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THE HANDSTAND	JUNE 2007
Lance Endersbee says the water crisis has been underplayed and global warming overplayed http://abc.net.au/xmlcontent/rn/latenightlive/stories/2006/1808528.xml Talks (R) Late Night Live 1808528 {hosted by} Phillip Adams http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2006/1808528.htm Transcript 'I'm not a sceptic, I'm an angry professor!' Lance Endersbee claims the world water crisis has been underplayed and global warming overplayed, as a result of the pressures in science to conform. Endersbee's main focus is on the state of the world's groundwater, the rapid consumption of which has put the world on the edge of a little understood catastrophe, he says, because contrary to popular belief groundwater reserves are not replenished from the surface. A dissident view of water and warming ... (2) Lance Endersbee responds to IPCC report: “CLIMATE CHANGE IS NOTHING NEW” From: "Adelaide Institute" <info@adelaideinstitute.org> Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2007 11:17:35 +0930 A response from Emeritus Professor Lance Endersbee, Australia - 26 March 2007 CLIMATE CHANGE IS NOTHING NEW New Concepts in Global Tectonics Group Newsletter Current issue (no.42), March 2007 Abstract: Since 1750 the electromagnetic radiation of the Sun has increased significantly, as indicated by the sunspot record. This increased electromagnetic radiation is considered by the author and others to be the real cause of global warming. The examination of the annual temperature records of the northern and southern hemispheres shows a sharp change and major increases since 1978, especially in the northern hemisphere. This is the so-called hockey stick effect, which the author concludes is not due to the influence of Man, and probably due to a change in the geothermal regime of heat flow from the fracture zones in the floor of the northern oceans. There is some confirmation of this in recent sea floor explorations. The role of atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane is considered in relation to claims that emissions by Man are causing global warming. It is shown that the increased warming is due to the Sun, and that the consequent warming of the oceans is causing the ex-solution of carbon dioxide and methane from the oceans, simply due to the decreasing solubility of these gases in sea water with increasing ocean temperatures. The extensive exploitation of groundwater around the world over the past century, at rates far in excess of possible recharge, has created a net addition to the hydrosphere commensurate with the apparent rise in sea levels over the past century. There is deadly pollution in the atmosphere over many world cities and industrial regions. These are local and regional matters, and should be corrected at the sources of pollution. Air pollution and global warming are scientifically separate matters. Keywords: climate, sunspots, carbon dioxide, methane, geothermal, cosmic rays From: Climate Change is Nothing New, New Concepts in Global Tectonics - http://www.ncgt.org/ I was invited to prepare the paper by the Editor as a scientific response to the IPCC report, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, Summary for Policy Makers, issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, February 2007. The paper can also be regarded as a response to the movie by Al Gore, and to the report on carbon trading by the London financier, Sir Nicholas Stern. The key points of the paper are:- 1. The Earth, the Sun, and indeed the Cosmos, comprise an inter-acting, dynamic, and evolving system. It is all in a state of continuing change. There is no steady state. In contrast, the IPCC assumes that the Earth was in a steady state until 250 years ago, which was upset by Man through increasing use of carbon fuels, and that led to atmospheric changes and consequential global warming. 2. In geological time, the climate of the Earth has been influenced by the immediate environment of the solar system as it travels through our Milky Way Galaxy. There were times when the solar system was enveloped in vast clouds of gas and dust, causing extreme cooling on Earth, and ice ages lasting for millions of years. In recent times the solar system has been travelling through space that is virtually empty, enabling a benign climate in which our civilization has flourished. 3. The Sun is the dominating influence on the climate of the Earth. That simple fact is not recognised by IPCC. The Sun is a churning, quivering body of hot plasma, generating intense electromagnetic fields in space that envelop the Earth. The electromagnetic behaviour of the Sun dominates and determines the electromagnetic and geotectonic response of the Earth, and thereby climate. 