South West WA and Perth have been the Australian posterchild for Water-Panic for years.
We were destined to be an abandoned ghost town with worthless property:
Perth is set to become the world’s first ‘Ghost City’ according to a long-term weather forecaster and a news anchor. “I’m reading here that unless drastic action is taken, Perth could become the world’s first ghost city – a modern metropolis abandoned by the 1.7 million people there for lack of water,” she said.
Tim Flannery started the Ghost Town scare in 2004. He felt the best way to fill WA dams was to vote for emissions reductions.
As I write, the remnants of a small cyclone are raining down on us in midsummer, which the ABC earlier warned was a “deluge” dropping “three months of rain”. What they don’t mention is that, even before this “downpour” (of 90 mm or 4 inches so far), Perth Dams already have 35% more water than at the same time last year, and an extra 69 gigalitres of the precious wet stuff. We have more water than we’ve had since 2009, and more is on the way.
WA Water corporation data shows Perth Dams have 267GL of water which is 42% of capacity (unusually good for Perth).
Perth Dam Levels Jan 2018
By the way, this graph from December includes the bumper year of 2009 (for comparison).
So far in the last 24 hours we’ve had 90mm, which is unusual for Perth in summer, but hardly a “deluge”. Perhaps that’s why the ABC changed their headline.
The Water Corp says 70 Billion Litres is Nothing to See Here…
You might think this was “good”, but the WA Water Corporation helpfully explains that this extra 70 billion litres is “little”, “slight” and may not even be from rainfall, (though those figures are strangely unavailable):
What does this mean?
Our metro dams are currently holding
35% more water
than this time last year.
Perth’s recent rainfall is welcome but it has made little difference to our dam levels. While it may look like dam levels are increasing slightly at this time of year, this may not be the result of increased streamflow. The water in our dams is no longer just made up of inflows from rain. Groundwater and desalinated water are stored in these dams during periods of low demand so it is available when it is most needed in the hotter months.
And if that extra 70GL is not from rain, somebody tell me why we might be pumping groundwater or adding expensive desalinated water into our dams in a year with average rainfall?
Curiously, the numbers at the Bureau of Meteorology are different, shows Perth’s Water Storage is 37% and only 216GL — somehow 50 billion litres are water are missing.
Despite average rain and well stocked dams, it is always the time to panic
The local State Minister for Water says there is no escaping the impact of climate change on our dams and rivers.
Here’s a headline from last month:
WA rivers losing climate change battle
Sophie Moore, News.com.au, December 2017 (Here’s a similar story from AAP)
Rivers in the southwest region of WA are struggling to cope with the impact of climate change despite average winter rainfalls returning to the area.
Got more rain than usual? That’s climate change:
Mr Kelly said the February rainfall was another example of climate change where more extreme and unusual weather is predicted.
“River flows are one of the best indicators for measuring the effects of reduced rainfall,” he said.
Because when you get extra rainfall we need to talk about the effects of something that didn’t happen.
“What this year shows is there is no escaping the impact of climate change, which is not only reducing flow to our water supply dams but to our rivers as well.”
Another effect of climate change is that journalists will write self-evident contradictions, internally inconsistent stories, and general click-bait meaningless climate drivel. The well of nonsense is deep and no end is in sight, no matter what the climate does.
And general climate noise can always provide mindless cherry-pickable truthisms:
It comes as winter this year was WA’s hottest on record, with average winter rainfall the 11th-lowest since 1900 when records began.
Don’t mention that climate change has given Perth an average rainfall.
Unusually heavy rainfall in February, combined with last year’s winter rains, has given a short-term boost to Perth’s main groundwater supply, which is currently at levels not seen since 2009.
Who needs to know that dams are 35% fuller, or that we have 70 billion extra litres of water compared to last year?
INFO:
- WA Water Corporation
- BoM Perth Water Storage (where 50b litres are water are missing and dams are 5.5% lower!)
- Rainfall anomalies WA
- Perth Airport annual rainfall
- Perth Gardens historic rainfall
Normal media drivel. Their credibility is gone. Please politicians, wake up!
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Deadpan brainless politicians can never wake up, no more than a rock. We need a new breed of politicians, and that is only ever going to be possible when people stop voting for either major party. End of story.
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OK, I get it. My comment was removed because I told the truth. Looks like Twitter is not the only social media site having trouble with transparency. Listen to this guy and learn a thing or two about consistency and being transparent about the ground rules, whatever they are: But Twitter Is A Private Company.
32
I take it back – I see my comment has come back. Many thanks.
50
Stefan Molyneux is superb. The highlight of the ‘private company’ post is that the Twattersphere Fascists condone corporate discrimination (against anything they disagree with), have unwittingly cracked the door for any company to discriminate on any grounds it sees fit. Finally it seems, a Libertarian World dawns, such are the Laws of Unintended Consequence.
50
One might argue that the control freaks are only consistent in their inconsistency.
The simpler explanation is that they are consistent in their hypocrisy.
Expose the hypocrisy. Shine a bright light upon it so that all may see.
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I agree completely Bernd. It seems ‘society’ at large, Dollywood, MSM, academia and the DEMS have succeeded for the moment in achieving an institutionalised hypocrisy not seen possibly since the Pharisees.
60
“Decline Of Journalism Happening Far Faster Than Expected”
https://realclimatescience.com/2018/01/decline-of-journalism-happening-far-faster-than-expected/
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Flannery has never been able to predict anything right .
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Actually he predicted he would make a good living by riding the climate disaster bandwagon.
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a very GOOD living!
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Indeed, so good a living he could afford a home on the banks of the Hawkesbury north of Sydney ….rising sea levels ….what rising sea levels!
30
Speaking of outrageous sea level predictions… here we go again at some greenies ABC:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-16/rising-sea-levels-could-shrink-australia-coastal-exodus/9333400
I couldn’t force myself to read to far into it (reproduced from The Conversation), but this stood out at the beginning:
Really? Well I followed the link to the IPCC (I feel dirty now) and it said the high end sea level rise projections were only in the last year’s of the 21st century, according to those wonderfully accurate models of the IPCC. That’s not how the line above reads.
Why would the authors say this? Oh, that’s right, they are all suckling at the teat of academic funding called ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage. Excellent indeed…
41
Reading that ABC report I wondered why Papua New Guineans didn’t colonise north QLD area. It states a land bridge existed just a few thousand years ago yet aboriginals claim to have been here alone for up to 85,000 years. I’m confused.
[I have no idea why this ended up in moderation, so we are both confused – my apologies] Fly
20
He has left the banks of the Hawkesbury and his wife.
” but Flannery works from home in Melbourne. He recently moved to Victoria to live with his partner, Kate Holder, a former heroin addict and sex worker who became an Age columnist and an accomplished, poetic memoirist. Their son, Colby, is four months old.”
http://adf.farmonline.com.au/news/metro/national/general/tim-flannery-a-man-for-all-climates/2687224.aspx?storypage=0
00
Flannery’s Sydney house was nowhere near sea level.
Maybe you could try to figure out the difference between “near water” and “at sea level”?
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I think he privately predicted that sea levels were not rising, contrary to his public claims, so with his money earned from his climate disaster consultancy fees he purchased a waterfront property.
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And he bought that property about 6 months after he said everything in the area would be flooded in 10 years. They betray themselves by their own actions.
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The only dams that haven’t filled in the the last few years are the ones we haven’t been able to build .
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Unfortunately – and ours
50
Drought has been declared in much of Queensland. Of course these things are not just natural variation. It has to be the fault of motor cars and coal. It makes sense. Just like the drought which would never end. When a very dead kangaroo scientist is presented as Australia’s leading expert on climate, you know there is something wrong with the political system.
CO2 is your fault. Pay now.
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A La Nina is in place although it is not that strong. Fair chance the drought in QLD will break soon. The “dead kangaroo scientist’s” predictions back in the mid 2000’s resulted in the building of the mega expensive desal plants in Brisbane, Sydney & Melbourne. Most are now white elephants – please hand back your “2007 Australian of the Year Award” please “Mr dead kangaroo scientist”.
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Yes, that’s the point. When all the predictions fail, there is always La Nina and El Nino. The problem with the infallible computer models is that they cannot predict either. You would have to wonder how good a model is if it cannot predict the two biggest climate events in the world? I suppose they also are just natural variation but the rise in CO2 is due to coal?
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Also the unused desalination plant in Adelaide.
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arent the generators used to provide power for the Multi Function Polis?
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That power has to be shared with Newport Quays, the trams that can’t turn right, and the hospital which wasn’t designed to hold patient records, you know, the one near the 41 million dollar Adelaide Oval footbridge to nowhere, and 600 million dollar patch of grass with chairs around it…
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JAMES!
How DARE you say all those things about South Australia… without listing the others.
You forgot the brand new bus tunnel, about $160 million, which was designed to save travel time for users of the O-bahn system to and fro the NE suburbs. The new bus timetables I am reliably informed (thank Mum! 😀 ) now give a 1 min longer transit time, although this is apparently carefully hidden by quoting a different final bus stop compared to the ‘pre-tunnel’ issue.
The tunnel also apparently is too narrow to successfully allow evac of disabled passengers should a bus become stopped within the tunnel and another, unconfirmed, rumour is that the construction failed to allow for the sandy soil in the area and the concrete track the buses run on has already begun shifting.
Not had that rumour confirmed, but remember that the Hackney Road end of the tunnel is effectively where First Creek runs under the road so at least some part of the tunnel is effectively passing through ex-creek bed. If this problem is true then it is clear the SA government would want to – pun intended – keep this buried till after the election.
There is also the issue of the road surface. All tunnel buses are funnelled onto Grenfell street which currently is in an ‘average’ surface condition. The Government claims the surface belongs to the Adelaide City Council and the ACC claims poor and wants the Government to assist in funding. So now we either face a road slowly being destroyed while they play blame game, or the magic new time saving bus routes being delayed for the next year by a series of road works as they resurface the entire street.
Ya! SA Great!
40
“Multi Function Polis”
Isn’t that “so yesterday”?
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“Also the unused desalination plant in Adelaide.”
Last I heard, the Adelaide desal plant was operating at 10% capacity 24/7.
51
Electricity for Adelaide’s desalination plant cost $13.5 million last financial year despite it producing only 2 per cent of the state’s water supply, the 2017 Auditor-General’s Report has revealed.
SA Water has run it at minimal capacity of about 10 per cent ever since to keep it maintained in a functioning condition.
It is capable of delivering 100 gigalitres (GL) per year at full capacity, although it was originally planned to have a capacity for 50GL until the Federal Government pitched in with more funding.
By the end of September 2017 it had produced a total 138GL since commissioning in 2013.
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For relativity anyone calculated what is that in mm rainfall over an area of ?? hectares?
10
I haven’t followed the desalination things, but I always thought that the Adelaide plant was the only one that ever got used. Not a lot of dam space in SA. The others have been white elephants.
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Perth desal plants work close to capacity a lot of the time.
The only time the Brisbane one was used was after the floods in whatever year it was, because it was able to produce clean water and the main water treatment plant was flooded.
Sydney, I think is still missing half its roof, and Melbourne is mothballed.
81
I
00
Try that again
I believe that the VIC contract is one where we pay whether we take water or not. It seems that water delivery is more based on the ideological slant of the prevailing government. Libs abstain (which , although I am not a supporter , seems dumb now that its built) and Labor takes the water.
