change is bad, but let's think how much this might cost to fix...". When it comes to existential threats to our mere existence, how is cost a factor? Talk about the definition of short sighted! And more, it's super short sighted on the money aspect too. We make changes to what is acceptable, how we do things, and yeah, it might cost a ton to begin, but we all know from history that amazing amounts of money are to be made in those revolutions too. This is not a zero sum game.

Being honest, there is a certain amount of privilege baked into this mindset. Not everyone is a software engineer with RSUs and a six-figure income. For many individuals and many communities, every dollar matters and increasing taxes to square off against a massive, but global and impersonal, existential threat is simply not something that everyone can get behind.

Really? You think this is about individual mindset? It's about governments and governments around the world. And about the future of our race and planet. Money should not stop us from tackling existential threats to everything we know and hold dear.

As much as I agree with your statement, the parent is arguing that climate change is a diffuse threat that's not immediately visible. Just like underfunding pensions will lead to possible issues later but we get money to spend now, or eating the seed corn instead of planting it.

It's not sustainable, but our political and economical systems are structured in such a way that we sacrifice long term sustainability for short term gains, such as getting reelected for a four year term or making the quarterly goals.

> Australia has plentiful solar irradiation, relatively dry climate, a well-educated population, vast coastlines and huge amounts of empty space. Seems tailor made for solar and wind powered desalination.

A few words changed/added and we have solutions that have a bunch of advantages:

- Lower cost (startup and running)

- Faster to deploy (Tapping existing production streams)

- Ability to scale more easily based on regional needs (while most of the population live near the coast, there's still a significant population that live inland who are most at risk from water shortages. There's not a national grid that covers everyone)

- More acceptable to our regional neighbours (Australia using Nuclear power tech that can be pivoted to produce Nuclear weapons would likely trigger our neighbours to also have this ability)

- More acceptable to the locals that have to live near it

- Safer (both a direct operational safety aspect, but also less likely to trigger regional conflict)

- Can be deployed close to/in existing cities and opportunity for dual-use sites (eg solar ontop of buildings, carparks; wind in existing farm fields) with minimal negative impact, and possibly positive impacts for land-owners.

Why pick Nuclear when it'll take decades to deploy, cost far more and piss off our neighbours?

With all the space, heat, and sun they have, I bet passive or solar desalination would be better (and would provoke less resistance).

> Drought is weighing on economic growth, and the dire conditions have prompted Australia, a major wheat exporter, to import the grain for the first time in 12 years.

This article is a perfect example of why the climate change issue is so polarized - it's just so full of propaganda and lies that the important truth it talks about is glossed over with mistrust.

"Reduced to a string of stagnant mustard-coloured pools, fouled in places with pesticide runoff and stinking with the rotting carcasses of cattle and fish, the Darling River is running dry."

This river runs dry regularly and has even before the industrial revolution. Guess what happens when rivers run dry? You get stagnant mustard colored pools. The sentence is trying to pull on emotional heart strings with nonsense. You know what else you find naturally in dried up rivers? Dead fish and animals. You know what you find in every body of water around the world today? Pesticides from farm runoff. Does it matter? Sometimes.

In short, just untrustworthy nonsense. I personally am concerned about my impact on the environment, but I consistently vote against collective action because articles like this make me really afraid of how crazy people are and what nonsense they'll believe.

1) It would be better if this article recognised that Australia is a naturally dry country and that the Murray Darling basis is prone to seasonal dry conditions.

2) It would be even better if Australian farmers also recognised that and didn't grow water intensive crops there.

3) The "climate change issue" is not polarised.

Your comment is an even better example of why the climate change issue is so polarized, because the article made no mention of climate change, yet you were triggered by it anyhow.

>Last summer was the hottest on record, and in Menindee, where temperatures regularly top 38 Celsius (100 Fahrenheit), another scorching season is expected.

Climate change is very implicit in the context of the article, even if not explicitly stated.

The first two points (hottest summer on record, average temperatures) are facts about recent weather patterns. The third is simply a prediction (I don't know what the source was for that).

