View Single Post
Old 04-02-2013, 02:34 PM   #641 (permalink)
jamesqf
Master EcoModder
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Earth
Posts: 5,209
Thanks: 225
Thanked 811 Times in 594 Posts
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arragonis View Post
More madness. A few years ago in Australia they had a drought. Their "climate commissioner" (on a modest $180K a year and owns seafront property) said that these droughts would become more and more the norm.

So they built a desalination plant to provide drinking water, just in case - that precautionary principle again.

Last year there were severe floods in Australia, and even now the dams are full of water.
Perhaps you have never lived in an arid climate, and so don't realize that it's perfectly possible - indeed, one could almost say it's the norm - to have floods and drought at the same time.

Dams full of water really don't do a damn bit of good (if you'll excuse the pun) for anything except the few things connected to the dam. To be of use to the general environment, rain (or snow) has to fall gradually enough that it soaks into the ground and so replenishes groundwater. If it falls too quickly, as with the many inches of rain of an Australian typhoon, it merely runs off into those dams, often over-topping them and flowing down the rivers.