4. The climate of the earth has always changed. There have been times lasting centuries when the Earth was warmer or colder than now. The period of 500 years from 800 to 1300 AD was warmer. It brought prosperity to Europe. It is known as the Medieval Warm Period. Many great cathedrals were built, the Vikings discovered a verdant land they called Greenland, and there were vineyards in England. After that, for the next 450 years from 1300 to 1750 AD, Europe experienced a progressively colder climate. It is known as the Little Ice Age. It was especially cold for 100 years from 1600 to 1700 AD, when there was famine and starvation in the northern parts of Europe. In London, the River Thames often froze in winter. 5. A key part of the IPCC report is the presentation of evidence of parallel increases in both global temperatures and levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is claimed by IPCC that the increased carbon dioxide emitted by Man is causing global warming. In my paper it is shown that the cause and effect relation is exactly the opposite; that natural global warming has caused an increase in the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, simply because of the reduction in solubility of carbon dioxide in sea water with increasing sea temperatures. 6. It is the vast surface area of the oceans that determines the interchange of gases between the oceans and the atmosphere. The oceans breathe carbon dioxide and methane in and out with the seasons, and the oceans release carbon dioxide and methane with the natural warming caused by the Sun. If in the future there is a significant decrease in the electromagnetic radiation from the Sun, the Earth will cool down, and the levels of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere will then decline. 7. IPCC refers to a rise in sea levels over the past century as evidence of global warming caused by Man. I show that the rise is due to the great exploitation of non-rechargeable groundwater over the past century which has led to a net addition to the hydrosphere, and thereby, the oceans. 8. Air pollution and global warming are scientifically separate issues. Global warming is natural and global. Atmospheric pollution is man-made and mostly close to the sources of emission. The IPCC have locked themselves into a scientifically untenable position by interweaving air pollution and global warming. 9. The deadly pollution of dust, acid gases, and water vapour entering the atmosphere in many cities of the world should be the focus of action. A large number of cities are most unhealthy places, with a lower expectation of life. The problems are not global but local. The correction of the problems must be industry and city-centred. 10. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, it is essential to all life. There is no need for carbon trading or geosequestration. The concept of carbon trading has been advocated by IPCC, and by many governments signing the Kyoto agreement, and is being welcomed by the financial community. But carbon trading has not arisen from the normal operation of the market. It is the result of fears about global warming created by IPCC and others. It thereby presents risks to investors. If it comes to be recognised that global warming has a natural cause, and the fears subside, the value of carbon credits will then drop to zero, and the market in carbon trading will collapse. The paper and this memorandum are circulated for your information. Lance Endersbee <mailto:endersbee@optusnet.com.au>endersbee@optusnet.com.au (3) Lance Endersbee says Australia’s underground water is finite and not being replenished {Australia is the driest continent, and at present enduring its worst drought on record. It’s a desert continent with a green strip about 30km wide, running down the east coast, which is all most people know from personal experince. Inland areas use bores to bring water to the surface from deep underground} http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/groundwater/default.htm For over a century the Great Artesian Basin has supplied water for drinking, irrigation and industry across much of Eastern Australia. In that time we've extracted 100 times the volume of Sydney Harbour from the Basin! But just how renewable is Artesian water? Can rainfall really replenish the supply, or are we in danger of losing one of our greatest natural resources? In a classic case of nominative determinism, Stuart Waters investigates. With the derricks up above us and the solid earth below, We are waiting at the lever for the word to let her go. Sinking down, deeper down, Oh, we’ll sink it deeper down: As the drill is plugging downward at a thousand feet of level, If the Lord won’t send us water, oh, we’ll get it from the Devil; Yes we’ll get it from the Devil deeper down. So wrote Banjo Paterson in his Song of the Artesian Water, which tells the story of a desperate search for water in the Great Artesian Basin. A century after Paterson wrote those lines water is still being extracted from the Basin at an enormous rate, and debate currently rages over just how sustainable our use of this precious underground resource is. It is an important debate because the waters of the Great Artesian Basin supply drinking water for stock and farmers, they irrigate our crops, and are a valuable resource for industry across much of Eastern Australia. The natural springs supplied by the Basin have provided precious drinking water to wildlife