00
It would be nice if you’re right.
I just did the water inventory yesterday. We had one dam filled from a storm on a neighbour’s place. The other 17 are dry or will be in probably a month. Then down to the bores and water carting – again.
Up till 2013 we had never had to cart stock water in 60-odd years.
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About kangaroos
It seems that due to the drought going away and the rains coming back, their numbers have increased dramatically in much of Australia – they have been breeding like rabbits.
The scary part of this story is that when the droughts eventually return, the population of kangaroos will drop back to where it was at the end of the last drought. Of course, this has been going on for many many millions of years and that is why the kangaroo is such a special animal.
Just imagine the scare stories we will be subjected to when that happens!
They will do the same thing they did to polar bears, penguins, whales, the Great Barrier Reef and so on. There will be a massive media campaign to “save the kangaroo” from extinction. 🙂
Kangaroo populations are “out of control” in western Queensland and in numbers not seen before, local graziers say
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I wonder how many of these kangaroos will claim to be climate scientists?
120
Graham Richards:
That deserves at least
20
Hell, my 3 emojis have evaporated. Must be due to Global Warming!
31
Wouldn’t claiming to be Klimate Refugees be more profitable?
10
Queensland Kangaroo Situation 2016
Sheep Equivalents (1.5K = 1S)
Kangaroo Population * Sheep Equivalent
26 ,162 ,000 17 ,441 ,333****
Human Population – Total
4 ,824 ,400
Rural Population **
516 ,694
Urban Population
4 ,307 ,307
Kangaroos per Urban Person
6.1
Agistment/K/person/Yr ***
$70.20
Total Qld K Agistment/Yr
$340,106,000.00
Share of Agistment Owed to Rural Population *****
$303,680,647.00
Qld Sheep Population
1 ,800 ,000
* http://www.qld.gov.au/environment/assets/documents/plants-animals/macropods/quota-submission2016.pdf
** Rural population of Australia (2014) 10.71% = 516 ,694 for Qld
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/australia/rural-population-percent-of-total-population-wb-data.html
*** Agistment Calculation $3/head/week for dry cattle, 8 sheep = 1 beast, 1.5 kangaroos = I sheep
$3.00 *1/8 (sheep:cattle ratio))*(1/1.5 kangaroo:sheep ratio)*52 (weeks/year) = $13/kangaroo/year
Total kangaroo agistment cost = $340,106,000.00
**** http://www.livestocklibrary.com.au/handle/1234/4936
***** Method of payment:- due to very poor internet service available to most rural producers, communication as to most appropriate method of payment will have to be by telephone or the very poor Australia Post mail service.
30
Oops. I haven’t learns about WordPress and tables. The 17 million sheep equivalents was meant to be spaced over to the rhs a bit more – it was on preview!
Oh for an edit function.
[Email coming. I would like to be able to grant some commenters the ability to drop in tables or images or to edit comments. Does someone out there know if this is possible in wordpress.org.? – Jo]
20
Open to correction but I was told once that roos evolved to be the perfect boom/bust drought animal which was fine for pre-1788 Australia.
After that as European influence expanded it became common to build dams – even on a small scale – to support the ‘European’ style of farming. With all that water now just laying around every day from a kangaroo’s point of view was now a ‘boom’ day and they breed like, well, roos after the drought had broken.
So in brief, European settlement has been VERY good for the kangaroo population.
40
It’s a “Flash Drought“!
20
‘When a very dead kangaroo scientist’
For a moment I thought the kangaroo scientist was dead. Damn.
20
Tim Flannery predicted that Perth would become the first “Ghost City” of the 21st century. Well, we are still here, Tim, doncha’ know!
Greenie propaganda is doing wondrous things to our state of Western Australia.
For instance:
1. We have ample resources of uranium, e.g. Yeellirie deposit discovered back in 1971. No mining due to environmentalists’ protests and knee-jerk reactions from politicians. Across the border we see mining of uranium in South Australia but this must be due to a fundamental change in the force of physics because South Australian uranium must be much safer than Western Australian uranium.
2. A ban on fracking in Western Australia preventing the development of shale oil and shale gas industries in the Canning Basin for instance. This is despite the fact that frac jobs have carried out in numerous wells in the Canning Basin without any deletrious environmental effects. The first acid-fdac in the Canning was carried out in Yulleroo #1 well back in 1961. How many jobs for young people are currently being lost by this stupidity?
3. Environmentalists, aided and abetted by the ABC, made a determined effort to ban bauxite mining and alumina extraction back in the 1970’s but, thankfully, were unsuccessful.
420
And apparently, no dam storage at all for 2013, at least, not according to Jo’s chart. 😉
40
Runoff barely covered evaporation.
32
It’s coming back to haunt him now. 😉
30
When did the 21st Century end, just out of interest?
32
The 21st Century will end on December 31, 2100.
Will you or Tim Flannelette be still alive to let us know it’s a ghost town?
60
Here’s my prediction, Craig: Perth will continue to be a thriving metropolis well into the 22nd century .
60
No reason not to be there.
Plenty of gas for a long time to come, and that’s just what they know about.
Desal plants can be built and powered, so no worries about water.
Iron ore will always be needed, and there is PLENTY of that in WA.
Perth is still a small, and expanding vibrant city.
Basically Flannery, and those who pay him the slightest credence, are just monumentally ignorance fools.
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Dont get there often enough , but have always been impressed with Perff and environs. Many worse places to live. When I was a worker bee, I recall a high flying thrusting manager type who got transferred to the Perth. All part of his career path, go and manage the State office for a couple of years. After a year there he and his family said nah, no more moving. He stayed with the company for quite a while working in associated locations/companies until he was in the way and then moved on but stayed in Perth.
00
According to the ‘experts’ on the first Earth Day) in 1970, NONE of us should be here now!
“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” — Harvard biologist George Wald
“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.” — Washington University biologist Barry Commoner
“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.” — New York Times editorial
“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” — Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich
“Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born… [By 1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.” — Paul Ehrlich
“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” — Denis Hayes, Chief organizer for Earth Day
“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions…. By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.” — North Texas State University professor Peter Gunter
“In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution… by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half.” — Life magazine
“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.” — Ecologist Kenneth Watt
“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” — Paul Ehrlich
“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate… that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, ‘Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, ‘I am very sorry, there isn’t any.'” — Ecologist Kenneth Watt
“[One] theory assumes that the earth’s cloud cover will continue to thicken as more dust, fumes, and water vapor are belched into the atmosphere by industrial smokestacks and jet planes. Screened from the sun’s heat, the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born.” — Newsweek magazine
“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.” — Kenneth Watt
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BTW Craig, take note of the very last quote;
“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.” — Kenneth Watt”
According to the kiddies over at SkS, this never happened.
40
Let me put it this way Craig:
“Been there, done that”
30
Comrade Craig, the masses will soon be demanding answers on this weird summer weather in south east Australia. What shall I tell them?
30
Here’s something else you can ponder on Craig, which happened in the 20th Century.
The record for the longest heat wave in the world was set in Marble Bar, WA, where from October 31, 1923 to April 7, 1924 the temperature was 37.8 °C (100.0 °F), or above, for 160 days.
The highest temperature recorded during the record spell was 47.5°C
on 18 January 1924.
CO2 was around 305 ppm at the time.
Imagine the press coverage if this happened now.
40
When people talk of Australia’s and the hemisphere’s official record daily max on Jan 2 1960 they seldom mention the days around it. The four day heat wave at Oodnadatta consisted of 47.1, 49.2, 50.7 and 50.3. This has to rate with Bourke 1896 and Marble Bar 1923-4 as an all time climate shocker. And done without human assistance.
Look, ma. No CO2!
60
Great. You’ve read about one weather record (out of millions) and you are using that …to…what’s your point, exactly?
Meanwhile, NOAA makes available a tally of all the broken records and here is what they have for the USA:
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datatools/records
Hot records in the last 365 days: 178
Cold records in the last 365 days: 18
Even if somebody were silly enough to use broken records as their proxy for climate change, the data really doesn’t seem to be offering too much joy to the “global cooling” mob and their unsceptical fans…
11
Just out of interest Craig, Perth so far has recorded it’s 2nd wettest January on record, according to the BoM.
So much for Perth being a ‘ghost town’.
50
So one good rain and we don’t ever have to fear any more droughts again, is that it?
Notice Perth’s “record” dam levels: not even halfway full. That’s how short of water they have become.
…and then we have these other idiots blathering on about how unnecessary desalination plants are….those ones have no clue whatsoever.
11
And with our Perth Dams, if there wasn’t wall to wall eucalypt trees in the catchment areas, then they would be nearly full, especially given that the Darling Range catchments received over 1000mm both in 2016 & 2017. So the previous WA State Govt’s had a better plan – build two desal plants (Kwinana south of Perth and Binningup north of Bunbury) at great expense and pump water from the Kwinana Desal Plant back into the dams – very clever. I am not sure if they pump water from the Binningup Desal Plant back into the dams. Given the vast expenditure on these two desal plants, is any wonder why WA is in so much debt. A lot of money surely could have been saved by removing eucalypt trees in the dam catchment areas and building just the one desal plant as insurance for periods of drought.
281
According to a radio interview between Curtin Radio and a veteran forester a few years ago it used to be standard practice to clean away some of the denser younger growth so that water runoff would be more prolific and to aid the growth of the remaining trees. That was stopped through the efforts of Green activists. Hence much lower water runoff as you say KG.
291
Just an observation from an expat Sandgroper, the last time I visited, about 2 years ago, the density of the under-storey growth in the Darling Ranges was massive compared with what it was in the mid-late ’60s when I visited the area regularly. At that time (mid-late ’60s), the Forestry Commission was carrying out regular controlled burns so every area was burnt every 7 years to control the under-storey, in response to the enquiry into the earlier Dwellingup fires. As I understand it, controlled burns are much less frequent now, resulting in the out of control re-growth, which has the side effect of reducing run-off as the new growth needs much more water.
Obviously, SW WA has lower rainfall as well as there has been no repeat of the mid’50s flooding of the Swan River when it wasn’t unusual for Perth Water to flood the the Esplanade and the upstream river to flood Maylands, Bayswater and Bassendean.
70
Warwick Hughes has been making that point, and I’ve been investigating references on whether the green regrowth and thick underbrush in catchment areas reduces the run off.
So if you know of any for land clearing and stream run off, please email or comment. Cheers!
Paradoxically, we already have studies showing that land clearance in the wheatbelt may have reduced rainfall.
322
Jo, The first time I went thru Jewel Cave down in Margaret River area they told us that the water level in the cave used to be much higher (existing pools, now not in existence). One explaination given was that there was so much underbrush that any water that fell was taken up by the underbrush and never had a chance of making it down into the cave.
131
There were lots of tree roots hanging down in the cave and absorbing moisture from the air, so we were told.
30
Or maybe that other cave near Vasse Felix that we visited another time. Both caves were marvellous to see.
A certain amount of growth is needed, is it not, around catchment areas to prevent landslides? On the other hand, even after some pretty wet weather recently we noticed dryish areas under bushes and thick trees so where does the rain that falls on them end up?
30
This is a tough problem. I wish some of the great funding for climate change could be used to study the water balance under all options of land use from none to clear cutting for agriculture. As I recall salinity problems may occur in some catchments when evapotranspiration is reduced by too much clearing. Better understanding of the hydrology of major rivers and their tributaries under a variety of land use and management should be a high priority.