Was the article incorrect in any specific way? If that is the case, I would love to know where it was wrong, specifically.

There are literally no weather conditions that won't be cited as evidence of dangerous climate change sooner or later. Wetter, dryer, hotter, colder, etc. It isn't so much being triggered as just saving time and hurrying the conversation on to its likely destination.

If the point isn't to talk about climate change there isn't much to this article. Australia frequently experiences droughts. They are taken with a high quality camera but all the photos are basically classic Australian bush scenes.

> If the point isn't to talk about climate change there isn't much to this article.

Sure there is. The article talks about non-climate-change human impacts, like the use of upstream water for irrigation. There's discussion to be had around that.

There are a lot of interesting things to discuss in the Murray-Darling basin, the water market and associated system of dams and waterways is one of Australia's subtle-but-serious national achievements.

However the article is a puff piece and is at best alluding vaguely to those more interesting issues. It is only inspiring discussion of them as people are trying to find lenses to interpret it that aren't climate related. It'd be lovely if HN suddenly decided to take a deep interest in irrigation systems but I'll wait for a few more articles on the subject to hit the front page before I start believing it. The comment threads look more like we are playing a game of finding links that aren't climate related.

There's an equally useful conversation around unsustainable use of resources - for instance overuse of water which would seem to be particularly precious in a region known for frequent droughts. Climate warming may worsen those, or they may happen more frequently, yet there's a whole world of potential human stupidity and short-sightedness to consider before that rates a single mention.

The top comment right now is hijacking this story to talk about climate change.

So you vote against action on climate change because you're worried people believe the wrong thing? Even if what they believe is wrong, isn't climate change mitigation still a win? Cleaner air, less reliance on non-renewable energy, etc, seem like fine goals regardless of whether or not it turns out the straights are as dire as we think (though, your issues with this particular article aside, there's plenty of evidence to merit concern)?

Even if what you say is true, one sensationalized article does not mean that the entire climate change issue is hyperbole. The fact is that climate change is a real problem with potentially catastrophic outcome for the human specie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_points_in_the_climate_...

When the stakes are so high, where we are literally risking the future of the human race, I'd definitely lean towards the side of action and change even if they sensationalize some facts sometimes in order to motivate change in others.

It's not even a sensationalized article.

It doesn't blame anything on climate change. It just says this:

> ... residents blame the government for exacerbating the drought by drawing down river water in 2017 for irrigation and other uses downstream.

That's it - the only mention of human fault in the entire thing.

I don't think GP is saying that climate change itself is hyperbole.

The problem is that reporting on both sides is garbage laden with misunderstandings and outright lies. This fuels the anti-climate movement, especially when it's coming from the 'pro' side like in this case.

I've been ringing bells about catastrophic climate change since the early 00s after being involved in a relevant research project, I'm the polar opposite of a denier, but the way that even 'pro climate change' media covers the topic is harmful to actually conveying it to the public because the media wants to put hyperbole on everything.

When the media over-stimulates the public by exaggerating every little thing to a BIG DEAL, the public becomes non-responsive to actual BIG DEAL issues.

This actively hinders action to manage catastrophic climate change. This is the same as the CIA handbook tactic to redirect activist movements to ineffective causes so that they're too activism-fatigued to act on an effective cause when one is presented.

As pointed out by others the article talks about water use not climate change:

The article heavily insinuates climate change and will certainly be categorised as a climate change piece in the minds of most readers.

Especially in Australia where 'drought' === 'climate change' === 'farmer issues'.

Do climate change scientists pay hundreds of millions of dollars to climate change PR firms to spread known untruths about climate change?

Is there a network of climate change science think tanks dedicated to framing the climate change debate in a way that benefits the climate change community?

Do climate scientists run social media "consultancies" to make a pro-climate change case on the major social platforms and smaller forums?

If any of the above happen - questionable, but let's pretend - they're at tiny outlier scale compared to the organised lies, smears, denial and general FUD put out by the denialist corporates.

