Errors in IPCC climate science

The comment by CP on my 2007 article -There never was a rain shortage to justify seawater desalination for Perth’s water supply – has prompted me to post the May 2012 reply from WA Minister The Hon Bill Marmion.
First – here are some relevant links – 2002 article in The West Australian Water bosses snubbed plan
This page has a graphic showing the effect of thinning – third graphic down.
“Effects of catchment thinning at Higgins near Dwellingup from WC online report”
Reply from the WA Govt Water Corporation to an article in the Rockingham local paper June 2005 The Sound Telegraph – thats Cockburn Sound.

On 14 March 2012 I emailed the WA Minister -
Dear The Honourable Bill Marmion,
You should know that Perth dam catchments are blessed with rainfall averaging over 900mm per year – and that is just in the May to October runnoff season.
Yet by decades of not managing catchment vegetation efficiently your water supply authorities are progressively decommissioning your network of dams – great facilities mostly put in place by the sweat, foresight and prudence of earlier generations.
This graphic demonstrates the relentless loss in catchment efficiency.

I have more online with my article “2011 update 37 year Perth dams catchment rainfall trend – nearly a Thousand GL of water wasted over 15 years by not managing catchments”
Please make sure you checkout my 3 page word doc linked at my online article;
“There never was a rain shortage to justify seawater desalination for Perth’s water supply”
December 4th, 2007
To improve the resilience of the Perth water supply using the most environmentally friendly and low cost methods – here is what you could do Minister.
[1] Order that dam catchment vegetation be managed so as to aim for a catchment efficiency figure of near 6%.
[2] Order that the Gnangara pines be cut forthwith in favour of native bush – the pines value as saw logs is probably less than the value of the Gnangara Mound water that they are wasting, taking water values as per the average of your desalination plants.
I would suggest that after those measures take full effect – dam levels should recover to where you might be able to close down some of your very expensive seawater desalination capacity. That would save many millions of taxpayer dollars.
You should also be able to postpone the expensive venture to tap deeper groundwater. More savings.
Please let me know if you have any questions Minister.
Yours sincerely,

Here is the reply from Minister Marmion.
Dear Mr Hughes
Thank you for your email dated 14 March 2012 regarding the management of
catchment vegetation.

I recognise that vegetation has been contributing to a reduction of inflow into surface water reservoirs of Perth’s forested surface water catchments.
A trend in reducing rainfall since the 1970s is also a considerable factor in this reduced catchment recharge . The assertion that rainfall to our dam catchments is over 900mm per year is generally true . However, this rainfall is declining markedly through the south west and is below 900mm in the significant Mundaring Weir catchment.
It should also be noted that rainfall reduction and streamflow to dams is not a linear relationship.
Once groundwater disconnects from the streams there is a significantly greater reduction in streamflow.

A recent study by the CSIRO (currently in review , pending publication) has found that the denser vegetation in Perth ‘s forested catchments is responsible for approximately one-third of the run off decline to our reservoirs. The remainder is mainly attributable to rainfall decline.

The Department of Water (DoW) has been researching this issue for some time and has also been working with other agencies and researchers on options to address
vegetation management issues . A prime example is the DoW and Water Corporation’s Wungong Catchment Thinning Trial, which is investigating the impacts of increased forest thinning on improving surface water catchment recharge in Perth’s forested water catchments.

The DoW has also contributed to the development of the Department of Environment
and Conservation ‘s (DEC) next Forest Management Plan regarding the issue of forest vegetation management and its impact on forested surface water catchments. I understand the draft plan is expected to be available for public comment by late 2012.

The DoW is also coordinating a scientific review of the rehabilitation option for mine bauxite rehabilitation in the northern jarrah forest to inform future practice.
You may also be interested in the following CSIRO report which provides information on current and future water yields of both aquifers and surface’water catchments,

www.csiro.au/Organisation-Structure/Flagships/Water-for-a-Healthy-Country-Flagship/Sustainable-Yields-Projects/SWSY.aspx.