since the first kangaroo got thirsty, and never are the waters of the Basin more important than during times of drought. The Great Artesian Basin, in blue, stretches beneath 20% of Australia. The Great Artesian Basin is vast, lying beneath 20% of the entire continent. It consists of porous layers of sandstone that arise on the Western Slopes of the Great Dividing Range as far north as Cape York and continue westward under much of Queensland and Northern NSW, far across South Australia and the south-east corner of the Northern Territory. Pick a spot in this huge stretch of land and it is likely that a bore sunk into the Basin will run like a tap, without the need for pumping. The amount of water stored in this huge geological feature is similarly vast. The Great Artesian Basin contains some 64 900 million Megalitres of water, or 820 times the total volume of water stored in all surface water storages in Australia if they were all full. The Great Artesian Debate Where does the water come from? How does it get there? Will it run dry? These are questions the scientific establishment feels it answered long ago. But one man is unhappy with these answers and claims that we are doing irreparable damage to the Artesian Basin and threatening the lifeblood of the west. Professor Emeritus Lance Endersbee says that our decades-old descriptions of the Basin are completely wrong. An engineer and past Pro Vice-Chancellor at Monash University, Professor Endersbee is convinced that the Artesian Basin, for all its size, is a finite resource which we are rapidly depleting, and that removing water from this natural reservoir will destroy it. The traditional view of the Great Artesian Basin is that it is not a closed system to which there can be no more inflows of water. Rather it is an open system that is regularly topped up by rainfall on the highlands around its perimeter, particularly on the slopes of the Great Dividing Range to the East. The story goes that the Basin’s tremendous sandstone strata reach the surface in these intake zones and surface water can readily percolate down into the porous rock from where it begins its long journey beneath the Western Plains. Yes, human activity is drawing water from the aquifer, but rainwater continuously finds its way down into the Basin to replenish it. Professor Endersbee believes something completely different. “As soon as I saw [the traditional explanation] I knew it was wrong. It was wrong fundamentally”, Professor Endersbee said on ABC Radio National Breakfast recently. “The idea of water falling on the hills in Queensland and seeping through the sandstone strata all the way to Roxby Downs in South Australia for example - a distance of 1500 km - was absolutely absurd.” The Professor’s explanation is that water extracted from the Artesian Basin does not come from the Basin Strata but from the bedrock beneath them. Curiously, says Endersbee, support for this argument is found in the poetry of Banjo Paterson, who in Song of the Artesian Water wrote: But it’s hark! The whistle’s blowing with a wild, exultant blast, And the boys are madly cheering, for they’ve struck the flow at last; And it’s rushing up the tubing from four thousand feet below, Till it spouts above the casing in a million-gallon flow. What lies beneath? The origin of the water sprouting from this bore drain is under contention. Photo: South West Strategy According to the Professor, the fact that bores go down four and five thousand feet, as described by Paterson, is a clear indication that the water does not come from the sediments of the basin itself but from the original rock below. This theory holds that the water coming up the bores is not rainwater that has trickled beneath the plains, but ancient water that has for eons laid quietly within the fractures and joints of the original crustal formations with which it came into being. The water supply is a closed system that can not be replenished. Once dry, says Professor Endersbee, the Artesian bores will never flow again. Critically, the Professor says that the long term decline in water pressure being experienced right across the Basin is telling us that the huge volume of water extracted over the past century and more means there is “not much” left. “In the last 100 years they’ve taken out a volume equal to 100 times the volume of Sydney Harbour”. If the Professor is correct and water extraction from the Great Artesian Basin has been completely unsustainable, it is terrible news for the Australian economy and for the livelihoods of thousands. But is Endersbee right? The body charged with providing advice regarding the Basin to all levels of government is the Great Artesian Basin Consultative Committee (GABCC). The past Chair of the GABCC’s Technical Working Group, and ex president of the Australian chapter of the International Association of Hydrogeologists, John Hillier, says the Professor is dead wrong. As more knowledge on water flow directions, water quality and the geological structure has been gained, says Hillier, it has become “obvious that the Great Artesian Basin performs like any other groundwater basin, except that