The Relevance of Climate

In case you haven't heard, Australia has been experiencing a drought, even by Australian standards (and remember-this is the second most arid continent behind Antarctica). Here's an update from the Bureau of Meteorology on rainfall:

"April rainfall was below to very much below average across most of the country, with vast areas registering less than 20% of the long-term average. In many parts of northern and central Australia, no rain fell for the entire month of April, and the Australia-wide average for the first four months of the year was the second lowest on record. "

This means that I get to enjoy lots of sunny weather, but it's very bad news for farmers and water resource managers (reservoirs throughout southern Australia are only about 30-50% full – the Mt. Bold reservoir is at 5% capacity). In developing its budget for the next fiscal year, the current government opted out of including emergency funding for Australia's farmers. Why? Well apparently it rained hard in Victoria one day back in February, and the government took this as a sign that the drought was nearing an end, and thus no need to include farm aid in the budget. Needless to say, the government's wisdom proved faulty, and heaps of farmers are about to lose their shirt and at present there's no safety net in place. [One could argue that no one really has any business trying to farm the Australian landscape, but that's another issue.]

Yet, about 25 years ago, CSIRO told West Australia that the drought they were experiencing at the time was likely to remain indefinitely. Quite out of character for a political institution, the WA government listened and has made water management a priority issue. CSIRO's forecast has proven to be correct, and if anything conditions have grown even worse over the years. The city of Perth in WA recently turned to desalination to address water availability problems - a very expensive solution, yet the only one that exists given the current climate. So there's evidence that when push comes to shove, politicians can actual pay attention to the scientific community when making decisions.