Trump administration releases report finding ‘no convincing alternative explanation’ for climate change

The Trump administration released a dire scientific report Friday calling human activity the dominant driver of global warming, a conclusion at odds with White House decisions to withdraw from a key international climate accord, champion fossil fuels and reverse Obama-era climate policies.

To the surprise of some scientists, the White House did not seek to prevent the release of the government’s National Climate Assessment, which is mandated by law. The report affirms that climate change is driven almost entirely by human action, warns of a worst-case scenario where seas could rise as high as eight feet by the year 2100, and details climate-related damage across the United States that is already unfolding as a result of an average global temperature increase of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900.

Read The Washington Post story - “Trump administration releases report finding ‘no convincing alternative explanation’ for climate change.”

Murray-Darling: testing times expected as extended dry period approaches

Farmers and nature have been at odds in the Murray-Darling Basin ever since the first European settlers, desperate for water, found that river flows were unreliable and out of sync with their needs.

"For would-be irrigators the problem with the River Murray was that the bulk of the annual flow occurred at the wrong time of year," Daniel Connell, a research fellow at the Australian National University, notes in his book Water and Politics in the Murray-Darling Basin.

"The time of peak flows under natural conditions in the rivers of southern Australia is winter and spring but the main growing season when agriculture needs water is the late summer and autumn. 

Even draining Australia's three longest rivers – the Darling, Murray and Murrumbidgee – over 1 million square kilometres, flows are also highly variable. The biggest year, 1956, saw volumes 17 times the worst, in 2006.

Read Peter Hannam’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Murray-Darling: testing times expected as extended dry period approaches.”