Friday, August 02, 2019

Bad drought, bad flood

*Cough* climate change *cough*:
THE ongoing drought through the Murray Darling Basin is now the worst on record according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
Speaking during a Bureau of Meteorology seminar on climate, BOM climatologist David Jones said the drought had now exceeded the Federation Drought, the WWII drought and the Millennium drought in terms of its severity through the Murray Darling Basin.

"Our records only go back 120 years but in terms of the rainfall records it is the most severe," Dr Jones said.
Hydrologist and water sector engagement lead with BOM Matthew Coulton said this had also translated into markedly lower run-off into the system.
Dr Jones added temperatures were as high as they have been during the human era, saying the nearest equivalent according to paleo-climatic data (analysing historical weather trends) was a hot period encountered 2-3 million years ago.
"We are still below that threshold of a couple of million years ago but we are starting to approach it," Dr Jones said.
And the BOM panel had tough news for those hoping for a swift resolution to the big dry.
"Our climate forecasts for the next three months show well below average chances of exceeding median rainfall through most of the MDB, especially in the north," Dr Jones said.
 On the other side of the world:
Hundreds of homes were evacuated in a Derbyshire town on Thursday when a dam threatened to burst after being damaged during extreme rainfall.

Around 1,400 people in 400 houses in Whaley Bridge were told to leave their properties with just minutes’ notice due to “an unprecedented, fast-moving, emergency situation” caused by heavy downpours.
Actually, the rainfall that has been around that dam is not being claimed as "record", as far as I can see - but climate change makes for more extreme rainfall events so it's an example of what climate change is bringing anyway.

9 comments:

Steve said...

Use of certain words gets you automatically deleted, GMB.

GMB said...

Use of certain memes is going to get you sworn at quisling. We are just going to have to go over it again and again and again.

CO2 has no power to make the rains come as it is not a part of water drop nucleation Because of the absence of solar activity, the cosmic rays coming rushing in from the heliopause. When they get here they cause heavy rain. So that the global solar minimum starts off with flooding and ends up with cold weather and drought. The flooding now. The super cold weather and drought in the 2030's.

Now. On top of this we have a REAL ENVIRONMENTAL CATASTROPHE. A real one and not a fake one. That is the loss of organic matter from our soils and the consequent desertification. This is caused by monocultured crops. Yes yes the same crops that go into your liars-meat. Your fake burger patties are not helping. Not unless the ingredients come off a permaculture farm.

Because for every 1% loss of organic matter in the soil we lose the capacity for 20 000 extra gallons of water holding capacity per acre. So the loss of soil leads to both drought and flooding. Please tell me that you grasp these realities behind the real crisis and repeat this stuff back to me.

"Hundreds of homes were evacuated in a Derbyshire town on Thursday when a dam threatened to burst after being damaged during extreme rainfall." Is all the land in the catchment area properly swaled? Or is it otherwise landscaped for water retention? Are there soil building activities going on in the catchment area? Fake solutions detract from measures that will work on the ground.

You have lived in the city all your life right?

John said...

Because for every 1% loss of organic matter in the soil we lose the capacity for 20 000 extra gallons of water holding capacity per acre. So the loss of soil leads to both drought and flooding. Please tell me that you grasp these realities behind the real crisis and repeat this stuff back to me.

Unfortunately it is worse than that. Micronutrient depletion is an issue and there is no attention being paid to it. Increased crop yields may even make the problem worse because of few nutrients per volume of the plant. The only possible solution I can see is the use of human and animal manure and urine as fertilisers.

GMB said...

""Our records only go back 120 years but in terms of the rainfall records it is the most severe," Dr Jones said."

Of course. We haven't had 3 weak cycles in a row like this for a very long time. And coming as it does hard on the heals of the strongest warming cycle since at least medieval times it makes perfect sense with real science. Because 20th century warming would leave a warm ocean and an atmosphere rich in water vapour. If you start lining up weak solar cycles until record loads of cosmic rays arrive in at us, what else are you going to get but stunning rains? You don't need to go to science fraud to explain this. You can go with actual science.

This is a moral failing. This is a character issue.

GMB said...

"Unfortunately it is worse than that. Micronutrient depletion is an issue and there is no attention being paid to it. Increased crop yields may even make the problem worse because of few nutrients per volume of the plant. The only possible solution I can see is the use of human and animal manure and urine as fertilisers."

Exactly. You've got to bring it together in space and work with the timing. You cannot have a cow shitting in a feedlot in once place, and grain being grown in another. Its got to be integrated over the same territory. The animals need to cycle through the plants territory one way or the other. We must stop relying on extended fields of monoculture or we are finished as a civilisation. A civilisation cannot long outlast its soils. And really we are only as good as our soils when it comes down to it. Toynbee and Spengler never talked about Jews and they didn't have much to say on soils either. So they didn't really cover properly, the rise and fall of cultures.

GMB said...

The rate determining step is how well the big trees and the fungal networks can mine the rocks for more nutrients. A fungal network cannot exist if we keep pouring pesticides over everything and it requires trees in close proximity. So the system of trees on the banks, water features and grasses on the terraces ... this is a good one.

John said...

BTW GMB can you provide the link to your blog? I certainly don't agree with you on a lot of issues but you're certainly not another conditioned right or left winger who just follows the tribe and I'm fed up crowd pleasers. Original thinkers make mistakes but at least they have the guts to go it alone and are far more likely to come up with interesting ideas.

GMB said...

Its quite a neglected blog.

GMB said...

Here's a thread that is more or less finished. It shows you the sort of mindset a well-funded team would have to have to do updated research on gravity. There's been a moratorium on serious gravity research. This stalling on public research is maintained by funding huge nonsense research and distracting everyone. Research into gravity waves and other unicorns. You go to the Albert Einstein institute or the Max Plank institute and their gravity research is everything but gravity research.

But then again the kids would not know how to go about real gravity research if they had the funding. So dazed and confused are they by 120 odd years of psychological operations. So if you read this blogpost it will shift your thinking and put you in the frame of mind to tell you what might be done if science were applied to all this nonsense.

https://abetterworldpartii.com/2018/06/26/possible-forces-affecting-mountain-development/