I still don't see how racism has anything to do with it. We're talking about how to improve the climate of Australia by filling Lake Eyre with water, whoudn't this be a good thing for all Australians? You can argue the merits of doing it or not doing it, which is fine, but racism has nothing to do with it.

Your argument makes no sense. Are you saying that it's because of my race (whatever it is) that I make/support the suggestion of flooding Lake Eyre? I hope not, because that would be racism.

> Pumping ocean water into lakes is simplistic stupidity of narrow-minded politicians with, at least, very limited understanding of enviroissues.

Fair enough if you believe that. But you haven't done a very good job so far of articulating your reasons for believing that it is simplistic, stupid or narrow-minded. I personally think it is a bold suggestion, and I have reason to believe that it would make some positive changes to the climate of inland Australia. That is the very opposite of narrow-minded.

Please, if you are against filling Lake Eyre, make a rational argument to support your position. Otherwise, you only look like a troll.

There will come a time when humanity will perish along with all the waffle written here and elsewhere.
In MichaelK's case, bring on the apocalypse!

There will come a time when certain stick in the mud politicians will perish along with all the public service waffle. Then people will begin to realise that rains come from coastal ocean evaporation and not from desert bore water mismanagement.

No need to bring on the apocalypse. Its already here with soylent Green style X city tunnel funnels, ghost M7s and Snowy/Monsanto 'we own what you eat and drink' people funnels.

Things can and will get better if we rid ourselves of Political-Private Partnerships and supplant them with true Public-Private Partnerships! Federal and State politicians have to stop manipulating our economy to make life easy for themselves at the expense of the community at large. A successful L Eyre climate manipulation pilot study could be a saving grace for certain politicians who are in my opinion on very shaky ground over the Snowy sale in the light of other disgraceful public asset sales.

You are so kind, Lizardman! Definitely, one could feel your empty proposals during business hours add much to a national 500-bill.dlrs-debt as their author is personally being paid well enough.

It is simply as one-two-three that decisions reflect interests of inherited the decision-making places, and further mentoring on this issue is useless if you still do not caught, geek100.

Yeah, KAEP, “There will come a time when certain stick in the mud politicians will perish along with all the public service waffle. Then people will begin to realise that rains come from coastal ocean evaporation and not from desert bore water mismanagement” sounds to me as a perfect example of Wolf Creek tourists mentality, where naivety and believes in good intentions rather than elementary scepticism and logic reflect and characterised predominantly twenty-something generation. However, I like your comment the most. At least, it echoes some physical reality:

http://omega.twoday.net/stories/302957/

It seems this link was already mentioned somewhere around.

I have long been interested in the idea of flooding the Lake Eyre region as a way of improving Australia's rainfall. It seems to me that there are two ways of doing this.

One is the sea-water technique. This would need two canals or pipes. One would bring in sea water. The other would remove more-salty water, to prevent eventual salting up of the whole basin. The differences in high-tide sea levels suggest that pumping water from the north, and waste to the south, would be the way to go.

The other way would be the Snowy Scheme method. Again, the water would come from the north, but it would be fresh water from damming one of the rivers that run into the Gulf.

Either way, the amount of energy needed would be very large. I can only think that a dedicated nuclear station would be needed, or another dam and hydro power. Depending on the plan, a huge amount of water must be pumped up about 200m. Where it is in pipes, there is a large amount of friction because of the distance.

I personally think that the best plan is to lay pipes and pump sea water from the Gulf to the headwaters of one of the south-flowing (normally dry) rivers. Then dig a channel down to the tip of Spencer Gulf. The route might be by pipe along the Flinders river, then use the Diamantina to gravity feed to the new inland sea. There is a pass there that is just 200m high, and this minimises the amount of pipe needed.

I can't stress enough that the amount of water needed would be Immense. Once flowing, the pumped water would need to cover the evaporation, as well as allow suffficient outflow to keep the salt level under control. At least half the water would need to flow straight through, though this would be helped by higher flows from the increased rainfall.

Is anyone still interested in this?

Recently, it is crystal clear that the Snowy System was a usual short term politically motivated decision-making disaster calming testosterone of European post-war refugees and Whitehall metropolitan masters. Perfect engineering solutions pleasing an overseas elite still claiming scalps of not supposed having a productive intelligent outsiders in Australia especially, constitute a very ground of ecological disaster locally.

To my vision, your ideas follow a very traditional colonial approach to this situation.
Nuclear generated power might really sustain appropriate water supply following a power producing processes the newest nuclear technologies to offer.

Understandably, traditional love to natural reservoirs –lakes hardly reflects oncoming reality of utilizing ocean water.