You say you've been warning about catastrophic climate change since the early 00s. What in your opinion would be the best way to counter climate denial PR?

Because clearly simply informing the public of the facts isn't going to do anything against the noise being made by the denialist side.

> What in your opinion would be the best way to counter climate denial PR?

With education. And with a factual description of the problem and the available solutions. With outright rejection of denialism. With rejection of feelgood non-activism like plastic straw bans and tree-planting measures. Don't get me wrong, those things are good and a step in the right direction, but they're far too little far too late compared to what must be done, and so they're inactivism that wastes public energy on measures that don't move the needle in addressing the problem.

This doesn't even fly with 'enlightened' crowds like HN out of the box because they'll tend to kneejerk about things like nuclear power + electrochemical CO2 sequestration despite it being the only realistic option to dig ourselves out of the hole we're in. Worth noting that the mainstream crowds in China/Russia are a lot more pragmatic about this than AU/UK/US.

I'm pretty sure this comment is going to be downvoted just for mentioning it, but I'll drop it anyway to genuinely answer your question. A lot of the folk I know in the field have basically given up hope to avert this and become gloom and doom in the last 5 years, including people you would've seen on TV at the Paris Accords. They are probably right. It's pretty depressing info to handle. I'm sorry I don't have a better answer, but people much smarter than me don't seem to have one either.

tl;dr: Like Bill Gates puts it, misdirected climate activists are actually a bigger problem than climate deniers at this point.

They aren't suggesting climate change is hyperbole, they're suggesting that the reason many people are able to dismiss climate change is because articles like this reek of sensationalism. In otherwords, in an attempt to get people to listen, they are turning people away as readers can pick up on the hyperbole and feel they're being manipulated.

If instead we spoke about the issue factually, to the point and without trying to influence people's opinions with emotional devices, more stubborn people might listen to the idea.

It's a shame, because if ever there were a real enough reason for an evangelical to scream in the streets at strangers that the world is ending, this might be it. But it doesn't work, people don't listen to the screaming crazies.

Except the article never mentions climate change so that argument doesn’t make any sense. The issue here is largely due to overuse of water for irrigation combined with a spell of hot dry weather.

> When the stakes are so high, where we are literally risking the future of the human race, I'd definitely lean towards the side of action and change even if they sensationalize some facts sometimes in order to motivate change in others.

I find this behavior deeply hypocritical and irresponsible. Worse, it is unproductive, because even a minimal sensationalization may trigger a lot of misguided (but sincere) opposition from climate deniers. Heck, even many rational people may be alienated by this!

As a matter of principle, I am disgusted by propaganda that contains falsehoods or exaggerations, even when it is for a good cause.

> As a matter of principle, I am disgusted by propaganda that contains falsehoods or exaggerations, even when it is for a good cause.

Any issue important to more than a few dozen people will involve propaganda, falsehoods, and exaggerations from both sides of the issue. Simple fact of statistics and human nature.

Letting that affect your evaluation of the facts is a mistake.

> Letting that affect your evaluation of the facts is a mistake.

I never said I will change my opinion about the issue because of that. Only that I am disgusted by this behavior.

As a more practical effect, just a tiny speck of falsehood in the discourse of "my" side, turns any attempt to convince anybody on the "other" side as an endless discussion about that silly speck, agreeing that it is false, but nonetheless the main cause remains true. It is very tiring. Exaggerated propaganda is useful to create stronger echo-chambers, but not to convince people who are outside.

> I personally am concerned about my impact on the environment, but I consistently vote against collective action because articles like this make me really afraid of how crazy people are and what nonsense they'll believe.

On what basis do you think your vote will change other peoples beliefs?

Vote differently please.

Source for your claim that this river is always in this state? Because the article disagrees with you. You don't think the country's largest drought has any impact on its largest river?

You seem looking for a reason to bash climate change and journalism in general.

