More Rain = Worst drought

[trev]

Australia is currently suffering a severe drought which has halved agricultural production, resulted in many irrigation licencees being given a zero water allowance, effectively shutting down the irrigation business and killing many orchards and other crops. All major cities are on water restrictions, some smaller cities are limited to minuscle water allowances each day, enough for cooking and about 10 mins of shower use per household. Massive fires have burnt and are still burning in some states, being fought by firefighters from Canada and New Zealand as well as our own.
Yet the Australia Bureau of Metereology has announced that Australia's rainfull for 2006 was 19mm above average (about 5%). The problem is the rain fell in large amounts in the North and Northwest Tropics of the country plus in the Western Interiors of the continent, all sparsely populated areas with limited agricultural activities. Many of the main agricultural areas had their driest year on record. Either the population of Austdalia needs to be redistributed, or the rainfall does. Both are not easy options.

[Wittlich]

Sounds like yet another sign of global warming...

[Datajack Franit]

Australia

[MOBIUS]

Re: More Rain = Worst drought

Originally posted by trev
Australia is currently suffering a severe drought which has halved agricultural production, resulted in many irrigation licencees being given a zero water allowance, effectively shutting down the irrigation business and killing many orchards and other crops. All major cities are on water restrictions, some smaller cities are limited to minuscle water allowances each day, enough for cooking and about 10 mins of shower use per household. Massive fires have burnt and are still burning in some states, being fought by firefighters from Canada and New Zealand as well as our own.
Yet the Australia Bureau of Metereology has announced that Australia's rainfull for 2006 was 19mm above average (about 5%). The problem is the rain fell in large amounts in the North and Northwest Tropics of the country plus in the Western Interiors of the continent, all sparsely populated areas with limited agricultural activities. Many of the main agricultural areas had their driest year on record. Either the population of Austdalia needs to be redistributed, or the rainfall does. Both are not easy options.

Sounds like Karma to me...

After all, Australia is one of the World's biggest energy wasters, standing shoulder to shoulder with the US in not signing Kyoto - why should it not suffer from the effects of its profligacy?

Now we just need more bad stuff to happen to the US - then they might do something more substantial than putting polar bears on the endangered species list...

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Re: Re: More Rain = Worst drought

Originally posted by MOBIUS


Sounds like Karma to me...

After all, Australia is one of the World's biggest energy wasters, standing shoulder to shoulder with the US in not signing Kyoto - why should it not suffer from the effects of its profligacy?

Now we just need more bad stuff to happen to the US - then they might do something more substantial than putting polar bears on the endangered species list...

We're working on the putting on the list the endangered Cardiff Geoscience subspecies.

[Combat Ingrid]

Why don't you guys use solar power to desalt sea water? Is it too expensive?

[Datajack Franit]

Re: Re: Re: More Rain = Worst drought

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe


We're working on the putting on the list the endangered Cardiff Geoscience subspecies.

The ones using average 5 smileys in every single post as well?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Combat Ingrid
Why don't you guys use solar power to desalt sea water? Is it too expensive?

Solar is extremely expensive and inefficent. By far the most expensive and inefficent of any major power source on a per Kw bases.

[Combat Ingrid]

I know it's both expensive and relatively inefficent, but in a place like Australia there's just so much potential in solar energy. One would think they had figured out a decent solution by now.

[Dinner]

A better way would be to build nuclear power plants. It is superior in just about every way plus it costs much, much less on a per Kw basis.

[Combat Ingrid]

I agree with that, but with solar power you don't have to care about nuclear waste and stuff like that.

I'm just a little surprised they don't seem to be better prepared for drought. After all, Australia is mostly just a big desert

[Dinner]

There is virtually no waste in nuclear if you bother to recycle it. The "spent" fuel rods still contain something like 95% of their energy so recycling and rerefining the rods can work wonders. This isn't currently done because governments don't force it to be done and it is cheaper to simply dig up more uranium then to recycle our existing uranium. Get a nice government recycling program and we'll only have about 5% of what is currently called "waste" as actual waste.

[Combat Ingrid]

Do you have any reference to that? I have a hard time believing it but if it's true it's great.

[Zkribbler]

Yeah.... Why is the U.S. getting ready to open a dump under Yucca Mountain?

BTW: The Israelis have been doing wonders in getting the price down on desalinized water. The Aussies could probably use of few of their plants. It's better than watching their agricultuarl sector dry up and blow away.

[Underseer]

[CONSERVOWACKO]Ah ha! All this extra rainfall conclusively proves that there isn't really a drought in Australia. It's just another Evil Liberal Conspiracy designed to make people think there's a drought![/CONSERVOWACKO]