The money wasted in climate change research could greatly improve our understanding of hydrology, and other land use and management studies.
This is the shame of the catastrophic anthropogenic climate change scam. Money is wasted when there are real needs for research on real problems.
170
“As I recall salinity problems may occur in some catchments “
Bickley is now considered “unusable” and has been taken out of the system (only a small dam anyway.)
One of the southern dams, (Wellington Dam, iirc) is well known for it high salt concentration. So much so that they have considered using desalination to make it usable for agriculture.
91
ps.. Wellington Dam is not part of the Perth system, its further south.
41
“Paradoxically, we already have studies showing that land clearance in the wheatbelt may have reduced rainfall.”
This is a well-known phenomenon. It was recognised in ancient times in the Middle East. In Ancient Mesopotamia, the cutting of a tree was a serious offence:
If a man cut down a tree in the garden of another man, he shall pay one half-mina of silver (Sumerian Law Code)
At other times, it was punishable by death.
Trees release vapour and elements which form the nucleus of clouds. These clouds release rain back to the ground.
Fewer trees mean less rain, decreased hydropower
140
Don’t depend on it.
You might recall that the dryland salinity scare was a furphy in Qld. As the “little golden book” as Gus McGown called it (The Qld salinity management handbook) stated before the beat-up, “in Qld areas below 600 mm of rainfall the chances of dryland salinity are negligable”.
This being due to the rainfall pattern (largely summer and mostly storm rain) combined with high temperatures (reducing the opportunity for infiltration) and evaporative potential greater than rainfall. Thus water tables are well below the surface (currently ours might be about half way to China).
Trial work in western Qld found that moisture turnover was similar whether the community was thick scrub or thinned to lower densities down to totally cleared.
Whereas mediterranean type areas have winter rainfall of extended duration at times of low evaporation (maximising potential for infiltration, rising water tables and salt migration)
70
“Don’t depend on it”
Thank you for that. Australia is always a special case. 🙂
30
Ian, scrub and trees are quite different. A forest 90m thick can give off a lot more VOC. On a flat land (eg WA) they count on the altitude scale too. (Highest point on Darling Scarp is only 550m.). Trees can filter air for moisture even if it is not raining, condensate will catch and drip. Roots on trees go much deeper too.
41
Jo
Not arguing with that at all.
It is important not to try and extrapolate across vegetation types – unless you have data to say that such extrapolation is valid. Which is why management of rangeland Qld is suffering from a surfeit of rainforest types with the government ear IMO.
“Extrapolation is the fertile mother of error” quoted as said by the designer of the De Havilland Comet in Herschel Smith “A History of aircraft piston engines”
20
with no byline I’m assuming you are the author Ms. Nova:
“And general climate noise can always provide mindless cherry-pickable truthisms:”
Comment: A ton of climate change knowledge in one very well written sentence,
in spite of the fact I had never read or heard “truthism” before, yet I knew what was
meant. Here in the USA I think we might have said “factoid”
120
Jo
Here’s a couple
“This has been most tellingly illustrated by the effect plantation eucalypts have had in lowering stream flows and water tables following their over planting on South African veldt”
Scott, D. F. (1999) Managing riparian zone vegetation to sustain streamflow: results of paired catchment experiments in South Africa. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 29: 1149-1157.
“the proposal to control woody plant cover in the Edwards Plateau to increase urban water supplies for San Antonio and Austin, Texas”
Wilcox, B.P. and Kreuter, V.P. (2003) Woody plant: streamflow interactions as a
basis for management decisions in drylands. Proceedings VIIth International
Rangelands Congress. Pp. 989-996.
60
Vis-a-vis run off and land clearing, I am aware of at least one clear case. After having been mined and revegetated to required standards (of the day), the issue arose of insufficient run off into a certain dam. This was because older standards for rehabilitation specified too many stems per hectare. So the area was thinned of vegetation somewhat to increase run off.
You can guess what happened… people started complaining that someone was clearing vegetation in the aforementioned area.
50
BTW on a side topic – I posted the other day about last year’s rainfall being slightly above Watercorp’s very long term average, but if you take out the big dump of Feb17 it would be slightly below average. However, that’s exactly the point … the average contains such sporadic big deluges. Guess what… here we are again:
https://thewest.com.au/news/weather/perths-summer-rain-breaks-records-ng-b88715324z
So when we get to the end of the year and assuming we are a little above average again, people can say “oh, but for that dump in January, it would have been below average.” Deja vu, all over again.
50
Wungong Catchment research project to boost water run-off
Wungong Catchment Trial (PDF)
Water Corp today
Keep in mind that the average rainfall to which we are to aspire typically includes the short yet exceptionally wet period in the middle of the 20th century. Warwick Hughes had some charts on this in 2005
30
Good find Berne,
It stands to reason that removal of general undergrowth around larger trees will have two beneficial effects.
There will be less rainwater sitting on leaves waiting to evaporate and what rain there is can saturate the ground and runoff.
The growing trees get more water and so does the catchment.
KK
10
Sorry.
Autocorrect changed it Bernd.
00
It never ceases to amaze me that somehow AGW is related to less water. The opposite is true. The higher the temp, the more mosture in the air and more rain. The fact that we had steadily less rain in WA in the last 50 years I attribute to the local cooling rather warming. Now we have more rain which is probably an effect of El Niño/La Niña perturbations. In geo record along the WA coast we have recent sands composed of 100% quartz (including in Perth) that are devoided of any life, no shells, not like on today’s beaches. This was deposited during that last glacial period when sands similar to Albany (a town some 350kms south of Perth) were deposited in Perth. Be scared of cold, not of warmth as these times bring death flora and fauna very quickly. In a way our favourite dead marsupials failed teacher may be right for the wrong reason. Perth may become of a ghost not because of global warming but because of global cooling.
91
Yes but most CAGW “information” assumes the average punter knows very little about science ( which is mostly true ).
I still think the best way to defeat the CAGW nonsense is to show all the failed predictions….most people can work thatsort of stuff out, but it needs to be laid out simply and clearly.
60
“The water in our dams is no longer just made up of inflows from rain. Groundwater and desalinated water are stored in these dams during periods of low demand so it is available when it is most needed in the hotter months”.
Wow, this sounds like a very expensive and very inefficient way to fill a reservoir. Does anyone know how much is spent on this process each year and what % of the reservoirs are actually filled this way?
50
And how much of that water evaporates?
40
“And how much of that water evaporates?”
Total evaporation from their dams is around 20GL/year. +/- some
41
That was my first thought about that Another Ian. With heat and strong wind a lot would be lost to evaporation. What a waste of expensive water.
30
As I mentioned elsewhere, Annie…
Its a sort of “insurance” storage, in case they have a desal outage.
They are well aware of the evaporation issue, and what they are starting to do is to store excess desal and highly treated wastewater in the aquifers, as a sort of “savings” system. No evaporation and what they “save” they can take out later, on top of the normal 125GL/year allowance.
They have to plan for what the rainfall/runoff data tells them is happening, which since the 1960s is a rather significant drop in runoff.
Forget “climate change” mumbo, look at the data.
https://s19.postimg.org/d3pahw3cz/IWSS_rainfall_and_runoff.png
32
Can somebody explain how Perth is different re the catchments? both the main catchments areas and dams in Sydney and Melbourne are pretty densely forested and protected. Just for my edumacation.
00
This ABC report from January 2017, when the subtropical ridge was intense, but the STR collapsed in July with the promise of normal winter rains in the coming decade. Its possible to see the Great Climate Shift of 1976.
‘More recently, writing a book for the WA Department of Water, Till the Stream Runs Dry, I talked to those now responsible for measuring the considerable decline in rainfall: men like hydrographer Bernie Hawkins, whose career began in the 1960s.
“The winters then were massively wetter,” he said. “We were in waterproofs, wellington boots and sou’westers most of the winter.”
‘But even 10 years later, things had changed: “We were quite aware that there had been a change in rainfall. The winters weren’t the same. We kept on saying it all the time as the years went by.”
110
And the question is — which we can’t know for years — whether we have flipped back to that rainfall pattern.
120
Yeah, looking at Perth Airport is a sobering sight, but I’m convinced SWWA will experience 1960s rainfall in the years ahead.
100
BB ?
20
The recent “discovery” of a centennial Antarctic cycle may hold some clues.
http://notrickszone.com/2018/01/15/ph-d-climate-scientist-modern-warming-natural-co2-changes-affect-climate-weakly-at-most/#sthash.lWqI36cw.dpbs
32
‘The period and amplitude of ACOs oscillate in phase with glacial cycles and related surface insolation associated with planetary orbital forces.’
Yes indeed, the new paradigm is developing.
Note to Ed: a Stephen Wilde guest post so that I can join the dots.
20
Still, the main point I am trying to make is that the Perth Water guys have to go by what the data for rainfall and runoff is telling them, and if it had continued without these last couple rain events, then they may as well have just taken runoff out of the supply picture.
What I am also trying to say is that their main risk now is from infrastructure failures, not run-off failures.
Heading back towards a 1960s rainfall regime would be great news for them because they would no longer need to consider expensive upgrades to the system.
32
Okay, from where I’m standing no further expensive upgrades will be necessary.
20
Demand will keep growing.
If the rainfall drops back to like it was from 2010-2015, then this rain has only delayed things slightly.
You cannot run a supply network on a knife edge, maximum 305GL available, 305GL needed and growing.
My guess is that you will see Perth Water trying to hold back that demand growth as much as possible, but a lot of it is well north of Perth itself, so new infrastructure will be needed anyway. (Yanchep, Two Rocks, Eglinton, Alkimos region) Also new development happening to the south towards Pinjarra.
Jo would know more about where the actual expansion regions of Perth are.
Anyways, eventually supply upgrades will be needed.
But I don’t think they will be desal. 😉
42
My guesstimate is that normal winter rains will return and the dams will fill to capacity, based simply on a negative Southern Annular Mode.
10
Would be wonderful if that happened, but they can’t plan for it, can they.
Because of the “absolute must” nature of water supply to cities, they must plan for the worst that is likely to happen. And 2010-2015 show that the worse runoff they might get, is pretty much zero.
32
You’re talking about the ‘precautionary principle’ which is constructed on a fallacy.
Do not concern yourself, winter rains will return to south west Australia and the dams fill to capacity over the coming decade.
Its all perfectly clear once you eliminate CO2 from the equation.
11
Its all just data driven. All they can do is look at current and recent past trends in rainfall and runoff. There is no “climate change” meme behind their decisions.
You cannot have a city the size of Perth run short of water.
Sure, its GREAT NEWS if the rainfall comes back, but you must plan for what you actually have.
With their new strategies, I doubt you will see another desal plant for quite a long time, even if the rainfall remains low. They don’t want to spend any more money than necessary either, but they have a responsibility to supply water as close to 100% reliability as possible.
21
My betting which I have been proclaiming at least here in west Vic , is that we are already well into a similar weather pattern as was the situation from 1948 here in west Vic right through to 1976 when the rains suddenly reduced in quantity and began to experience dry, droughty conditions as we now know, the Great Pacific Climate Shift of 1997/ 98 was getting under way towards a more El Ninos and a warmer, drier near three decades that has transpired since..
