Still water flowing down the Murray Darling and out the mouth

The perceived wisdom that drought and a closed Murray Darling system is the new normal continues to be challenged by reality. From my reckoning and the following graph of the Murray river flow rate at lock one, the closest proxy of what is flowing to the sea from the system, 15,000 GigaLitres (or 30 Sydney Harbours) of fresh water has flowed to the sea since September 2010.



This link to see more live river data flows if you are interested.

I had predicted at around January that more water would flow out of the mouth than the total official storage of the whole of the Murray Darling before it stopped again. The total official storage is around 22,000 GL so I could yet be right. I figure that one more year of this kind of thing and we will be wanting to redact our thinking and declare that (the 10 years from 2000 to 2010) was just a freak drought the likes of which we would never see again in our lifetime. It is plausible that we may want to keep strategic dams along the Murray at half capacity to hedge our bets with catastrophic lower Murray floods now possible if we get a repeat of the inflows of last year. Namely the Menindee lakes, Hume and Lake Victoria could moderate catastrophic inflows to just the major flood mark at Renmark and below if they are pre-emptively emptied.

Grid based access vs grid independent systems

I started thinking about this entry ages ago when I had an epiphany and I felt that it could be proven that a speed/price/throughput advantage would exist for "fibre" over "wireless". (Conversely, a flexibility and ability to function when the grid is "down", advantage would always exist the other way).

The basis of the proof is basically that any imaginable technology that improves speed over wireless electromagnetic radiation, would be applicable to wired electromagnetic radiation in the same proportion of improvement.

In the case of broadband, at one extreme is Fibre to the Home and the other extreme is Satellite broadband. Wi-Fi is closer to the FTTH side, then there is 3G style wireless broadband that relies on the mobile network which is connected via mainly fibre, and satellite, which can work even if the whole countries internet is down, theoretically. This doesn't really prove that FTTH is worth pursuing, because it is a tenable argument (although I would dispute it) that wireless will improve to the point that it is fast and cheap enough for everything we find important.

Back in Uni, it was proposed that solid state storage improvements were happening faster than hard drive improvements and could overtake them, and although a USB stick is enough for most things, portable hard drives still hold more and are used a lot, the storage advantage of hard drives is constant, due to the solid state improvements being equally applicable to hard drive storage.

Similar grid vs grid independent comparisons are common - road vs helicopter, grid power vs home generators, rail vs aeroplane, piped gas vs cylinders, water tanks vs dam & pipes, private dam storages vs large scale dams for irrigation.

With this in mind, simple goal based arithmetic could decide the balance between grid based and grid independent systems.

For Photo Voltaic electricity generation, I think we have got it backwards, which is why grid parity is not served well with thousands (or millions) of individual installations. If a household is after energy independence, a PV system with a significant amount of battery storage (batteries suitable for an electric car?) is actually very useful and would be a boon for extended power outages (like after Yasi). Because home PV installations are optimised to feed power back into the grid, they are quite useless as independent power sources, compared to diesel generators.

However, if we want PV power to compete with Coal or Gas, we need economies of scale of large scale PV based power stations.

Lessons from flooding

I fear that lessons from the Brisbane catchment flooding may not be heeded for the Murray Darling basin at the moment.

The main thing I have seen is that, for the Brisbane River at least, it is enough to refine procedures (or the rule book, as I have heard it called in the media) to have made the catastrophic major flood of the lower Brisbane river a moderate flood (albeit a longer lived moderate flood). The rule book seems to have been written at the time the Wivenhoe was built, and it essentially awaits for upstream data of inflows to enable releases in advance to allow room for incoming floods. This was fine when weather predictions days in advance were highly unreliable (as they were in the eighties) or for inflows of a volume that is not several times the capacity of the dam, nor when "La Nina" conditions point to aggressive early releases being more "conservative", than a wait and see what runoffs eventuate policy.

This lesson, which I am sure will be heeded for the Brisbane River catchment because catastrophic floods make it obvious, seems to be being ignored for the Murray-Darling. At the moment, the calculations are quite similar - with the Menindee lakes at over 100% and three major floods on their way in the next few months.

In 1956, another La Nina year, catastrophic floods hit the lower Murray when floods of the Darling and Upper Murray converged at the same time - Similarly a reaction was to build flood mitigation storages (in that case the Menindee lakes). They really should be emptied at a much faster rate right now, not just to absorb the peaks coming down already, but to have enough capacity to hold back the flood such that it doesn't coincide with possible autumn upper murray floods. The analogy with the Brisbane catchment is that the Wivenhoe may have been able to actually slow down the outflow as the Bremer and Lockyer floods peaked through, mitigating them rather than exacerbating them (If enough pre-emptive releases were made).

