Climate sense from wine commentator James Halliday

The Australian has a piece by James Halliday, producer of the Australian Wine Companion, in which he talks a great deal of sense about the effect of the drought on the Murray-Darling basin and its causes.

Again and again we hear -- from Kevin Rudd, Climate Change and Water Minister Penny Wong and Murray-Darling Basin Commission chief executive Wendy Craik -- that this is due to climate change. As a headline grab and as an opportunity to castigate those who dare to suggest the Murray-Darling's woes are due to drought and a century of profligate water extraction, it reinforces widespread popular belief.

And he correctly identifies the central flaw of the whole "carbon pollution reduction scheme":

But let us suppose for a moment that rising CO2 emissions are the direct cause of the Murray-Darling's plight. Australia could close down all mining and manufacturing industry overnight, throw away the keys to all the cars in the country, work only while sunlight and solar power were available and plunge itself into Third World poverty, all without making a blind bit of difference to global warming and the Murray-Darling.

He also suggests, again correctly, that adaptation is the key. I think I'll open a nice bottle of Barossa Shiraz on that note...!

Read it here.