John Forrest (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the House:

(1)

notes the renewed interest being taken in the potential for cloud seeding to enhance precipitation across Australia;

(2)

acknowledges that Snowy Hydro has rolled out an extensive cloud seeding operation over the past two winters for snow fall enhancement and that Hydro Tasmania has been undertaking cloud seeding precipitation enhancement operations for several decades;

(3)

notes that many countries around the world continue to invest heavily in cloud seeding research, whilst in Australia it has not been enthusiastically embraced by the scientific community; and

(4)

calls for the establishment of an Australian Cooperative Research Centre for weather modification to follow similar models in other countries.

Cloud seeding is a subject which I have followed and pursued quite vigorously for a decade now. I am pleased to see that there are at least some initiatives to recognise cloud seeding as an area that is deserving of legitimate scientific research. Cloud seeding is not obscure science, as many are hasty to assert. I have had that assertion put to me regularly. Cloud physicists all agree that it is possible to modify the microphysics of clouds by seeding them with silver iodine and that you can have an immediate influence on the precipitation outcome for that particular cloud—they all agree. The science is not new; it has been the subject of investigative science for 50 years. Indeed, postwar Australia led the world in the research of this area of science: we invented the equipment that is now being used around the world, and we wrote the textbooks on which many of the cloud-seeding operations around the world base their work.

Time does not permit me to explain how cloud seeding works. It is sufficient to note that the introduction of the crystalline structure of silver iodine, which is very similar to ice, encourages the cloud to form raindrops; it causes them to coalesce. It is quite simple and it is not a hypothesis anymore: it is recognised science.

At the end of a demonstration, there is a discussion about statistics or arithmetic. In Australia we have a short period of rainfall record—notionally 100 years—with all of the variability that appears in weather, because the statistical variables are just so immense. The debate is about proving the science beyond the influence of statistical significance. Because of the problem with the variability of weather, to be deemed efficacious it must at least show that cloud seeding is 20 per cent more likely to result in precipitation than the statistical expectation. There is no other scientific endeavour that I am aware of that is asked to get through an efficacy hurdle as significant as that. That is what the discussion is about. It is not about the science but about the arithmetic, or the statistics, at the end of it.

Considerable effort is being expended around the world on this subject. I had the benefit of a visit to Texas in 2002, after which I tabled a report in this chamber urging the Australian scientific community to show a renewed interest in cloud seeding. The next year I went to Israel. It was interesting last week to meet with Eli Ronen, the chairman of Mekorot, the Israeli water authority. Mekorot have an extensive cloud-seeding operation, with a demonstrable benefit to Israel beyond the statistical expectation. The Israelis are using Australian invented technology, but they have extended it.

Here in Australia we have two significant cloud-seeding operations: Hydro Tasmania, which for decades has continued the development of this technology; and, more recently, Snowy Hydro. For the past three winter seasons, Snowy Hydro has been making snow using the same techniques.

The world has moved on and is using technology that we have never used in Australia—for example, the use of pyrotechnic flares to distribute the silver iodine in a more accurate and precise way, and the advent of accurate radar with an interpretive capacity so that particular clouds can be targeted. What I learnt from the Texans was that a precise dose in a precise location is the key to getting good outcomes.

I am greatly encouraged by the renewed interest in Queensland, with the Premier last year announcing $7½ million to further cloud-seeding research in south-east Queensland. My motion asks for consideration for the establishment of a research facility, which many other countries—including the United States, Israel, China and South Africa—already have. I believe the cooperative research centre model is the way to go, where you can get interested players in and those who are participating in cloud-seeding activity. I commend this motion to the chamber, and I ask all members to support it. (Time expired)

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This motion is interesting for a number of reasons, as there has been a lot of discussion over the years on cloud seeding, including comments made in the 2004 House of Representatives report Getting water right(s): the future of rural Australia. I also know the member for Mallee was itching to get some cloud seeding done over his patch in 2003, but the science gurus were unconvinced that it would work because of the type of clouds floating across his area and the fact that a number of tests had proven inconclusive. Added to this was the fact that the science on climate change was at that time seen as rather irrelevant, as was noted on Ockham’s Razora radio program—this last weekend, in which Sol Encel was talking about the brain drain in Australia. He said:

An ironic commentary on the present concern with global warming is the fact that CSIRO closed down its climate change division a year ago, with a resultant exodus of climate change specialists, most of whom went abroad.

So I am somewhat amused that the poor member for Mallee, who had been left out in the cold by his own government—who dismissed his requests and saw them as trivial back then—now should be flavour of the month. His motion should be picked up. I hope it is.

