Gideon Polya, “Mega-delta River Death & Earth’s End. Australia’s Biggest River to Become a Lake”, MWC News, submitted 8 August 2008.
Mega-Delta River Death & Earth’s End. Australia’s Biggest River to Become a Lake
We live in an Orwellian world in which there is a massive suspension of reason, the gross abuse of language (“war is peace, ignorance is strength, slavery is freedom”) and a huge gulf between reality and perception. Our Mainstream media tell us endlessly that it is OK to invade, devastate and occupy Muslim countries from Occupied Somalia to Predator Robot-bombed Waziristan in Pakistan – because We are Good and They are Bad. However these same Mainstream media resolutely ignore the horrendous, post-invasion non-violent and violent avoidable deaths in the Occupied Palestinian , Iraqi and Afghan Territories alone that now total 0.3 million, 2 million and 3-7 million, respectively. Indeed these same Mainstream media ignore the horrendous avoidable loss of life in metropolitan America itself due to the warped priories of the Zionist- and Bush-ite promoted War on Terror (see “De-valuation of American lives. 7 million Americans, $49 trillion lost under Bush” on MWC News: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/23939/42/ ).
A major problem with this remorseless, Mainstream Establishment media and politician deceit is a failure in rational risk management. The Western Murdochracies are like the frog being slowly brought to the boil – the frog would react instantly if thrown into boiling water but is unaware of the slow increase in temperature until it is too late. However some events may act to trigger perception in these Zionist- and Bush-ite-befuddled societies and I believe that such a key event has effectively happened now, as described below.
The 2,575 kilometre-long Murray River is Australia’s biggest river and part of the Murray-Darling River System that is the heartland of South Eastern Australia. However the Australian Government has effectively decided to destroy the Murray River delta and to turn the Murray River, Australia’s biggest river, into a LAKE. This, in turn, establishes a precedent for scenarios looming elsewhere in the World due to man-made climate change (a climate emergency reality still extraordinarily denied in the Murdoch Media Empire). These scenarios involve the closing off of other major rivers from the ocean.
Australia has been hit hard by climate change and has suffered a decade long drought that has been the worst in recorded history. But for water releases from weirs, in 2007 the Murray River would have been reduced to a succession of big pools. The water that flows into the Murray River is lost to irrigation, to towns and cities and to evaporation. The Murray River used to flow out to the Great Southern Ocean in South Australia via Lake Alexandrina (in turn connected to Lake Albert, the other of the Murray Lower Lakes) but this increasingly saline, fresh water lake system has had to be cut off from the sea by a barrage. Now these lakes have declined about two thirds in volume due to diminished inflow and evaporation. The dry, exposed lake beds are sulphur-rich (from biological remains) and these residues are being oxidized – when they are re-flooded the lakes will become dilute sulphuric acid as in car lead batteries. The key problem is that this water at the end of the Murray River’s long journey is piped to the City of Adelaide in South Australia and accordingly the Australian Government has evidently decided to “pull the plug” on these internationally-listed wet-lands. It is clear that a weir will be built upstream that will make the Murray River a freshwater lake and preserve potable water for Adelaide. The Murray River Lakes will be flooded with sea water and all regional organisms dependent on freshwater will die (for a detailed report and photo of the blocked outlet to the sea see: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24146233-5013404,00.html ).
The Australian Federal Opposition Water spokesperson and conservation groups have condemned Water and Climate Minister Wong and PM Rudd for their proposed passive destruction of the South Australia wetland lakes. Opposition Water spokesperson Greg Hunt MP stated that: "[Water and Climate Change Minister] Penny Wong and prime minister [Kevin] Rudd are set to join Saddam Hussein and the Ba'athists of Baghdad as only the second government in the world to have presided over the destruction of a RAMSAR-listed wetland." (The Convention on Wetlands or Ramsar Convention, was signed in Ramsar, Iran, in 1971, and is an intergovernmental treaty which provides the framework for national action and international cooperation for the conservation and wise use of wetlands and their resources. There are presently 158 Contracting Parties to the Convention, with 1,758 wetland sites, totaling 161 million hectares, designated for inclusion in the Ramsar List of Wetlands of International Importance. Saddam Hussein destroyed the Iraqi southern marsh wetlands by diverting water flows after the Gulf War).
Australian Water and Climate Change Minister Penny Wong is equally blunt about the fate of the Murray River Lower Lakes: “We've all known for some time that things are very difficult in the Murray-Darling Basin, particularly in the River Murray and unfortunately there is simply not enough water to do everything we want. So the priority does have to be critical human needs” – translated in context from Rudd-spin Newspeak, this means that the mighty Murray River will be turned into a Lake and the freshwater Lower Lakes will become part of the Great Southern Ocean.
So what, you say? Well, this means that for the first time a major continental river system will be turned into a lake to meet agricultural and urban water needs. The Zionists colonizers have already done this on a small scale in the Occupied Palestinian Territory to the holy River Jordan, which is now a putrid, contaminated trickle. The significance of the death of the Murray River is that it is likely to be the FIRST of many such destructions of mega-delta river systems in the face of continuing climate change due to remorseless climate criminal countries such as Australia (the developed World’s worst greenhouse gas polluter and the World’s biggest coal exporter).