The article doesn't even mention the word 'climate', let alone 'climate change'. There are references to last summer being the hottest on record, which is true, or the effects of the drought, but it's not talking about climate change. Get your shit together - you are a perfect example of why the issue is polarized.

If the river always runs dry and the article is not implying anything about climate change, then why does the article exist?

It doesn't really need to be about climate change - the main issue people are upset about seems to be this:

> At Menindee, 830 km west of Sydney, despair has turned to anger as residents

> blame the government for exacerbating the drought by drawing down river water

> in 2017 for irrigation and other uses downstream.

To complain about and argue for changes in upstream water use.

The issue is not related to climate change, but a series of water policies that have favoured farming / agriculture over the environment / community use. In short, too much water being taken upstream.

As an Australian, it baffles me that we're trying to grow cotton and rice in the desert. I personally don't believe that farmers who make poor business decisions should be consistently bailed out by the government. I'd rather we pay for research into drought resistant crops, growing the right produce in the right climates, and failing that, retraining farmers and agri workers into new industries like solar. Lots of sun, not much water.

Isn’t the overwhelming scientific consensus on the harm we’re doing enough to justify collective action? It seems to be the only thing of sufficient scale to address the harm you’re concerned about. I am struggling bc to understand your priorities here.

Why are you against collective action? Because it could ... make a difference or something?

Meanwhile we're still voting in governments that don't believe in climate change and which fight tooth and nail to destroy any chance of addressing the problem. No worries giving endless buckets of taxpayer money to climate-denying farmers and coal plants, though.

That will continue to happen as long as voting/politics remains ideology based rather than issue based.

It's always been that way and always will be.

The first past the post two party systems lock that in.

Australia has a preferential voting system, and our two main parties are actually one primary centre-left party and two smaller centre-right parties that have formed a coalition.

Doesn't stop us making dumb voting decisions every three years, though.

Ideology determines how we view the world (and thus the issues) and what we want it to look like. Politics without ideology is impossible, there is no objective "null ideology".

There are many people in the current government that believe in climate change. The real problem is that the government has surmised (correctly, it would seem) that climate change isn’t an issue that will win an election. That and the fact that pricing carbon was the opposition party’s policy...

They're pressured to improve KPIs of economy and life quality (including employment rates) and that's the complete opposite of what fixing the climate requires.

Are you saying that fixing climate change requires poor life quality for people in Western countries?

Is poor life quality in the West going to stop worldwide deforestation somehow?

No, why? Not poor, but maybe involving using cars/tech items for longer times or spend more on locally grown food leaving less for vacation flights etc.

>No, why?

What does "opposite" mean in your comment then, exactly?

There are very few government policies in the Western world that would have any noticeable impact on climate change.

I believe that Climate Change is mostly caused by deforestation, but how would any government stop 7B people from cutting down trees?

> That and the fact that pricing carbon was the opposition party’s policy...

It is somewhat complicated by the fact the the Labor party was tarred by introducing a climate tax after promising not to.

They had a minority government due to some political shenanigans and had to form a loose coalition with the Greens for an electoral cycle. The Greens managed to negotiate in a carbon tax that was not well received. Labor is associated with the policy but their support for it was always tepid.

Granted from a political and economic standpoint imposing consumer carbon taxes is stupid and inane.

Australia would be a net power exporting nation if they harnessed their solar and especially wind resources. The fact that they still burn coal is ridiculous and shameful.

To where and how? Electricity is not something you can export when your main grid is 5000km from your nearest neighbour

Typically power is exported by smelting aluminum from bauxite. A big advantage of doing it this way is you can run the smelters only when there is an overproduction of power to help even out demand on the grid.

I wonder if a concentrated solar power tower heating a crucible of ore would be more efficient than inefficiencies from PV, transmission, conversion, storage etc.

Not for aluminium smelting, which is done with electricity rather than heat.

This is why aluiminium has only recently become a cheap resource, or indeed a resource at all, despite being incredibly common and having a low melting point.

I think we're getting close to the point where mirrors cost more than solar panels.

