Drought proofing a dry continent

If we keep inflating our population with immigrants, subsidising big families with welfare, and attracting tourists with games and spectacles we will have to find more usable water for both cities and farms.

Australian governments are wasting billions of dollars on foreign aid, foreign wars, climate propaganda, subsidies for un-viable industries, politically distorted research and many other suspect causes. Only those who administer or receive this flood of money see value in it. More should be used for drought-proofing the dry continent.

However, the only big water-related investment on Australian government drawing boards today is the Snowy 2.0 pump storage scheme. This scheme will not conserve one extra litre of water, and it will be a net consumer of electricity – its sole useful function is to keep the lights on when intermittent green energy fails. It will also exploit and smooth out the severe electricity price fluctuations caused by intermittent energy from wind and solar power. But, like all hydro-schemes, it needs water and may be at risk in a big drought.

The estimated cost of Snowy 2.0 has risen from $2 billion to $7 billion as the result of spending $29 million on an initial feasibility study. Add that to the $6 billion that the federal government will spend buying the existing Snowy Hydro scheme from the states who own it. If they used this vast splurge of money to build a real water supply dam and a real base-load power station, Australia's supplies of water and electricity would be far more secure.

Eastern Australia is currently suffering a big drought. Climate alarmists pushing a green global agenda will, as usual, try to exploit community suffering and concern by blaming man-made global warming for more droughts. Wrong again. Warmer oceans would increase evaporation, producing more clouds and more rain, not more drought.

Warmer oceans also expel carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and plants flourish in the moist warm fertile atmosphere. Anyone who studies a bit of climate history can see that warm centuries like the Medieval Warm Period are times of plenty, whereas cold periods like the Little Ice Age are times of hunger and conflict. Spending ANY money trying to reduce global warming is totally wasted. Drought and global cooling are the real threats we should fear and prepare for.

Sensible drought-proofing policies for Australia are simple:

• Stop wasting water
• Build more dams, pipelines and pumps
• Build power stations capable of delivering cheap reliable electricity for pumping water and energising desalination plants.