Scientists say the Draft Murray-Darling Basin Plan should be scrapped

The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists have called for the Draft Murray Darling Basin Plan, released last month, to be scrapped

They say the plan should be started afresh. Not throwing out all the work they've done - but they need to completely re-think what the plan is meant to be a plan of (water management, irrigation, environmental flows and so forth). It's not a plan yet and it won't do the job.

This is the next episode in the ongoing sad saga of planning for the Murray Darling Basin.

Previously - Mike Taylor quit as Chair of the Murray Darling Basin Authority, saying the government set impossible expectations that could not be delivered and were not in accordance with the Water Act. He had just released the Guide to the proposed Basin Plan, flagging "a long-term average increase of 7,600 GL/y (would mean) the environmental targets are all met and all catchments improve from their existing status to good flow levels".

The Minister then appointed former NSW Labor MP Craig Knowles as Chair. Shortly afterwards, Wentworth Group of Scientists who were consulting on the plan quit. They said the process itself was flawed and that a decision had already been made that the minimum flows required (4,000 GL/year) would not be met.

Knowles released the draft Basin Plan last month, which only provides for environmental flows of 2,750 GL/year.

The prospects for the Murray Darling have fallen a lot, as shown by:

2010 - Desirable 7600 GL/year
2010 - Probably target 4000 GL/year
2011 - 2750 GL/year - less 2600 GL/year removed from groundwater.

From the Wentworth Group of Scientists:

STATEMENT ON THE 2011 DRAFT MURRAY DARLING BASIN PLAN

The draft Plan released for public comment by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority on the 28 November 2011 does not provide the most basic information required to allow anybody to make an informed decision on the future management of the water resources of the Basin.

The absence of this information makes it impossible for the community, science or Parliament to understand the implications or have confidence the Plan has any prospect of delivering a healthy working river:

1. The Plan specifies a volume of water but it does not identify the volume of water required to deliver a healthy working river, as required by the Commonwealth Water Act;
2. The Plan cites river management infrastructure as the limiting factor however there is no assessment of the feasibility or cost of redesigning river management infrastructure (such as periodically flooding paddocks or raising the height of a bridge) so that a healthy working river can be delivered;
3. The Plan does not incorporate in the modelling the impact that increasing groundwater extractions by over 2,600GL will have on surface water flows, many of the groundwater systems in the Basin are linked to river systems;
4. The Plan sets long term diversion limits on the assumption that there is no risk to river health from climate change; and
5. There is no information presented on the effectiveness of the Plan to cope with long dry periods such as that experienced throughout the Basin during most of the last decade, or deliver the volumes of water required keep the Murray mouth open as a functioning (Ramsar listed) estuary and export the 2,000,000 tonnes of salt accumulating in the river system each year.

Details of their statement can be found here.

We'll probably be into the next drought within the next year or two. What will happen then? I do hope it is not too late for the Coorong and the red gum plains along the Murray.

Will USA wake up soon that climate change is already here?

On the fires in Texas - like the 2009 fires in Victoria - more precautionary burning wouldn't have made much difference. And it would probably have been dangerous to attempt it any time in the past 12 months - too dry. From Jeff Masters:

As I reported in yesterday's post, there has never been a Texas summer hotter than the summer of 2011. The summer of 2011 now holds every major heat record for the city of Austin, including most 100° days (67 so far), hottest month in recorded history (August, breaking the previous record by a remarkable 2.1°), hottest summer (by 1.1°), and hottest day in history (112°F, tied with Sep, 5, 2000.)

As wunderground's weather historian Christopher C. Burt documents in his latest blog post, the situation is similar across the rest of the state. Seventeen major cities in Texas recorded their hottest summer on record in 2011. Most of these stations had records extending back more than 100 years, and several of the records were smashed by an amazing 3.4°F--at Lubbock and at Wichita Falls.