New Zealand has the problem where the smelter has such huge power usage that they get to wag the dog. That is a situation that is probably hard to avoid. https://i.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/116851413/ri...

I thought you could only shut down an aluminium smelter for a couple of hours. It’s essential they keep the pots (?) hot constantly or they get ruined and the plant is then offline hundreds of millions to repair. If this is correct then solar would be a terrible power source for smelting.

Good power sources: hydro, geothermal. Which is why we see smelters in places with hydro and geothermal.

Australia should go nuclear. Plenty of places to put plants. A dozen plants would generate all the electricity they need and they can stop burning coal.

You can design the plant to handle intermittent power. It's a bit more expensive, but you're getting the savings from using cheaper power.

https://www.metalbulletin.com/events/download.ashx/document/...

Lately people are "exporting" cheap electricity by mining cryptocurrency. I don't think that's a good idea from a public policy standpoint, but it is happening and growing fast.

"Australian billionaire to fund Singapore subsea cable project"

https://www.power-technology.com/news/australia-singapore-po...

The Australia-Singapore Power Link (ASPL) project has been developed by Singapore-based company Sun Cable project is being developed by Singapore based company Sun Cable at an estimated cost of $14bn (A$20bn). With a storage facility based in Tennant Creek in Australia’s Northern Territory, the project will include a 10GW solar farm and a 20-30GWh storage facility which will transport 3GW of power to Singapore.

ASPL was given major project status by the Northern Territory Government in July 2019 and will begin producing power in 2027.

It sounds just this side of science fiction to me, but it will be exciting if the project actually goes forward as planned.

From one state to another would be a good start. South Australians are paying more per kilowatt hour than anyone else on the planet, including people living in active warzones.

I think voting with your dollar is much effective then voting at the ballot boxes since politicians go to where the money is and end up not fulfilling most of their campaign promises anyway.

Well, you can do both really easily. Thankfully it's not a binary decision.

It's really not though, there are many candidates in a political election, many political debates, many topics, in order to make an informed decision it takes a lot more than just going to the ballet box and ticking a person's name. The fact that the mass media can't be trusted makes that getting correct information even harder. To make a properly informed decision to vote for a candidate you can truly say you believe in and whose agenda you know inside out would take days if not weeks of investigative research in my opinion, how is that easy?

The mass media is actually pretty trustworthy for the most part. It's incredibly easy to make a binary decision between two candidate about who is better for the climate. You overcomplicate it. In the end, for most places, 1-3 people are your choices. Party affiliation, etc is not pertinent. Just research your actual choices, and make an informed decision. Most of the time it will be obvious, and if it's not, then maybe you have a dilemma. But don't paralyze yourself by assuming the dilemma.

The Labor party have constantly and consistently fought to address climate change, and have been thwarted by right-wing politicians every time. Voting absolutely matter, and anyone who tells you it doesn't has an agenda.

climate change is not likely even a second order reason as to why this river is drying up. Maybe you and everyone knows that, and this is just an aside about the trouble we have dealing with long term environmental problems as societies?

We shouldn't use "believe" and "don't believe" terminology when we talk about scientific facts. It is more proper to say that people refuse to accept the climate change.

Even if you accept it, it does not mean you have much power to act on it. The largest emitters of CO2 in the world are by far India and China and Australia is a tiny country with a tiny footprint in comparison.

You can apply that argument to every person or group. I'm just one person, my individual carbon footprint is neglible – let the other 7 billion deal with it!

I'm not sure that deliberate ideological message-control efforts of this sort actually meaningfully contribute to understanding. They seem unlikely to actually change what anyone thinks, somewhat reinforce the perception that climate change is a lie spread as part of a political conspiracy to control people.

The observation that the climate is changing is a scientific fact.

The hypothesis that draconian reduction or even elimination of CO2 emissions by humans will stop the climate from changing is not a scientific fact. It's the opposite: it's a hypothesis based on computer models that have been falsified by the data.

