The feed in tariff concept

The feed in tariff concept is great, it overcomes the ugly side of the PV rebate which is the failure to discriminate the quality of the panels and the quality of installation (site selection etc.).

There is still a serious gap not covered by F-i-T, RRPGP, PV Rebate or any other program. Acquifer pumping is already highly regulated to ensure acquifier sustainability. These sites are frequently off grid and presently rely on diesel and are continuous service.

Support equivalent to $2 per Watt would see these sites converted to solar. This is four times the effectiveness of the aclaimed PV rebate and far better than projects lauded by RRPGP as poster children for emission reductions.

Perhaps these high potential remote opportunities have been overlooked as the climate debate has understandably been dominated by a city perspective. Hopefully there is room in the minds of the policy folk to also consider the perspective of those in remote areas, especially given the overlooked vastly superior emissions reduction potential that is offered.

Given its present exclusion I think we need a specific program to cover conversion of acquifer pumping from diesel to solar power. The criteria should include sufficiently continuous service to ensure that the average dollar spent per unit emission reduction is superior to other funding programs.

This climate debate should not entrench marginalising of minorities. We should provide equal terms to all who can contribute if we hope to make serious inroads into the problem of emissions reductions.

There is madness happening

There is madness happening here. Aquifer pumping energy from diesel to solar will involve salt water seeping inland from the sea. And what energy and emission is required to produce the solar equipment?

From personal experience managing outback environment there is one golden rule with water management. If need is seen to manage water supply, do it now before the next big rain. If obviously needed, take the dam down or build a new one, whatever is required. Do it now before the next rain that could be a big one. Once rain begins to fall, all outback earth moving equipment becomes useless and the river is lost

There is need to stop the on and on talk just about CO2 submissions and fix Menindee Lakes so Darling River flow will reach the Murray when the next big rain falls. Do it now.

Failure of river estuary food web environment is causing marine animal starvation that is not being included in government submissions and action anyway. What a waste of natural Australian environment and life.

Politics these days seems just about figuring how to collect more money from the people. It looks like the southern boundary of the GBRMPA is also 'economic' policy because it is preventing scientific research of northerly flowing alongshore natural food supply and unnatural nutrient pollutiion input to the Great Barrier Reef.

Water is water. It is not possible to segregate fresh and salt water biology. Climate is not the only issue. Formulation of a Bill about energy should encompass the whole environment situation, not just about money and CO2.

COncerned, I'll try to find

COncerned, I'll try to find an answer to your direct question, but I would ask you, please, to temper your language on this blog in the future.

Many thanks,
Tim

Concerned, You seem to be

Concerned,
You seem to be speaking only about far inland aquifers. I was referring to aquifer water closer to the coast like in the lower Murray area. For extreme example there has been talk of pumping from an aquifer under Sydney. When water weight is taken out, seawater usually runs back in throught the water table. I think you are referring only to the inland artesian basin. Besides, my main point is about money and time and fuel for pumping as well as energy to develop solar power equipment, including to transport and replace toxic lead acid batteries.

I think it would be more appropriate to immediately use time and available funding for public meetings in Broken Hill to explain PRESENT need for Darling River water to temporarily bypass the massive useless evaporation area of Menindee Lakes and run full river flow to the Murray. Menindee Lakes are only sometimes used by just a few Broken Hill water ski and sail enthusiasts, but mining union desire for the play water is powerful. But I think the unions might help to reduce the expanse causing so much evaporation. Under circumstances of dead sea birds all along coast from Rockhampton to SA and around Tasmania, due to lack of river estuary seagrass bred food, there is extreme need for reconsideration.

There is also evidence toxic algae residue from fouled river waterholes and estuaries is becoming airborne and is linked to asthma, no doubt also asthma in the outback including Broken Hill.

I think there are various very urgent issues that need to be attended to immediately. What do you think about importance and relevance of fresh water to the marine environment food web and world protein food supply sustainability?

My apologies. I felt moved

My apologies. I felt moved to address the wild accusation of insanity which was without foundation and offensive.

I agree I could have more calmly pointed out the flaws in the statement. It is just that sometimes it is difficult to do that when the errors are egregious.

