
Australia’s Darling River is running dry - howard941
https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/thirst-turns-to-anger-as-australias-mighty-river-runs-dry
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moomin
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. Imagine being told your entire
business is toast because Sydney has no drinking water and you’ll have some
idea of how toxic it’s going to be _before_ it get politicised.

~~~
ekianjo
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.

~~~
vkou
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.

~~~
moomin
Indeed, some forms of farming e.g. cotton in Australia are literally
unsustainable when exposed to market forces.

Doesn’t mean capitalism is wrong in this case, though.

~~~
pstuart
> Doesn’t mean capitalism is wrong in this case, though.

Edit:

Wes it does, _in this case_. This is not some software startup. The water,
which ostensibly belongs to all, is the input to this wealth.

Plus, that's a stupid use of water that should not be rewarded.

Original below \----------------

of course it does. It's "captialism" and we must bow down before it and not
question any of the inputs to the money being made.

~~~
core-questions
If market forces would make something which is already unsustainable untenable
without subsidization, it is the subsidization that is the problem because it
enables the unsustainable behaviour.

In other words: let the cotton farmers get stuck with paying for the water,
and the business will simply dry up, and the water will be used for
economically sound purposes.

~~~
pstuart
Sure. But since the word "subsidization" is in play, are we now talking about
socialism? :-)

~~~
moomin
This is the fun thing. If person X thinks the fair price for something is $1,
person Y thinks it’s $10, and the government has to set the price, both of
them can yell “Socialism” at the other and never actually address anything.

~~~
pstuart
I'm specifically referring to the Government giving money or forgiving taxes
to business in order to help them. That is not "Capitalism".

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PixyMisa
Here's some background information: The Darling River at Menindee (the town
mentioned in the article) dried up 48 times between 1885 and 1960.

~~~
lllr_finger
Are you driving towards the conclusion that we don't need to be concerned
about management of water resources because this happens naturally?

That sounds close to the argument that we shouldn't do anything about climate
change since the Earth naturally warms and cools.

~~~
PixyMisa
> Are you driving towards the conclusion that we don't need to be concerned
> about management of water resources because this happens naturally?

Not at all. My point is that if this is taken as an example of climate change
it does a terrible disservice to real climate science, because this is
something that has been happening on a regular basis for as long as we have
records.

~~~
kieranmaine
As pointed out by others the article talks about water use not climate change:

"At Menindee, 830 km west of Sydney, despair has turned to anger as residents
blame the government for exacerbating the drought by drawing down river water
in 2017 for irrigation and other uses downstream."

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nshepperd
If only it was somehow possible to charge more for water, so that people would
use less.

~~~
nickthemagicman
So you're saying subject a fundamental basic need for human life and existence
to capitalism? That's an absolutely terrifying proposition.

~~~
jefftk
Do you think it's a problem that food is priced?

~~~
michaelscott
If I disagree with the price of a potato, I can buy rice. Food is price
elastic in so far as I have options in what food to buy for what purpose. That
said, indeed in my country and a number of others there are certain food
stuffs which may not be legally taxed via VAT as they are considered necessary
for daily survival.

Water is completely price inelastic economically. There is no alternative to
it and it is essential to the persistence of life. Should it be priced? If it
requires labour or other external factors that bear cost, sure. Should its
price be tweaked as an economic lever? Even if that worked (it wouldn't for
something inelastic like water anyway) I would still say no.

Using water's price as a disincentive can only possibly work in non-essential
use cases, which doesn't seem to be the case in this Australian example.

~~~
nshepperd
Demand for _drinking_ water is inelastic. That's a tiny fraction of a fraction
of usage. The majority of fresh water is used for farming, as coolants,
solvents, reagents in industrial processes. These uses certainly do have
alternatives, whether switching to alternative crops, developing more
efficient manufacturing methods, building desalination plants. If that
happened there would be _more_ water available for essential use cases like
drinking.

~~~
michaelscott
Absolutely, this is the ideal. All the examples you mentioned are what I would
class in my previous comment as non-essential use cases (as in there are
alternatives).

Certain alternatives such as desalination and water reclamation in industrial
processes don't change the elasticity of water economically; it's still
required. They just increase the amount available in the pool (excuse the pun)
and even then these too bear cost for implementation and maintenance and would
not be provided free (which makes sense).