I'd prefer language like "I [am/am not] persuaded by the evidence I've seen"

Small difference but I think it properly orients the discussion around evidence

The IPCC gave models to scientists that are necessarily missing part of the picture (namely, all energy from the sun that is not part of a specific EMR spectrum)[1], and then said "we have a consensus" when the scientists came back with an inevitable conclusion. This resulted in the inevitable false attribution of human activity being the cause of [strike: global warming] climate change.

To fully appreciate the gravity of the IPCC's misadventures in "climate science", here is a seemingly hyperbolic, but actually quite accurate analogy of the situation:

A group of 100 people have been consuming candy, water, and Raid®. Among those 100 people, 20 have died within a 1 month period. A committee is formed to solve this crisis. The committee tasks a group of scientists with determining the cause of death, and they are told, "Here is a group of 100 people, 20 of whom have died, all of which have been consuming candy and water." A consensus is formed among the scientists; obviously the candy is causing the deaths, since water is known to be safe.

When some of the scientists discovered that the subjects had been consuming Raid®, they reached out to the committee to ask why the Raid® consumption had not been in the data, and the committee decided that, since the first ingredient in Raid® was water, and since water was known not to be a health risk, it was of little significance in the study.

Now, imagine knowing all of the above, and then trying to be patient while listening to everyone you know become a "candy science" expert over the ensuing decade, and seeing your favorite news show, movie actor, musician, etc. calling for a candy tax, and constantly berating you as a "candy denier" when you question the consensus... then, those same people begin calling for candy-related fines, fees, and taxes that will affect your livelihood, and then facing the irony of those same people berating you as ignorant swill living in a fly-over state that's simply "voting based on ideology"; imagine that.

1. https://progearthplanetsci.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186...

Please provide reproduced, peer-reviewed sources for these extraordinary claims.

While you're at it, please explain, with reproduced, peer-reviewed sources why you think the greenhouse effect, which directly ties CO2 to warming doesn't exist.

1. I added a link to the gp - I'll also provide you with these as food for thought:

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39054778

https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2013/oc...

2. Please provide any evidence that I made claims that the greehouse effect doesn't exist.

So, no evidence of your claims, gotcha.

> 2. Please provide any evidence that I made claims that the greehouse effect doesn't exist.

Okay, so it does exist - that's great! We're ~1.3C above the pre-industrial average today.

Which part of this 1.3C came from the greenhouse effect, which part of it comes from a collection of odd one-off factors, and which part of it came from the magical IPCC-ignored radiation spectrum that has nothing to do with the greenhouse effect?

Please, provide numbers. Not hand-waving - but numbers.

Also, since it does exist - how much warming would the greenhouse effect be expected to contribute when we hit 500 ppm carbon? 650 ppm?

Please explain to me how Fourier and later Tyndall were wrong about the effect of (misnommed) greenhouse gases on the atmosphere, and how 200 years later no one disproved them.

Your analogy is creative, but if you really think the IPCC have no statistician (or that you are a better statitician than them), you might want to read more about the work of IPCC WG1, that will cure the Dunning-kruger while allowing you to work the statistics by yourself.

And yes, the IPCC WG3 is alarmist and ignore some conclusions from the WG2, but their job is to push the politicians.

I was like you (well, i was skeptical about the WG3 conclusions and the human greenhouse contribution) so i did something really special: i read the rapports! Yes, i know, its crazy, but this is something i think every skeptic should do: read. This is crazy that learning to read scientific papers is not taught until year 3 of college (at least in my country), but i assure you its not that hard, even if you never went to college.

If only you had commented a few moments later (added a link to paper). Apparently, all the climate experts haven’t kept up with the climate news, so what I thought was common knowledge is not commonly known at all. I guess CNN is where most of the expert information comes from these days. That’s the Dunning-Kruger part, or?

Also, somebody else replied with something similar (something about me denying the greenhouse effect existed)… I’m not quite sure how either of you came to the conclusion that I didn’t believe the greenhouse effect existed. I think it’s a pretty big leap in logic to go from “the greenhouse effect exists” to “because the greenhouse effect exists, the greenhouse effect via CO2 from human activity is the primary cause of global warming”.

