Agmates

Our current Australian anti-farmer policies coupled with a population that grows by 1 person net each 1.3 seconds will lead us to a point within 40 years where we will be a net importer of food. As the world population grows by another 2.3 billion people, food in Australia will indeed become a scarce resource.

During the past 8 years just on 11,000 Australian farmers have left the land. Today just 130,000 farmers or 0.6% of the population not only feed 21.5 million Australians but export enough food to feed double that number.

Australia is one of the world’s major agriculture exporters not because we are a major producer on a world scale, but because we have a small population. Our population is exploding whilst each day our policy makers work hard at reducing the number of farmers and their capacity to produce, in the name of ‘free trade’ and the environment.

As the Australian anti-farmer Federal and State Labour governments continue with policies that shrink our farming sector, world experts are urging them to pour money into ag & water research to avoid world wide food shortages and civil unrest.

THE director-general of the International Water Management Institute, Colin Chartres, has warned that Australia, along with the other developed nations, needs to invest more in research into agriculture and water management and in international aid.

The Rudd government is doing the exact opposite with huge cuts to CSIRO ag research funding including the closing of a number of world renown research facilities.

One of the first things the new Ag Minister Tony Burke did in coming to power 12 months ago was to scrap the very successful Farmbiz program which subsidized training and ongoing resource management education for farmers.

The QLD Labor government has followed up with an announcement it will close more Department of Primary Industry research facilities in that state.

Chartres says the food crisis of the past year was an important warning sign. “We have to heed the warning. Otherwise the ultimate outcome is, if we have millions of people starving in the developing world, much more social unrest, much more fertile ground for terrorists and extremists and the whole world becomes a lot less safe.

There is whole lot standing on it in terms of social security, as well as food security.”

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The much laundered new era of Federal - State cooperation has fallen apart.

The Federal Governments battle to gain control of the Murray Basin Water took an ugly turn this week with Federal Water Minister Penny Wong dropping a ‘water bomb’ on the Victorian State Labor Government Premier John Brumby [pictured] .

“In an aggressive play that was dropped on the states by surprise, Federal Water Minister Penny Wong declared that grants for small-scale farmers to cease irrigating will be paid only to those whose home state has agreed to the Commonwealth’s demands over abolishing certain trading rules.

The move has renewed tensions between the Rudd and Brumby governments over reform in the Murray-Darling Basin and forces the Brumby Government to effectively choose between two groups of farmers.”

Struggling small irrigators have been lining up to take advantage of the exit grants scince they were first announce 2 months ago.

“Pressure from the Commonwealth intensified over the weekend when Ms Wong declared that farmers could not access the grants - worth up to $150,000 - until their home state had met the Commonwealth’s demands.

The incentive package has been offered only to “small block” farmers - those with less than 15 hectares of land - and is of most significance to farmers in Victoria’s Sunraysia district.”

Once again small farmers will be left high and dry whilst the Brumby government digs its heals in.

“The Brumby Government vowed to continue fighting to protect the 4% trading cap until late 2009, when it is scheduled to rise to 6%.”

It would be a real treat and a novelty for Australia to have just one State Political Leader who’s planning and policies had a longer time frame than the next State election.

Can there be a better example than the Murray Darling fiasco for the need to rid ourselves of the blight on our nation that is our system of State Governments?

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Gary Johns is a former minister in the Keating Labor government.

In a terrific piece in todays Australian Newspaper he says that the Emissions Trading Scheme will require Australians to pay for something that will have zero impact on climate change.

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THE one certainty of climate change (anthropogenic or not) is that it is unstoppable. Government advertisements suggest worst-case scenarios but they do not concede that these are no less likely should Australia cut its carbon dioxide output.

Whether or not you believe in man-made climate change, it’s out of our control.

At some point, probably about the time the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill - a carbon tax - comes before parliament and in the lead-up to the next election, the electorate will realise they are being asked to pay for something they cannot have: a guarantee against climate change.

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Johns rightly goes on to argue that the only responsible thing for governments to do is to spend tax payers money on adapting to climate change as and when it occurs. He goes on to site the QLD governments $9 billion dollar South East QLD water grid as a great example of this working successfuly.

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Wisely, the Queensland Government decided it could not stop the drought (climate change) and it did not try. Instead, it responded to the needs of citizens for water by restricting water use and spending $9 billion drought-proofing the economy.