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kyrieeschaton
Australia has plentiful uranium reserves, relatively dry climate, a well-
educated population, and huge amounts of empty space. Seems tailor made for
nuclear powered desalinization.

~~~
timberfields
context: I lived in Australia for a few years in South Australia. There was
talk of building one, maybe two desalinization plants near Adelaide.

I think the consensus across the board is "yup, it does, and it would help
massively" though it always came down to money and how it was going to get
funded.

Side tangent: I cannot for the life of me understand the argument for "well,
yeah, climate change is bad, but let's think how much this might cost to
fix...". When it comes to existential threats to our mere existence, how is
cost a factor? Talk about the definition of short sighted! And more, it's
super short sighted on the money aspect too. We make changes to what is
acceptable, how we do things, and yeah, it might cost a ton to begin, but we
all know from history that amazing amounts of money are to be made in those
revolutions too. This is not a zero sum game.

~~~
thehappypm
Being honest, there is a certain amount of privilege baked into this mindset.
Not everyone is a software engineer with RSUs and a six-figure income. For
many individuals and many communities, every dollar matters and increasing
taxes to square off against a massive, but global and impersonal, existential
threat is simply not something that everyone can get behind.

~~~
timberfields
Really? You think this is about individual mindset? It's about governments and
governments around the world. And about the future of our race and planet.
Money should not stop us from tackling existential threats to everything we
know and hold dear.

~~~
jfim
As much as I agree with your statement, the parent is arguing that climate
change is a diffuse threat that's not immediately visible. Just like
underfunding pensions will lead to possible issues later but we get money to
spend now, or eating the seed corn instead of planting it.

It's not sustainable, but our political and economical systems are structured
in such a way that we sacrifice long term sustainability for short term gains,
such as getting reelected for a four year term or making the quarterly goals.

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perfunctory
> Drought is weighing on economic growth, and the dire conditions have
> prompted Australia, a major wheat exporter, to import the grain for the
> first time in 12 years.

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corebit
This article is a perfect example of why the climate change issue is so
polarized - it's just so full of propaganda and lies that the important truth
it talks about is glossed over with mistrust.

"Reduced to a string of stagnant mustard-coloured pools, fouled in places with
pesticide runoff and stinking with the rotting carcasses of cattle and fish,
the Darling River is running dry."

This river runs dry regularly and has even before the industrial revolution.
Guess what happens when rivers run dry? You get stagnant mustard colored
pools. The sentence is trying to pull on emotional heart strings with
nonsense. You know what else you find naturally in dried up rivers? Dead fish
and animals. You know what you find in every body of water around the world
today? Pesticides from farm runoff. Does it matter? Sometimes.

In short, just untrustworthy nonsense. I personally am concerned about my
impact on the environment, but I consistently vote against collective action
because articles like this make me really afraid of how crazy people are and
what nonsense they'll believe.

~~~
computerex
Even if what you say is true, one sensationalized article does not mean that
the entire climate change issue is hyperbole. The fact is that climate change
_is_ a real problem with potentially catastrophic outcome for the human
specie:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_points_in_the_climate_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_points_in_the_climate_system)

When the stakes are so high, where we are literally risking the future of the
human race, I'd definitely lean towards the side of action and change _even if
they sensationalize some facts sometimes in order to motivate change in
others_.

~~~
missosoup
I don't think GP is saying that climate change itself is hyperbole.

The problem is that reporting on _both sides_ is garbage laden with
misunderstandings and outright lies. This fuels the anti-climate movement,
especially when it's coming from the 'pro' side like in this case.

I've been ringing bells about catastrophic climate change since the early 00s
after being involved in a relevant research project, I'm the polar opposite of
a denier, but the way that even 'pro climate change' media covers the topic is
harmful to actually conveying it to the public because the media wants to put
hyperbole on everything.

When the media over-stimulates the public by exaggerating every little thing
to a BIG DEAL, the public becomes non-responsive to actual BIG DEAL issues.

This actively hinders action to manage catastrophic climate change. This is
the same as the CIA handbook tactic to redirect activist movements to
ineffective causes so that they're too activism-fatigued to act on an
effective cause when one is presented.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Do climate change scientists pay hundreds of millions of dollars to climate
change PR firms to spread known untruths about climate change?

Is there a network of climate change science think tanks dedicated to framing
the climate change debate in a way that benefits the climate change community?

Do climate scientists run social media "consultancies" to make a pro-climate
change case on the major social platforms and smaller forums?

