Australia - The Continent That Ran Dry

suchandra · June 20, 2007

Looks like that harinam doesnt work in Australia to provide rain since they have lots of harinam in Sidney, Melbourne, Perth, Darwin etc.

Australia - the continent that ran dry

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg19426085.300-australia--the-continent-that-ran-dry.html

13 June 2007
Rachel Nowak
Magazine issue 2608

IN THE beginning the Australian drought was fun. A talking point over the barbecue, an excuse to shower with a lover or spend more cloud-free days with friends at the beach. Tales of thirst-crazed camels rampaging through country towns merely added to the excitement.

Sometime last year, the mood changed - perhaps with the first inkling that water restrictions had all but destroyed urban gardens and that agricultural production across the country had fallen by a fifth. Last month, when water storage fell so low that energy supplies were threatened, the sense of panic became palpable. Australia is facing a national crisis, one that promises to transform the country, inexorably changing where people live, what they eat, what they do in their spare time, and - most threatening of all - their future economic well-being.

Whether Australia can adapt remains to be seen, and water experts around the world will ...

Australia suffers worst drought in 1,000 years

Australia's blistering summer has only just begun but reservoir levels are dropping fast, crop forecasts have been slashed, and great swaths of the continent are entering what scientists yesterday called a "one in a thousand years drought".With many regions in their fifth year of drought, the government yesterday called an emergency water summit in Canberra. The meeting between the prime minister, John Howard, and the leaders of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and Queensland was told that more than half of Australia's farmland was experiencing drought.

David Dreverman, head of the Murray-Darling river basin commission, said: "This is more typical of a one in a 1,000-year drought, or possibly even drier, than it is of a one in 100-year event." He added that the Murray-Darling river system, which receives 4% of Australia's water, but provides three-quarters of the water consumed nationally, was already 54% below the previous record minimum. Last month it recorded its lowest ever October flows. Inflow this year was just 5% of the average.The drought is likely to affect drinking water supplies to many areas. Sydney's largest reservoir is now 40% full and many small rural towns in east Australia face shortages within a month.

It is also expected to have a serious impact on crops. Last week, the government forecast its lowest wheat crop for 12 years, a 62% decrease on last year. Yesterday the agriculture minister Peter McGauran announced the allocation of more than A$200m (£80m) to help businesses which service drought-stricken farmers, in addition last month to the A$910m in payments for 72,000 farmers affected by drought.

The drought has set off a fierce political debate in Australia about climate change. The country has maintained, with the US, a sceptical stance on the issue, and Mr Howard has refused to sign Australia up to the Kyoto agreement. However, polls suggest he is increasingly out of step with public and scientific opinion and the drought has forced him to demonstrate concern.

With an election due within a year and the environment emerging as a big political issue, Mr Howard last month announced several "green energy" projects. He now concedes that climate change is taking place but argues that the Kyoto process is flawed because it does not include the big polluters - India, China and the US. But last week new UN figures showed that Australia's emissions of greenhouse gases were the highest per capita in the west, apart from Luxembourg, and that they had grown by 1.5 tonnes a head since 1990.

Australia now emits almost as much carbon and other greenhouse gases as France and Italy, which each have three times its population.

In Kenya next week Australia will come under intense pressure from ministers of developing countries at the UN meeting on climate change. However, Mr Howard is not expected to change his position.

Adding to the government's embarrassment, the leading scientific body in Australia - the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation - this week predicted that rainfall in parts of eastern Australia could drop by 40% by 2070, along with a 7C rise in temperature. It said that by 2030 the risk of bush fires would be higher, that droughts would be more severe and that rainfall and stream run-off would be lower.

Mike Young, a water management expert at the University of Adelaide, told Reuters this week that Australia's long-term climate was changing. "When the drought breaks we will not return to cooler, wetter conditions. It is the worst type of drought because we are not expecting to return back to the old regime. The last half of last century was much wetter. What we seem to have done is ... built Australia on the assumption that it was going to be wetter, and we haven't been prepared to make the change back to a much drier regime."

South Australia's premier, Mike Rann, said yesterday: "What we're seeing with this drought is a frightening glimpse of the future with global warming."

But Mr Howard played down the assessment that the drought was the worst in 1,000 years, saying he doubted if anybody really knew.

also see:

A Sacred River Endangered by Global Warming

Glacial Source of Ganges Is Receding

By Emily Wax

Washington Post Foreign Service

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/16/AR2007061600461.html?referrer=emailarticle Sunday, June 17, 2007; Page A14

VARANASI, India -- With her eyes sealed, Ramedi cupped the murky water of the Ganges River in her hands, lifted them toward the sun, and prayed for her husband, her 15 grandchildren and her bad hip. She, like the rest of India's 800 million Hindus, has absolute faith that the river she calls Ganga Ma can heal.

Around Ramedi, who like some Indians has only one name, people converged on the riverbank in the early morning, before the day's heat set in. Women floated necklaces of marigolds on a boat of leaves, a dozen skinny boys soaped their hair as they bathed in their underwear, and a somber group of men carried a body to the banks of the river, a common ritual before the dead are cremated on wooden funeral pyres. To be cremated beside the Ganges, most here believe, brings salvation from the cycle of rebirth.