The common feature of both is their dismissal of the impact of the ENSO system on Australia’s weather patterns and in particular the Great Pacific Climate Shift of early 1976.

Australia has long been subjected to serious droughts, and some observers, notably Peter Andrews (author of “Back from the Brink”, see http://www.nsfarming.com.au argue that over the past 150 years, man has progressively dehydrated the landscape by using inappropriate farming and water management practices. From the site: “Peter Andrews has devoted his life to the development of Natural Sequence Farming (NSF) techniques to restore the natural balance of water cycles prevalent before they were disturbed.”

Peter argues that uncontrolled clearing of bush and scrub, ploughing, draining of wetlands and swamps, emphasis on holding water in dams, monoculture farming practices, and use of herbicides to interfere with nature’s methods of regeneration using “weeds”, has disrupted the natural processes. He has demonstrated remarkable success in rehydrating individual farm properties (of some size) by installing ‘leaky weirs’, slowing down stream flows, establishing wetlands and ‘chains of ponds’ and by encouraging diversity.

It is very evident that in Australia man has dehydrated the landscape, and probably caused an increase in the intensity and duration of droughts, but it is not clear that CO2 emissions are the main cause. It is high time that we applied real science to understanding these issues. I urge all those seriously interested in the issues to have a look at what Peter is saying.