Moving water at Sydney Uni

Finally some rain again in Sydney, it has been pretty dry. It is not much better in some parts of country NSW, as this article in the SMH attests to. In contrast, Victoria seems to be getting plenty for a change. The climate keeps us guessing where the falls will occur this time.

While I was mulling over this variability this morning, I listened to Macca on the ABC. I always get a bit upset with him, but maybe that is ok. I think he tends to be very simplistic in some of his environment comments, or maybe it is just that he lets people I don’t agree with air on the show. So that is not a bad thing, I can write my blog, he can have these people on the show. Anyway, this morning someone was having a go at wind energy and arguing that we would still need coal fired plants to pick up the peak demand. The main concern of the caller was the visual damage of wind energy to the landscape.

Finally some rain; It has been a dry couple of months, especially in Sydney. My garden looks like dust bowl and not because of the recent dust storms in Sydney. The amount of soil that was lost in those dust storms is scary and will take years to rebuild. It stresses even more the need to sequester carbon in our soils and many people have already pointed this out. The agricultural community would like to be paid for the amount of carbon they sequester and that is understandable, but, while there is great potential there are difficulties in monitoring the amount of carbon changed. But what about the water? The last month drier weather got me watching the “El Nino” monitor again to see if we are again in for a long drought, but it all seems pretty uncertain. It also got me thinking again about how the rainfall would change under changes in the global climate and how carbon and water would work together.