it is much larger”. “Water enters the sandstone aquifers mostly along the outcrop along the Great Dividing Range in Queensland and New South Wales and flows westwards”. Raindrops keep falling in my bores Dating waters from creeks like this helps to define the source of the Great Artesian Basin. Photo: South West Strategy Another past Chair of the Technical Working Group, Jim Kellett, is equally convinced about the nature of the Artesian Basin. “We have irrefutable evidence that the Basin works as we understand it to”, says Kellett. In support of this claim Kellett refers to the large amount of geochemical and radioisotopic data collected over many years. “We’ve done Carbon14 and Chlorine36 isotope dating on the water extracted from bores across the basin. These data clearly show an age gradient, with the oldest water being in the centre of the feature, and the youngest being close to the intake zones in the highlands.” Levels of oxygen and deuterium isotopes have also been analysed in detail. The relative amount of each of these isotopes is like a fingerprint for water, and according to Kellett “the oxygen and deuterium isotopes have the distinctive signature of rainfall”. In other words, isotopic analysis says that water drawn from the Artesian Basin cannot be ancient water that was formed at the same time as the bedrock strata. Instead it has a definite age gradient and is composed of rainwater. The age gradient indicates the pace at which water moves through the sandstone strata. Endersbee claims it is implausible for water to move right across the state but the data show that it is moving, albeit at the less than dashing pace of a couple of metres per year. The slow pace of transfer is one of the reasons water pressure can drop where the extraction rate is high. But the fact that it is moving means that the basin will be replenished. “The evidence is 99.99 repeater per cent in our favour”, Kellett says. So if Endersbee is wrong and the Basin is naturally replenished, does this mean open season on Artesian Water? “Not at all”, say the authorities. Endersbee is correct when he says there has been a worrying decline in pressure across some parts of the Basin and the GABCC is moving to curtail the enormously wasteful practices that have long been a feature of water extraction. Restrictions are being placed upon the amount of surface water farmers can remove around the infill zones in the mountains, and a capping and piping program is underway across the basin to prevent leakage and evaporation. “We have to justify the expenditure of 100s of millions of dollars on the capping program”, says Jim Kellett. “It is because the water is a renewable resource, and we can get pressure back that it is worth spending the money”. The science indicates that the Great Artesian Basin contains rainwater that flows in from the highlands, so perhaps Banjo had it right when he wrote: To the tortured thirsty cattle, bringing gladness in its going; Through the droughty days of summer it is flowing, ever flowing – It is flowing, ever flowing, further down. Thanks to Ray Evans - Australian Geological Survey Organisation. Jim Kellet - Bureau of Rural Sciences. John Hillier - once Chair of the GABCC’s Technical Working Group, and ex president of the Australian chapter of the International Association of Hydrogeologists. Related Links The ABC's sustainable development gateway - Bringing together news and articles which look at current efforts toward sustainable development in population health, resource use and consumption. Professor Emeritus Lance Endersbee’s paper - A New Understanding of the Groundwater Resources of the Great Artesian Basin. The Great Artesian Basin Consultative Council (GABCC) - For both general and technical information on one of the world's largest groundwater resources and more about the organisations and individuals involved in its use and management. The Department of Natural Resources and Mines - Committed to maintaining a high quality of life for current and future generations by ensuring the sustainable management and use of one of Queensland's most precious resource, water. The Minister for Forestry and Conservation, Senator Ian Macdonald’s report - Budget Continues Support for Great Artesian Basin, 14 May 2002. Mound Springs in Arid Australia - Australian Museum fact sheet. Northern Territory authorities - including the Department of Lands, Planning and Environment, maintain a ‘watching brief ’on various aspects of the Great Artesian Basin water supply. The Murray-Darling Basin Initiative - offers an information booklet, Groundwater a Resource for the Future, in PDF format. The South West Strategy - consists of four components allowing for a unique, holistic approach to the region's problems of economically sustainable production, natural resource management, social issues and regional development. Published 19/9/2002 © 2007 ABC \| Privacy Policy -- Peter Myers, 381 Goodwood Rd, Childers 4660, Australia ph +61 7 41262296 http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers Lance Endersbee says “Climate Change is Nothing New”, but we are running out of water