The claim that this is nobody's fault may be delusional? Climate change is cyclical to be sure! And has almost always been determined by that great nuclear reactor in the sky, the sun.

Which like an MSR thorium, pulses with a self-controlled life of its own, And as it waxes increases the nuclear fusion reaction and produces more heat and internal activity/expansion.

This natural expansion in the sun and an MSR thorium pushes the nuclear particles further apart, thus automatically slowing the internal reaction, whereby the sun wanes and the walk away safe self-controlling MSR thorium similarly cools and contracts bring the fissile elements closer and consequently speeding up the reaction as the next pulse or wave.

What can't happen, David, is for the sun to produce more heat during a waning period, as now, and according to NASA, since the mid-seventies. Were normal cyclical events allowed to occur naturally, heralded a new ice age not one heat wave record smashed by yet another and another, nor the worst drought in living memory!

The second hottest year on record, being 2017 and a La Nina year to boot.
TBC, Alan B.

The Murray/Darling is the most engineered river system in the world and for good reason, it runs through the driest inhabited continent in the world! And cannot be de-engineered!

Things that could and should be done include more weirs, and streams deepened, the spoil becoming levy banks that hold back more water and force much-much more of it into the landscape, particularly in upland catchments.

Where practical, covered to minimise massive (60-70%) evaporation losses, so that in dry times it can slowly weep back into the system to maintain flows two or three years longer than at present and as a natural, self-activating, control system controlled by nature alone! And a virtual replication of the natural landscape prior to white settlement/farming clear fell farming practices!

Along various streams creeks and river, there are salt springs some twice as salty as seawater. Many have been piped and sent out to sea. Alternatively, these often significant water flows can be passed through deionisation dialysis desalination to put as much as 90% back into the catchment flows as supplementary additional potable water.

All irrigated crops must be irrigated via underground tapes to achieve following outcomes, twice as much irrigated crop production for half the normal water allocation. Water should remain God's gift that can't be bartered just subject to real enforceable legislation and control!

So we the people the environment and farming families and the Riverland towns that rely absolutely on this water are not disadvantaged by paper shuffling water barons, given control by weak compliant government officers over a product that is not only the source of life but all our natural wealth!

Therefore, must be retrospectively de-privatised and returned to cooperative enterprise and environmental outcomes only!

Paper shuffling profit demanding middlemen/water Barons add nothing to this, save their often exorbitant profit demands. Some of them in the public sector as alleged public officials serving the public good!?

And served by corrupt compliant government, with anything else other than the public good uppermost in their minds or machiavellian mechanisation!

NSW being the corruption capital of Australia and perhaps
the world?
Alan B.

You do talk garbage sometimes Alan.

In south east Queensland rainfall for 2018 was just above average. Mine was 2 inches above.

Our rivers are all flowing nicely, with no restrictions on irrigation. In 1993 & 4 our river was dry from October to late December both years, as were many others. People were paying a fortune to dig holes in the sand of the riverbed to get a little stock water.

The federation drought, & the 1940 drought left this one for dead. Sure not many still remember the federation drought, but some still remember 1940.

In earlier times, droughts were much worse. Great barrier reef cores drilled in the 50s showed a period in the early mid 1700s when for 26 years there was not a single rain event heavy enough to wash any sediments out of our rivers for 26 years. We had better hope we have built many more big dams before this happens again, as it most definitely will.

When it does, or when the US has it's next dustbowl period, lets hope the politicians are smarty enough to ignore the "experts" & their fellow travellers, who scream it is CO2 causing it.

It's interesting that "Crossbench senator David Leyonhjelm is quitting federal politics to contest the NSW election." [1]

Apparently Leyonhjelm realises he cannot stay in the Federal Senate on a freakishly low number of votes. He needs to bail out before the May 2019 Federal Election.

So this is why Leyonhjelm's headlines MAY favour rich farmers in NSW's interests. Apparently these farmers each accepted $100,000s from Governments under the Murray Basin Plan

then these farmers quietly diverted much Murray-Darling water they were not entitled to into their farms. They had two bites of the cherry.

Hopefully Leyonhjelm won't help them againt the interests of small farmers and against farmers in non-NSW states.

[1] Australian Associated Press JANUARY 8, 2019 http://www.news.com.au/national/breaking-news/david-leyonhjelm-to-contest-nsw-election/news-story/6009c6b8ce2a023c1a8f78f23698b3b7

Apparently the new Storm Boy movie includes a diatribe against the evil people trying to engineer the river system. Then dynamite the concrete weirs holding all that fresh water back from the sea so the lakes are saline as Capt Sturt found them 200 years ago.

I believe there may be an advantage in growing stone fruit in semidesert with drip feed. Cool in winter, hot in summer but with less mould and bugs. That's why that horticulture may not relocate to the wet tropics. Perhaps it should contract in area so pre-1950 flow prevails. Mother Nature keeps sending us hints but we don't listen.

