Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
The Arabunna people live in the area around Lake Eyre in Southern Australia. It is a hot, hostile desert region, which is no surprise, because … well … it’s in Australia. Here’s the general area where they live:
Figure 1. Lake Eyre region in South Australia. Yellow line show the area from 25°-30°S, 135°-140°E
A new report from the University of Everybody-Panic is a study of the horrendous future faced by these poor folks:
The first stage of University of Adelaide research released today shows that South Australia’s Arabunna country, which includes Lake Eyre in the far north, is likely to get both drier and hotter in decades to come.
“Temperatures could increase up to four degrees Celsius in Arabunna country in the next century, threatening the survival of many plants and animals,” says the author of the report, Dr John Tibby from the University of Adelaide’s Discipline of Geography, Environment and Population. SOURCE: PhysOrg
Yes, temperatures “could” increase … and I could win the lottery, but I’m not quitting my day job just yet. Meanwhile, back in the real world, what’s been happening in the Lake Eyre region in the last thirty years? Figure 2 shows the satellite-derived temperature trends for the lower troposphere in the area around Lake Eyre, from both the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH) and Remote Sensing Services (RSS).
Figure 2. Satellite temperatures for the lower troposphere in the Lake Eyre Region of Southern Australia. Photo shows the approach to Lake Eyre. Temperatures are the average of the region outlined in yellow in Figure 1. All data from KNMI
So … here’s the deal. We have no evidence that the temperatures are rising in the Lake Eyre region. There has been little change in the area temperatures since the satellite records began. Despite that, University of Adelaide professors are selling their fantasies of a terrifying future to the Arabunna, the aboriginal people who live in the area.
Meanwhile, the temperatures in the region are currently lower than they have been in the entire satellite record …
The professors seem to find nothing wrong with scaring the aboriginal people who have lived there for generations. And where do their projections of a 5°C temperature rise originate? Well, as usual, it’s models all the way down, and even the modelers say that their models are useless at the regional level … but despite that, these professors from the University of East Wankerton or wherever it is are more than happy to use these useless models to terrify the local folks.
I find this kind of crying wolf reprehensible, particularly when it is aimed at indigenous people, but hey, that’s just me.
w.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I find this kind of crying wolf reprehensible, particularly when it is aimed at indigenous people…
Why is that?
No, Tim Ball, you still have it wrong. The Snowy Mountains Scheme has come under fire from greenies for STOPPING the flow of water towards the coast – it provides water in the opposite direction (ie, east to west) to provide electricity to the NSW and Victorian grids (Canberra, wholly land-locked with NSW but most definitely not a coastal city, draws its power from the NSW grid) and to provide irrigation water for the Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers, both of which flow to the west.
Adelaide (capital of SA) draws water from the Murray.
Tim Ball says:
June 30, 2012 at 8:43 am
No, Tim, you were wrong on both counts, even allowing for a typo. The term ‘desert’ does not mean the same as ‘arid’ and ‘semi-arid’, and it is the total of those three categories that equals 74% of the land mass.
I live in Canberra, and assure you it is not a coastal city, as you claimed in your first post (the closest sea is more than 90 miles away), or even a coastal plain city, as you fudged the words to in your second. The inhabited parts are around 550 – 600 metres above sea level (depending where you are) there are small mountains that go up to about 900m above sea level within the city limits.It is surrounded by higher mountains, and is in fact more like a high plateau.
You said: “although they have diverted water through the Snowy Mountain Range to provide supply to the coastal cities.” The Snowy Mountains Scheme does not supply a drop of water to Canberra or any other city, although it does supply hydro power here. As your later quote says, it supplies some water for irrigation to farmers a long way from here. Our water system is completely separate and it does not come from the Snowy Mountains.
As for the stuff about towing icebergs, it is a hardy perennial of alarmists which is not taken seriously. The inhabited parts of Australia are not under threat from lack of water, but from lack of water storage to cope with cyclical droughts. Almost nobody lives in the desert or arid lands, and the semi-arid parts are mainly used for running sheep or cattle on massive properties with not many people on them. The population, sensibly, lives in the wetter parts, which are about 25% of the area of the continental US and have about 20 million inhabitants. No need to panic just yet.