Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Having spent a reasonable amount of time there, I have the highest regard for Australia and Australians. In general they are good, level-headed folks.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the people who wrote the Waxman-Markey website page on Australia. I discussed the first of their “Impact Zones” here, please read it for an overview of the Waxman Markey site. This thread discusses why you need to be very careful with the Waxman Markey “facts” about Australia – they bite.
Figure 1. An Australian example of what we surfers call “the man in the gray suit”.
The website says:
Drought
Global warming is a major contributor to Australian drought. Record high temperatures are increasing evaporation, damaging vegetation and reducing water for irrigation in the continent’s agricultural basin. Sustained high temperatures are as hazardous for people as they are for plants. The average annual death toll from heat waves is over 1,100 people in Australia and that number only stands to increase.
In 2006, Australia experienced its worst drought in the last millennium. The Murray-Darling River System, which produces well over half of the country’s water supply, dropped 54 percent below its record low.
BZZZZT! Bad website, no cookies! Another factual error, and another big lie.
First, the factual error. The website links the claim of the “worst drought in the last millennium” to that noted scientific journal, the Guardian newspaper. It in turn says:
Australia suffers worst drought in 1,000 years
Australia’s blistering summer has only just begun but reservoir levels are dropping fast, crop forecasts have been slashed, and great swaths of the continent are entering what scientists yesterday called a “one in a thousand years drought”.
With many regions in their fifth year of drought, the government yesterday called an emergency water summit in Canberra. The meeting between the prime minister, John Howard, and the leaders of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and Queensland was told that more than half of Australia’s farmland was experiencing drought.
David Dreverman, head of the Murray-Darling river basin commission, said: “This is more typical of a one in a 1,000-year drought, or possibly even drier, than it is of a one in 100-year event.”
What’s wrong with their statement? A number of things. First, “scientists” didn’t say anything about a one in a thousand year drought. That was said by David Dreverman, who is the head of the local Murray-Darling river commission.
Second, Mr. Dreverman did not base that statement on a thousand years of drought records preserved in tree rings, or on other proxies, or on any observations at all. It was simply a mathematical estimate of what is called a “return period” based on a probability distribution, not a scientific statement of historical fact. Here is a link (PDF) to how it was calculated.
Third, his statement was only peripherally connected to the drought. He was actually talking, not about the drought, but about the return period of the flow of the Murray River.
Fourth, he either didn’t notice or didn’t want to comment on the other reasons why the Murray River is so low. Here (PDF) are some of the reasons:
So why is there less water?
The amount of water that ends up in the Murray river has changed because:
• More farm dams have reduced run-off by between 660 and 2,400 gigalitres (Gl) per year
• Groundwater pumping has reduced run-off by 327 gigalitres per year
• regrowth from the bushfires in early 2003, when over a million hectares of
native forest was burnt, could reduce run-off by 430 gigalitres by 2020
• new plantations could have further reduced inflows by 1,100-1,400 gigalitres per year
• farmers have increased the water holding capacity of their soil by adopting minimum tillage.
So that’s the factual error. The 2006 drought was serious, there’s no question about that. But there is no scientific evidence that it was the biggest drought in a thousand years. That’s just alarmist hype.
If that’s the factual error, where’s the big lie?
The big lie is that global warming is making Australia drier. Or as the website says:
Global warming is a major contributor to Australian drought. Record high temperatures are … reducing water for irrigation in the continent’s agricultural basin.
Why is that a big lie? Because Australia has has been getting wetter as the globe warmed over the last century.
How do I know that? Well, that’s what the Australian Bureau of Meteorology says. Here’s their information about Australian rainfall, from their website.
Figure 2. Changes in rainfall, Australia, 1900-2009
No sign of a problem there, rainfall is increasing. It has increased by about 80 mm (3″) over the last century. Note that (as has been true for millennia), the rainfall in Australia comes in fits and starts. It is not uncommon for a year to have twice the rain of an adjacent year.
Now I can hear you thinking “But what about the places that were hit by the drought? The Murray-Darling River basin (of “1,000 year drought” fame) and West Australia and South Australia were all hit very hard in 2006. They must be drying out.”
We are nothing if not a full service website:
Figure 3. Changes in rainfall, Murray Darling Basin
Figure 4. Changes in rainfall, South Australia.
Figure 5. Changes in rainfall, West Australia.
No reduction in rainfall there either. Yes, there was very little rainfall in 2006 in South Australia and the Murray Darling Basin and West Australia … but in all cases, there have been worse years in the historical record.