Neighboring states also experienced unprecedented heat, withOklahoma recording America's hottest month by any state in recorded history during July, and Shreveport, Louisiana breaking its record for hottest month by 3°F in August. Mr. Burt commented to me: " I do not believe I have ever seen a site with a long period of record, like Shreveport, where records go back to 1874, break its warmest single month on record by an astonishing 3°. This is unheard of. Usually when a site breaks its single month temperature record, we are talking about tenths of a degree, rarely a whole degree, let alone 3 degrees! Hard to believe, frankly."

Texas has also had its worst fire season on record, with over 3.5 million acres burned this year, and it's driest 1-year period in recorded history.

While people are trying to control the Texas fires, rain is pelting down elsewhere. More from Jeff Masters:

An extreme rainfall event unprecedented in recorded history has hit the Binghamton, New York area, where 7.49" fell yesterday. This is the second year in a row Binghamton has recorded a 1-in-100 year rain event; their previous all-time record was set last September, when 4.68" fell on Sep 30 - Oct. 1, 2010. Records go back to 1890 in the city.

The skies have now cleared in Binghamton, with this morning's rain bringing the city's total rainfall for the 40-hour event to 9.02". However, another large region of rain lies just to the south in Pennsylvania, and all of the rivers in the surrounding region are in major or record flood.

The Susquehanna River at Binghamton is at 25.18', its highest level since records began in 1847, and is expected to overtop the flood walls protecting the city this afternoon. In Hershey, Pennsylvania, Swatara Creek is 18' over flood stage, and more than 8' above its record flood crest. Widespread flash flooding is occurring across the entire area, and over 125,000 people have been evacuated from their homes.

And read the comments here on ClimateProgress for more about what rainfall records are being broken around the world.

The Critical Decade

Yesterday, Australia's Climate Commission released a new report with important messages:

The following points highlight the key messages arising from the accompanying report The Critical Decade:

1. There is no doubt that the climate is changing. The evidence is overwhelming and clear.

• The atmosphere is warming, the ocean is warming, ice is being lost from glaciers and ice caps and sea levels are rising. The biological world is changing in response to a warming world.
• Global surface temperature is rising fast; the last decade was the hottest on record.

2. We are already seeing the social, economic and environmental impacts of a changing climate.

• With less than 1 degree of warming globally the impacts are already being felt in Australia.
• In the last 50 years the number of record hot days in Australia has more than doubled. This has increased the risk of heatwaves and associated deaths, as well as extreme bush fire weather in South Eastern and South Western Australia.
• Sea level has risen by 20 cm globally since the late 1800s, impacting many coastal communities. Another 20 cm increase by 2050, which is likely at current projections, would more than double the risk of coastal flooding.
• The Great Barrier Reef has suffered from nine bleaching events in the past 31 years. This iconic natural ecosystem, and the economy that depends upon it, face serious risks from climate change.

3. Human activities – the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation – are triggering the changes we are witnessing in the global climate.

• A very large body of observations, experiments, analyses, and physical theory points to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere - with carbon dioxide being the most important - as the primary cause of the observed warming.
• Increasing carbon dioxide emissions are primarily produced by the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, as well as deforestation.
• Natural factors, like changes in the Earth’s orbit or solar activity, cannot explain the world-wide warming trend.

4. This is the critical decade. Decisions we make from now to 2020 will determine the severity of climate change our children and grandchildren experience.

• Without strong and rapid action there is a significant risk that climate change will undermine our society’s prosperity, health, stability and way of life.
• To minimise this risk, we must decarbonise our economy and move to clean energy sources by 2050.
• That means carbon emissions must peak within the next few years and then strongly decline.
• The longer we wait to start reducing carbon emissions, the more difficult and costly those reductions become.
• This decade is critical. Unless effective action is taken, the global climate may be so irreversibly altered we will struggle to maintain our present way of life. The choices we make this decade will shape the long-term climate future for our children and grandchildren.