.
The Cloud types and formations and cloud base heights around here are now much greater beginning about 3 or 4 years ago with Cumulous type cloud cover up to bases of ten thousand feet and consequent overall cooler temperatures so far his year,.
All of which are much more reminiscent of the times in the 1960’s to midway through the 70’s when I was doing some very long flights in gliders out of Horsham in excellent high cloud base , strong smooth well structured thermal lift under those clouds on many days enabling fast speeds and long distances to be flown.
Then in the late 1970’s the conditions for gliding in west vic precipitously decayed and the thermals were broken, rough, difficult to work and generally not in the same league as the 1960’s to the mid 1970’s conditions.
Conversely the conditions in eastern Vic and up the east coast of Australia were excellent gliding conditions.
It appears that a very broad, weak and semi-permanent north south trough lay down through central Victoria for all of those 3 decades possibly as a part of the inflow of warm moist air from the Tasman sea which flows in at altitude , sinks as it would in the right sector of a trough formation and then flows back east at ground level providing cooler and more unstable atmospheric conditions in eastern vicoria and SE NSW..
We were on the drier, warmer more stable western side of the trough and under the dry stable continental air systems were destined to be facing some near three decades of very difficult, dry, hot growing conditions for our agricultural scene here in west Vic.
I suspect that very weak north south central Victorian trough has either dissipated or has shifted west of Victoria as the next approximate three decade negative phase of the PDO kicks into gear with the probability / possibility of cooler conditions and much wetter conditions to become the norm for another couple of decades ahead in Western Victoria.
.
Contrails from the jet liners are another interesting phenomena which have reappeared over the last year here in our skies after a near absence of nearly 40 years and have been the subject of some discussion by the locals at their reappearance..
Their reappearance is something that should not have occurred with the regularity they are now appearing considering the effects of technology on the micron sized particles around which visible trails of super cooled water in the form of large droplet vapour forms in the trail of jet eengined aircraft..
.
Reason;
The original jet engines of a half a century ago were by today’s standards, very inefficient in their fuel burn; ie; they used a lot of fuel to go anywhere at all compared to the miserly consumption, relatively speaking of the modern jet engines of today.
The modern jet engines give roughly a 60% improvement in fuel efficiency burn per 100 passenger kilometers over the fuel burn figures from those early1960’s jets.
And the modern jets do it faster and higher and with twice as many or more passengers . And still the fuel efficiencies per seat mile improve year by year at about 1.6% per year.
Consequently those earlier engines produced a huge amount of very fine, micron sized, unburnt or partially burnt fuel residues which in the altitudes around 35,000 feet these micron sized particles provided an excellent core for the condensation of the super cooled water vapour droplets.
Plus the water vapour produced from burning of the fuel which condensed around those burnt and unburnt fuelt micron sized fuel residues leading to the formation of those immense patterns of contrails that we use to see nearly every day following the roues of the jet airliners at the beginning of the jet age.
And then quite abruptly, probably around the end of the 1960’s those contrails just quietly faded away and from out of the public consciousness as the jet engine efficiencies rapidly increased, fuel burn became ever better and consequently there were less mcron sized particles for the basis of condensation of the super cooled water vapour at the heights the airliners flew at.
And just maybe less water vapour at those particular heights the jets flew at as the precursors of the still to be recognised Great Pacific Climate shift of 1977 an 1978 began to exert their influences.
But now with still increasinfg efficiencies in jet engine fuel burns , now using considerably less than half, up to over 60% less in a few cases, the fuel to transport the same number of passengers over the same distances as those jets of the 1960’s, and therfore with far less particles of the sizes that super cooled water vapour can form around to produce contrails, we are quite suddenly seeing contrails again forming in some numbers .
Although they are also mostly dissipating at a far higher rate and in a much less time frame, only appearing for few minutes and hundred to a couple of hundred kilometers behind the jet sources of those contrails.
All of which to me indicates the probability that either there is now a much larger percentage of super cooled water vapour entering the atmosphere in that 30 thou to 40 thou foot levels and / or temperatures up there have fallen considerably in that same layer of the atmosphere or both.
The longer term outcome?
Who knows but I for one, based on what I saw and experienced back in the 1950’s, 60’s and to the mid 70’s, we won’t mention the often very hard farming decades after the mid 1970’s to the mid 2010’s , think that we might be heading back into a predominant La Nina, PDO negative , cooler and wetter few decades into the future.
At least for here in west Vic.
And if the Idian Ocean Dipole kicks into its negative phase then hang on as we could well have the incredibly wet years of the early 1970’s all over agin.
For the rest of you , well you take your chances along with the rest of us.
Times and the climate, they are a’changing all over again and wwho knows where it will lead the global climate and how it will affect mankind.
.
Australia’s Variable Rainfall; The Long Paddock ; Maps of Australia’s 116 years of rainfall
93
I think the jet contrails have a simpler explanation. A cooling of the atmosphere at cruising height. In my part of Canada, the jets almost always leave contrails at cruising height. Same kind of jets as Australia. It is simply that the air is cold enough to condense the water exhausted by jet engines as a by-product of combustion. The same as the steam we see coming out of vents and tailpipes during cold weather.
50
rockredneck;
The temperature at around 35,000 feet at or near the top of the troposhere where the jets fly for maximum efficiencies in fuel savings is around [ minus ] -51 C or [ minus ] – 60 F .
So a few degrees temperature changes one way or another isn’t going to make a scrap of difference to the formation of contrails from water vapour at those heights.
If the micron sized nuclei for super cooled water vapour to form cloud droplets are not around or there isn’t sufficient water vapour to fform those cloud droplets then there won’t be any contrails.
Contrails are after all nothing more than artificially formed high altitude clouds.
30
And another factor affecting contrails is that modern aircraft do not fly as high as the older jets, ie, where they fly it’s not as cold. In the mid -’60s, Boeing 727s cruised at 43000ft + while most current aircraft are around 32-37000ft. O/T, the 727s also cruised faster, taking 3 1/4 hours Perth-Melbourne (or as little as 2 1/2 with a good tailwind).
21
ROM
This part of western Qld hasn’t seen a decent hammerhead storm cloud for a while.
O/T Find yourself a copy of
Stanley Hooker “Not much of an engineer”
for a good read. He was the supercharger whiz behind the Merlin among other things.
From there re jet efficiencies. At flat chat the Concorde had a thermal efficiency of 43%.
30
I have a copy of Stanley Hooker’s biography,
If I get to Horsham in Feb I will lend it to ROM.
30
Peter
I reckon he’ll enjoy it
10
‘…what I saw and experienced back in the 1950′s, 60′s and to the mid 70′s …’
Correct, remember the 1950s floods? Because of AGW the appropriate authorities are blissfully unaware of a catastrophe looming, this is not a parody.
20
Do I ever remember those 1950’s floods and wet, wet wet!
A 17 year old teen ager sitting out in a no cabin tractor in drizzling rain getting bogged to the axles literally two or three times a day.
And then the utterly exhausting trek, sometimes two or three treks each time one got bogged through a couple of hundred metres of mud up to the ankles, carrying heavy 8 and 10 foot long poles to be placed under the wheels of the tractor to try and get it to climb up onto the rails and get out of that bog hole.
;
Another farm , not ours.
A tractor bogged to the axles and in an arc of a hundred metres out and around the front of that tractor , five more of the neighbours tractors bogged to the axles as they tried to get the original bogged tractor our.
The decision was taken to leave them all there which they did for about two months until the weather warmed up a little and the ground dried out enough to walk out to those tracrtors and a some longer chains plus another couple of tractors in tandem managed to pull them all out a couple of months after they first got bogged.
Ducks trying to land on sheets of water that covered tens of acres but was only a couple of centimetres deep.
Usual duck approach with landing gear extended out front to make a ski type stop only to have the landing gear hit the muddy bottom and a spectacular and completely unplanned rapidly changing multi position aerobatic/ acrobatic performance at very low level with mud and water and duck all sort of mixed up.
Great hilarity from the homo sapiens spectators as the ducks finally got themselves sorted and more or less in duck talk muttered , f—k, we won’t do tthat again.
But they did!
60
On that occasion La Nina was hanging about in the summer of 1954, making things very soggy, then an intense east coast low moved down from Queensland in early 1955 and flooding resulted.
At the moment ENSO is neutral, so we have this weirdness of extreme heatwaves for a few days followed by an equal number of cool days.
20
Blushing red and purple anomaly maps aside, Perth has been a bit drier in recent decades. 2006 was actually drier than those other low rainfall years like 1914 and 1940. I’ve read some learned explanations to do with Hadley cells and the like.
But you have to be careful with learned explanations of drought in Oz. They’re like desalination plants…they tend to cause flooding.
101
BoM and the like use Perth rainfall when takling about out water supply; which is largely irrelevant because Perth is not in a catchment of any of the reservoirs.
P.S. Didn’t I write that Perth is the wettest that it’d been for 8 years; last August?
100
According to the BoM, it’s the 2nd wettest January, so far, on record.
10
It’s the Wettest Drought. Evah!
The connection between record high temperatures and catastrophic flooding events isn’t inferential, it’s direct.
Up goes the temperature, down comes the deluge.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/lyons-climate-change-deniers-are-the-new-marlboro-men/
We must prepare for an increased risk of more frequent and severe drought conditions
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/impacts/causes-of-drought-climate-change-connection.html#.WQ93AlJ7Ghc
40
“and may not even be from rainfall,”
What a strange comment. !!
I though all their run-off into the larger dams was gauged.
Where else do they think it came from ??
81
Everyone knows rain is unicorn tears Andy.
10
I wonder what WA grain production was this year?
51
The rains in September saved the crops in a lot of areas. Kalannie, Beacon, North Mukinbudin etc didn’t get these rains and so did not finish up very well. I undertstand Esperence did very well. CBH are the ones to know.
40
Its another bumper crop in grain and canola, looks like returning a profit at last.
10
Warwick Hughes has continually pointed out, it is not the rainfall which is the problem (of course water use has increased due to population and industry use), but the mismanagement of the dam catchments areas.
Perth water policy disaster rolls on ignoring one obvious cheap solution (Jan 28,2016).
91
Interesting. Just imagine if you took a 1 litre beaker of water into the bush and threw it over some undergrowth.
You can picture a fair amount of that water sitting on leaves and being directed down to the root system where it would be very welcome.
A rule of thumb would say that in a catchment area, the more undergrowth, the less available runoff.
KK
61
Just so you can see the issue.
Here is Perth Rainfall and Runoff since 1960
You can see the reduction in both.
What is really telling is the runoff coefficient (runoff/rainfall) since 2000
https://s19.postimg.org/d3pahw3cz/IWSS_rainfall_and_runoff.png
61
It occurs to me that the best weapon against the CAGW-inistas is their own failed foolish predictions.
Once the mug punters realize the hysteria is just that, all support will evaporate.
Then of course the Establishment will probably start a war to divert the peoples attention away from such truth, and in the confusion, quietly arrest and illegally imprison Skeptics on false charges in mental institutions….its a favourite tactic of tyrants…
Ive noticed the recent beefing up of prisons and mental institutions recently, odd….
30
Hence the expensive new fence around Parliament House in Canberra?
20
The warmists would like to arrange,
Where and when the climate should change,
Thinking downpours are weird,
And warm spells should be feared,
But it’s they and not climate that’s strange.
