Resisting Climate Hysteria

[explod]

Perma culture is an answer. Farms developed in Victoria and South Australia have turned into productive oasis on the fundamental basis of Peter Andrews "Back From the Brink" you let the weeds grow, which also provides near ground cover which encourages trees and all manner of scrubs and fruit trees. All organic refuse is allowed to block the waterways and hold moister around which further growth comes.

One of the enimies is large scale cropping where, in north central Victoria the dams have turned into salt pans. Could not believe the change over 50 years at Willaura where I used to shear as a youngster.

The lawn clippings off suburban homes are put into the rubbish. Many friends and I use them as heavy multch which encourages worm activity and thereby wonderful growth of vegitables and some of which are not normally grown this far south.

And one can go on about the burning of stubble etc.

 

[Smurf1976]

in north central Victoria the dams have turned into salt pans.

With the extreme low rainfall at the moment we're converting the dams into a storage of air rather than water. No salt thankfully.

Good point - if there's ever a shortage of air then don't worry, we've got plenty of that in Lake Gordon right now and it's nice clean air down there too. 81.1% full of air at the moment and increasing. Might be easier to catch a fish too - same number of fish in less water, so more fish per area of water = easier to find one (though friends who go fishing tell me that it doesn't work this way in practice for some reason).

Bad points - it's only 18.9% full of water. And it's only October. And we can't run air through the turbines. Bugger.

The lawn clippings off suburban homes are put into the rubbish.

Around here we've got 3 wheelie bins. Small one for garbage (red lid or dark green for the older ones), medium size one for recycling (yellow lid) and big one for "green waste" (bright green lid). Council empties the green waste bin in the same manner as other wheelie bins and it ends up as mulch and compost which is sold commercially.

 

[noco]

In fairness the Tugan desal plant is currently providing water to Burleigh and around Mudgeeraba while the clapped out water treatment plant is getting repaired.

It's going to be cheaper for the desal plant to provide water to the extra 400k people on the Goldie in twenty years than run pipes from the dams to the new estates. 125 megalitres of water a day is a fair amount of water coming through rusty pipes.

Not only is the cost of construction of reverse osmosis plant expensive, they are also extremely expensive to run.

I did have some dealing with reverse osmosis and deionized water some years ago in the industry I was associated with.

The membrane in those units are as thin as a human hair and it takes something like 6000 psi water pressure to force the saline water through......And as you will read in the link, the saline % of ocean water can vary greatly from one place to another...the higher the % the higher the cost to produce....So on the basis of this exercise, it is far more efficient and cheaper to build dams....The membranes also have to be replaced on a regular basis.

http://geography.about.com/od/water...4ec453ac-6241-451e-b7f7-46b0d3b9a0b8-0-ab_gsb

 

[SirRumpole]

.So on the basis of this exercise, it is far more efficient and cheaper to build dams....The membranes also have to be replaced on a regular basis.

Apart from the fact tht there is a lot more sea water to desalinate than there is rainwater to catch in dams.

Dams are no use if it doesn't rain.

 

[macca]

Apart from the fact tht there is a lot more sea water to desalinate than there is rainwater to catch in dams.

Dams are no use if it doesn't rain.

Very true! But for years cities that are on the coast have been building better drains so that rain can flow into the ocean as quickly as possible, preferably cleaning the streets and gutters at the same time.

All of the rubbish then floated around in the ocean along with the sewerage coming from the other outlets.

My family were threatened with court action if we did not remove the water tank from the house and use town water in its place.

Finally !!! someone got the bright idea that if we all have a water tank plumbed into the toilet flush we can save billions of litres of water per year.

In cities that get good rainfall, like Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane there is absolutely no need for desal plants, use the funds spent on that to pay half the cost of fitting water tanks to buildings and we save the desal running costs forever.

Another ridiculous point is that water usage was free, by putting meters on each supply point and charging for the water people suddenly people were rewarded for treating water like the precious resource that it is.