Finally, there must be some areas of Australia that are getting dryer, aren’t there? Of course. It’s a big place. Here’s an overview of the country, showing the changes since 1900:
The overwhelming majority of the country has gotten wetter. A few places have dried slightly.
SUMMARY: Their web page contains one misrepresentation of fact about droughts, and one big lie.
Misrepresentation of fact: the 2006 drought was not the biggest in a thousand years. Most places it was not even the biggest drought in the historical record.
THE BIG LIE: When you look at the full record for Australia, it is evident that as the globe warms, Australia is not drying out. It is getting wetter.
The big lie is that “global warming” is reducing the rainfall in Australia. In fact, it is increasing the rainfall … go figure.
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However – – drought is more than just precipitation.
There is no mention, whatsoever, of temperature trends – which are also available on the Australia Bureau of Meteorology’s excellent website. A quick look will show that overall temps in Australia have risen about 1C degree since WWII and 1.5C degrees in the Murray Darling Basin. Higher temperatures mean higher evapotranspiration – all other factors being equal. In the case of the Murray Darling, a increase of 1.5C degrees would negate 80 mm of increased precipitation in the summer months, alone.
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=tmax&area=mdb&season=0112&ave_yr=10
Now, I have no great love for the exaggerations coming from the alarmist camp, nor do I appreciate the extreme alarmism and historically inept recent article on the Murray Darling drought in the National Geographic; however, any critique that does not address long-term increases in temperature while only considering precipitation is not accurately addressing the full issue of drought.
Hi Chris, I’m sure it was just an oversight or I’m reading it wrong but do you care to re-phrase your paragraph?
Australia’s worst drought in recorded history,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_Drought
Almost forgotten now, the Murry Darling dried out. There are wonderful photos of the river steamships of the age high and dry on the river bed. More chilling were the memories of those involved, the total loss of vegitation over huge swaithes of territory. The recent drought was very mild by comparison. Humans have short memories sometimes.
I love how the increasing demand for water by people in dry climates is used as an example of “drought” and global warming. Great post Willis.
It’s fascinating to read all these anti-global warming/climate change comments: I guess that none of the people posting can have lived in the parts of Australia which have had water restrictions over the last 10 years? Are the empty dams – for example, Melbourne’s currently at about 35% – also a CSIRO/BOM conspiracy? Or are they also due to some kind of faulty measurement – we’ll just move the guages, they’ll start reading at full and then we can go back to hosing down our driveways? Towns like Geelong on stage 4 restrictions for the best part of a decade – are they imagining it? The point is that – in case you haven’t noticed – it hasn’t been raining in big parts of the country for much of the last 10 years. How do you explain it? Or can I confidently expect full rain tanks next week now that you’ve exposed the lack of rain for the commie plot that it is? I used to know a few meteorologists and I’d’ve never guessed that they were one-world-government stooges: guess you just can’t tell with some people, they hide it really well.
Oh, and I liked the comment about all the shoddy science in Australia – I guess most of the people posting here have advanced degrees in meterology or general science or statistics and are in a position to assess the merits of the science they don’t like the conclusions of?
The fit of those lines doesn’t loot good enough to reject null that there is no change in rainfall at all.
Wow! That shark looks a mouthful of teeth and little else.
Joseph Heller was Catch 22. Kurt Vonnegut was Ice#9. 😉
well In Victoria we just had at least 2 and possibly 3 inches of rain in the last 2 days, after some frosts and cold days, its been quite mild but winter finally arrived:-)
I have a mini lake out front and need gumboots to walk round the yard, its wonderful:-)
keeping up the firewood supply is a worry, but the trees are booming!
growing so fast they are splitting Vertically as the bark cant keep up.
a tree we cut last week has HUGE growth rings for the last 2 years, like triple the prior years at least.
Feb 08 was the coldest I can remember being in my life, even the ’09 fires came in the ONLY hot week we had, prior to and days after it went back to quite cool.
feed malarkey and co to the sharks:-)
“Crop forecasts have been slashed” hey? However, crap forecasts remain prolific…
Yes but says:
June 30, 2010 at 5:14 am
I take it from your dismissive response that you haven’t read the Lockhart paper.
The Cai et al 2010 paper you linked to makes the following criticism..
In response I note the following from the Lockhart paper…
That is, the Cai criticism that Lockhart weighted the data in favour of those stations closer to the equator during cool months doesn’t stack up.