270
Love you Ruairi
20
CBH profit soars on bumper crop
The Australian-7 hours ago
Australia’s largest grain exporter CBH Group has reported its biggest ever underlying profit in the year to 30 September, driven by a record Western Australian harvest. The company is “well positioned” for the year ahead as a trend towards increasing crop sizes in Western Australia continues, chief
15 Jan: AFR: CBH sticks to its guns after unveiling record profit
by Brad Thompson
CBH reported a profit before rebates of $247.6 million for 2017, compared to $112.5 million the year prior.
The strong result allowed the Perth-based group to return an unprecedented patronage rebate of $156.3 million, or up to $12.75 per tonne, to about 4200 grain growing members in Western Australia.
The record result came on the back of the state’s biggest grain harvest with CBH receiving 16.6 million tonnes into its vast storage and export network, which includes four port terminals.
Mr Wilson, a former BHP executive, said grower members expected management to focus on ensuring their co-operative was sustainable.
“When you do have good years, the growers are expecting that the rebates are provided and given back but that those rebates are not excessive and put the business in a situation where in essence it can’t service the capital that it does need to deploy to ensure that there is a world-class, low-cost, outbound logistical business here and also that the business is able to fund the bad years that potentially can occur,” he said.
“We have had a number of really good years in this business but potentially there could be bad years and it is important that the organisation retains sufficient funds to weather those storms.”…
CBH’s revenue topped $3.47 billion in 2017 with net profit after tax of $91.3 million once the $156.3 million in rebates was deducted from the surplus. The co-operative reported it had no long-term debt, zero gearing and total assets of $2.17 billion…
http://www.afr.com/business/cbh-sticks-to-its-guns-after-unveiling-record-profit-20180115-h0ihvu
50
15 Jan: TheWest: WA’s biggest harvest bumps up CBH’s record surplus
by Jenne Brammer
The huge surplus, up by 120 per cent on a year earlier, was driven by WA’s biggest-ever 16.6 million tonne harvest and a disciplined approach to cost and capital management.
These strong results enabled CBH to pay a record rebate to growers of up to $12.75 per tonne, totalling $156.3 million, announced in September.
After accounting for the rebate, net profit after tax was $91.3 million, an increase of 83 per cent on the previous year.
Total revenue was $3.5 billion, ($3.8 billion including pool revenue), marking a 6.3 per cent increase from a year earlier. Although a larger number of tonnes was traded, this was partially offset by lower grain prices…
https://thewest.com.au/business/agriculture/was-biggest-harvest-bumps-up-cbhs-record-surplus-ng-b88714462z
***trickles?
11 Jan: The West: Grain ***trickles into bins as harvest ends
by Cally Dupe and Shannon Hampton
Statewide, grain growers have now produced an above-average crop overall.
GIWA oilseeds council chairman Michael Lamond said growers were feeling relieved. “It was pretty grim (in June),” he said.
“It’s a massive turnaround. It’s unprecedented, really. No one could’ve foreseen how the finish could have gone so well.”…
Farmers in the Geraldton zone battled dry conditions and were bracing for a devastating season, with as little as 500,000 tonnes forecast midyear.
But late rains led to an astonishing turnaround, zone manager Duncan Gray said, with CBH receiving more than 1.5 million tonnes from the area.
“It was a complete drought (in June) and you would have said then it was going to be a complete wipe-out,” he said. “At the end of July, early August, we were thinking, ‘where is this going to go?’. It just went upwards and onwards from there.”
Mr Levett said growers in his area were now busy spraying zealous summer weeds…
https://thewest.com.au/countryman/grain-trickles-into-bins-as-harvest-ends-ng-b88708152z
60
Everything that the climate catastrophists had predicted failed to occur while everything that occurred was not predicted by these same catastrophists.
61
So they have been consistently, unfailingly and completely wrong every time.
That’s because their absurd interpretation of the facts is the complete opposite of the truth, even to the point of fudging the facts, drawing hockey sticks.
When you start with a wrong premise and a political agenda, that’s what happens.
It was never about the truth. Just communism dressed up as environmentalism. Like the current violent campaign against Australia day. A made up battle over nothing but already nasty like all the battles in the US. Engineered mayhem without facts or reason and plenty of violent supporter.
Climate Change is simply made up nonsense. After thirty years of this, the climate of “land of droughts and flooding rains” has not changed at all, despite the best efforts of the CSIRO and BOM.
81
couldn’t help wondering if TheWest’s “trickles” pair – Cally Dupe and Shannon Hampton – were part of the CAGW media mob:
Aug 2017: The West: Rain relief as crops soak it all in
by Cally Dupe
Three weeks ago, Northampton farmers Lindsay and Kate Box did not know whether they would harvest a crop this year…
But scattered showers which dumped 50mm-70mm across their wheat, lupins, oats and canola last month have turned the season around.
Mr Box said he breathed a sigh of relief each time a small rain event occurred across his 2900ha of arable land…
With low rain initially forecast, the pair slashed their program by about a third, seeding 1155ha in two stints after rainfall events in May and June…
Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development integrated farming systems manager David Ferris said this week’s rainfall was welcome.
But he said it was also was too late for some farmers in the north-eastern grain belt whose crops would not germinate.
“The recent rainfall came far too late to support a harvestable crop in the north-eastern agricultural areas,” he said…
WA has just experienced its fourth-driest June-July on record and dry conditions have put a dent in the State’s forecast grain production…
The Grain Industry Association of WA’s July crop report estimated the size of the 2017 harvest between 10 million and 12 million tonnes…
Bureau of Meteorology senior climate liaison officer Glenn Cook said recent scenarios, in which cold fronts hit coastal areas but fizzled out before heading inland, were likely to continue.
“The models seem to suggest that this pattern will persist during the next few months, it is unlikely to change,” he said.
Almost a third of farmers in the northern Wheatbelt are not expecting to harvest a crop this year after the dry start to winter.
According to BoM, most of the Wheatbelt has a 60-70 per cent chance of below-average rainfall during the next three months.
https://thewest.com.au/countryman/rain-relief-as-crops-soak-it-all-in-ng-b88555097z
Dec 2015: TheWest: Nowhere hotter than here in WA
by Tim Clarke and Shannon Hampton
WA was the hottest place on Earth yesterday, as Perth recorded its warmest December day for three years — and Geraldton Airport topped the global temperature scale when it reached a blazing 45.1C.
As towns all over the State broke the 40C mark, sweltering holidaymakers made a beeline for beaches and cinemas — while backyard pools were also popular — in a bid for any relief from the heat…
Deadly extreme weather on at least five continents is driven in large part by a record-breaking El Nino, but climate change is a likely booster too, experts said today.
EXTREME WEATHER AROUND THE WORLD
VICTORIAN FIRE DANGER TO SPIKE
EL NINO, CLIMATE CHANGE DRIVE WILD WEATHER
WILD STORMS KILL 43 IN US
DEATH, MASS EVACUATIONS IN SOUTH AMERICAN FLOODS
BIGGEST SNOW STORM IN DECADES HITS MEXICO
EUROPE HIT BY FREAK WEATHER
WILDFIRES IN NORTHERN SPAIN
BRITAIN NEEDS RETHINK ON FLOOD DEFENCE
QLD TROPICAL COAST ON FLOOD WATCH
But there was nowhere hotter in the world than the weather station at the airport in Moonyoonooka, 11km east of Geraldton, which had topped 35C by 8am and kept on climbing. According to data from almost 8000 weather stations worldwide, the only place warmer worldwide in the preceding 24 hours had been Augrabies Falls National Park in South Africa.
But as their temperatures dipped overnight, WA’s soared to some of the hottest in recent years.
Perth’s 41.6C was the warmest December day in the city since 2012, and Perth’s seventh-hottest December day on record. Nullagine, Telfer and Gingin also made the world’s hottest top 10.
https://thewest.com.au/news/australia/nowhere-hotter-than-here-in-wa-ng-ya-134533
30
Some comments here about media sensationalist headlines. http://rockyredneck.simplesite.com/432394455
10
The reality is that Perth’s dams provide <10% of Perth's water supply and <10% of that water is for domestic use.
For too long domestic users have been sent on a guilt trip.
110
International cooperation amongst the elites:
Perthifornia — sister states in a state of drought. Even when there is water.
Please don’t tell me Perth isn’t draining their damns to save the fishies.
Promiscuous piscatorialism is such as exotic idiocy.
41
So dams are being drained to create an artificial water shortage? Is that correct?
20
In other parts of Australia, it seems to be the policy to maintain water levels at well below capacity in case of extreme rainfall. The Wivenhoe Dam in Queensland was built in after the Brisbane floods of 1971 for this express purpose. Yet when the rains came six years ago, the dam was full. Maybe as a result of forecast climate change?
71
It was 1974 for the flood. But, yes, the 2011 flood was partly due to Flanney and the subsequent desire not to waste a drop. Wivenhoe is only supposed to be 1/2 full leaving the gap to take flood water as well as releasing all that time. The idiots did not release until the water hit the top. The dam came close to collapsing which could have drowned 1,000s.
10
Actually, the engineers originally designed TWO dams, one for storage and one for flood mitigation.
Because of the Greenies, only one COMPROMISED dam was built.
10
It’s comical the way these “experts” make their pronouncements, then deny all knowledge of them when they fail to come true and go on to make more pronouncements of doom and gloom of some other kind.
If Los Angeles — a desert by any geological or geographic standard — can keep going without any water supply but what get’s imported from hundreds of miles away I’m sure Perth will survive with equal ease.
I wish someone would try paying these “experts” to find good news instead of bad. I think they could come up with many reasons to rejoice instead of trembling in fear of becoming extinct.
80
And how come it is that the plan to become a ghost town isn’t summarily dispatched to the ash heap of history where all failed theories are destined to go?
70
You would think the human race has never had a bad problem until now when we have so many experts to tell us what’s going wrong.
80
Perth has plenty of access to ground water, its just a matter of when to put the funds and effort into accessing it.
And with 2 Desal plants, they really don’t have any “drought security” issues at all.
They have an infrastructure risk problem.
81
I for one am glad that Perth is now using desal plants to supply water rather than use groundwater. During summer, the extensive use of groundwater meant horrible-tasting water and the draining of some of the lakes and wetlands around Perth.
20
With the staggering amount of money Australia has wasted on desal plants we could have engaged in some proper engineering projects to bring water from nothern rivers to dry areas such as Perth and desert and semi-desert areas and still had plenty of money to spare to build coal and nuclear power plants.
102
And not to forget the ongoing annual maintenance expenses cost to taxpayers.
50
Lake Argyle to Perth…..
https://www.water.wa.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/4966/64772.pdf
pages 83-> give a good summary of why not.
about 5 times the cost of desal.
“To be competitive with other sources available to the Water Corporation, the cost of
delivering water from the Kimberley would need to be reduced by 80 per cent. This was not
seen as achievable by any of the options studied even taking an optimistic view of the
development of new technologies in the future.”
71
That may be correct for the rest of Australia, but in WA the desal plants have been a godsend.
20
What? Would you have Perth emulate Los Angeles and do something practical just because it would solve a problem? Unthinkable! You never take a practical step to solve a problem. That violates the unthinking man’s main dictum, the prime directive, do the wrong thing or do noting at all.