Yes Tas, good thinking. Except, I would replace your drip system with one feeding the root systems as monitored by an inground moisture monitor. And fed by a system of levee banks and weirs that raised the nearby water source by a couple of metres, so only gravity, wind, wave power or ultra-cheap MSR thorium would push the water. Which could be covered to eliminate most of the evaporation.

You can see by (I'm alright jack) Hasbeen's commentary the furthermost west he's been, has been his front gate?

I've seen an irrigation system like that envisaged on a N Z Dairy farm when on holiday as a boy. The cow cocky (Kiwi slang for farmer) had better than 8 beasts to the acre, which remained permanently green regardless of prevailing weather conditions.

I suppose the fact that a small permanent spring feed stream rose from his property helped as did N Z laws which recorded the spring as part of the property and his to use as he wished.

Had he tried to do it here, there would be howls you could hear from the moon from this or that officialdom and most of the anti-dam green movement.

He used a flood gate alone to raise and lower water level and replenish the local public water hole which my Kiwi cousins preferred as their favourite swimming hole.

It was cold. but at least there were no sharks. About then I came to a long term arrangement with sharks, they didn't come to my beach and I stayed out of their ocean.

Seems to have worked quite well thus far.
Cheers, Alan B.

Excuse my ignorance but has this got anything to do with the water guzzling Cotton Industry ?

Very true individual

Large farms ripping off the water system, protected by certain political interests (eg. the National Party and opportunists) is the main game.

plantagenet,
Well, these large farms should be made to invest in the Bradfield scheme or else.

Thanks individual

The Bradfield Scheme to those that don't know

Like me a second ago

Is The Bradfield Scheme, a proposed Australian water diversion scheme, is an inland irrigation project that was designed to irrigate and drought-proof much of the western Queensland interior, as well as large areas of South Australia. It was devised by Dr John Bradfield (1867–1943), a Queensland born civil engineer, who also designed the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Brisbane's Story Bridge.

The scheme proposed in 1938 required large pipes, tunnels, pumps and dams. It involved diverting water from the upper reaches of the Tully, Herbert and Burdekin rivers. These Queensland rivers are fed by the monsoon, and flow east to the Coral Sea. It was proposed that the water would enter the Thomson River on the western side of the Great Dividing Range and eventually flow south west to Lake Eyre. An alternative plan was to divert water into the Flinders River...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradfield_Scheme

plantagenet,
This subject has been flogged on various threads here over time. The most common objection is cost vs no instant return for impatient investors. People with vision have no problem in seeing the eventual massive benefits all round. With some luck the present tragedy with the mass fish kills may evoke some interest again.
I have always maintained that such a scheme has to be a gradual, long-term project with only minimum but constant earthmoving operations at no noticable cost by way of a Levy of $1.- per wage & $2.- per public service salary. If Australian wage/salary earners think they can't do with contributing $52.-$104.-/year for future infrastructure then we might as well give up now & sell the bloody lot to the highest bidder.
As I have claimed countless times here, I believe the permanent flooding of Lake Eyre & recharging the great Artesian basin would enhance the environment & make great livable country for future inland settlement & agriculture in as soon as 15-20 years.
It would also provide desperately needed opportunities for a National (not military) Service for young unemployed Australians. Just the adventures alone would be invaluable for them.
Defence force could get involved with useful exercises where needed.
It can be done with people who know as long as the "experts' are kept at a distance.

Just read on Google News that a nearly completed pipeline from the Murray River to Broken Hill will totally dry up the lakes system.
Anyone have any enlightened views on that ? Any Cotton growers want to comment ?

If our so-called leaders had any practical sense whatsoever they'd right now organise an aerial survey & infrared satellite imagery whilst the gulf rivers are in full run & find the natural flows closest to the lake Eyre basin. It'd be surprising how little work it'd actually take to divert water into the lake catchment. Guessing by past tactics they'll probably again wait for the dry & then, if they actually were interested at all, hire massively expensive consultants just to do over years what could now be done by only a few hours of plane & helicopter charters.
Is there a politician with sense. I'd have thought the water guzzling Cotton barons would grasp the opportunity without delay.

Individual it would be great to do the Bradfield scheme, but you miss the major problem.

Right now from Cairns to MacKay there are huge amounts of lovely fresh water rushing out to sea. Out there it will poison a large amount of coral. Large amounts of freshwater is death or at least bleaching to coral. It would be much more use inland.

The problem you ignore is that all that water will be gone in just a few days. It would require huge dams, much bigger than the Burdekin to retain much of this water long enough to pump a meaningful amount over the range to anywhere useful.

For many of the years I lived in the Whitsundays, the roads would be cut by heavy rain or a cyclone. The water would be gone in a day or two. If you can't hold it for at least a few months, you can't pump more than a few meg.

Do you really believe you could get this past the greenies. Hell even where we had done it with the snowy, they have demanded & got huge amounts returned to the Snowy, to rush uselessly out to sea.

Even when a great rice industry was established from the Burdekin it was destroyed by those greenies when they stopped control of Magpie geese that invaded in huge numbers. Now the rice has gone, & so of course have the geese. No synthetic habitat for them now.