I appreciate your interest and demonstrated concern for the future of Perth’s water supply.
Yours sincerely
HON BILL MARMION MLA
MINISTER FOR ENVIRONMENT; WATER
11 May 2012

My eye was caught by this ABC article – Eyes skyward for farmers waiting on rain – and the quote from the WA Premier “The Premier Colin Barnett has ruled out a bailout, saying some producers should consider walking away from their farms if they are no longer viable.”
I was curious to see long term rain trends for Merredin -
Annual rain –

and Winter rain

Recent numbers are similar to those from 1900 to before WWI – same pattern we see in Perth rain history – see chart in comments here.
Note Merredin data is only from 1903 – I added Burracoppin data to get back to 1900.
Here is another article – from The Australian 5 March – Farm exodus as drought sows seeds of despair – they choose to show a 36 mon rain decile map.
Map contrasting 36 and 24 month rain abundance.

Note that if you make the same map of rain deciles as in the article – but change the setting to 24 months not 36, the areas of average and above average rain are larger in the WA wheat belt. Remember “white” on the map is average rain. I note the farmers comments that they do not get rain when they need it and that summer rain has increased. Here are monthly rain totals from 2000

And the WA annual wheat crop from 1993

April to October rain -

Thanks to Romanoz for alerting us to this fascinating research – see his comment #5. I now have the 20MB download – Antarctic Climate Change and the Environment – dated November 2009.
Under 2.1.2.7 Atmospheric data derived from ice cores
The last para on page 43 starts – Ice core sea-salt as a potential proxy for mid-latitude winter rainfall variability. The full text on p 43 & 44 is saved here if you click on “Read the rest of this entry” at the end of the post.
Fig 2.8 shows salt content of ice varying from 1300AD and the text says – [ The work in progress indicates that southwest Western Australia experienced periods of higher mean winter rainfall, with high interdecadal variability during 1300 to 1600 AD, followed by lower mean but less variable winter rainfall from 1600 to 1900 AD, which is similar to the past 50 years (Goodwin, in prep.).]

The text ends by saying – [This long record would be of enormous economic benefit to all water users in Western Australia.]

Fig 2.7 shows that in the phase illustrated in panel b, the SW of WA is affected by higher readings of MSLP (mean sea-level pressure) – more finer weather.

So WA water authorities and politicians should take note – there is evidence that pre-1975 SW WA rainfall was not some constant high-rain regime. The post-1975 lower rain regime may be a perfectly normal phase of long term cycles and nothing to do with Greenhouse as they have claimed ad nauseum – Chapter and verse for a decade or more. Read the rest of this entry »

I see it has been operating for 18 months and “…SA Water admitted the plant is likely to be mothballed in 2015 after its warranty period expires.”
Opposition Leader, Steven Marshall, says the Government should not have doubled the plant’s capacity from 50 to 100 gigalitres. “The original cost estimate for the 50 gigalitre site or infrastructure was going to be $500 million. We now find out the Government’s spent $2.2 billion,” he said.
“That of course is not money that the Government has paid. That’s money that every single water consumer in South Australia is going to be paying from now on.”
Sounds like another episode in the string of Australian desalination disasters and White Elephants.
I was looking for information summarizing the Adelaide water supply. This metro area map shows a lot of reservoirs and pipelines from the Murray River. However I can not find figures showing how much scheme water is sourced from rainfall around Adelaide and how much is from the river.

This story broke here in fanatasy-land a day or so ago but the roots go back two and a half years to October 2010 and earlier.
I have just faxed the ACT Chief Minister an open letter with ideas on reforming ACTEW. Here is the essential text.

Dear Chief Minister,
Re this ~$234K understating of one of the top ACTEW salaries.
Let us be clear here – this issue has been running for at least two and a half years.
I understood that the original +$600K figure (which was excessive enough) – came from a Canberra Times FOI request in 2010; if not under FOI then at least a persistent request for information that took months to be answered. Now we know the 2010 answer from ACTEW was wildly wrong and has stood until now.
Here is the 2010 story saved on RiotACT from two and a half years ago.
Mark Sullivan worth half a mil per year? – 8 Oct 2010

