1. The Wonthaggi desalination plant
2. The Victorian North South Pipeline (and the abandoning of plans to increase Melbourne’s existing rainwater catchments)
3. The New Murray Darling Basin plan with its complete and utter lack of respect for the wisdom that underpinned the existing water sharing plan between NSW, Victoria and South Australia).
4. The Koondrook-Perricoota Forest Flooding Plan which was intended to save gum trees that were dying because of “natural drought” rather than “unnatural drought” and which was gazetted when the drought had broken and the forest was flooded. [And which now seems to have resulted in the creation of an artificial forest lake which may drown more vegetation than it saves…not to mention creating artificial blackwater events].
5. Canberra’s Murrumbidgee to Googong Water Transfer Project
6. Sydney’s Warragamba Dam Deep Water Recovery Project.

Amazingly enough, not one of these projects were operational before the ending of the drought rendered them unnecessary.

But even more amazing is how out of step Australia was with other countries’ response to global warming. A significant component of the South Korean response, for example, has been the assumption that global warming will result in higher levels of evaporation and a generally more active water cycle. The South Koreans expect much more rain…..and are busy ensuring their dams can cope with much higher inflows.

Tim Flannery warned Australians that Lake Hume would “never fill again”. He can tell that to the thousands of trees that were planted above the 75% capacity water mark……almost all of which are currently underwater and drowned.

Like Stevo said, phew!

This ‘balancing’ commentary is just nonsense - as the last two paragraphs of the article make plain. I’d expect that kind of silly and misleading commentary from Andrew Bolt or IPA stooge Bob Carter I’m surprised to see it here.

It’s rather like saying there’s nothing to worry about as the northern icecap melts because the Antarctic sea ice is expanding.

We don’t grow food in any quantity in the north of WA, NT or most of SA, we grow it in the east and the south of WA…

This article would have been profoundly better if it also mentioned what’s been happening in some of the critical areas for food production around the world rather than concentrating on the abstract point about slower drought.

And despite what the boosters try to tell us Australia is the tiniest of tiny minnows when it comes to feeding the world. We couldn’t even keep our neighbours in Java fed if their agriculture failed - and they manage near self-sufficiency on an island not much bigger than half the size of Victoria!

Dragging our attention to the places where the vast majority of food is grown, the northern hemisphere - and specifically the world’s greatest food basket, the USA - we’re seeing an ongoing problem.

That regionalisation of drought mentioned in the article is biting very hard into a food producing region that was still expecting a reasonable crop when this paper was being finalised. That hope died about the same time as this paper was submitted, back in July.

The new research that has shown the effect of the melting northern Ice Cap, and the resulting ‘blocking’ weather patterns, that have increased rain and bitter cold in Northern Europe, winter heatwaves in Southern Europe and the worst one year drought in US history, needs to be brought into an article like this which purports to report on ‘new research’.

Otherwise you end up with an inaccurate, and frankly misleading, headline like “Climate change may not cause drought”.

I’m assuming that the author understands that the loss of 70-odd percent of the northern ice volume,and the resulting drought that we’re seeing now across the Great Plains of the US is due to Climate Change…

But it is worth revising actual records, always, if you can bring a new perspective.

While believing that climate change is both real, and man made, I am also cognisant that science doesn’t know enough to make unequivocal statements about it. As Risk Management, the carbon tax and other measures must be introduced.

But don’t ask me to start believing in bloody forecasts.

Now one can’t rule out that even though the concentration of a major greenhouse gas has been increased by 28% on account of human activity and is continuing to increase, everything will somehow work out OK, but that seems like a tremendous leap of faith and a poor basis for planning the future.