Tasmania is the home of Australia’s cloud-seeding program, as we have been running trials and actually using cloud seeding over the last forty years. Cloud seeding is a technique used by our hydroelectric commission to increase precipitation over the key hydro generation catchments. Hydro Tasmania has been involved in both operational and experimental cloud seeding over Tasmania and mainland Australia for over 40 years and has developed a great deal of knowledge and expertise in this area. Their own people have estimated the benefits to Hydro Tasmania of our existing cloud-seeding program as being at least six to one.

This is a quote from Hydro Tasmania’s submission to the House of Representatives report I mentioned earlier:

All clouds in the temperate areas of Australia contain levels of supercooled liquid or water at a temperature less than zero degrees centigrade. It is the amount of this water present and the number of naturally occurring cloud condensation nuclei that determine the probability of precipitation from a cloud. The cloud droplets form small ice crystals on the surface of the cloud condensation nuclei. Once the cloud is suitably seeded, the ice crystals falling through the cloud collide with cloud droplets thus growing in size. Eventually when this ice falls from the cloud it melts as its temperature rises above the melting point or zero degrees and falls as rain.

According to Hydro Tasmania’s cloud-seeding people, there are two sorts of cloud treatment. One relates to warm temperatures and one to freezing, the latter being glaciogenic and the most appropriate for Tasmania. Warmer areas would go with hydroscopic seeding, which may be worth investigating for the mainland if this motion is to be considered.

Cloud seeding is expensive and does take a lot of flights, as you need to have aeroplanes in the air for some 20 days during autumn and spring and it takes about 60 to 80 flights to find the right conditions. However, once they are found, it can be a very successful way of producing more water out of the clouds that come out of the roaring forties.

If these trials are going to take place and if the member for Mallee’s motion gets some interest from the government, I would suggest that the CRC be set up in Tasmania and be sponsored jointly by Hydro Tasmania and CSIRO, who already have the research well underway. Funds could be directed to them to apply their results to mainland conditions. We have the runs already on the board. That makes a lot of sense. In fact, considering the success of the Tasmanian ones, Hydro Tasmania’s paper recommended a new series of trials on the mainland, particularly if they followed closely the guidelines laid down in the CSIRO paper Guidelines for the utilisation of cloud seeding as a tool for water management in Australia.

In these low rainfall cycles, Australia must seek a number of ways to manage our water resources. We need to look at water pricing and trading water entitlements, and improve discussions with water users around the nation. We are all seeking answers to our water problems and certainly this is another research consideration. I believe there is an excellent opportunity here and I congratulate the member for Mallee in bringing this to the parliament’s attention. I hope he manages to find some funding for this proposition. (Time expired)

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to speak to this motion. I support the four points in the motion and strongly support the idea of more research into cloud seeding and related matters. I would like to correct a small point that was in the good presentation by the member for Lyons. He said that the member for Mallee has no support. Quite the contrary: he has. He has already obtained a government grant to run an international symposium on this matter. Being the only person in the House who has done anything like that, we all owe him a vote of thanks, not oblique criticism. As has been said, Snowy Hydro and Hydro Tasmania have run tests to examine cloud-seeding technologies. I support that. In a time of extreme and prolonged drought and with the nation calling out for water facilities, this is something that we as a nation need to pursue.

In my own electorate, we have had some controversy over weather modifications in the form of hail cannons used by the Mundubbera shire. The Central Burnett region is the home of dozens of citrus orchards, and a number of growers in Mundubbera shire have used hail cannons to reduce crop damage from hailstorms. Hail can cause millions of dollars worth of damage to these sorts of crops. Our biggest mandarin exports come from this area, and it can be seen both in Central Burnett and the Granite Belt that the technologies are probably worthy of being trialled.

The whole theory is that shockwaves are sent up from these cannons and that that causes the breakdown of the particles of ice and the rain falls as slush or heavy rain droplets. The practice is that the cannons are activated about half an hour before the storm approaches and usually run for about 20 minutes—typically until the storm has passed. Each sends out waves through the air and alters the mix of gases in the air. The shockwaves spread out to a maximum intensity of about three kilometres in diameter, generally at an altitude of 8,000 to 12,000 metres. While there is some anecdotal evidence of hail cannons working, residents and farmers of Gayndah shire to the east say that it has reduced rainfall to their communities—a negative impact. There is a concern that the use of hail cannons has reduced rainfall to the geographic areas of Wetheron, Byrnestown, Gooroolba, Gin Gin, Rosedale, Biggenden and Coalstoun Lakes and over the Paradise Dam. Gayndah shire has just called for further investigations into hail cannon activity across Australia to establish whether similar rainfall patterns are being experienced.