As our population grows we need to do something, places like the Gold Coast used to have 100k people now they have over 1mill yet no new dams have been built afaik, so no surprise they run out of water.

No big picture planning of infrastructure any more, no Snowy Mountain schemes, no bridges with spare capacity, no roads with spare lanes, etc etc media driven government simply does not work.

If a CEO was to run a Co with no 3, 5 and 10 year plan they would never get a gig yet the country is run by the 24 hour news cycle

 

[SirRumpole]

In cities that get good rainfall, like Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane there is absolutely no need for desal plants, use the funds spent on that to pay half the cost of fitting water tanks to buildings and we save the desal running costs forever.

Agree completely. When you consider how much water is used in watering gardens and washing cars, not to mention flushing loos, tank water is suitable for all those tasks.

My brother recently built a house in Melbourne, and the installation of an in house water tank was required by the council.

 

[Tisme]

Very true! But for years cities that are on the coast have been building better drains so that rain can flow into the ocean as quickly as possible, preferably cleaning the streets and gutters at the same time.

All of the rubbish then floated around in the ocean along with the sewerage coming from the other outlets.

My family were threatened with court action if we did not remove the water tank from the house and use town water in its place.

Finally !!! someone got the bright idea that if we all have a water tank plumbed into the toilet flush we can save billions of litres of water per year.

In cities that get good rainfall, like Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane there is absolutely no need for desal plants, use the funds spent on that to pay half the cost of fitting water tanks to buildings and we save the desal running costs forever.

Another ridiculous point is that water usage was free, by putting meters on each supply point and charging for the water people suddenly people were rewarded for treating water like the precious resource that it is.

As our population grows we need to do something, places like the Gold Coast used to have 100k people now they have over 1mill yet no new dams have been built afaik, so no surprise they run out of water.

No big picture planning of infrastructure any more, no Snowy Mountain schemes, no bridges with spare capacity, no roads with spare lanes, etc etc media driven government simply does not work.

If a CEO was to run a Co with no 3, 5 and 10 year plan they would never get a gig yet the country is run by the 24 hour news cycle

Remember the Wolfdene Dam? The 1st of March 1990 and the Goss Govt scotched the construction, stating there shouldn't be a need for "extra source of supply until 2010 ....... they seem to have been correct.


I see 80% of QLD is now officially in drought ..... just seasonal I'm told by the armchair experts Good thing about deserts = warm days & chilly nights

 

[trainspotter]

Apart from the fact tht there is a lot more sea water to desalinate than there is rainwater to catch in dams.

Dams are no use if it doesn't rain.

basilios conundrum solved ! Global warming melts icecaps, sea level rises, man uses sea water in desal powered by solar, sea water falls through consumption, drought and climate change crisis diverted. Polar bears and penguin population limited to zoos only.

SirRumpole for President !!


No wait .... they are doing it already ...

If Saudi Arabia and solar power don’t look quite right together, it’s time to shake off that 1970s oil crisis dust and take a look at the country’s recent forays into renewable energy. The latest move is a solar powered desalination plant aimed at treating 60,000 square meters of seawater daily for the northeastern city of Al Khafji. According to the developer, this will be the world’s first utility scale, solar powered desalination plant.

http://cleantechnica.com/2015/01/22/worlds-largest-solar-powered-desalination-plant-under-way/

 

[basilio]

basilios conundrum solved ! Global warming melts icecaps, sea level rises, man uses sea water in desal powered by solar, sea water falls through consumption, drought and climate change crisis diverted. Polar bears and penguin population limited to zoos only TS

.

Done it in one TS!!! A truly ingenious solution To All Our Problems no less.

Just quietly could you let us know how much sea water coming from the melting ice caps do we have to desalinate to keep the oceans at their current level?

Just a rough guess perhaps ??

 

[trainspotter]

.

Done it in one TS!!! A truly ingenious solution To All Our Problems no less.

Just quietly could you let us know how much sea water coming from the melting ice caps do we have to desalinate to keep the oceans at their current level?

Just a rough guess perhaps ??

