Energy Efficiency

So if global warming is the second biggest threat, what is the primary threat you might ask?

With the Australian population hitting 22 million, it is exactly that.

While not having access to local data (given budgetary and political constraints placed on the CSIRO, Weather Bureau and DPI by the various political parties in controlling the public’s access to this information), we can reasonably suggest that there is a parallel in the USA, leaving aside that they are in the northern hemisphere.

In the Southeast Drought Study (in the USA), various sources tie water shortage to population, not global warming. The drought that gripped the Southeast (of America) from 2005 to 2007 was not unprecedented and resulted from random weather events, not global warming researchers have concluded; they say severe water shortages resulted from population growth more than rainfall patterns [http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/pub/seager/Seager_etal_SE_2009.pdf] in an issue of The Journal of Climate. Census figures show that in Georgia alone the population rose to 9.54 million in 2007 from 6.48 million in 1990 (a 46% growth).

Given the Bligh government’s fixation on dams, its worthwhile knowing that in 1990, the Queensland population hit 2 million (it took 36 years to double from I million) and in 2008, we hit almost 4.3 million, a growth of 115%, so America’s and Queensland’s Southeast population growth is the problem.

Bligh and her partner restricted their procreation in children, however, despite their assumed intelligence, they seem unable to join the dots that just as their house, household budget and other constraints put a ceiling on their immediate population, so too should Queensland be considered.

In the American study of data from weather instruments, computer models and measurements of tree rings, which reflect yearly rainfall, their conclusion was this drought is pretty normal and typical by standards of what has happened in the region over the century. Similar droughts unfolded over the last thousand years, the researchers wrote. Regardless of climate change, they added, similar weather patterns can be expected regularly in the future, with similar results.

As any such affected region’s temperature may rise – leading to more rain – evaporation will likewise increase. The Wivenhoe Dam had an evaporation rate calculated at some 1.74 metres per annum not long after its commission (the dam was built more as a flood mitigation initiative). However, building dams to mitigate drought effects in areas where population is rising, is a misnomer, particularly when these dams are always build on waterways where – over the millennia – topsoils have gathered.

Bligh and any government following them had better start the damming of every river to meet the needs of an ever increasing population; if it took 36 years for the population of Qld to double (1954 – 1990) and then double again in 16 years (1990 to 2008), then at this rate, the State’s population will be somewhere in the vicinity of 9 million by 2016; as you can well imagine, there will be harsh water restrictions, poorer air quality and human density and traffic congestion hard to imagine …