It is building a new dam, thereby spreading the area of rainfall capture, connecting the dams to enable water to be pumped around in response to rainfall change, recycling water and building a desalination plant. Broadly, these are the only responses a government could make.

Southeast Queensland water users will pay the price, indeed are probably happy to, given the insignificant cost of water compared to its immense significance to everyday life.

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The Federal Governments $10 billion buy back of the Murray Darling water licenses from farmers is another great example of the government waging a real adaption campaign against climate change. The buy back is a win win for farmers and the broader Australian community and a tangible response to climate change that tax payers are happy to fund.

As we have repeatedly said at Agmates:

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The Rudd government should abandon the ETS sham and move to take practical measures that will have a real and lasting impact on the environment. Those steps should be anything that will prepare us as a nation for what lies ahead. that the public will see no results from.

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The Emissions trading scheme will cost Australians an estimated $5 billion in the first year with zero impact on global climate change. At the governments peril the electorate will soon tire of that.

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Also published on Crikey

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The Senate inquiry into the Murray Darling is due to report later this week and Independent Senator Nick Xenophon and Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young [ pictured] have laid it on the line to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Labor.

You have to love the new balance of power that the Senate has. Last week we saw Family First Senator Steve Fielding winning the practical and much needed exemption for farmers from the “Luxury car tax”. This week we’ll see enormous pressure on the government to in the words of Senator Hanson-Young “pull the states into line”.

The Greens Senator from South Australia said the federal Government had to step in and remove Victoria’s 4 per cent annual limit on the amount of water that can be traded from its irrigation districts.

Echoing those sentiments, Senator Xenophon, also from South Australia, told The Australian: “

“The Rudd Government has lacked the political backbone, to use that Paul Keating phrase.

The Rudd Government, when it comes to taking on Premier Brumby, has been a shiver looking for a spine.“

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The main reason that the Crisis is happening is because of years of bloody minded political State parochialism.

The “we are fine, so stuff you Jack” attitude of Victorian Premier John Brumby [ pictured] in relation to the Murray again sparked a verbal war between the states on Friday when he declared Victoria was doing all the “heavy lifting” when it came to saving the Murray River.

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Senator Xenophon summed it up when he said,

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“When Mr Brumby tries to lecture us about responsible water policy it’s a bit like Osama bin Laden calling for world peace.

The Government doesn’t have the numbers in the Senate and I think that they need to heed the need for using their powers,”

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So at last we might see the Senate force a federal government to take control of the Murray Darling System. As long as management of the basin is divided between the Governments of four States - (Victoria, New South wales, Queensland and South Australia) it will be what it always be as it has been - a disaster.

The sooner we get rid of state governments altogether, will be for the better in my book.

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Got a tip off, article or have you seen a video or item you’d like to be seen by the Agmates Community? If so please email it to us at news@agmates.com

Patients in country hospitals are being served meatless meals because the NSW Health system is so broke they can’t pay their butchers bill.

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“NSW Nationals State MP for Barwon Kevin Humphries has stepped in and offered to pay the butchers bill out of his own pocket so patients at Gilgandra and Coonabarabran hospital and local Meals on Wheels recipients, can get some meat back onto their plates.

Mr Humphries said he was appalled when he found cooks at Gilgandra and Coonabarabran hospitals were forced to provide meatless meals.

“Our patients deserve better. It is a sad day when staff are forced to compromise patient care with a reduced and inadequate diet,” he said. “I have even heard stories of staff buying meat for their patients out of their own pockets.”

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The NSW health Department is obviously completely broke. What a disgrace. Once again we see a long term Labor government hopelessly mismanaging the finances and ending up being virtually insolvent.

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“Murray-Darling Nationals MP John Williams said he knew of several cases of unpaid bills from the western health service. One Broken Hill business was owed almost $2000 and another business in his electorate had been owed more than $12,000 since May.

“It’s a bleeding ulcer for them - they are all suffering from the drought and they don’t need this,” Mr Williams said

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Hang on didn’t the NSW government just purchase Toorale station at Bourke for $24 million in conjunction with the federal government. Clyde Agriculture should probably do an urgent check that the federal government is guaranteeing the payment.

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“Greater Western Area Health is not the only one unable to pay suppliers. Yass air-conditioning mechanic Touie Smith said he is owed $18,386.50 by the Greater Southern Area Health Service for work at Yass and Goulburn hospitals.