If any of the above happen - questionable, but let's pretend - they're at tiny
outlier scale compared to the _organised_ lies, smears, denial and general FUD
put out by the denialist corporates.

You say you've been warning about catastrophic climate change since the early
00s. What in your opinion would be the best way to counter climate denial PR?

Because _clearly_ simply informing the public of the facts isn't going to do
anything against the noise being made by the denialist side.

~~~
missosoup
> What in your opinion would be the best way to counter climate denial PR?

With education. And with a factual description of the problem and the
available solutions. With outright rejection of denialism. With rejection of
feelgood non-activism like plastic straw bans and tree-planting measures.
Don't get me wrong, those things are good and a step in the right direction,
but they're far too little far too late compared to what must be done, and so
they're inactivism that wastes public energy on measures that don't move the
needle in addressing the problem.

This doesn't even fly with 'enlightened' crowds like HN out of the box because
they'll tend to kneejerk about things like nuclear power + electrochemical CO2
sequestration despite it being the only realistic option to dig ourselves out
of the hole we're in. Worth noting that the mainstream crowds in China/Russia
are a lot more pragmatic about this than AU/UK/US.

I'm pretty sure this comment is going to be downvoted just for mentioning it,
but I'll drop it anyway to genuinely answer your question. A lot of the folk I
know in the field have basically given up hope to avert this and become gloom
and doom in the last 5 years, including people you would've seen on TV at the
Paris Accords. They are probably right. It's pretty depressing info to handle.
I'm sorry I don't have a better answer, but people much smarter than me don't
seem to have one either.

tl;dr: Like Bill Gates puts it, misdirected climate activists are actually a
bigger problem than climate deniers at this point.

------
neotek
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.

~~~
gonational
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 gravity of the IPCC's misadventures in "climate
science", here is a seemingly hyperbolic, but actually quite accurate analogy
of the situation:

A group of 100 people have been consuming candy, water, and Raid®. Among those
100 people, 20 have died within a 1 month period. A committee is formed to
solve this crisis. The committee tasks a group of scientists with determining
the cause of death, and they are told, "Here is a group of 100 people, 20 of
whom have died, all of which have been consuming candy and water." A consensus
is formed among the scientists; obviously the candy is causing the deaths,
since water is known to be safe.

When some of the scientists discovered that the subjects had been consuming
Raid®, they reached out to the committee to ask why the Raid® consumption had
not been in the data, and the committee decided that, since the first
ingredient in Raid® was water, and since water was known not to be a health
risk, it was of little significance in the study.

Now, imagine knowing all of the above, and then trying to be patient while
listening to everyone you know become a "candy science" expert over the
ensuing decade, and seeing your favorite news show, movie actor, musician,
etc. calling for a candy tax, and constantly berating you as a "candy denier"
when you question the consensus... then, those same people begin calling for
candy-related fines, fees, and taxes that will affect your livelihood, and
then facing the irony of those same people berating you as ignorant swill
living in a fly-over state that's simply "voting based on ideology"; imagine
that.

1\.
[https://progearthplanetsci.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186...](https://progearthplanetsci.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40645-014-0024-3)

~~~
vkou
Please provide reproduced, peer-reviewed sources for these extraordinary
claims.

While you're at it, please explain, with reproduced, peer-reviewed sources why
you think the greenhouse effect, which directly ties CO2 to warming doesn't
exist.

~~~
gonational
1\. I added a link to the gp - I'll also provide you with these as food for
thought:

[https://www.bbc.com/news/science-
environment-39054778](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39054778)

[https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-
network/2013/oc...](https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-
network/2013/oct/04/open-access-journals-fake-paper)

2\. Please provide _any_ evidence that I made claims that the greehouse effect
doesn't exist.

~~~
scottmcf
So, no evidence of your claims, gotcha.

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thewhitetulip
Can this, by any chance, be averted by planting eco diverse forests??

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

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

~~~
jandrese
The natural state of the ecosystem is a desert. We could try to plant trees to
help control the moisture in the soil and evaporation, but it would be an
artificial ecosystem, propped up by human intervention.

~~~
pvaldes
This is a natural state, but also the most degraded state of the ecosystem.

If there was a river, there was either forests or coastal rains. Would not be
uncommon to find that the landscape was more humid in just two or three
generations ago.

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dosss
[https://youtu.be/gNbSazIqVYA?t=290](https://youtu.be/gNbSazIqVYA?t=290)

