Australia’s Darling River is running dry • Hacker News Board

Re: Australia’s Darling River is running dry

#101

Post by lisper » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 3:32 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #72

moomin wrote: post #67

Australia has a serious problem with water, and it would have a serious problem even without climate change. The water in the Darling, and in any river, can be extracted free of charge if your land includes the river. This produces permanent drought conditions in a country that exports oranges. Australia has limited water resources and laws that treat it as unlimited. It will be incredibly hard to square that circle.…

It could be simply solved by selling water usage rights or incentivizing saving water wherever the river runs. This was done with success in some parts of the US.

Until the amount of water available becomes less than the rights that have been sold. Then things get sticky again.

Re: Australia’s Darling River is running dry

#102

Post by daveFNbuck » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 3:33 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #84

ekianjo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be simply solved by selling water usage rights or incentivizing saving water wherever the river runs. This was done with success in some parts of the US.

Cities require relatively little water for the economic output they produce, compared to farmers. If you require farmers to pay full price for the water they consume, they will never be able to afford it.

If there's a choice between producing more oranges for export or providing enough water to support your population, it doesn't make much sense to choose the orange export.

There are plenty of ways to manage water rights so that you have a reasonable amount of farming and other uses also get to exist.

Re: Australia’s Darling River is running dry

#103

Post by samatman » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 3:33 PM UTC

imglorp wrote: post #95

jandrese wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typically power is exported by smelting aluminum from bauxite. A big advantage of doing it this way is you can run the smelters only when there is an overproduction of power to help even out demand on the grid.

I wonder if a concentrated solar power tower heating a crucible of ore would be more efficient than inefficiencies from PV, transmission, conversion, storage etc.

Not for aluminium smelting, which is done with electricity rather than heat.

This is why aluiminium has only recently become a cheap resource, or indeed a resource at all, despite being incredibly common and having a low melting point.

Re: Australia’s Darling River is running dry

#104

Post by orwin » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 3:34 PM UTC

gonational wrote: post #74

neotek wrote: post #4

Meanwhile we're still voting in governments that don't believe in climate change and which fight tooth and nail to destroy any chance of addressing the problem. No worries giving endless buckets of taxpayer money to climate-denying farmers and coal plants, though.

The IPCC gave models to scientists that are necessarily missing part of the picture (namely, all energy from the sun that is not part of a specific EMR spectrum)[1], and then said "we have a consensus" when the scientists came back with an inevitable conclusion. This resulted in the inevitable false attribution of human activity being the cause of [strike: global warming] climate change. To fully appreciate the gravi…

Please explain to me how Fourier and later Tyndall were wrong about the effect of (misnommed) greenhouse gases on the atmosphere, and how 200 years later no one disproved them.

Your analogy is creative, but if you really think the IPCC have no statistician (or that you are a better statitician than them), you might want to read more about the work of IPCC WG1, that will cure the Dunning-kruger while allowing you to work the statistics by yourself.

And yes, the IPCC WG3 is alarmist and ignore some conclusions from the WG2, but their job is to push the politicians.

I was like you (well, i was skeptical about the WG3 conclusions and the human greenhouse contribution) so i did something really special: i read the rapports! Yes, i know, its crazy, but this is something i think every skeptic should do: read. This is crazy that learning to read scientific papers is not taught until year 3 of college (at least in my country), but i assure you its not that hard, even if you never went to college.

Re: Australia’s Darling River is running dry

#105

Post by BurningFrog » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 3:34 PM UTC

moomin wrote: post #67

Australia has a serious problem with water, and it would have a serious problem even without climate change. The water in the Darling, and in any river, can be extracted free of charge if your land includes the river. This produces permanent drought conditions in a country that exports oranges. Australia has limited water resources and laws that treat it as unlimited. It will be incredibly hard to square that circle.…

Weird. Every country I know of has a legal system for ownership of water extraction rights.

Though, come to think of it, that may only be two countries...

Re: Australia’s Darling River is running dry

#106

Post by collyw » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 3:35 PM UTC

moomin wrote: post #67

Australia has a serious problem with water, and it would have a serious problem even without climate change. The water in the Darling, and in any river, can be extracted free of charge if your land includes the river. This produces permanent drought conditions in a country that exports oranges. Australia has limited water resources and laws that treat it as unlimited. It will be incredibly hard to square that circle.…

I think this is a bigger problem where downstream countries rely on a river that passes through their neighbour first.

Re: Australia’s Darling River is running dry

#107

Post by lostlogin » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 3:36 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #82

throwawaybbb wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To where and how? Electricity is not something you can export when your main grid is 5000km from your nearest neighbour

Typically power is exported by smelting aluminum from bauxite. A big advantage of doing it this way is you can run the smelters only when there is an overproduction of power to help even out demand on the grid.

New Zealand has the problem where the smelter has such huge power usage that they get to wag the dog. That is a situation that is probably hard to avoid. https://i.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/116851413/ri...

Re: Australia’s Darling River is running dry

#108

Post by collyw » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 3:36 PM UTC

neotek wrote: post #4

Meanwhile we're still voting in governments that don't believe in climate change and which fight tooth and nail to destroy any chance of addressing the problem. No worries giving endless buckets of taxpayer money to climate-denying farmers and coal plants, though.

Even those that believe in climate change seem to have a problem with naming overpopulation as a principle cause of the problem.

Re: Australia’s Darling River is running dry

#109

Post by pvaldes » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 3:36 PM UTC

thewhitetulip wrote: post #69

lllr_finger wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article touches on the cause. Planting trees won't help if you use the available water for other things.

That's true, but once the ecosystem is established, we don't drain water, trees cause rain right?

Yes, and trees will produce shadow and store water in trunks but also in leafs and flowers that would be directly available to animals. The effects of dry season would be mitigated, even in a desertic area.

The culture to burn wild plants each year to avoid fire will eliminate the water. Is a vicious circle. Less water in soil equals to more risk of fire, so you start burning the soil, so you have less and less water and you need to keep burning .

Re: Australia’s Darling River is running dry

#110

Post by gonational » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 3:38 PM UTC

orwin wrote: post #104

gonational wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IPCC gave models to scientists that are necessarily missing part of the picture (namely, all energy from the sun that is not part of a specific EMR spectrum)[1], and then said "we have a consensus" when the scientists came back with an inevitable conclusion. This resulted in the inevitable false attribution of human activity being the cause of [strike: global warming] climate change. To fully appreciate the gravi…

Please explain to me how Fourier and later Tyndall were wrong about the effect of (misnommed) greenhouse gases on the atmosphere, and how 200 years later no one disproved them. Your analogy is creative, but if you really think the IPCC have no statistician (or that you are a better statitician than them), you might want to read more about the work of IPCC WG1, that will cure the Dunning-kruger while allowing you to w…

If only you had commented a few moments later (added a link to paper). Apparently, all the climate experts haven’t kept up with the climate news, so what I thought was common knowledge is not commonly known at all. I guess CNN is where most of the expert information comes from these days. That’s the Dunning-Kruger part, or?

Also, somebody else replied with something similar (something about me denying the greenhouse effect existed)… I’m not quite sure how either of you came to the conclusion that I didn’t believe the greenhouse effect existed. I think it’s a pretty big leap in logic to go from “the greenhouse effect exists” to “because the greenhouse effect exists, the greenhouse effect via CO2 from human activity is the primary cause of global warming”.