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Is the NSW Labor government insolvent or are they very short of money and just not paying their bills in rural and regional areas, hoping the media won’t notice.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd should cancel his trip to the UN and stay home to sort out the financial mess the NSW State Labor government has created. Who knows with the global financial crisis the state of New South Wales may be at the brink of bankruptcy ?

Do you think thats fanciful, who would have believed 2 weeks ago that the worlds oldest Merchant Bank Lehman Brothers would declare bankruptcy last Monday. I mean they have not got the money to pay a $2,000 butchers bill.

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Seen a video or you’d like to be seen by the Agmates Community? If so please email it to us at news@agmates.com

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Murray Darling Basin chief executive Dr Wendy Craik are adamant that the drought and water crisis in the Murray Darling Basin is caused by climate change.

Rudd & Craik have both stated that the science proves the link between the current drought and global warming. But are they telling the truth?

Recently Rudd mocked opposition leader Brendan Nelson for saying that it had nothing to do with climate change.

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BRENDAN Nelson was yesterday accused of being “blissfully immune” to the effects of climate change after he said the crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin was not linked to global warming… “You need to get with the science on this,” the Prime Minister said. “Look at the technical report put together by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology.”

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Dr Wendy Craik [pictured below] says the current drought affecting Australia’s largest river system has the fingerprints of climate change all over it. …

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“from the Bureau of Meteorology, the CSIRO and places, there are elements we’re seeing in the current water shortage availability that are relevant to climate change.

“The reduction in late winter and autumn rainfall is linked by the Bureau of Meteorology to the intensification of the subtropical ridge and that’s linked to global warming.

“There are features of the current phenomenon that we find ourselves in - water shortage, drought, whatever you want to call it - that are linked to climate change.

“CSIRO scientists … say this drought has the fingerprints all over it.”

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Agmates has on a number of occasions pointed out how dodgy the science is that Kevin Rudd and Wendy Craik are relying on.

Now Associate Professor Stewart Franks [pictured below] , a hydroclimatologist and an associate professor at the University of Newcastle School of Engineering, very clearly & precisely explains to Prime Minister Rudd and MDB chief Dr Wendy Craik what the science in fact does say:

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“IS the ongoing drought in the Murray-Darling Basin affected by climate change? The simple answer is that there is no evidence that CO2 has had any significant role…

In fact, the drought was caused by an entirely natural phenomenon: the 2002 El Nino event… In short, the drought was initiated by El Nino, protracted by further El Nino events and perhaps more importantly, the absence of substantial La Nina events…

A key claim is that the multiple occurrence of El Nino is a sign of climate change. This is speculative at best. Recent analysis showed the nine-year absence of La Nina was not unusual…”

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Fanks then goes onto deal with Dr Craik’s statements:

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“Indeed, Wendy Craik, the chief executive of the Murray Darling Basin Commission has stated that temperatures were warmer, leading to more evaporation and drier catchments.

This is disturbing to hear from the head of the MDBC, as it is completely at odds with the known physics of evaporation… [ Franks explains the science in detail here]

Craik is not alone in her desire to view CO2-induced climate change as proven and affecting the drought.

Numerous politicians, environmentalists and especially scientists have made spectacular leaps of faith in their adherence to the doctrine of climate change over recent years, too many to document here.”

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Then Stewart Franks delivers a stingy rebuttal to the Prime Minister:

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However, the most literally fantastic claim on climate change must go to Kevin Rudd, who has guaranteed that rainfall will decline over coming decades; one can only assume he’s based his view on deficient climate models and bad advice.

There is no direct evidence of CO2 impacts on the drought, nor is there any rational basis for predicting rainfall in 30 years time.

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Franks last statement will put a chill up the spine of each of us that live and work in rural and regional Australia.

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One just hopes that sensible and sustainable management from our leaders will enable struggling rural communities to weather the vagaries of climatic and political extremes.

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So folks, that is what the science actually says. So why does Kevin Rudd and his long serving Public Servant Dr Wendy Craik keep churning out this global warming alarmist hype?

Are Rudd & Craik deceiving the public or are they just hopelessly ill informed by the 100% Government funded CSIRO and BOM ?