Not enough parameters to give you a quantitative answer there basilio. Are you suggesting that ALL the icecaps melt away to NOTHING or are you using a hockey stick graph methodology or have you factored in the oceans warming thusly expanding thereby increasing the rate of melt? Am I factoring in the El Nino effect for the 2016/17 winter around the Equator or am I projecting a flat curve ratio based on the existing emissions assuming man does not reduce Co2 gas released into the atmosphere under the Kyoto Protocol?

The easiest answer would be whatever amount of ice melt was entering the ocean would be the amount of desalination would be required ... just think about it .. deserts into oasis supporting agriculture, no more farmers waiting on Mother Nature to do her rain dance, abundance of water for lawns and parks and gardens. Utopia man. And how much is it rising EXACTLY ??? Oh just 1.7mm to 1.8mm per annum they think give or take + or - 0.5mm for the 20th century.

Are we using IPCC prediction models or Elsevier’s ??? According to the IPCC it is

Considering the above results, and allowing for the ongoing higher trend in recent years shown by altimetry (see Section 5.5.2.2), we assess the rate for 1961 to 2003 as 1.8 ± 0.5 mm yr–1 and for the 20th century as 1.7 ± 0.5 mm yr–1.

https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch5s5-5-2.html

So let's say the glass is half full and the rate is 1.2mm (give or take 0.5mm) per annum as a prediction from the IPCC.

But bit bit it is the 21st Century now ... oh but wait a minute we have an answer for this one ....

There are large uncertainties on sea level projections beyond the 21st century. Thermal expansion under the RCP6 scenario contributes from 0.4 m (Vizcaino et al., 2008) to 0.7 m (Solomon et al., 2009) by AD2200. By then about 1.1–1.3 m of sea level rise would have to come from ice melting, including about 40 cm from small mountain glaciers, 60% of which would have disappeared (Raper and Braithwaite, 2006). By AD2300 thermal expansion would reach 0.5– 0.75 m (Vizcaino et al., 2008; Solomon et al., 2009) with up to 1.2 m sea level rise coming from melting of ice sheets alone, since mountain glaciers and ice caps disappear almost completely by the end of the 23rd century (Raper and Braithwaite, 2006). T

http://kaares.ulapland.fi/home/hkunta/jmoore/pdfs/jev_moore_grin_Glob_Ch_2012.pdf

A LOT OF ASSUMPTIONS HERE basilio

 

[basilio]

Very good TS !. Love the range of parameters you have thrown into the pot. All quite legit.

My thoughts are that the oceans will rise significantly if only as a result of thermal warming and the current rate of ice loss from the Arctic and Antarctic. Check out the figures calculated from the Cryo Sat 2 satellite.

The reality ? It will be incredibly unlikely that the deserts can somehow "absorb" the water that will be release from the ice caps. The only way I could see that happening would be the creation of vast new forest around the world via this massive irrigation project.

Alternatively of course we could develop a way to freeze all this desalinated water (super cold freezer...) and create a huge new on shore ice mountain....

Cubic miles of water are really, really BIG volumes. Think about it.

'Incredible' rate of polar ice loss alarms scientists
A European satellite has shown ice sheets shrinking at 120 cubic miles a year in Antarctica and Greenland


Sunday 24 August 2014 09.05 AEST


The planet's two largest ice sheets – in Greenland and Antarctica – are now being depleted at an astonishing rate of 120 cubic miles each year. That is the discovery made by scientists using data from CryoSat-2, the European probe that has been measuring the thickness of Earth's ice sheets and glaciers since it was launched by the European Space Agency in 2010.

Even more alarming, the rate of loss of ice from the two regions has more than doubled since 2009, revealing the dramatic impact that climate change is beginning to have on our world.

The researchers, based at Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research – used 200m data points across Antarctica and 14.3m across Greenland, all collected by CryoSat, to study how the ice sheets there had changed over the past three years. The satellite carries a high-precision altimeter, which sends out short radar pulses that bounce off the ice surface and then back to the satellite. By measuring the time this takes, the height of the ice beneath the spacecraft can be calculated.

