I can't see how Melbourne's decline in rainfall this century in relation to its climatic average fits in with your ascertain " was a median decline of 4 per cent, with the middle half of the distribution ranging from minus 13 per cent to plus 4 per cent ".

This year Melbourne has received 2/3 its climatic rainfall year to date , which is more than it received last year or the year before. The rainfall pattern over the whole of Victoria is just as dire. Or was 1990 a statistically dry year?

My garden and the Melbourne street and park trees say that your ascertains are wrong, Ian Castles.

Hasbeen: "Much as most of these people know they have to comply with K RUDD's instructions for their report, they don't like actually lying, particularly personally, in public. The one I know has signed up to do dentistry next year."

Sounds like you have more information on this issue Hasbeen. You can contact me via my website at http://landshape.org/enm. In particular, do you know anything about an earlier report that was sent back for rewriting?

I wonder how BoM and CSIRO are going to explain away the 2008 snow depth as recorded by Snowy Hydro, the best in twenty years.
It can't be all because of cloud seeding.
Though the alarmists do tend to believe models as apposed to actual observations.

The Bom and Csiro's guilded representatives must be paying significant insurance coverage for their misdirected fiction, considering past and current long range weather forecasting results supported by empirical research which are available to both but gladly never quoted in support of their nefarious projections. The distinction between science and politics has been lost in a rush for political flavor,fame & cash jackpots where players are rewarded for their principled obstructionism (insert precautionary principle)to stalemate action which does not suit their masters voice/choice.

"This year Melbourne has received 2/3 its climatic rainfall year to date , which is more than it received last year or the year before. The rainfall pattern over the whole of Victoria is just as dire. Or was 1990 a statistically dry year?"

What, exactly is your point? Melbourne is one of the few Australian stations with a long record. There have been runs as dry as the present as far back as the 1850s. The driest year on record was 1967, which is well before the supposed "global warming" scare. What does 1990 have to do with anything? FYI it was marginally below the long term average.

Wong and Rudd misrepresent climate science? What's new? Ms Wong did a great job of sidestepping questions put to her on Lateline the other night. According to her, it's the opposition's fault the Murray-Darling has dried up, plus IPCC projections of "less rainfall by 2050". What bearing this dodgy document has on 2008 is anyone's guess. I would have though over-allocation of water upstream was the most important factor, allied with drought (as if that's anything new).

The politician's dream is being realised! Tax the air we breathe(Carbon tax) and the water we drink (via charging much much for water than it costs to deliver).
In the 1st of Decemeber 1982 the storages on the Murray were empty. by the 31st they were full. I was on holiday in Mildura and they had opened the lock gates and the Murray was flowing straight through them as it was so high.
The rush is on before the inevitable deluge hits us and then lets hear the squeals from the Greens about climate change.