Unfortunately these days such projects as the aqueducts that bring water to a thirsty Los Angeles would probably be blocked and LA would be a ghost town. And if some in Northern California could get their way that water would be shut off. All it would take is a case that got to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that sits in San Francisco and they might win. The probable result is something I have nightmares about.
Now that Justice Gorsuch is on the Supreme Court the outcome would probably be better and I’ve no longer been worried about that possibility. But we’re still faced with growing demand on a fixed resource and the long term isn’t pretty. I hope Perth fares better than to become a ghost town.
00
Roy, If you read the link above, you will see that the Lake Argyle to Perth pipeline was considered, but that for Perth, desal was a far cheaper and more reliable option.
00
Andy, I’m not an expert on desal. But the City of Oxnard California built itself a desalination plant depending on reverse osmosis, which is the only option that I know of other than distillation. They raved about it in the press until it came time to put it into operation. Then suddenly I could find no more information about it.
I had reverse osmosis sitting under my kitchen sink for years and it has/had a serious problem in that the membrane can become punctured and allow something through that could be quite dangerous. Since I was filtering already safe water I didn’t care about that. But when you’re filtering potentially unsafe water, salt water at that, the danger prospect gets to be a glaring problem, at least in my mind. I don’t know what happened to all the promise of Oxnard’s desal plant but the sudden dearth of information about it is suspicious, no?
What does the City of Perth, Australia know that I don’t?
I did another search just now and found this saying the plant hasn’t worked for 2 years. It says it was posted May 23, 2014. This describes a classic screw up. If our project to put a man on the moon had been run this well we would have killed every astronaut we tried to put aboard a rocket and light the fuse until we learned our lesson and scrapped the project.
00
I should have mentioned that 2014 is after my last search for info on that plant.
00
To put things in perspective, Jo’s chart shows that available dam water is currently about 150GL and has been a lot less recently
Perth uses just over 300GL of water per year. So they only have 6 months storage.
Fortunately they are allowed 125GL per year from the aquifers plus what Desal provides.
Look at 2013 (the dark blue unmarked line on Jo’s first chart Barely 35GL available at its lowest.
So, 35GL + 125GL (groundwater) + maximum of 145GL from Perth (45) and Southern (100) Desal plants.
That equals a maximum of 305GL/year available and Perth uses just over 300GL/year..
Now, what happens if one of those desal plants has failure ???
81
It seems that the output of the desal plants is pumped into the dams (unconfirmed). If this is correct, the dams then continue the water supply until the desal plant is repaired. We have more than one desal plant running BTW.
10
Graeme, You can see where I split the desal between the two plants. (3rd bottom line)
As I said, the pumping of spare desal water to the dams is a sort of insurance policy against breakdowns. Some is also pumped into the aquifers as a “saving”.
Nevertheless, before the recent rains, the system was on the borderline.
And demand is increasing.
If rainfall drops back down to the 2010-2015 levels.. you have “issues” with supply.
Demand at the moment is just over 300GL/year.
In 20 years, that demand will probably grow to somewhere between 380 and 420 GL.
Where is that extra water coming from?
21
WCORP is investigating additional sources. That is a combination of ground water replenishment, desal, usage minimisation strategies etc. Easiest is a other desal but that is serious capital..likley to be North of Perth…other two are South.
20
“likely to be North of Perth”
The two main expansion regions are North and south
Alkimos region desal or one even further up the coast.
Kwinana South desal or one further down the coast
Another option they could consider is increasing the capacity of Perth desal plant
I believe they have now linked in Harris reservoir.
I suspect they will use quite a bit of groundwater replenishment with the deeper northern aquifers. I believe the Bennyup replenishment system is already up and running.
They may also look at replenishment systems for the Leederville and Gnagara aquifers.
Probably the cheapest options for starters.
11
‘The decline in autumn and winter rainfall in the south-west is attributed to the southward shift of the subtropical ridge and the southern hemisphere polar jet stream. The associated strengthening of the polar jet stream and a 17% reduction in the strength of the subtropical jet stream over Australia have reduced the likelihood of storm development over the south-west. This is most likely the result of a weakening of the temperature gradient between the equator and the poles.
‘A weaker subtropical jet stream leads to slower alternation of low and high pressure systems, and weaker surface low pressure systems and cold fronts. The stronger polar jet stream is associated with low pressure anomalies over Antarctica and high pressure anomalies over the mid-latitudes. Consequent rainfall reductions over south-west WA are associated with the persistence of high pressure systems over the region. While heavy rainfall events can still occur, they are often interspersed by longer dry periods.’
Dept of Primary Industries and Regional Development, March 2016
31
This graph tells the story of seasonal rainfall changes, also the massive drop in the runoff coefficient since 2000.
https://s19.postimg.org/d3pahw3cz/IWSS_rainfall_and_runoff.png
31
El Gordo @ #26
I believe tht SW WA had very good late sason rainfall this last year which created some very good growing conditions and some consequent excellent yields from their grain crops.
.
I have previously read that BOM explanation for the past fall off in rainfall in SW WA which unfortunately has extended for a couple of decades now.
So assuming that the BOM’s own explanation re the weakening of the pole / equatorial temperature gradient , generally accepted as happening over the last 3 decades or so as the slight natural warming of the climate occurred coming out of the remainder of the LIA in the 18th and 19th century and with increasing solar activity of the time, all of the reasons given for the fall off on global cyclone activity over the last couple of decades and the low cyclonic index numbers and the changes in the polar jet streams and the consequent shifting in the tracks of the high and low pressure systems across Australia.
We can now asssume using BOM’s own explanations that with a small but now widely accepted cooling in Antarctica, an accepted cooling in the Southern Ocean which has a huge impact on the Australian continent and a general trend with decreasing solar activity [ you will probably find a connection between SWWA rainfall and solar activity if some old memory is right about a research paper being written with that conclusion before political correctness over took climate science and destroyed it, from many years ago can be located. ] all with a consequent increase in the temperature gradient between poles and equator and therefore higher and more turbulent atmospheric flows as the polar / equatorial temperture differential gradient tries to smooth out and equalise, that the polar jet plus the positions of the low pressure anomalies will now begin to shift with the changes in the global temperature profiles and we could again see some very wet conditions that SW WA saw back in the period from about the turn of the 20th century through to the mid 1930’s.
In the late 1950’s through to the beginnning of the 1970’s many long established farming families from western Vic’s Wimmera and Malleee up rooted themselves lock stock and barrel, machinery, live stock, the lot and moved to the New Lands of Western Australia and to Northern NSW and Queensland’s Darling Downs country to clear land and to set up farming there.
Certainly those that went west seem to strike it lucky with the seasosn and did very well as they cleared hundreds of thousands of acres in the NewLand grain areas of SW WA and in the central and northern grain regions of WA.
40
ROM
Having used the BOM explanation like that you can expect that they will come up with another one to say you’re wrong
10
ROM the Southern Annular Mode shifted to its negative phase in late July 2017 and the SW received good late winter rains.
https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/wa/winter-rain-fills-perth-dams-to-highest-levels-in-decade-ng-5a77e9b5ad92732776aee06ce8e76191
Now with this current deluge they can turn off the desalination plant.
10
Ot not all hospitals block access
To this site .
20
I for one am grateful for the small cyclone that helped extinguish the wildfire just up the road from my home. Thanks Jo for pointing out the continued lunacy of the global catastrophe lovers.
70
Summer in Cooma NSW – 7C at 8.00am
60
That’s Christian Edwards (Australian Associated Press) via today’s Oz.
The air quality indexes for Beijing (for instance) do not mention CO2 because CO2 is not pollution.
Either the writer is using clever wording to conflate CO2 and smog and his article is blatant propaganda, or he is plain ignorant.
40
China needs to copy developed nations and the Environmental Protection Agency with related laws agains polluting created during the 1970s that effectively cleaned up cities and environment in general.
I ask myself why the man-made global warming fanatics don’t report “carbon pollution” to the EPA – sarc.
20
Dennis, China already has those environmental laws on ther books.
It is just that many provincial officials and bureacrats fail to implement those clean air policies.
To do so would mean closing some major often government owned industries and companies down wih consequent unemployment which frightens the hell out of your average provincial chief as unemployment means trouble on the streets.
Secondly a large part of many private companies are owned indirectly by those same provincial officials and their families so they are not going to cut their own throats financially by closing a factory down even if it is pouring out a lot of not very pleasant substances into the local air.
If those local officials don’t actually own the local industries and factories they are more then likely to be the benifitters of large paper bags of the folding stuff.
All of the above is whu Xi is having his corruption drive at the moment which is also conveniently, a means of eliminating the opposition to his rule.
A few months ago the Central committtee agreed to stop the burning of coal for heating homes , school, business and etc to cut back the atmospheric pollution .
With no cheap readily available alternative fuels and with gas supplies becoming short , the intense cold of a chinese winter led to deaths from hypothermia and schools and other government buildings where the officials had ripped out the coal buring furnaces and not replaced them with anything else, to have to try and keep the kids warm by fully clothing them in their cold weather gear inside of the class rooms.
Or close the Schools which happened when it really got cold but with both parents working left the little kids with nowhere to go..
The decision on coal burning for heating was reversed some weeks ago mid a fairly savage public backlash at the bureaucrats and politicians stupidity and inhumaness.
It is also having a fairly serious back lash against the Party for trynig to implement such a stupid human suffering creating decision without making anyn provision at al to provide an alternative to coal for heating annd cooking in the lower, very poorly paid classes numbering hundreds of millions in China.
40
As President Trump has pointed out several times lately China is not the only country that has been somewhat lax at applying laws existing on its books
30
The Australian
MATT CHAMBERS
Alinta plans to drive down power prices after buying the Loy Yang B brown coal power station in Victoria.
60
O/T I could not resist posting this article
http://reneweconomy.com.au/coal-dies-super-cheap-renewables-plus-battery-storage-82743/
Talk about deluded.
91
Climate Kool Aid must have been on special this week…..
61
Now I know where Patricia (who comments endlessly in The Australian on energy matters) gets her “facts”.
Am I right in thinking they are confusing nominal capacity with actual capacity i.e. 3.2¢ per kWh at 20% efficiency becomes 16¢ per kWh which becomes $160 per MWh.
10
Its funny how, now that they have been basically forced to include battery power, that they now talk about it as a fantastic, insightful, innovation.
00
” Perth Dams already have 35% more water than at the same time last year, and an extra 69 gigalitres of the precious wet stuff. We have more water than we’ve had since 2009, and more is on the way.”
I would expect the recent wildfire in the area of the Mundaring catchment to add even more water to the dam, as evapotranspiration is greatly reduced due to burning and scorching of foliage of both understorey, and tree canopy. The groundwater level should rise significantly with or without the current rainfall. It will be interesting to watch how much the storage increases.
50
Speaking of Mundaring/Helena Reservoir, it is one dam that absolutely MUST remain above a certain level. (capacity 64GL, cannot drop below 18GL or no supply to goldfields.)
It supplies the goldfields and agricultural areas to the east.
It is constantly topped up from the Perth system.
41
Yes topped up from the desalination plant.
20
Come on Red Thumb please enlighten us al as to why this article is a leftist fantasy…. No I thought not!
60
Should say not a leftist fantacy
40
A weather chart & satellite image to help the picture:-
14 Jan 2018 Earth nullschool
14 Jan 2018 EOSDIS Worldview
10
Long range weather prediction attempt ( astrometerology ). I’d be interested to see how it goes in WA.