It was found from the average drops in elevation that were detected by CryoSat that Greenland alone is losing about 90 cubic miles a year, while in Antarctica the annual volume loss is about 30 cubic miles. These rates of loss – described as "incredible" by one researcher – are the highest observed since altimetry satellite records began about 20 years ago, and they mean that the ice sheets' annual contribution to sea-level rise has doubled since 2009, say the researchers whose work was published in the journal Cryosphere last week.

"We have found that, since 2009, the volume loss in Greenland has increased by a factor of about two, and the West Antarctic ice sheet by a factor of three," said glaciologist Angelika Humbert, one of the study's authors. "Both the West Antarctic ice sheet and the Antarctic peninsula, in the far west, are rapidly losing volume. By contrast, East Antarctica is gaining volume, though at a moderate rate that doesn't compensate for the losses on the other side of the continent."

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...e-polar-ice-loss-cryosat-antarctica-greenland

 

[Smurf1976]

Dams are no use if it doesn't rain.

They work fine if it rains sometimes however.

The basics are (1) yield and (2) storage capacity.

Eg you build a dam somewhere that has net (after evaporation losses) annual inflows of 100 GL +/- 35% and a storage capacity of 500 GL. In practice you can then draw pretty close to 100 GL out of it each year and do so reliably.

Then there's smaller dams in an interconnected system. Eg you capture an additional 10 GL but can only store 1 GL at that site due to topography. Not a problem as long as you can either physically move that water to another (larger) storage or alternatively can use it as the major source when inflows are high thus allowing the entire inflow to larger storages, which would otherwise be used to supply water, to be kept in storage.

It's worth noting that we use an intermittent renewable resource, sunlight and water, to produce the vast majority of food eaten by humans. If we take it that food is more important than watering gardens or generating electricity, then we're already making intermittent renewables work so far as our most critical energy supply (food) is concerned.

Key point there is that it works because we can (1) store food and (2) move it around. A poor wheat crop in Australia doesn't really matter as long as someone else has a good crop. Same principle can be applied to energy - if we could move electricity around like we move food around then there's no reason at all why we couldn't easily use solar, wind and hydro to generate 100%. That we can't move it around or store it easily (apart from hydro) is the crux of the difficulty there.

 

[Smurf1976]

As an illustration of the impact of the current El Nino and positive IOD (Indian Ocean Dipole) event on runoff, here's a 12 month chart of water levels in Laughing Jack Lagoon (Tas).

http://www.hydro.com.au/system/files/water-storage/Web_Lakes_LAUGHINGJACK.pdf

As you can see, significant inflow stopped in mid-September and has been zero in the past few weeks. The outlet valve has been shut since early May (normal operation is release during Summer and Autumn).

In contrast, whilst levels at this storage were a bit lower last year inflows continued into early December until release commenced (outlet valve opened) in January.

So in practice the dry season has started about 2 months earlier in 2015 than it did in 2014. That's the impact of the El Nino and positive IOD. As water cannot enter this storage by any means other than natural inflows, there is no ability to divert or pump from anywhere else, the change in water levels since May (outlet closed) is a direct function of runoff during that time - and in short it has come to a halt early this year.

Note - chart is not scaled to empty. NMOL (Normal Minimum Operating Level) is 8.99 metres below full. Figures in the chart are in minus metres (that is, the vertical distance from full supply level to the current water level, so full would be 0 and empty would be 8.99).

 

[Tom32]

They work fine if it rains sometimes however.

The basics are (1) yield and (2) storage capacity.

Eg you build a dam somewhere that has net (after evaporation losses) annual inflows of 100 GL +/- 35% and a storage capacity of 500 GL. In practice you can then draw pretty close to 100 GL out of it each year and do so reliably.

Sounds like you have studied or worked in hydrology?

Only thing I could add is that often for Australian capitals the catchments yield curve, used to estimate required dam volume, has to be done over decades rather than yearly yield*, ie for some cities you may have to rely on 1:5 or 1:10 year flood events to top them up.