Concerned, I clearly stated

Concerned,

I clearly stated existence of an aquifer at Sydney as an extreme example, far away from the Murray food basin but right on the coast that you seem to think is too high for water to flow back underground. I was responding to your claim @4 about speaking nonsense.

Take time to consider my words like, "public meetings", not singular but as many meetings as required in order to explain all possible reasons to include consideration of damage to the marine environment. If no meetings, then what happens. Should we all just sit back and let the marine environment die, like happening right now with the Coorong? Emissions policy is not so urgent.

I was referring to aquifer pumping in the lower Murray food producing region and where the Coorong needs water. You now also refer to extracted groundwater to grow carrots. Clearly, the lower Murray and carrot growing climate is in LOWLANDS, not at the high inland area you focus on while taking a crack at me.

I have not mentioned ocean freshwater spring. It is ocean water backing up through the water table due to unnatural human influence that is a concern. I think any subsurface water studies as you mention would vary in different area movement speed. Water that soaks into the ground has to get away somewhere and in high rainfall areas must move much faster than the 1 km per 1000 years as you state. I believe I have previously seen evidence of a much faster rate.

Environment degradation is not just about emissions and sustainable energy. The whole of this planet's water ecosystem needs to be urgently considered if food supply for over 7 billion humans and other life is to be sustained, trees that take up underground lowland water included. What is known about the natural biology of a lowland fresh water aquifer?

There is an excellent article about saving the Coorong at;

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7762

JCF, there are several

JCF, there are several errors in your note as follows:

a) I have no trouble believing that seawater will contaminate an unsustainably overextracted coastal acquifer. The issue you first characterised as madness was specifically described as extracting at a sustainable rate in a remote location. You really are mixing up concepts like calling a bilby a rabbit. I continue to oppose your claim unambiguously indicated above that it is madness to extract sustainably from remote acquifers. Perhaps you might now care to retract that claim of insanity.

b) Have as many public meetings as you like. I still don't think they will achieve anything. But that just remains my opinion. Nothing has changed with your stressing the plural. You shouldn't have public meetings just because you can't think of anything else to do as seems to be implied by your thought that if no meetings then what. All I will offer is that in order to have public meetings you really should first have a reason to believe they will help. Having no other ideas doesn't seem like sufficient justification.

c) In 2007 I was inland west of Sydney standing in a 50 acre field of carrots 7 hours from the nearest coast. Your claim about them being in the lower Murray is incorrect. My point only requires that the acquifer surface is above sea level and very little of the remote inland agricultural regions of Australia will be less than 30 meters above sea level. I only took a crack at you because you first took a massive crack at another while you seem not to properly understood what you were taking a crack at. If you are sensitive to someone taking a crack at you then you should be more circumspect, glasshouses and stones and all that.

d) I agree movement rates will vary. It is not the fast inflow rate during recharge that counts for making your point. What counts is the slower bulk transfer. It is not going to be a successful debating strategy for you to keep bringing up overextraction from coastal acquifers to support your attack on the merits of sustainable extraction from remote inland acquifers.

e) I only offered undersea springs in a vain attempt to understand what connection you were trying to make from acquifer extraction to marine ecosystems health. I seem to have failed. I now deduce you are not trying to make any such connection, perhaps you just wanted to segued across without there being much of a link. I don't have enough knowledge to venture an opinion on marine health so I'll leave it to others to offer comments on this topic.

f) I take the view that with the available information the risks to remote inland acquifer biology from sustainable extraction are not great enough to outweigh the benefits to us from the extractions. I would be happy to modify the view if I were presented with new information to the contrary. Please don't bring up information about unsustainable extractions from coastal acquifers as no one has ever contested that point here.

I have not made a

I have not made a submission. I see that 32 were submitted and mostly by people in the industry whose submissions will likely be more informed. I have read enough of the submissions to know I have no special insight that would add weight to what is there.

Reading between the lines then perhaps you are implying that because I have nothing to offer the Inquiry then I have no place making comments here. I justify my contribution here on the grounds that I was quite unable to let stand unchallenged the extraordinary statement:

"There is madness happening here. Aquifer pumping energy from diesel to solar will involve salt water seeping inland from the sea."

The relevance here is the above statement was made in response to a request for a F-i-T equivalent for sustainable remote off-grid acquifer pumping to convert from diesel to solar.