Of course, the bigger the flood, the less dams can feasibly hold them back, regardless of strategy.

What we need is more "lakes" in the not so wild west

There is quite an eerie duality between the lakes of the "wild" west-flowing rivers (in general they flow to wards Lake Eyre) and the "tamed" west flowing rivers. A series of lakes in the "wild rivers" (eg Lake Yamma Yamma, Diamantina lakes, Coongie lakes, etc.) Considerably slows the flow to the treeless salty pit in the end point (Lake Eyre). On the way, these storages are the lifeblood of both wilderness in these catchments(waterholes, trees, wildlife), and for human resources in those same catchments (mainly sheep/cattle grazing).

If you compare this with the Murray/Darling basin, all the human endeavour that has toiled to tame it has merely expanded on this natural system of floods being trapped. Both for the environment and human uses, it is an amazing extension, as the facts remain that floods and drought are as damaging to the natural environment's inhabitants as they are to human habitation. The remaining floods and droughts in the system are still primarily in the gaps where there is no suitable "lake" to absorb floods and make the water available through some of the following drought. I am estimating that by the end of this La Nina year, as much as all the water capacity of all of the Murray Darling water storages will have flowed out through the barrages of Lake Alexandrina. It is an open question as to whether the floods have nicely "reversed" the whole of the environmental damage done through the 10 or so years of it being a closed system (in drought, as it were). Although climate scientists have deemed the last 10 or 20 years as the new normal - I would suggest that it is a very brave call to BET that there will be similar droughts within our lifetime, as opposed to the usual contrived predictions.

If we could have harnessed even half of that water flowing away to the sea, the floods would have been even more controlled. At least we should have generated some osmotic energy from it at Lake Alexandrina, instead of just talking desalination. In the next few years of relatively plentiful water (even if we have a drought immediately after this La Nina) It makes no economic sense to buy (at a high price) water allocations from farmers who would use it to make a profit, for the environment which doesn't need it at that moment because of the soil storage from this recent series of flood events. Just feel grateful that we have got so much flexibility due to large natural and artificial storages, and perhaps plan some more future bountiful lakes that can be huge long term environmental assets for a relatively small environmental and human adjustment upfront price in drowned valleys.

Must BLOG

There is no way around it - Facebook is a poor substitute for just saying what I want to say about whatever is on my mind (without distraction).

- Water - I feel somewhat vindicated in my thought that reduced allocations, water buybacks, desalination plants, compulsory water tanks were not going to "fix" the Murray-Darling: All we needed was just a good sequence of floods, which incidentally make some or most of those fixes look foolish in hindsight. However, trading of water, infrastructure for transmission and efficiency, and even dams/water storages help both in drought and to manage the bounty of floods.

As far as the Lake Eyre basin is concerned, There is such an inland sea of evaporative ponds (lake Yamma-Yamma, Coongie Lakes, Bulloo lakes, lake hope, Goyder's lagoon, Warburton Lakes, Diamantina lakes, lake Blanche, Lake frome, as well ase now Lake Eyre South and North) that in the medium term, it should be considered that it would generate "coastal showers" for the inland basins of Australia, hopefully extending a run of higher runoffs.See: Lake Eyre Status and

Latest satellite images for images and data on water in the deserts.

Out-back-yard Water Fight

SA: Hey; Nice flood, Newy*. Can we have some of that?

NSW: Get your beady eyes off it Southa**. That's OUR flood. Get your own flood! We saw it first; We had to suffer the damage and inconvenience. Now we get to store it up for our next drought.

SA: OK here you go. Ten million bucks. Will that cover it?

NSW: HAHAHAHAHAHA... Do you think this is about money?

Penny Wong: Do I get a say in this?

SA & NSW in unison: SHUT UP.



* Newy = NSW

** Southa = SA

Nick Xenophon is RIGHT

What better time is there than RIGHT NOW to buy off (by buying their water allocations) farmers in the Murray-Darling. The most likely thing that they will do with their windfall is to move to somewhere more sensible, like the Burdekin, Atherton Tablelands or N.T. farming areas, bringing their farming experience, and getting cheaper water allocations, and lower fire risks.

Younger Dryas - Why can't it happen again?

Apparently, the most likely theory of the cause of the younger dryas involves a comet impact. The Younger Dryas is a rapid cooling event of about 13K years ago, going against the trend of moving into the current interglacial period. The reckoning is that a comet caused a catastrophic melt event which rapidly sent fresh water into the northern polar region: This caused a severe disruption of the thermo-haline current, plunging the Northern hemisphere back into ice age temperatures. Extra snow and ice cover caused an albedo effect which somewhat affected the temperature of the whole Earth somewhat, giving a thousand year pause to the interglacial warming, which even more suddenly corrected globally to a warm temperature consistent with the interglacial.