Another important point about the benefit of dams is that they can be equally beneficial as flood mitigation measures which can save society significantly more than the cost to construct them.

Something Brisbane forgot when they turned to the flawed logic that dams don't make rain in 2004-7, making water infrastructure investment decisions while living on what is quite clearly, even to a layman; a flood plain....

If I could also add though desals can and do have a place though in places like perth where the geography / geology is not as rich with catchments ripe for creating dams. Our desal is going strong and has shored up our water supply for a few years.

*Edit: just realised you did say plus minus 35pc. Still In the land of droughts and flooding rains the European textbook approach doesn't work where in our case we can get an average over 5years of -35pc compared to long term average and then a year (or month...) of +300pc on average rainfall. Ie we don't get anything like consistent rain and never have.

 

[SirRumpole]

I suppose you could have the best of both worlds and have desal plants discharging into dams to top up the storages.

Or is that how it works now ?

 

[noco]

I suppose you could have the best of both worlds and have desal plants discharging into dams to top up the storages.

Or is that how it works now ?

There is no doubt in my mind that when desal plants come into discussion, the high cost of power to run pumps at very high pressures is completely overlooked apart from the high cost of maintenance whereas more dams = more storage and flood mitigation.

Eventually the rains will come....The .Ross river dam in Townsville is now at 33% and has been as low as 10%....top up is obtained from the giant Burdekin dam....Discussion have taken place over some years now to raise the height of the Burdekin Dam wall by some 2 meters which could increase the capacity 8 fold.

Had authorities proceeded with the Bradford scheme 50 or 60 years ago, the whole of the central and southern part of Queensland would now be drought free....This scheme was also designed to fill Lake Eyre and had Lake Eyre been kept full it could have created rain for NSW.

But when politicians become involved wrong decisions are often made and that includes the construction of desal plants on the advice of that nutter Tim Flannery....The "Climate Change" expert...nuff said about politicians.

 

[SirRumpole]

But when politicians become involved wrong decisions are often made and that includes the construction of desal plants on the advice of that nutter Tim Flannery....The "Climate Change" expert...nuff said about politicians.

Easy to say with the benefit of hindsight. If major cities were running short of water it's hard for a politician to say to people "if we wait long enough all our problems will be solved". At least with desal plants there is another option for water supply, sea water will never run out.

That's why I say don't rely on one source of water, have some options.

The stupidity of politicians is in letting the population expand to such an extent that the demand water water is outstripping the supply. Something had to break.

 

[trainspotter]

Very good TS !. Love the range of parameters you have thrown into the pot. All quite legit.

My thoughts are that the oceans will rise significantly if only as a result of thermal warming and the current rate of ice loss from the Arctic and Antarctic. Check out the figures calculated from the Cryo Sat 2 satellite.

The reality ? It will be incredibly unlikely that the deserts can somehow "absorb" the water that will be release from the ice caps. The only way I could see that happening would be the creation of vast new forest around the world via this massive irrigation project.

Alternatively of course we could develop a way to freeze all this desalinated water (super cold freezer...) and create a huge new on shore ice mountain....

Cubic miles of water are really, really BIG volumes. Think about it.

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...e-polar-ice-loss-cryosat-antarctica-greenland

Ermmmmm please don't patronise me with a pat on the head basilio ... it is beneath you. If the ice caps have doubled their melting rate why hasn't the ocean risen at twice the rate as per the "scientists" predictions?

ie Current rate from IPCC as per link I posted was 1.7mm + or - 0.5mm per annum. Surely now it would be spiking out to 3.4mm give or take as well as the increase in ocean levels from El Nino equating to about a further 0.7mm adjustment? Give or take a pooftenth of a millimetre or so. Afterall the editorial you posted from the Guardian is over a year old now. Surely we should be up to our ankles in icy sea water by now

Oh yeah .. you missed the whole thrust of my post ... DESERT + WATER = FOREST. You do realise that this has been done before right?