Since no one else challenged the statement I can see that had I not challenged it then the risk I fear is it would then have stood as a Green tenet that use of acquifers as a form of floodwater storage is bad.

I can see that acquifer pumping may result in sea water seeping in the case that the acquifer is below sea level and it is close to the sea and that the extraction rate is unsustainable. None of those qualifers were offered by the attack. Given the initial premise included both qualifiers of remote and sustainable then I was left to conclude that the attack included remote sustainable acquifers and was not specific to overexploited coastal acquifiers.

Is it your intention that I should let such falsehoods stand?

You seem generally quite keen to correct errors where you find them. Surely you do not judge you have superior capacity to me in that regard and that I should not similarly participate.

McFarm @ 14. I do not

McFarm @ 14.
I do not support a national feed-in tariff and have not made a submission. As well as a call for submissions, this thread also takes comments. Surely this is also a thread about the environment, even though not indexed as such on this site.

Concerned @ 13.
In reply,
(a) You could have perhaps asked what I meant by madness, no worry. I consider it madness to be dealing with renewable energy and tariff's while nothing is being done about managing the whole of the water environment. You mention bilby and rabbit's and apparently think they are different concepts, but both are animals, not mineral, not vegetable. Likewise fresh water and salt water are water and the Great Barrier Reef is downstream from Broken Hill's Menindee Lakes but this is presently ignored.

(b) Public meetings in BH would be better than doing nothing. Consultants have public meeting all the time to collect ideas and information. Meetings with TV could have a Q&A. This is about whole river systems and survival of agriculture and survival of Aus coast and ocean ecosystems, even though you and others do not understand it all at this point in time.

(c) Carrots 7 hours west of Sydney must be growing on water from a natural river or aquifer likely to impact natural trees. Aquifers take up scarce water when refilling. Anyway I support sensible farming. It was apparently the thread moderator who commented on your temper. In response I used the work crack. I reiterate it is madness to use available time on developing renewable energy and tariff law while ignoring dire critically urgent need for total water ecosystem management. Alternatives are likely.

(d) I am not complaining about aquifer over-extraction but it can be a problem. I merely used the salt water seepage as one problem. I was focused on the troubled lower Murray, not carrots west of Dubbo.

(e) I have a lifetime experience with observation of marine health, from pristine to catastrophic damage, degradation and collapse as politicians waffle with how to charge more money. The southern boundary of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority for example, appears to be positioned by economic policy, nothing whatsover to do with biology, and that boundary is stopping science and upstream research. It is madness to spend available time on tariff's while taking no action on inland river pollution impact on the downstream entire GBR.

(f) I think those key words "available information", are often used as an excuse to allow damaging development to continue, aided and abetted by media gagging of key information of substance, blocking even your knowledge of the marine environment. In contrast I support farming and sensible use of aquifer water. I think tall poppy Pratt should be respected and his ideas to help bring water to southern farmers from northern high rainfall areas should be welcomed and put to use. The best renewable energy is gravity.

Stop fiddling with tariff's and more and more costs that wipe out some farmers and will be added to end consumer purchases anyway, together with now high cost of fish meal and guano fertilizer resulting from fish resource devastation. The situation is outrageous, reeking with stupidity and madness in terms of priority and focus. Why is the marine environment excluded from so called 'catchment' water management? When will there be a Senate inquiry into the ongoing destruction of the marine food web? Right now there is another whale calf abandoned, this time right outside where I am based. Marine animals are starving because nutrient pollution is feeding algae and smothering seagrass pilchard, herring, anchovy nursery. The nutrients are coming from well fed millions and their "in one end and out the other end" waste, including from carrots. But CO2 and man-made renewable energy and tariff's seem more important. Surely this is madness.

Wrong priority

McFarm, I have already replied to your question but my post has not remained, maybe lost during website changes. Right now I am absolutely busy with whale calf abandonment linked to whale starvation that is occurring right now, the incidents forming evidence of fish depletion, consequences and need for solutions. Thus I think it madness for CO2 tariff business to be a focus of debate at a time when virtually the whole world ocean marine environment is already in an advanced and perhaps irreversible state of collapse. I think it outrageous fish depletion linked malnutrition and disease and chronic poverty amongst Pacific island people is being ignored while PM Rudd and others go on and on about collecting CO2 money.

Please describe how my comment is aggressive as you state.