That's quite the strawman you've built here

How’s that?

The IPCC report is massive with every single thing painstakenly cited, sourced and explained.

For example: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_TS_FI...

>"Solar forcing is the only known natural forcing acting to warm the climate over the 1951–2010 period but it has increased much less than WMGHG forcing, and the observed pattern of long-term tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling is not consistent with the expected response to solar irradiance variations. Considering this evidence together with the assessed contribution of natural forcings to observed trends over this period, it is assessed that the contribution from solar forcing to the observed global warming since 1951 is extremely unlikely to be larger than that from WMGHGs. Because solar forcing has very likely decreased over a period with direct satellite measurements of solar output from 1986 to 2008, there is high confidence that changes in total solar irradiance have not contributed to global warming during that period. However, there is medium confidence that the 11-year cycle of solar variability influences decadal climate fluctuations in some regions through amplifying mechanisms. {8.4, 10.3; Box 10.2} "

So there are multiple avenues of evidence that conclude that solar forcing isn't the cause of the temperature increase. This includes direct measurements of "total solar irradiance" (TSI).

And the numbers at the bottom in brackets? Those are sources for the claims made in that paragraph!

10.3 and "Box 10.2": https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapt...

The above source even has an explanation for how the causes are determined: "FAQ 10.1 | Climate Is Always Changing. How Do We Determine the Causes of Observed Changes?"

Here is "8.4": https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapt...

>"Total solar irradiance (TSI) measured by the Total Irradiance Monitor (TIM) on the spaceborne Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) is 1360.8 ± 0.5 W m–2 during 2008 (Kopp and Lean, 2011) which is ~4.5 W m–2 lower than the Physikalisch-Meteorologisches Observatorium Davos (PMOD) TSI composite during 2008 (Frohlich, 2009).The difference is probably due to instrumental biases in measurements prior to TIM."

The don't rely on single measurements of "total solar irradiance" either.

> "Since 1978, several independent space-based instruments have directly measured the TSI. Three main composite series were constructed, referred to as the Active Cavity Radiometer Irradiance Monitor (ACRIM) (Willson and Mordvinov, 2003), the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium (RMIB) (Dewitte et al., 2004) and the PMOD (Frohlich, 2006) series. "

The above claim that "all energy from the sun that is not a part of a specific EMR spectrum" is missing when the conclusions were drawn is just plain wrong.

from 8.4:

>"Solar spectral irradiance (SSI) variations in the far (120 to 200 nm) and middle (200 to 300 nm) ultraviolet (UV) are the primary driver for heating, composition, and dynamic changes of the stratosphere, and although these wavelengths compose a small portion of the incoming radiation they show large relative variations between the maximum and minimum of the SC compared to the corresponding TSI changes. As UV heating of the stratosphere over a SC has the potential to influence the troposphere indirectly, through dynamic coupling, and therefore climate (Haigh, 1996; Gray et al., 2010), the UV may have a more significant impact on climate than changes in TSI alone would suggest. Although this indicates that metrics based only on TSI are not appropriate, UV measurements present several controversial issues and modelling is not yet robust.

Multiple space-based measurements made in the past 30 years indicated that UV variations account for about 30% of the SC TSI variations, while about 70% were produced within the visible and infrared (Rottman, 2006). "

It is correct that UV is only 30% of TSI. Hence why TSI was used to make conclusions about the impact of "solar forcing" on the climate instead of just UV.

The links I give are to just a couple sections of just one of the reports (the "physical science basis" one).

Here is the full "physical science basis" report: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/

I’m afraid your comment completely ignores the only point I made in my comment...

TSI stands for total solar irradiance. This is the EMR spectrum I’m referring to. If you continue to read the report from the IPCC, you will notice there is no mention of energetic particle precipitation (EPP), or any particle forcing of any kind.

So yes, the IPCC report is extraordinarily thorough and exactly perfect in everything that it purports to be; unfortunately it completely leaves out the largest part of the equation. Please see my analogy above.

