Rojo

In a world of over 6 billion I would guess that many would want to live in Japan. But what should open the door for them? Whether the Japanese benefit? Whether the immigrants benefit? A vote? The moral imperative based on the relative mess that the rest of the world is in? Could wealthy nations benefit overpopulation catastrophes better with guidance than sharing their disaster in deference?

Water is quite complicated Rojo, but you can simplify things considerably by classifying it according to its duration of availability or cost of capture. I guess you would be including in you total rainfall things like desert storms and downpours meters from the shore. While all rainfall can be captured in theory, some is cheaper to capture. Even water which is cheap to capture can destroy ecology and industry reliant on natural river flows. Rather than present the raw data, you might show how much of the cheap water is being captured, and how much of that has the perennial availability necessary for domestic consumption. You might also note that people live where they want to, and might not like being shoved about to satisfy some grand economic plan. This might explain why Brisbane is spending three billion dollars on a desalination plant instead of marking every second resident with a yellow spot and forcing them to settle in the far north, and is a great example of how the profits of population growth come at the expense of all.

How much easier would it have been without mass immigration pursued against public approval for the benefit of parasites.

We passed the optimum population - 13,000,000 - for Australia long ago. Too late, now, to think about the problems caused by the big immigrationists of all parties in Canberra. Very small population in that artificial town you will note!

Fester, Japan has had 3544 applications for asylum between 1982 and 2004. Hardly swamped.
It's falling birthrate, and since 2005 population, means japan will face a real necessity to have millions of immigrants over the next fifty years to maintain an adequate workforce, or raise the retirement age to 77. They might just get over their racism.

50% of Australias run-off flows into the gulf of Carpentaria, I don't know what the potential capture and storage would require there but Lake Argyle in WA's North holds 10,750GL and has an average 4000GL inflow.
Sydney, a city of approx 5 million people, uses 635GL/year. So with a conservative approach we could have 10 million up there alone. And climate change models forecast it to get wetter

Rojo

You are only considering the domestic water usage. What about the water required to provide a living standard for the 10 million? Water is needed for industry and to grow food also(It takes about a litre of water per calorie of food on avarage). On the basis of 5 million people using 635 GL per annum and domestic usage representing 9% of total water consumption, 10 million people would need about 14,000 GL per annum, or 3 1/2 times the average annual inflow for Lake Argyle. Your ten million people would be very hungry and thirsty. You haven't been a planner for Australian water supplies have you?

http://www.environment.gov.au/soe/2006/publications/report/inland-waters-1.html

Rojo

“So with a conservative approach we could have 10 million up there alone”

Well you could possibly stick a million up there, but certainly not 10 million. But why on earth would you want to?

The development of northern Australia to any large extent would be highly problematic.

Firstly, if it had been even marginally wet and fertile in basic agricultural terms, it would have been occupied by agricultural Asian peoples many centuries ago. The fact that a hunter-gatherer culture existed there at the time of European contact, with intensive agricultural peoples just to the north, says it all.

Then if Europeans had been able to easily utilise it, they would have, in just the same way that they occupied the agricultural areas of southern Australia.

OK so now we have the ability to implement fandangled water storage and irrigation systems. But this can still only happen on a minor scale, and with real problems with security of supply and basic economics.

Perhaps we could accommodate another five million across the north if we really tried. But again; why?

There is not a lot of difference between your view that 30 – 35 million is a reasonable population for Australia and mine of a maximum 25 million. But I think your reasoning for the extra five or so million seems very flimsy.

You said; “Australia will very likely have to increase it population to 30 000 000 to remain in line with population growth, in order to share the pain.” (9 April)

But you didn’t really explain what this means, when Stephany asked you. You also didn’t respond to my assertion that it would be far better to help refugees at their sources than to accommodate large numbers here. Please see my post of 10 April.

Fester, So what you are saying is that we have no agricultural surpluses and that all irrigated production is required for the amount of people we have now? I think not.
Since we use only 8% of available water then there is obvious scope for expansion. Effectively domestic use is less than 1%(9% of 8%) of water available.


Anyway Sydney for instance uses 635GL/year from an average inflow of 1400GL(1949-1990) however since 1991 the average inflow has been only 697GL/year. Sydney has only 2600GL of storage or 4 years worth if there was no rain at all.
Lake Argyle has 10750GL of storage and an average inflow of 3800GL and it's catchment is not getting dryer. If we double the 635 for 10,000,000 to say 1300GL/year it has 8 years supply without rain and uses only a third of average inflow.

I'm not suggesting we will have 10 million people in Kununurra but it could be done using that water supply as an example. The food can be grown elsewhere.