Clearly ACTEW needs major surgery and the following points might be just a start.
[1] Obviously they could source a replacement for less than half of what they are paying the current CEO. Review all salary scales and re-align with utilities from similar sized cities.
[2] ACTEW needs to be divorced from AGL in all areas.
[3] ACTEW should be pruned back to being an agency tasked to deliver the cheapest electricity and water to Canberra – prune back the top heavy ACTEW board and top management structure – sever non-core functions.
[4] Shut down their Civic offices and relocate to cheaper premises at depots in Fyshwick.
[5] ACTEW needs telling by Govt to cease all their “community sponsoring”. To the extent that worthy “community organisations” need financial help – a Minister should handle that task and make decisions to pay out taxpayers money through a Dept in an open and transparent process.
[6] ACTEW has wasted hundreds of $millions on gold plating our water supply while in the thrall of doomster climate change dogmas. A big contributor to blowing out the ACT debt.
[7] By “gold plating” I mean the unnecessary Murrumbidgee to Googong Water Transfer which should be put on “care & maintenance” at least cost to taxpayers.
[8] Your predecessor Chief Minister and Labor Governments contributed to ACTEW cost and debt blow-out by delaying construction of the no-brainer enlarged Cotter Dam.

And I have not started on wasteful Green power schemes – electric car scheme.

The BBC is reporting – New Zealand North Island hit by worst drought in 30 years. Curious to see some rainfall graphs I turned to KNMI Climate Explorer but it was not easy getting updated data. The GHCN V2 data assembled by NCDC in the USA has many data gaps post 2004 and ends anyway in March 2011 – see picture below. The CRU data ends at 2009. I wonder why – it still rains here and there – did somebody stop paying their salaries ?
So I turned to a shorter term partly satellite based data set from GPCP to bring the graph up to date at Dec 2012. The GPCP might reflect rain over both land and ocean – but that is what we have.

Note the grid area chosen misses out Southland and much of Otago west of 170°East. New Zealand should have rain data from say the 1860′s – if anybody has up to date station data please let me know – or please pass on URL’s to any published New Zealand rain history graphs.
This is a common feature when researching climate data – to find that recent data are worse than old data.

Perfect from 1900 to 2004 – then gaps abound.

It will be more interesting when the plan sees the light of day. When the Coalition makes it into Govt they will find entrenched water bureaucrats wedded too much to “Wentworth Group” ideas that would naturally oppose the vast majority of projects in this report. There has grown in Australia an influential group of interests in favour of more expensive water.
We are certainly paying in our water bills for the last 25 years or so when Green Anti-Dam dogmas have had too much influence. Anti-Dam sentiment allied with arm-waving arguments exaggerating the 2002-2009 drought have contributed to several uneconomic seawater desalination plants being constructed. Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane desal projects are costing us multi-tens of $Billions and stand as huge “white elephants”.
Some things the Coalition could do without building a single dam.
First review all environmental flow specifications with a view to cutting them back. How crazy that the Thomson Dam for example has 35% of inflows wasted to the sea. Should add that on 5 Feb 2012 I posted – Possible Kimberley region nation building dam projects
Never used plans going back half a century.

I thought this marvellous anti-development beatup too good not to share – “CSG water may pose risk to coast: experts”
May we ask – and before 2002 they did not know that groundwater can seep to the sea ?

The SMH peddles this example of scaremongering by taxpayer funded science.
Unfortunately for the authors the last three Autumns have not followed their plan.
Autumn 2010 rain deciles

Autumn 2011 rain deciles

Autumn 2012 rain deciles

The world just not behaving for the warmistas.

The Australian Climate Commission pdf paper – “THE CRITICAL DECADE Queensland climate impacts and opportunities” has a Figure 3 shown below.
Which shows how Queensland has become drier in the 1970-2011 period.

But taking another view of Queensland rain data – this BoM chart of Qld annual rain anomalies 1900 to 2011 shows the cyclic and erratic nature of Queensland rain. This chart also shows that the large brown areas in Qld on the Climate Commission Figure 3 for 1970-2011 are entirely due to the careful selection by the Climate Commission of 1970 as a starting point – the decade 1970-79 having the highest values for the 11 year average rain for over a century.

For another view of recent Qld rain checkout that map of Australian rain deciles for the past 36 months.

No shortage of rain anywhere in Queensland since 1 Nov 2009. So it pays to look at a variety of data sources to better understand the numbers behind what you are being told by GreenLabor and their propaganda organizations.