Climate scientists are almost unanimous in stating that a similarly triggered iceage could not happen due to the ice melt in greenland etc. due to global warming. The two prongs of this argument are 1) that the melting is too slow to give enough fresh water to similarly disrupt the currents, and 2) the base climatic conditions are too different - ie. there are less chance that there would be enough snow/ice cover to affect the albedo enough.

Most of the fearmongering however is that the icemelt and northern polar warming is going to be much more than had been calculated just a few short years ago, and quicker than anything since the younger dryas. That, to me, means that if Europe has a sudden cooling event (whithin the next 40 years), climate scientists could still claim that they were correct.

South East Qld level 5 hah..

I just couldn't help snickering to myself as the level 5 water restrictions were announced recently. Move to North East Qld, I thought. I hope there's such a huge exodus of businesses and people, that their land valuations go down....
It was always a little bit hurtful during Townsville's droughts that we were nicknamed "Brownsville". Maybe Brisbane should be nicknamed Brisbrown?

My Children

Teenager
Water Rating : *
Energy Rating: *

Long, Hot showers + obsessive with having clothes cleaned, ironed (by others). Uses more water and energy than the average adult.

Pre-Teens
Water Rating : * * * * *
Energy Rating: *

Water: They never flush the toilet, wash their hands, they have a bath once a month at the most, they care little whether they play on green grass or bare dirt, they even get most of their fluids from fruit.

Energy: They like computers but don't like shutting them down (takes too long to restart their games), they watch DVD's and videos but never turn them or the TV off (Not much point those devices having low standby power usage if they don't switch to standby). They love airconditioning, especially for when they get home. They either have a light, fan, air conditioner, cd player, computer (or combination) on in their room all night.

Dream time for water trading enthusiast

First they wanted to build pipes to Brisbane, now they are resurrecting the NQ to Darling-Murray system diversion scheme. The latter scheme kind of Bypasses Brisbane a bit but on paper seems to be slightly cheaper. There is also talk of a network of pipes between Queensland's dams. All of this is enough to make the mouth of a water-trading enthusiast.. well... WATER. It is hard to trade water allocations between places that don't have a cheap transference of actual water (ie. a pipe) between them. After years that recycled water has been free, it now is seen as valuable, and therefore worth spending money on. With a water allocation trading structure, infrastructure ideas suddenly find a way to fund themselves. Why would North Queenslanders be happy for their excess water to go to greedy southern areas? For the money of course!

Freakonomics analysis of Swimming sportsmen

The book analysed extensively the level of corruption in Sumo-wrestling, a high profile Japanese sport. So why not a high profile Australian sport. I shall resist naming names, but there are times when I am suspicious given the incentives.

1) Selection trials often get in the way of "tapering" the training regime. ie, faster times would be more likely at big meets, if one could avoid having to swim hard to qualify, rather than sticking to a training regime.

2) This is more of a problem in longer races eg. 550m or 1320 meter races, for instance, and not so much for the 90m and 180m type distances.

3) The general public doesn't really know the qualifying rules, while top swimmers would know if there was a way to get into an event without swimming in the qualifying final.

4) A casual, pre-race gentleman's agreement between swimmers is unlikely if they are coached by different coaches.

5) In certain races, it is very easy to predict the places each swimmer will get, in advance, if there is considerable difference between them.

6) It is quite easy to fake a false start.

7) If you are going to false start, better it be in the first heat, rather than the final, so that you didn't waste that energy qualifying for the final for nothing.

8) How does a swimmer get a jaw injury that requires surgery, and how come his mouth can open so wide afterwards.

Fine line

Hells bells! We sure go from Brownsville to Drownsville pretty quick! The rain will be P(ers)iss(t)ing down for a while to come now. Should have re-routed those rivers to point South.

If water was bananas

Due to the suddenness of the onset of drought, retail prices of water are expected to be up to 10 times greater than normal. Therefore the price for one thousand litres of drinking quality water will go up from an average of $1.20 to an estimated $12.00 per thousand litres. Just think about that for an average family of four who drink a litre of water each (+ dogs) that is nearly .8 of a cent a day just for drinking water! Add in the hygene necessities like washing and cleaning clothes that goes up to 5 cents a day! It is no wonder that people are fretting about the crisis. In a thirld world country droughts like this bring ruin and famine. Thankfully for us it just means spending a little less on our lifestyle this Christmas. Luxuries like watering the lawn for an hour will go up from $2 to about $20. Looks like another miserable summer with brown lawns again, except for the lucky rich. Thankfully, the higher water prices will make it worth while to truck in supplies from areas with plenty of water, or to pay rent on recent new pipelines.