It indeed doesn't mention EPP.

Is there any proof that EPP is significant?

What about the other parts of the report?

For example:

>"It is extremely likely that human activities caused more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010. This assessment is supported by robust evidence from multiple studies using different methods. In particular, the temperature trend attributable to all anthropogenic forcings combined can be more closely constrained in multi-signal detection and attribution analyses. "

In order for climate change to be primarily driven by EPP or particle forcing instead of anthroprogenic forcing, it would have to be the case that either:

A. Somehow, anthroprogenic forcing is much less than the multiple avenues of evidence show. Here:

https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapt...

https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/07/WGI_AR5.Chap...

https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_TS_FI...

https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapt...

B. There is something unknown that offsets the impact of anthroprogenic forcing, but would not have offset the impact of particle forcing in the absence of anthroprogenic forcing.

In the absence of evidence, it is a big claim to make that either of these things are the case.

There is no direct evidence of specific amounts of temperature rise that can somehow magically be attributed to human activities (e.g., we are able to measure all energy values of every single thing on earth and then determine what causes what exactly, etc.). Nobody even claims that this is the case; certainly not the IPCC.

The conclusion (temperature-changing effects of human activities) is derived specifically from taking the local maxima of warming we’ve seen in this very short window, subtracting the known non-human factors (of which the sun is one... hence the importance of the missing data), and then attributing the rest to human activities.

In other words, your statements, pertaining how we can deduce that their conclusions are correct, save for A or B (above), are the most quintessential example of “begging the question”.

Another important bit that I didn’t even mention in my original comment is that, not only does looking at TSI ignore other particle forcing qualities of solar phenomenon, such as flares and sunspots, But it also ignores the fact that, during such events, solar irradiance is measurably decreased. This means that the assumed human factor needed to justify the perceived temperature increase in the models is actually raised in such cases. This means that when using the models to predict the temperature on the earth, the models will actually predict that human activities that cause warming increase during solar events.

Even those that believe in climate change seem to have a problem with naming overpopulation as a principle cause of the problem.

Because you can't reduce your population by any acceptable method and birth rates are below replacement levels in most parts of the world anyway.

And indeed addressing birth rates takes too long to have a large enough effect on the population to resolve the climate crisis even if we could at this point.

Doesn't stop you naming the problem. If everyone thinks that cutting a straw out is going to solve the problem, then the problem will go unsolved.

Regarding below replacement birth rates - the world population is still growing. The fact this is happening suggests that "most parts of the world" as you say do not have below replacement birth levels.

Your comment seems as much of a distraction as the demands to cut out straws.

Most of the population growth is through ageing, you can have a below replacement level birth rate and expanding population if people live longer.

Not only this but the places that are still growing their population have negligible emissions compared to the developed world.

Most of the population growth is from less developed countries breeding like rabbits for want of a better term. And these low emissions countries all want to live like more developed countries. China and India don't have "negligible" emissions.

Can this, by any chance, be averted by planting eco diverse forests??

You'd have to shut down the over-grazing first.

The article touches on the cause. Planting trees won't help if you use the available water for other things.

That's true, but once the ecosystem is established, we don't drain water, trees cause rain right?

The natural state of the ecosystem is a desert. We could try to plant trees to help control the moisture in the soil and evaporation, but it would be an artificial ecosystem, propped up by human intervention.

This is a natural state, but also the most degraded state of the ecosystem.

If there was a river, there was either forests or coastal rains. Would not be uncommon to find that the landscape was more humid in just two or three generations ago.

Yes, and trees will produce shadow and store water in trunks but also in leafs and flowers that would be directly available to animals. The effects of dry season would be mitigated, even in a desertic area.

The culture to burn wild plants each year to avoid fire will eliminate the water. Is a vicious circle. Less water in soil equals to more risk of fire, so you start burning the soil, so you have less and less water and you need to keep burning .

https://youtu.be/gNbSazIqVYA?t=290

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