Earlier in the year I invited my good friend the member for Mallee to address those two groups. We had a meeting of the two shires and the protagonists in the shire hall at Gayndah. I was very pleased to see that a local working group was formed to monitor the use of hail cannons, record data and seek some conclusive scientific evidence. Mundubbera shire mayor, Bruce Serisier, and Gayndah shire mayor, Bill Mellor, are leading the group, which will include three people from each party.

Two years ago the Queensland Department of Primary Industries, as has been previously mentioned, appointed climatologist Roger Stone to see what could be done about various technologies in this field. It will take another year of gathering data before any conclusive results can be reached.

It is noted, again as previous speakers have said, that the Queensland government has allocated $7½ million for a study of cloud seeding. Perhaps these two issues, including that of the hail cannons, could be brought together to seek some clarity in the Mundubbera and Gayndah areas.

The CSIRO has been involved in cloud seeding since the 1940s and through to the eighties. This has produced a number of mixed but inconclusive results. I remember as a young boy living in Stanthorpe that the apple and stone fruit growers fired silver iodine rockets into hailstorms. Although the results were always inconclusive, some farmers swore by them. The CSIRO has come to the conclusion that cloud seeding is effective in a limited number of weather conditions. However, in his 2001 paper, Paulo Hopper of the CSIRO’s atmospheric research division said:

It may be worth again attempting rainfall enhancement experiments in areas where past efforts have failed, but proper planning needs to be done first, along with rigorous independent evaluations.

To achieve that, and for the benefit of all Australians, I call for the establishment of an Australian cooperative research centre for weather modifications, similar to those operating in other nations. (Time expired)

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I support the motion and I congratulate the member for Mallee for his perseverance with this particular issue. Nearly four years ago the member for Mallee, and the balance of the committee that I was on—the AFFA committee—moved a motion that the government put in place a cooperative research centre on climate. Four years have moved on and we have done very little in that regard, other than recognise that the climate is changing. Even the Prime Minister last October had a conversion on the road to Damascus and recognised that climate change is a very real phenomenon.

Climate change in Australia has been a real phenomenon for many years. When people suggest, as some do, that cloud seeding would be interfering with God’s law, I would suggest, as the member for Mallee has done previously, that we have interfered with God’s law in the past quite dramatically. One of the reasons that we are suffering from a lack of rainfall in some areas in Australia is due to the pollution that human beings have caused.

One of the things that cloud seeding is attempting to do—and I know the member for Mallee is well aware of this—is overcome the adverse impacts that pollution has had in terms of rainfall droplets and the formation of rain and, when suitable circumstances do arise, encourage more rain through the artificial insemination of clouds. As you would remember, Mr Deputy Speaker—because I think you were the minister in the New South Wales government when a trial was carried out—

Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Very good minister, too.

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He was a good minister, too. It fell apart a bit after he came down here, but he was a good minister in the New South Wales parliament. I think it might have been under the Deputy Speaker’s hand that a cloud-seeding trial was carried out in the northern part of New England. It was a very successful trial. The clouds were of the correct nature that could be inseminated, and rainfall was recorded.

One of the great problems that the member for Mallee and others have had with regard to this, which he alluded to earlier, is the statistical significance of some of the scientific research. In a nation as dry as this one, in a nation that has a great dividing range and a nation that has had the conclusive evidence that has come out of the Tasmanian environment, to have given up on research into this particular climatic occurrence and the way in which to encourage rain, I think is an absolute disgrace.

Climate change is an issue in this place now. It is for two major reasons that I believe this issue has been thwarted over recent decades. One is the far-reaching antagonism between the protagonist, Ian Searle, who did a tremendous amount of work on cloud seeding—and I congratulate him—in the early Tasmanian hydro, the Snowy hydro and the trial that happened in northern New England in the mid-nineties, and some people within the CSIRO who had an antagonistic attitude towards the concept.

I urge the government to have a very close look again at this particular issue. We are the driest continent and nation in the world and we have not done the research that others have done. The Israelis, the Texans and people in many other parts of the world have carried out research and are still carrying out research to perfect the ways in which clouds can be inseminated and rain can be encouraged. As to the idea that we should not do something that is supposedly unnatural: we have created an unnatural environment in many of our climate systems through the additional pollution that climate change has driven us towards.

We need to look at all the options. The Prime Minister keeps saying that: let’s look at all the options in terms of energy and the climate change issues. I urge the government, and support very strongly the member for Mallee, to put in place a cooperative research centre on climate. One of the issues at the top of the list in a drought stricken nation such as ours should be what we can do to aid and abet natural rainfall in areas where it previously occurred.

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.