But hey, why believe researchers and scientists? Any housewife will tell you that her washing will ALWAYS dry quicker on a sunny day than on a sunless day of equal temperature.
Yes but no but, try it for yourself.
p.s. The reason why Lockhart used cool months data is because that’s what Nicholls et al did and arrived at the IT”S MANS CO2 THAT DID IT conclusion. Surprise surprise.
Waxman-Markey
I feel sorry for them. They could look at a new dam and see less water flow past the dam. That is a simple principle of how dams work. They catch water.
Waxman-Markey think it is CO2 that explains less water flow downstream from the dam.
It is obvious that Australia has extremes of weather looking at the graphs and anecdotes. Combine this with a growing population who put pressure on water resources, Australia is not a good indicator of climate.
John Egan
Thanks for the link. Wondering why you didn’t link to this too:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=rain&area=mdb&season=0112&ave_yr=99
Point, set, match.
Well done, Willis. Again.
Christopher Hanley says:
June 30, 2010 at 3:40 am
Outstanding, thanks, Christopher. I read Marty Singh’s comment, and I was reading on down and wondering where I could find information on pan evaporation in Australia … and you have beaten me to it.
What Christopher points out is that evaporation in Australia, far from increasing, has actually decreased. So that claim goes out the window as well.
w.
Steele Lawson says:
June 30, 2010 at 7:50 am
Steele, thanks for the view from down under. Obviously my writing is not as clear as I vainly think it is, you seem to have missed my point.
Yes, there are assuredly droughts in Australia. Sometimes extreme droughts. Australia is far and away the driest continent, even on a good day. And on a bad day, it is dry beyond belief. You say “The point is that – in case you haven’t noticed – it hasn’t been raining in big parts of the country for much of the last 10 years. How do you explain it?” I explain it by saying “G’day, mate, welcome to Australia” …
My point is that Australian drought is a natural phenomenon, which has been around for millions of years, and has nothing to do with humans. The Waxman Markey website claims that Australian drought is a result of CO2-induced warming. But the increase in rainfall over the last century, during which time Australia was generally warming, clearly shows that warming (from whatever cause) does not reduce Australian rainfall. So human actions are not causing any decrease in Australian rainfall.
On the other hand, the levels in the reservoirs that you discuss are affected by humans. For various reasons, Australia has not increased its water storage in decades. During that time both population and water use have increased greatly. It doesn’t take much math to predict what this will do to the water levels in Melbourne’s reservoirs … meanwhile, those of us outside of Australia scratch our heads and say “Instead of bitching about falling reservoir levels, why don’t they build more dams?”
Finally, “one-world government stooges”??? “Commie plot”??? Take a deep breath, my friend. I’m just pointing out that Australia’s rainfall is increasing, not decreasing, no need to hyperventilate.
Steele Lawson says:
June 30, 2010 at 7:54 am
Yeah, there’s no shoddy science in Australia, it is magically immune … not.
Steele, like every other field, there is good and bad science in Australia as in the rest of the world. The poster who commented on shoddy science gave an example (including a citation) of what he thought was shoddy Australian science.
Now, you could have taken the scientific path and shown how what he cited was not at all shoddy. That would have been good science. But you didn’t do that, you didn’t increase the amount of good science in Australia.
Instead you just attacked the scientific qualifications of the people reading this site, the famously fallacious “ad hominem” strategy. By doing so, you actually increased the amount of shoddy science in Australia … I believe in soccer playing countries that’s called an “own goal”, but I grew up on a cattle ranch, and we called “shooting yourself in the foot”.
I have never seen a heat wave caused death. I have seen dehydration complications.
I suspect when life expectancy was 39, we had less deaths blamed on over heating than we do now with millions of people over the age of 80.
I will discount the anecdotes regarding Austrailia untill I examine the official tree ring reports and hockey sticks from The MANN.
Our own (warmist) CSIRO stated in September last year (sorry, no time to find the reference) that the drought WAS NOT caused by Global Warming. Are the CSIRO deniers now???
Cheers,
Tim
Neville says:
June 29, 2010 at 11:56 pm
Good summary Willis, the facts are that southern Australia has been drying out for at least 5,000 years, see Catalyst ABC video or transcript below.
In the last 100 years Tasmania is the only state that has received less rainfall, but from a much higher base than other states.
Sure the SW of WA has had less rainfall but the rest of the state has had increased rainfall.
I hope Willis has the time to watch the video ( approx 10 mins) because it proves that the drying out of southern Australia could not have been caused by humans, because it started way before the Industrial Revolution.