Consider the expert words of Dr James Hansen (top US climate scientist; Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies; member of the prestigious US National Academy of Sciences; recipient of the 2007 Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility of the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS) in New Scientist (July, 2007, “Huge sea level rises are coming – unless we act now”: http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg19526141.600 ): “The current rate of sea level change is not without consequences. However, the primary issue is whether global warming will reach a level such that ice sheets begin to disintegrate in a rapid, non-linear fashion on West Antarctica, Greenland or both. Once well under way, such a collapse might be impossible to stop, because there are multiple positive feedbacks. In that event, a sea level rise of several metres at least would be expected. As an example, let us say that ice sheet melting adds 1 centimetre to sea level for the decade 2005 to 2015, and that this doubles each decade until the West Antarctic ice sheet is largely depleted. This would yield a rise in sea level of more than 5 metres by 2095. Of course, I cannot prove that my choice of a 10-year doubling time is accurate but I'd bet $1000 to a doughnut that it provides a far better estimate of the ice sheet's contribution to sea level rise than a linear response. In my opinion, if the world warms by 2 °C to 3 °C, such massive sea level rise is inevitable, and a substantial fraction of the rise would occur within a century. Business-as-usual global warming would almost surely send the planet beyond a tipping point, guaranteeing a disastrous degree of sea level rise.”
What does a 5 metre sea level rises mean for my OWN city of Melbourne, Australia, and for the beautiful Yarra River that empties into Port Phillip Bay and thence into the ocean? Will the beautiful Yarra River also have to be turned into a lake in the interests of the fossil fuel burners? This is particularly irksome to me as a Melburnian and because I belong to the extremely active Yarra Valley Climate Action Group (YVCAG) which in turn is associated with the Australia-wide Climate Emergency Network (CEN). These organizations are dedicated to informing our fellow citizens and the World about the need for urgent action to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) to a safe and sustainable level of no more than 350 parts per million (ppm) as recommended by NASA’s Dr James Hansen and his colleagues (for very comprehensive and documented “Climate Emergency Fact Sheets” see the Yarra Valley Climate Action Group website: http://sites.google.com/site/yarravalleyclimateactiongroup/Home )
One can do a “back of the envelope” calculation based on the geometry of Melbourne, a huge city of about 4 million people spread between the mountains of the Great Dividing Range to the north (most notably Mount Dandenong) and Port Phillip Bay to the South. Port Phillip Bay can be conceptualized as a circular bay with Melbourne spread out along its 264 kilometre circumference from Sorrento in the east and now almost joining up with the city of Geelong in the west. The entrance to Port Phillip Bay between Point Lonsdale on the western Geelong side and Point Nepean on the eastern Melbourne side is only about 4 kilometres wide (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Phillip ). If we assume 400 properties at risk per kilometre then we have 260 x 400 = 104,000 properties at risk and an average value of $1 million per property means real estate worth over $100 billion is threatened.
An Earthend (Earth’s End) scenario that is officially regarded as acceptable by the world-polluting, climate criminal, “look the other way”, pro-coal, Bush-ite Australian Government involves 450-550 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere – indeed the Australian Government instructed Australian economist Professor Garnaut to model Australian responses to climate change based on a 450 - 550 ppm CO2 concentration range. Above 500 ppm CO2 the Greenland ice sheet melts (according to Dr James Lovelock FRS in his recent book “The Revenge of Gaia”) and British, Belgian and German experts scientists have determined that the melting of the Greenland ice sheet means a sea level rise of 7 metres (see: http://www.stabilisation2005.com/34_Jason_A_Lowe.pdf ).
At this Earthend scenario, contemplated as a realistic economic “target” by the ecocidal, Bush-ite Australian Rudd Labor Government, Greater Melbourne faces massive inundation and further threat from storm surges. The above “back of the envelope” calculation estimates over $100 billion losses in real estate alone. However just as the Australian Government is prepared to scrap Australia’s largest river delta, the Murray River delta, and turn Australia’s Murray River into a lake in favour of water for irrigation and the City of Adelaide, so it may also have to turn the Yarra River that flows into Port Phillip Bay into a lake by building a barrage to close off Port Philip Bay from the ocean.
A similar scenario can be envisaged for Sydney, with Sydney Harbour and Botany Bay becoming lakes (like the Murray River) through closure of the respective entrances to protect possibly hundreds of billions of dollars worth of real estate from 7 metre sea level rises.
While major cities such as London, Amsterdam, Buenos Aires, New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Vancouver, Bangkok, Calcutta, Bombay, Djakarta, Lagos, Hong Kong and Shanghai are substantially doomed by a 7 meter sea level rise, some major cities in addition to Melbourne and Sydney may be saved by the “Port Phillip option”. Thus closure of the Straights of Gibraltar would save all Mediterranean and Black Sea cities and river deltas. One could envisage closure of the Straights of Hormuz to protect the Iraqi river delta region and cities of the Persian Gulf. Closure of the Dardanelles would save major river deltas and cities of the Black Sea.
Absurd projections? No, it is ALREADY about to happen, with the Australian Government signalling the end of the Murray River delta – Australia’s biggest river is on track to be turned into a lake and its irreplaceable delta ecosystem surrendered to the ocean.
What can we do in the face of this ecocidal, terracidal madness? Tell everyone you can and take appropriate action. We successfully applied Sanctions and Boycotts against UK-, US- and Apartheid Israel-backed Apartheid South Africa for denying one-man-one-vote to Africans, Chinese and Indians – should we continue to do business with countries engaged in ecocide, climate genocide and indeed prospective terracide? The appropriate response by a World threatened by global warming is to rapidly force climate criminal countries like Australia to a world average per capita greenhouse pollution level by Sanctions, Boycotts, Green Tariffs, Reparation Demands and legal action over complicity in climate genocide via the International Criminal Court.