Top 10 ways Israel fights desertification. Israel has gained a worldwide reputation for its ability to turn barren desert into useful and arable land. ISRAEL21c takes a look at the country’s top 10 eco-strategies. By Karin Kloosterman

This past year’s erratic and violent weather is only a small taste of what’s to come, climate scientists predict, as the impact of global warming starts to hit. Weather will become more unpredictable, flooding will become even fiercer, and droughts and famine more widespread as land increasingly gives over to desert.
With desert covering a large part of its surface, Israel has had to quickly develop solutions for its lack of arable land and potable water. Israeli research, innovation, achievements and education on this topic now span the globe in tackling problems common to all desert dwellers.
“We’ve done a lot of research on ecosystem response to drought because we have this problem on our doorstep,” says Prof. Pedro Berliner, director of Israel’s foremost research center for desert research, the Jacob Blaustein Institute for Desert Research at Ben-Gurion University in the Negev Desert.

http://israelseen.com/2012/07/19/israel-turns-barren-desert-into-useful-and-arable-land/

Or is it that the ice melting from the polar caps is merely evaporating due to the increased global temperatures thusly negating the rising effect?

 

[basilio]

Your logic is way out TS. The rapid increase in ice melt from the Arctic/Antarctic is not going to show up immediately. In terms of increasing ocean levels it is still small potatoes. The current major contributions to sea level rise are thermal expansion as the oceans warm up and melting of land based glaciers.

The concern with the Arctic (Greenland) /Antarctic ice caps is that if they start to collapse then the oceans will rise by many metres. The time span for a theoretical collapse is almost literally anything. We might like to believe it is thousand of years - if at all.

Unfortunately historical evidence says otherwise.

The big question is how fast can the ice sheets collapse? We know the melting of ice sheets is a non-linear process. NASA climatologist James Hansen explained on ABC Television program, The 7.30 Report in 2007 to 7.30 Report anchorman Kerry O'Brien that:

"the problem is that the climate system in general has a lot of inertia and that means that it takes time for the changes to begin to occur but then, once they do get under way, it becomes very difficult to stop them and that is true in spades for the ice sheets. If we once begin to disintegrate it will become very difficult, if not impossible, to stop them and we are beginning to see now on both Greenland and west Antarctica disintegration of those ice sheets. They're both losing ice at a rate of about 150 cubic kilometres per year and that's still not a huge sea level rise."

"Sea level rise is now going up about 3.5 centimetres per decade. So that's more than double what it was 50 years ago. But it's still not disastrous; it's a problem, but it's not disastrous. But the potential is for a much larger sea level rise.If we get warming of two or three degrees Celsius, then I would expect that both West Antarctica and parts of Greenland would end up in the ocean, and the last time we had an ice sheet disintegrate, sea level went up at a rate of 5 metres in a century, or one metre every 20 years. That is a real disaster, and that's what we have to avoid."

So, with rapid ice sheet disintegration we get strong pulses of sea level rise of several metres per century. This has happened in the geological past, even with a much slower rate of atmospheric climate change. We don't know when we might trigger the first of these pulses. But we are changing the climate much much more rapidly than has ever happened on the geological time scale. What may have happened naturally over several thousands years in geological time, we are doing in a brief 150 years.

So Greenland Ice sheet is melting in 2011 with near record mass loss. There have been warnings about Greenland ice caps to raise sea levels going back to at least 2004 and earlier.

In Antarctica the Thwaites and Pine Island Glaciers are accelerating with the West Antarctic Ice sheet losing mass.

http://takvera.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/global-warming-means-20-metre-sea-level.html
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_Chapter13_FINAL.pdf

______________________________________

PS And by the way the Israelis use irrigation for cropping. The amount of water that stays on land is raised but not that significantly.

A truly big forest on the other hand is effectively metres of water held in the trees and leaves.

 

[basilio]

The National Ice and Snow Data Centre have any excellent website which draws together all the research on snow and ice. Well worth a read.

https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/sotc/sea_level.html