If bananas were water

Shortages of bananas would lead to harsher and harsher restrictions. Level 1 restrictions would mean we are only allowed to eat bananas on our allocated days based on odds and evens. Voluntary reductions would be encouraged and a "banana wise" campaign launched. By level three restrictions we would only be allowed to consume them at certain times on our allocated days. By this time, fines would be imposed on people eating them outside these times. These restrictions are important because although most bananas are eaten when people can do without, sometimes the nutrients obtained can be a matter of life and death.

Yes, build it up higher! (the Burdekin dam that is)

The one minor consolation that I got from the sad news that no hydro station was being built up in the rainforest mountains up north, was that the environmental groups acceded that the Burdekin Dam stage two should be used for hydro instead. There apparently is less ecologically important land to be flooded. The only thing was that the extra storage capacity entailed was way overkill, and even the storage as it is was a resource waiting for possible extra uses. It has been handy for water security here in Townsville of course. It seems that with the talk of South East Queensland wanting a pipeline for their water security, stage 2 is becoming much more likely. Of course, the Burdekin is a river where siltation is a big long term problem compared to the rainforest areas, but by the time the pipeline is built, hydro will almost certainly be part of the deal anyway (to power the pumps?) together with all its carbon credits and peak loading power supply advantages. The possible problems with this vision? Pipeline cost may be in the billions of dollars.

I unashamedly prefer Hydro-electric power

The simplicity, permanence, renewable status and engineering advantages at economically suitable locations speak for themselves. The environmental "costs" are all one off's.

The Answer - Smaller "NIMBY" footprint!!!

AHA. So what was the question? Why would a green-ly inclined Premier build a desalination plant in Sydney? The alternative of another dam involves incalculable number of "Not In My Back Yard" ers. The other answer is how the "culled" trees get treated. For general expansion of Sydney all trees are killed humanely (ie. chopped down quickly) and the animals which relied on those native trees could move on (a bit like the early settlers thought about aboriginals). With a dam being built, the imagination is that basically everything gets drowned - a slow and painful death.

This is also why Hydro-electric schemes get fought tooth and nail by environmentalists, despite the incredible number of carbon credits over a number of centuries of likely operation. Meanwhile, fossil fuel powered schemes just find an existing industrial complex to attach themselves to WITHOUT A SINGLE PROTESTER!
ACT LOCALLY - yeah right, as long as no big ugly dam, wind turbine, solar generation stack, farm etc. doesn't end up in my back yard!

When I lost Faith in all environmental activists

It was in third year University, at the refectory, watching a debate about a hydro-electric dam proposal somewhere in North Queensland. My primary interest was that because it was the World's most popular and effective type of renewable energy, we may turn the corner and have a bias towards these type of projects and away from coal and gas powered stations. I was sadly mistaken. The local environmental speakers pointed out that we should be reducing demand by using less electricity in the home by turning off lights etc. etc. and not building new power stations (oh yeah, and not needing them anyway). The scheme was shelved - Not one single hydro power project has been built in NQ. Several gas power stations have been built. Coal fired stations that had been out of commission for years were re-started. Meanwhile, electricity demand has increased steadily by about 8% per year. Since that time I would estimate our (NQ) CO2 emmissions have doubled. Meanwhile at the university, virgin wilderness surrounding it has been built on for new accommodation and general expansion. Surely the environmental activist movement could have picked a different project to pick their fight on. Environmental activists are still aiding fights against wind farms, tidal energy projects and the list goes on. Any project that is "big" and "new" is automatically seen as bad and fought tooth and nail - but the gradual but certain expansion of existing facilities is completely ignored.

What "ought" to be done about Townsville's heat

There was this great research and pilot scheme done for a system of taking cold waters from the deep (4 degrees C) and using the temperature differential with shallow tropical water to generate electricity. The pilot scheme (in Hawaii) showed reasonable effectiveness in generating electricity, but also a great many other uses for the cold water. For instance, pumping cold water through underground pipes under crops to improve their productivity, and using the cold water for air-conditioning. My "scheme" for Townsville would be a simple heat exchange for the water already being pumped to all the houses. The salt water would cool a hunk of metal, and the purified dam water would be cooled significantly by the metal, and the cold water being distributed to the whole city would cool everything down. The main problem with Townsville as I understand it is that there is no deep water nearby. The water would have to be piped in from a hundred kilometers away. This shouldn't really be a problem though - we are piping in gas from further than that for electrical generation. Once the initial "cold water" scheme is shown to be successful, all sorts of applications will become obvious, as well as generating electricity. And the considerable advantage over electrical air-conditioning is that there is a net reduction in heat.