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Federal Water Minister Penny Wong [pictured] is to be congratulated for instigating the purchase of the giant outback irrigation property Toorale.

Wong is the recipient of today’s Agmates “Onya” award.

However the Federal government has come under heavy criticism from some quarters and that is to be expected as there are no easy solutions to the Murray Darling River System crisis.

Rural Press Canberra based reporter Lucy Skuthorp takes particular exception with the purchase in her syndicated article in the companies rural papers, The Land, The Country Life, The Stock Journal, The Stock & Land, The Farm Journal and the North QLD Register.

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“Federal Minister for Water, Penny Wong, and her new NSW counterpart, Carmel Tebbutt, might be celebrating their purchase along with the media and conservation organisations which campaigned long and hard for the Government to buy the property.

None of this purchase makes sense, apart from keeping some Greens and city-based journalists happy.

If they’d taken just a day to have lesson 101 in “how the rivers flow” they would have found this property does not achieve what the Government wants it to.

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Skuthorp is wrong. In my working life I have lived on the banks of the Warrego river at Cunnamulla upstream from Toorale and in the city of Broken Hill which draws its drinking water from the Darling river at Menindee down stream from Toorale. I have also lived and worked on the banks of the Bulloo river at Quilpie.

The purchase of Toorale has zero affect on anybody on the Warrego river upstream from Toorale which is at the very end of the river. Downstream the purchase it is a god send for all those between Toorale and where the Darling meets the Murray at Mildura in northern Victoria.

In the summer of 2000-2001there was particularly good rain in Northern NSW which caused the Darling river to flood for a good 5-6 weeks. From memory in late January 2001 the Darling at Menidee receded back into its banks after running a complete banker for that 5-6 week period. I had assumed such a prolonged run of a great volume of water would ‘flush’ the system and return it to great health.

I was wrong. Just a couple of weeks later when I crossed the Darling at Menindee heading to Ivanhoe to see that the water in the river was a putrid green with fish floating dead on the surface.

It was at that point that I realized just how sick the Darling river system was/is.

When I inquired with the Department of Primary Industries at Broken Hill as to what was going on they said that it was a result of the high concentration of nutrients in the water, combined with the summer heat had sapped the river water of oxygen, hence the dying fish. The nutrients I was told came from run off from higly fertilized irrigation properties upstream.

Skuthorp has no concept of how these ancient western river systems work. These rivers do not flow from high Alpine regions as do the rivers of the Southern portion of the Murray Darling.

They are actually the low drainage section of a vast and flat landscape. If you look at any topographic map of these regions particularly the lower ends of the Warrego, Paroo and Bullo rivers they are just a series of water courses not rivers as Urban people like Skuthorp might imagine them.

When excess rain falls over a large area and the soils become saturated the water runs off into the rivers via usually dry gullies and the odd dry creek. That is why when you see pictures of the Darling, Warrego, Paroo or Bulloo rivers the water is an earth brown colour.

In the long dry periods between these exceptional rain periods that is the ‘norm’ in the outback the bottom end of these river systems are just dry water courses.

The Warrego river heads in the Augathella district of QLD which is a 24 inch (600mm) annual rainfall but by the time it travels just 100kms to Charleville is is back to 18 inch rainfall (450mm) and at Toorale a further 350kms south the rainfall is just 14 inches (350mm).

Graziers downstream are happy that the weir that blocks the Warrego from entering the Darling at Toorale will be removed releasing an immediate 14 gigalitres into the Darling.

I spoke to Hamish Halcombe, the Chairman of the Australian Floodplains Association and he said that the association viewed the purchase as a ‘positive’ move.

Speaking to Mog Etheridge from ‘Kalyanka’ Station on the Darling river downstream from Toorale and just above Wilcannia, she also thought it was a positive outcome for the river.

In January this year following good rain at the top end of the Warrego saw substantial amounts of water flowed downstream with minor flooding at Cunnamulla [pitured below].

However graziers downstream from Toorale on the Darling saw virtually no water from the run in the Warrego at a time the Darling desperately needed it (still does). I have been told me that down stream graziers believe up to 80% of the Warrego water was trapped at Toorale weir and never made it into the Darling System

There has been much made of the impact of the closing down on the outback rural community of Bourke. Whilst it is true that there will be some impact, it has been grossely over exaggerated.