Mar 2018
02 Fair
09 Showers
17 Rain
24 Changing
31 Rain
Feb 2018
07 Changing
15 Rain if wind SW/W
23 Wind, rain
Jan 2018
02 Fair
08 Rain if wind SW/W
17 Fair
24 Rain if wind SW/W
31 Rain
20
Several years ago there was an article by a civil engineer from an AU technical college (?) regarding the probability distribution of rainfall.
I do not have a source, sorry.
His argument was that wrong concepts were introduced and historically a period of good precipitation years influenced the results.
The long-term probability of precipitation is not uniform as irrigators would like, nor is it a normal distribution that beginning students learn, but rather it is peaked. In a dry climate type there are many lean years and a few with high rainfall. Planning for an average is a recipe for disappointment. [kurtosis and skewness]
30
it’s catastrophic!
VIDEO: 30secs: 16 Jan: ABC: Perth saturated as ex-Cyclone Joyce brings four months of rain in a day
Updated 20 minutes ago
Related Story: ‘It was horrifying’: Torrential rain forces planes to abort landings at Perth airport
The remains of ex-tropical Cyclone Joyce has dumped more than four months’ worth of rain on Perth in less than 24 hours, leading to power blackouts, flooding and causing havoc for planes trying to land at the city’s airport.
The conditions were caused by the remnants of ex-tropical Cyclone Joyce, which pummelled Perth with heavy rain for much of Monday.
The State Emergency Service received more than 220 calls for help overnight, and Western Power said this morning blackouts had affected about 1,300 homes, with crews working throughout the night to repair damage to its network.
The city officially recorded 96 millimetres of rain — the wettest January day since 104mm fell on the city on January 22, 2000.
The total is equal to the average rainfall for the city for December, January, February and March combined.
Bureau of Meteorology duty forecaster Noel Puzey said coastal areas bore the brunt of the downpour.
“We’ve seen, at least for the Perth metro area, that Rottnest Island has had 142mm of rain, Swanbourne and Bickley more than 138mm, 96mm for Perth metro site and 118mm for Jandakot,” he said.
“So there’s been plenty of falls above 100mm through much of the metro area.”
The wettest parts of Perth (LIST)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-16/perth-saturated-as-ex-cyclone-joyce-brings-four-months-of-rain/9332556
20
It wasn’t even heavy rain for most of the day.
Just steady, moderate precipitation. That’s mid-scale on the weather RADAR.
30
Most of Perth is on a flat sandy porous plain, so the water just soaked straight through. No damage around my area and the ducks and water birds look very happy.
20
So they show a picture of water on Langley Park, which is usually water-logged every time we have a decent rainfall. No new news here.
40
OT, anyone care to comment on the news that Solar Reserves being given the green light on
“The Worlds Largest Solar Thermal Project” in South Aus?
20
all this was known yesterday:
15 Jan: BrisbaneTimes(Fairfax): Gold Coast market vendor dies after suffering heart attack
By Jorge Branco with Toby Crockford
It was initially thought the 45-year-old woman had suffered heatstroke, which then led to her going into cardiac arrest, but the market director said the extreme heat had nothing to do with it.
“We have been informed by the family that it was a pre-existing medical condition which led to the heart attack; not from heat stress as previously reported,” the statement said…
Two other visitors to the area, a woman in her mid-30s and another person in their mid-60s, suffered “heat-like symptoms” were also taken to hospital, according to paramedics.
QAS senior operations supervisor Luke Wyatt initially blamed the worker’s condition on the heat as well, agreeing it was the “most extreme” case of heat stroke he had seen for a while.
“I’m not sure exactly where she was working but reports were that she had been working there throughout the day,” he said on Sunday…
But NightQuarter director Michelle Christoe sought to correct the record on Monday after speaking with the woman’s family.
“From the information we have received, heat was ruled out as a contributing factor,” she said.
Ms Christoe said the woman had been on site for less than an hour and had not been there any earlier in the day…
Temperatures across Queensland soared at the weekend, with hot nights following even hotter days.
The mercury peaked at 33.1 degrees on Saturday at the closest weather station to the markets, the Gold Coast Seaway.
https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/heat-was-ruled-out-in-nightquarter-vendor-heart-attack-20180115-p4yyi4.html
who will call theirABC into line?
16 Jan: ABC: Unattributed: Gold Coast woman dies after suffering suspected heat stress at market
Updated about 4 hours ago
Temperatures in south-east Queensland reached the high-30s last Sunday, with Brisbane Airport recording 38.1 degrees Celsius.
Nambour on the Sunshine Coast reached 37.8C, while the Gold Coast seaway peaked at 34.4C…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-16/woman-dies-hospital-suspected-heat-stress-gold-coast-market/9332226
heard a weather report on radio this morning about how Brisbane will be sweltering in 33C this weekend!
40
The bias is terrible from the weather people.
40
These ABC reports are truly a crock of sheets!
OTOH: this time last year dozens of people were perishing in Eastern and Southern Europe during an extended, deep cold spell.Mizerya, mizerya! Moscow has its coldest (Orthodox) Christmas Day since 1824, that’s right, since 1824! Now was that reported by “Our ABC” beaver boy and girl scouts? Nah!
40
Indications are the current ‘X Factor’ induced Wet/Normal Cycle has reached Australia and is now making its way across the country, East to West with the Earth’s Solar orbit. This will mean Perth, (along with the rest of Australia,) is in for increasing precipitation over the coming Earth/Solar Year, before the next One Earth/Solar Year ‘X Factor’ Dry Cycle reaches us in early January 2019.
As prevailing weather moves from West to East and towards the Poles, (with the Earth’s Axil Spin,) this current Wet/Normal Cycle is already affecting Australia via ‘encroachment’ from the West. This Wet/Normal Cycle initiated circa 110 degrees East longitude,(Beijing,) in mid-February 2017.
The subsequent increase in precipitation has been easy to follow through South-east Asia, Europe and North America over the past year.
Combined with a significant increase in global Volcanism, the increase in ‘albedo’ has resulted in the observed marked over-all decrease in temperatures globally.
2018 will see increased precipitation, (cyclones,) and additionally, more cold and snow events for Australia.
These X Factor Solar-induced Dry Cycles,(and the Wet/ Normal default intervals,) were defined and predicted by Alex S. Gaddes in his work ‘Tomorrow’s Weather'(1990.)
An updated version of this work,(including Dry Cycle forecasts to 2055,) is available as a free pdf from dongaddes93@gmail.com
20
Seems like 2017 was not too bad for the grain harvest.
Grain trickles into bins as harvest ends
10
this truly is novel-length stuff:
15 Jan: CarbonBrief: Q&A: How do climate models work?
by Robert McSweeney & Zeke Hausfather
In the first article of a week-long series focused on climate modelling, Carbon Brief explains in detail how scientists use computers to understand our changing climate…
What is a climate model?
A global climate model typically contains enough computer code to fill 18,000 pages of printed text; it will have taken hundreds of scientists many years to build and improve; and it can require a supercomputer the size of a tennis court to run…
(BOTTOM) Updated on 15 January 2018 to clarify that the one million dollar prize for solving the N-S equations are for proving the existence of a solution in all circumstances, and that the grid boxes only converge towards the poles when the grid is based on latitude and longitude.
Carbon Brief would like to thank all the scientists who helped with the preparation of this article.
Tomorrow: An interactive timeline of the key developments in climate modelling over the past century.
COMMENTS (8):
#1: by Chino780: The answer is that they don’t work.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-how-do-climate-models-work
40
Pat,
I note now that there are no comments at the site.
20
The Chino 780 comment has been deleted ( another example of alarmist censorship).
Joe Banks gets in 2 skeptical comments but gets slammed down by “Concerned”. Hence his comments stand because he is seen to be refuted.
The whole article is very long and hence need to be dissected in detail. There are a lot of problems which with Climate models which have been glossed over or are maybe provably wrong.
20
headline misleadingly says “blown away”;
first sentence says “set to”;
second sentence says “in two years” “are expected” and, even then, might only come close to the “lower end”;
not to mention other omissions:
13 Jan: AFP: Fossil fuels blown away by wind in cost terms: study
New onshore wind and solar energy projects are set to deliver electricity more cheaply than fossil fuels plants, with other green technologies also rapidly gaining a cost advantage over dirty fuels, a report published Saturday said.
According to a new cost analysis from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), within two years “all the renewable power generation technologies that are now in commercial use are expected to fall within the fossil fuel-fired cost range, with most at the lower end or undercutting fossil fuels”…
“This new dynamic signals a significant shift in the energy paradigm,” said IRENA’s Director-General, Adnan Amin, in a statement.
“Turning to renewables for new power generation is not simply an environmentally conscious decision, it is now — overwhelmingly — a smart economic one,” he added…
The report was released on the first day of the eighth assembly of IRENA, which aims to be a global hub for renewable energy cooperation and information exchange by its 154 member countries.
14 COMMENTS, MOSTLY SCATHING:
#2: by Alec: Of course a body like IRENA would say that but the reality is the opposite.
Their accounting does not take into account the cost of having essential thermal stations and the carbon tax they pay, the cost of infrastrucrture to connect to the grid and the subsidies and constraint payments made to wind.
Increasingly offshore wind farms are being built as we are running out of onshore sites, and they are expensive and getting more so.
But as always, the cost is secondary to the non dispatchability of wind and solar which makes it a poor grid supplier. Earlier this week the total wind and solar contribution to the U.K grid was about 2% for nearly forty eight hours. Coal, gas and nuclear plus some imported power kept the lights on. This is the reality and it is more marked in winter when demand is highest.
There are very few media writers who really undersatnd how the grid and power stations work. Their ignorance means that the general public is given a totally wrong impression about the ‘benefits’ of renwable power.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/fossil-fuels-blown-away-wind-cost-terms-study-094840283.html
30
14 Jan: IRENA: Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2017
Download the Executive Summary.
http://www.irena.org/publications/2018/Jan/Renewable-power-generation-costs-in-2017
14 Jan: IRENA: Analyses Where that Money is, and isn’t, Coming From
IRENA’s new report, ‘Global Landscape of Renewable Energy Finance’ (LINK) outlines key global investment trends between 2013-2016, offering a comprehensive overview of capital flows by region and technology. The report also examines the differing roles and approaches of private and public finance, highlights the emergence of viable risk mitigation instruments, and provides an outlook for renewable energy finance in 2018 and beyond…
http://irena.org/newsroom/articles/2018/Jan/Investments-in-Renewables-are-Bringing-Record-Capacity-Online
10
11 Jan: RenewableEnergyMag: 150 Countries to Gather for IRENA Assembly in Abu Dhabi
The meeting, which is being held Jan. 13-14, will focus on IRENA strategy for the next four years and offer strategic advice on how its member countries can further their shared goal…
Since 2013, more than $1 trillion have been invested in renewables globally and today the industry accounts for nearly 10 million jobs worldwide.
Throughout the weekend-long event, attendees will take stock of the progress that has been achieved in the deployment of renewables and the decarbonization of the electricity system.
Among the anticipated highlights of this year’s assembly are…READ ON
Finally, the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development and IRENA will announce the recipients of funding allocated through the IRENA/ADFD Project Facility.