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1848641.htm
That was quite interesting and very informative.
Not mentioned: Have they looked into the CO2 content of the cores?
Other than that, the only downside of the presentation was the constant banging on the AGW drum by the narrator.
Steele Lawson says:
June 30, 2010 at 7:50 am
“It’s fascinating to read all these anti-global warming/climate change comments: I guess that none of the people posting can have lived in the parts of Australia which have had water restrictions over the last 10 years? Are the empty dams – for example, Melbourne’s currently at about 35% – also a CSIRO/BOM conspiracy? Or are they also due to some kind of faulty measurement – we’ll just move the guages, they’ll start reading at full and then we can go back to hosing down our driveways? Towns like Geelong on stage 4 restrictions for the best part of a decade – are they imagining it? The point is that – in case you haven’t noticed – it hasn’t been raining in big parts of the country for much of the last 10 years. How do you explain it? Or can I confidently expect full rain tanks next week now that you’ve exposed the lack of rain for the commie plot that it is? I used to know a few meteorologists and I’d’ve never guessed that they were one-world-government stooges: guess you just can’t tell with some people, they hide it really well.”
And just over a year ago Brisbane dam levels were at 20% whereas now they are close to full. Incidentally they were also full back in around 2001. When you keep packing more and more people into an area without proper planning this kinda things happens and has nothing to do with global warming.
Dam filling events never happened on an annual basis in the past and they are unlikely to in the future.
Steele
If you look at this graph (total Australian rainfall w/running 10 yr. average)
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=rain&area=aus&season=0112&ave_yr=10
you can figure out what happened to cause your water restrictions. Beginning in about 1970 the continent saw quite a significant increase in rainfall that lasted for more than a generation. When conditions persist for that long people perceive them as permanent. I’d bet dollars against donuts that water use, primarily for irrigation, grew to consume all that extra rainfall and over a period of 20-30 years became dependent on it. Now that rainfall has fallen back to the 1900-1970 average for the past 10 years all of a sudden there isn’t enough water to go around anymore.
I’d start solving it by ditching the rice farms. Producing one million tons of rice per year in an arid region is kind of silly. I know that isn’t easy. I live on the shore of a large reservoir in Texas and the biggest single water users are rice farms 100 miles downstream. They have water rights that are legally unassailable. The rice fields continue to get flooded while those of us upstream can’t wash our cars or water our lawns because of mandatory water conservation measures. Such is life.
The two dams feeding most of the water into the Murray River were partially emptied at the beginning of the decade in order to upgrade and repair the dam walls. This is the Hume and Dartmouth dams. I live in that region, and at the time, 2002, it was expected to take several years to refill the dams. So the environmental nitwits measuring river flows don’t realize that the low water levels they observe are indeed man made, but by the engineers with whom they would never deign to socialize.
Love reading this site. Have not commented before.
Steele Lawson: I am but a humble researching engineer, no “advanced degree in meteorology”, but I worked for CSIRO for a big slab of my life, I’ve been studying meteorology for about 20 years or so and I live in Brisbane which has been on water rations since about 2000. I’m also 500 yards from the river and get to see it flood and subside.
I took an early interest in GW due to my interest in meteorology, and as a consequence studied up on atmospheric physics and studied all the data I could find. In the 90’s all the weather data was available free off the BOM website. I understand government cuts force them now to charge for it but I am suspicious they refuse to supply data beyond WW2 for weather stations that have been in operation since the 1870’s. I also note the CSIRO now has an ex macquarie investment banker for a CEO. His first announcment was a commitment to focus CSIRO on GW issues. I am sure this has nothing to do with carbon trading. There are many good people in CSIRO trying to do good work. The people you see in front of TV cameras usually aren’t. A PhD is no garantee of intelligence let alone ethics.
The previous MD drought has been mentioned along with some other pertinent comments. I would add that weather patterns in aus are generally more extreme than many other places and as many of you will know cycles tend to be long and not sit well with human memories and perceptions. You can cherry pick data all you like to make this drought or flood sound like “the worst in 10,000 years” or whatever. The reality is we in SEQ had a similar drought to this in the 50’s, and the so called 100 year ’74 floods actually occure about every 40 years. We are due. Also remember that Australia had a population about half it’s present level in the 70’s.
Regarding weather records remember they are taken under specific controlled circumstances. I remember growing up in Sydney sub zero mornings in winter and 50 C afternoons in summer. The weather stations didn’t register those temps because they are off the ground in boxes.