Toorale was owned by a British company which owns 18 Rural properties (745,000hectares or 1.86 million acres) across Northern NSW and Southern Queensland, a Cotton Gin at Bourke and has its own Stock and station agency business which looks after 1 client - Clyde Agriculture.

Across that entire conglomerate they employ up to just 120 full time staff.

The rest as with all large scale corporate Agricultural businesses are seasonal contractors, most of whom don’t live anywhere near Bourke.

From Clydes web site:

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Clyde Agriculture Limited is owned 100% by John Swire & Sons Pty Ltd, the Australian holding company for the UK based Swire Group.

Clyde has two subsidiaries: Darling River Cotton Pty Ltd, which operates the cotton gin at Bourke, and Wesbeef Agencies Pty Ltd, a licensed stock and station agent which operates only on behalf of the parent company.

The Company normally employs approximately 120 permanent staff.

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I congratulate Federal Water Minister Penny Wong and the Rudd government on the purchase of Toorale.

For that Minister Wong gets the ‘thumbs up’.

She is added to the list of receipients of the Agmates “Onya” award. Onya Penny.

There has been no under handed ‘taking’ by resumption. A willing seller in the form of Clyde Agriculture has meet a willing buyer in the form of the Australian public through the Federal and State govertnments with $24 million dollars changing hands in a totally transparent transaction.

Outrage and criticism from journalist like Skuthorp who know nothing of the real plight of the Darling River system but yet espouse to do so is pathetic.

Skuthorp should stick to writing pseudo Federal National Party press releases drip fed to her in her Canberra office and not pretend to have any idea of what is actually going on with our treasured outback river systems.

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The NSW government with the backing of the Federal government finalized the purchase of Toorale Station on Wednesday, just a day before it was due to go to auction.

The purchase of the property for $23.75 million is the first of a number of huge outback irrigation property’s that the Government has indicated it may be interested in purchasing as part of its $500m water buy back scheme to save the severely stressed Murray Darling river system.

It won’t be the last.

Toorale is a 91,000ha (224,860 acre) property, west of Bourke at the junction of the Darling and Warrego rivers. Toorale has 40kms of frontage to the Warrego river and 40 kms of frontage to the Darling river with approximately 60,000ha (148,400 acres) of floodplain.

About 14,000 megalitres of water stored on Toorale will be available for immediate release into the Murray-Darling Basin. Dams built across the Warrego River will be removed to ensure that flows from Queensland will reach the basin.

The purchase is expected to return up to 80 gigalitres of water to the Murray darling each year. Tooralie will be turned into a national park and managed by the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service.

The selling Agent was respected Bourke Stock & Station Agent Les Walsh from Landmark Bourke.

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Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday launched an attack on opposition leader Brendan Nelson for saying the Murray Darling crisis is not the result of climate change:
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BRENDAN Nelson (pictured) was yesterday accused of being “blissfully immune” to the effects of climate change after he said the crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin was not linked to global warming.

The Opposition Leader told the ABC on Monday night:

“What’s happening at the moment in the Murray-Darling Basin is a consequence of two things: mismanagement of the entire system for almost 100 years and also the worst drought in 100 years.

And it is quite wrong for people to suggest that what we’re seeing at the moment is a consequence of climate change.”

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Dr Nelson is 100% correct. In fact average annual rainfall has increased according to the very source that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd quotes - the Bureau of Meteorology.

There is no way anybody can blame the drought in Southern Australia on Climate Change, why because its all happened before.

In his attack on Brendan Nelson the PM says:

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“You need to get with the science on this,” the Prime Minister [kevin Rudd pictured] said. “Look at the technical report put together by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology.”

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In fact it is Prime Minister Rudd who needs to look at the science on this. The report that the PM is referring to predicts more frequent and horrific droughts.

Ecological niche modeler Dr David Stockwell, has checked the report’s modeling and assumptions and found them seriously flawed:

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“The most worrying failure was that simulations showed increases in droughted area over the last century in all regions, while the observed trends in drought decreased in five of the seven regions identified in the CSIRO/Bureau of Meteorology report.

Therefore there is no credible basis for the claims of increasing frequency of Exceptional Circumstances declarations made in the report.

These results are consistent with other studies finding lack of adequate validation in global warming effects modeling, and lack of skill of climate models at the regional scale.”

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But wait Dr Stockwell is not the only person who says that the science that PM Rudd is relying on is dodgy.