IRENA will also hold an art exhibition called Visions of Sustainability. During it, sound artist Bill Fontana will present multimedia works on renewable energy created especially for the event, and sustainability thought leader William McDonough and initiator and pilot of Solar Impulse Bertrand Piccard will share their visions for a sustainable future.
https://www.renewableenergymagazine.com/panorama/150-countries-to-gather-for-irena-assembly-20180111
15 Jan: The National UAE: Artist Bill Fontana’s installation in Abu Dhabi explores the power of the earth to create its own energy
Acoustic Visions of Renewable Energy is Fontana’s installation that consists of a four-channel video showing the sounds and images of four types of renewable energy production: solar, wind, geothermal and hydropower
by Melissa Gronlund
Fontana has produced a major installation for Visions of Sustainability, a week-long exhibition hosted at Manarat al Saadiyat in Abu Dhabi by the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena). “The general public doesn’t think about it so much,” says Fontana. “You have to affect them emotionally – hit their heart – and art has the power to do that.”
The intergovernmental organisation that promotes the adoption of clean energy commissioned Fontana to respond to the idea and methods of renewable energy for its exhibition, which coincides with Sustainability Week in Abu Dhabi. The resulting work, Acoustic Visions of Renewable Energy (2018), is a four-channel video installation showing the sounds and images of four types of renewable energy production: solar, wind, geothermal and hydropower.
The US-based artist travelled to Austria, Iceland, Italy, Portugal, the UAE, UK and US to record how these varied sources are harnessed…READ ON
https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/art/artist-bill-fontana-s-installation-in-abu-dhabi-explores-the-power-of-the-earth-to-create-its-own-energy-1.695452
20
The above, in a nutshell, is the entire CAGW industry. Visions, noises, and thoughts. No substance. No reality.
I tried, oh I tried, for so very long, to be a believer. But the more I learned, the less I believed, and the angrier I got. The anger still pops through – sorry, moderators, for the pain in the backside I have been – and yet now, seeing the result of “science” reduced to
doesn’t make me angry – it depresses me.
Interpretive dance is next, I suppose.
10
Interpretive dance? I had enough of that in some ‘accessible worship’. Yuk.
00
‘The power of the earth to explore its own energy’…?! Oh really?! What some utter codswallop! What about the wonderful energy the earth has produced in the form of coal, oil and gas…hey?
00
Hmm!
Who would ever have thought someone would say this.
Tony.
100
Snowy Mountains National Park today quite large snow pockets sighted mid Summer.
50
Michael Mann would say that you will see more of these snow pockets as global warming worsens.
40
In the Australian
January deluge smashes Perth rain records
Perth has been saturated with up to 10 years worth of January rain in the past 24 hours as records tumbled across the city.
The remnants of ex-Tropical Cyclone Joyce dumped more than 100mm of rain on parts of the city, with the Bureau of Meteorology predicting another 10 to 15mm of rain before conditions ease later on Tuesday.
The leafy suburb of Swanbourne has received 138.6mm since Monday, while Rottnest Island broke all January records after 143mm drenched the popular tourist spot in a little less than 24 hours.
.. clearly Climate Change.
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Those once in 100 year records seem to fall eventually. Maybe every hundred years?
I love the endless cherry picking too, the warmest December day in 3 years? That’s actually 1/100. Then the warmest winter? Does no one care about the coldest spring or the wettest Easter or the dryest Guy Fawkes night? Is it possible to turn every day into some sort of record which proves Climate Change? Adding location helps. The wettest day on Rottnest ever?
It was on the steps of Parliament house when a reporter raced up to John Howard and asked him what he thought of “the worst drought in 1,000 years”. John calmly asked him how he knew that. Silence. The next day the Melbourne Age trumpeted “the worst drought in 100 years”. Cute since it omitted the near identical Federation drought which the BOM pretends never happened. Another regular one in a hundred year event.
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Do you remember when Matt Shirvington ran the fastest time ever for the 100 metres
by a white man
at sea level
in the Southern Hemisphere
in May
in Malaysia.
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On a Tuesday
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Malaysia is in the Northern Hemisphere.
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John of C,
I meant that Shirvington was from the Southern Hemisphere.
11
Sounds a bit like a scene from Shakespeare’s Henry V prior to the battle of Agincourt.
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Crickets. We copped a bit of rain for a while, which for Perth in summer is a great thing.
30
I guess this will add about 5-7GL to storage levels.
Not a huge amount, but very welcome.
21
And of course, it will reduce watering requirements in Perth for a while too, added bonus.
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“January deluge smashes Perth rain records”
It doesn’t take much to smash a Perth summer rainfall record. 🙂
51
Remember to always remind climastrologists that one day they WILL be held to account with a climate change Nuremberg Trials.
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But first we will have to fight the war to completion. Is Climate Change a Tool to Eliminate Democracy?
It sure looks that way.
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As much as I enjoy reading blogs such as this, I doubt they do much to educate the misinformed and ignorant masses that tend to frequent SocialMedia, as I do too in order to do my bit to spread the message. No, IMHO this war will only end when Nature itself decides to end it re an unmistakeable global cooling via mini ice age, but by then it will likely be too late to save civilised society from surrendering to the NWO schemers.
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Ah, so, it was yous fellas that stole our missing 35% water: local authorities here, via the mess-madia, are ramping-up the drought meme as our lake storage is “worryingly at only 65% capacity”. I’m no hydrologist, nor engineer, yet 65/100 sounds OK to me.
First, it was the Aus BoM; now, it’s MS NZ: “Our weather station at Dunedin Airport recorded 35C at 3.12pm today (minute data), which would make this the hottest day on record for Dunedin Airport since records began in 1972.
— MetService (@MetService) January 16, 2018”
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/348230/dunedin-s-hottest-day
“(minute data)”? Is this a new science-fiction clima-crock technical-thingy term? Minute, as in sixty seconds, or, minute, as in “extremely small, so small as to verge on insignificance”? An expert “said Dunedin was the hottest place in the country today, but noted the city would be slightly cooler than at the airport.” Note: the airport is way outta town, built on a reclaimed swamp / ancient lake bed, a bowl surrounded by hills, no wind, heat trap… unprecedented! The city would’ve been a lot cooler by the sea – especially when the southerly change came through this arvo… snap!
“We ask people to de particularly careful about the effects of drinking alcohol in the hot weather.” Explains everything.
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How come no complaints about the increased rainfall in the north since the 1970s? Lots more rain around Darwin no good for the warmie ghost narrative? (I could have said ghost story, but thought I’d try some ABC speak.)
Hey, climate changes. Really. We get told all too often how we don’t live in the climate of our grandparents. What doesn’t get said is that our grandparents didn’t live in the climate of their grandparents.
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Current Global temp daily records from Ryan Maue’s site; [ unofficial ] Record Breaking Temperatures across the Globe.
——————
Last updated at Tue Jan 16 10:32:13 UTC 2018 using 2201 observations from 10UTC
Unofficially, there are currently 7 stations that have broken their daily high record, 4 that are tying it, and 15 that are near it.
Unofficially, there are currently 12 stations that have broken their daily low record, 4 that are tying it, and 24 that are near it.
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naturally, this would be of interest to theirABC…too boring to read all:
16 Jan: ABC: How rising sea levels could shrink Australia and spark a coastal exodus
The Conversation By Sean Ulm, Alan Williams, Chris Turney and Stephen Lewis
Sean Ulm is deputy director at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, James Cook University.
Alan N Williams is an associate investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, UNSW.
Chris Turney is chief investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, UNSW.
Stephen Lewis is principal research officer at James Cook University
With global sea levels expected to rise by up to a metre by 2100, we can learn much from archaeology about how people coped in the past with changes in sea level.
In a study published this week in Quaternary Science Reviews, we looked at how changes in sea level affected different parts of Australia and the impact on people living around the coast…
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says global sea levels are set to increase by the equivalent of 12 millimetres per year, four times the average of the last century.
A major challenge for managing such a large increase in sea level is our limited understanding of what impact this scale of change might have on humanity…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-16/rising-sea-levels-could-shrink-australia-coastal-exodus/9333400
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ROck shelves along the East Coast show the sea level was about 1.5-2m above now at some stage in the past, probably measures in thousands of years.
All the beaches are still there.
There is NO SIGN of any acceleration of sea level rise.
It is still averages 1mm/year along the East Coast, where most people live.
(not 3mm/year, as their lying propaganda says.)
They are DELIBERATELY LYING, and I hope that some day SOON, they are held accountable.
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Andy,
The oceans have dropped that 1.2 metres in the last 2,000 years.
Ephesus, in Turkey, is a good illustration.
At the time of Christ there was apparently, a well known harbour that is now high and dry to the tune of 1.2 metres.
Help, the oceans are falling!
KK
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Thanks KK, was late last night when I posted that… and I had forgotten the timing. 🙂
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pat,
If Chris Turney is one of the group saying the oceans are rising, I think I’ll purchase a block of land somewhere between the Seychelles and Mauritius.
30
Over the last half a million years our planet has been through several severe glaciation which have literally frozen the Earth. Every 110,000 years or so, there have been the relatively short, warm, reprieves such as the one we are in now.
This cycle is the only real model of climate change that I will acknowledge.
This model, which didn’t require huge, massive computers, says that we are looking at the next deep freeze coming to our Planet within the next few thousand years, if it has not already started. The residents of Siberia and North America might be excused for think it’s started.
The point is that oceans, at the present, are about as high as they are going to get.
The next step is serious ice deposits and Falling sea levels.
For the next 90,000 years!
KK
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KK:
I see the phantom red thumber is up early. As you are talking settled science that is accepted even by Al Gore I wonder what his objection is.
To cheer you up try https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmPSUMBrJoI
Apologies if you already seen it.
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Yes.
I really liked that one.
🙂
10
read all:
16 Jan: Fox Business: U.S. oil industry set to break record, upend global trade
(Additional reporting by Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Gary McWilliams and Brian Thevenot)
Surging shale production is poised to push U.S. oil output to more than 10 million barrels per day – toppling a record set in 1970 and crossing a threshold few could have imagined even a decade ago.
And this new record, expected within days, likely won’t last long. The U.S. government forecasts that the nation’s production will climb to 11 million barrels a day by late 2019, a level that would rival Russia, the world’s top producer…READ ALL
http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2018/01/16/u-s-oil-industry-set-to-break-record-upend-global-trade.html
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The increase in production from Russia and the USA in recent years must be of concern to the Little Sheet Heads (they wear little sheets on their heads – not rags or towels).
41
Just to put the 300 “Giga-Liters” damm capacity in perpective.
(If I calculate correctly, that is)
One-Giga-Liter is equivalent to one Mega-Cubic-Meter.
Those darn Israelis are de-salinating one Mega-Cubic-Meter sea-water A DAY !
(think of a shallow little lake with sides – 1(one)km by 1(one)km and depth 1 (one)meter.
So – their de-salitation capacity is enough to keep that damm filled.
What is then the problem? Really!
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So from 4.1.2.2.1
“By the end of September 2017 it had produced a total 138GL since commissioning in 2013.”
So 138GL over 5 years.
From the above dimensions equivalent to
1 * (138/300) /5 m = .092 m of rain/year
= 92 mm per year over that 1 sq km
(if my calculations are right)
20
Or maybe I’ve misread BoE’s figures and had better recalculate
10