Ian Castles, is the former head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics He’s also checked the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO’s controversial report on future droughts, that the Kevin Rudd wants Brendan Nelson to take a look at.

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The key finding of the report, as presented in the opening words of Australia’s Primary Industry Minister Tony Burke’s [ pitured] media release of 6 July, was that:

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‘Australia could experience drought twice as often and the events will be twice as severe within 20 to 30 years.‘ …

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What the Minister Tony Burke didn’t mention was that the report hadn’t been reviewed by outsiders….

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“As it happens, a peer-reviewed study of the prospective incidence of droughts in Australia has just been published.

The paper ‘Comparison of suitable drought indices for climate change impacts assessment over Australia towards resource management’ appears in the current (August 2008) edition of the International Journal of Climatology - the journal of the UK Royal Meteorological Society.

It is authored by four CSIRO scientists, three of whom were also authors of the BoM/CSIRO report (Freddie Mpelasoka, Kevin Hennessy and Bryson Bates) and two of whom were Coordinating Lead Authors of the IPCC’s 2007 Assessment Report (Kevin Hennessy and Roger Jones)…

In short, the simulations from the two models (of the CSIRO and the Canadian Climate Centre) suggest that in the medium-term (20-30 years) there will be a tendency towards a small increase in drought frequency in most of Australia, but with decreases in drought frequency in some areas.

Although the peer-reviewed study comes from several of the same scientists, it gives no support to the cries of alarm and disaster which have accompanied the release of the BoM/CSIRO report…

The impression given by the peer-reviewed paper is vastly different from that given in the report to the Australian Government.”

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Or would Mr Rudd like to read what Steve McIntyre had to say. A new scientific paper has tested 18 years of predictions by global warming models against real-world rainfall and temperature. The result found is that when compared to what has acually already happened the climate models are useless.

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“Geographically distributed predictions of future climate, obtained through climate models, are widely used in hydrology and many other disciplines, typically without assessing their reliability. Here we compare the output of various models to temperature and precipitation observations from eight stations with long (over 100 years) records from around the globe. The results show that models perform poorly, even at a climatic (30-year) scale. Thus local model projections cannot be credible,”

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However as demonstrated on the recent 60 Minutes program the Prime Minister has undying faith in the IPCC findings. He will let his ‘fact’ not be confused by any amount of new scientific data that does not confirm his beliefs.

Its now about ‘faith’ not science for PM Rudd.

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DAVID EVANS: I urge them [the Rudd Government] to look at the modern science, the evidence isn’t there. There is no evidence that carbon emissions cause a significant amount of global warming.

PM KEVIN RUDD: I am not, myself, a qualified scientist. I’m elected as Prime Minister of Australia to act on the basis of the considered scientific advice.

TARA BROWN: But it’s never too late to continue the debate is it?

PM KEVIN RUDD: Look at your kids in the eye tonight and ask yourself this question - “If we have this much evidence available to us now “on climate change and just refuse to act, “then what are the consequences for them?” The alternative, however, is to just stick your head in the sand and hope it all goes away.

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Brendan Nelson should be telling Kevin Rudd “You need to get with the science on this”.

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The last 6 weeks has seen above average winter rainfall raise the level of the Murray’s lower lakes in South Australia.

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170mm of rain that has fallen around the lakes since Kevin Rudd visited them in early July

We’ve had exceptional rains in the last six weeks, which have really raised the water level by about six inches (15cm),” Mr Davis said. “We’re really stoked about that.”

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But we should not worry because Kevin Rudd is back from his Pacific Island jaunt.

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Mr Rudd yesterday again to tried assuage public anger about the delay in taking action over the Murray River, saying his Government was working “as fast and as hard” as possible to deal with the crisis.

“I’ve said before that we’ll be back and back again working on the challenges of the Murray-Darling, and this is for me a huge priority,” he said.

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Despite those assurances Federal Water Minister Penny Wong is still playing political games rather than taking action:

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“THE Greens were last night standing firm against Rudd government attempts to soften the proposed Senate inquiry into water availability across the Murray-Darling basin.

Federal Water Minister Penny Wong has proposed a series of changes to the Greens’ terms of reference which would widen and possibly slow the inquiry.

It remains unclear whether the Government will support or oppose the investigation in the Senate tomorrow.”

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