Or any other noisy, ugly polluter for that matter. On one hand I can see what they are getting at – whilst wind farms are an important and relatively clean form of energy (everything gets made in a dirty manufacturing and installation process, after all, it’s only ‘clean’ in final use and concept) they are conspicuously unnatural things that hum and swish in an unnerving way, usually situated where you least expect them. So having to get agreement from the neighbours makes some sense. And keeping the noise down also makes sense. But what about new coal and gas mines? How tough will the O’Farrell government now get on them, or on any other noisy, ugly development proposal? I’d like to see ugly, car-attracting shopping centres covered by a similar approval process, for example… or major road construction for that matter.

Ah, but what about the greater good, you say? Indeed. And wouldn’t a wind farm contribute to the greater good?

Wind farm plans put growth at risk

ANYONE living within two kilometres of a planned wind farm would have a right to veto it and delay its development, under strict new state guidelines.

Yes, we all want Freedom of the Press but do we want a free press that ignores reason and logic and prints just, umm, anything? They have printed a weak piece on smart meters today, blaming the Gillard government and the Greens for something that is actually commercially desirable. Smart meters are the future of power distribution, be it publicly or privately owned. Full stop. Dumb meters and non-variable pricing is just inefficient and wasteful. So why write a slanted “journalistic” article and an opinion piece making out that it’s a Green travesty? Is the Terrorgraph just dumb (in the colloquial sense) or do they really think their readers are so ill-informed and mindless as to just blame Gillard and Brown and vote Abbott? (Judging by the majority of comments I’d say “preaching to the converted” applies here.)

But smart meters are coming, irrespective. It’s not just a Green thing, it’s a sensible, more efficient thing. Why is that so hard to understand?

The Tele said:
We’re paying high price for Greens | thetelegraph.com.au

A PATTERN is beginning to emerge. Just over one year since the federal Greens entered into a power-sharing arrangement with Labor, and a few months since the Greens assumed the balance of power in the Senate, we can see a certain theme.

Almost every proposal put forward or championed by the Greens either is or would be seriously damaging to the bank balances of middle Australia.

The Greens largely drove the carbon tax, forcing Prime Minister Julia Gillard to embarrassingly reverse her pre-2010 election promise to not introduce such a tax.

The cost of this new tax to businesses and consumers will be hugely significant, and may yet cost Labor its hold on national government.

And FWIW I say:
Blame the Greens if you want but you and I both know that the electricity distributors will phase out “dumb” meters anyway – and that “smart” meters will be standard issue soon enough. And current demand for artificially cheap peak power is driving up our energy bills. We are all paying for this waste – over-cooled houses and oversized video screens running full bore even when no-one’s using/watching/even in the same room. Whereas variable pricing will allow us to choose when and how to use non-essential appliances and encourage non-grid power sources (like home solar). It will shift demand around and ease the need for new capital investment in peak power. So our electricity bills may well be relatively lower with smart meters. Why not mention – and support – that? 

And why shouldn’t power companies charge more for their product during peak periods of demand? We can all make informed decisions on power use, surely? Is the Tele really saying that Australians can’t make smart decisions about their lives? Whilst I’m all for socialism and a fair go we should recognise that this isn’t a planned economy and some things make commercial – and environmental – sense. Yes, keep a safety blanket in place for those who really need it but we don’t need to publicly-fund more middle-class waste, surely? We should encourage efficiency, fairness and choice instead. Charging a fair – and variable – price for power just makes sense. In part it’s the lack of fair, variable pricing that is causing the recent price rises. So what the Telegraph is really supporting is higher prices. Go figure.

Implementing a carbon tax makes sense, too. If we could just let go of old ideas of price control and subsidised over-use and build a better, cleaner and more efficient economy we’ll all be better off.

The “journalistic” article: 
Smart meter technology to drive up the costs of power | thetelegraph.com.au

THE cost of cooling your home and cooking dinner could double under a new Gillard government power proposal.

Charging consumers more for electricity during the evening peak, and less at other times, is among a raft of “policy options” contained in a discussion paper made public yesterday.

Mind you, this is just a “discussion paper”, apparently. And how much does it cost to cook dinner now? A dollar? So it may double to $2? That matters more to some than to others, but wait, there’s more…

Smart meter technology to drive up the costs of power | thetelegraph.com.au

Other proposals put forward in the paper include minimum energy standards for appliances, rebates and green building regulations.

So if you choose wisely you could land a cheaper-to-run cooking appliance and get back some of that extra cost. And that “rebate” may be aimed at home cooking, who knows?

Smart meter technology to drive up the costs of power | thetelegraph.com.au

There is also a bizarre plan allowing energy companies to remotely control home airconditioners in high-demand periods in return for a discount at other times – a move experts say would hit western Sydney hard.

So the Telegraph “journos” think this is bizarre, apparently. They may all be unaware anti-tech Luddites, who knows? But if you agree to your smart meter adjusting your air con whilst you cook dinner – it’s called “smart” after all – then you may recoup some or all of the extra cooking cost. Frankly that makes great sense. So why is it bizarre? (Yes, I have air-con and on average I use it once a year, just to make sure it still works. Dimming your air con for an hour or so is hardly going to kill you.)

As usual one can only sigh.

I know Gumbramorra swamp quite well. It’s dry, heavily paved and filled with factories. Plus the odd house or 3. When it rains, however, the swamp rises fast and floods Sydenham and Victoria Roads to car door-level in places. You get a bow-wave effect as you drive through it. I know this because a storm flooded this area in ’79 and knocked out the electricals on my VW Golf. That sort of thing – stuck fast in a temporary lake – sticks in your mind.  

It wasn’t always exactly so developed and the story is interesting, so here are some links and quotes.

Quoted sections via Chrys Meader, ‘Sydenham’, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://www.dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/entry/sydenham, viewed 15 December 2011

Sydenham

Most of the western half of Sydenham was within the Gumbramorra Swamp, a local Aboriginal name, which provided an effective boundary for the early European land grants. The majority of Sydenham stands within Thomas Moore’s Douglas Farm, granted in 1799. Thomas Moore was one of the largest landowners in the area.

Another grant of 30 acres (12.1 hectares) was made in 1799 to emancipated convict, John Fincham but it was virtually useless land as it was entirely contained by the swamp.

What else would you give an ex-con but a swamp? It certainly looked different back then: 

Sydenham

The Gumbramorra Swamp emptied into the Gumbramorra Creek and then into Cooks River. Part of Sydenham and the suburbs of St Peters and Tempe developed to the south east of the swamp and the suburb of Marrickville to the west of it. Gumbramorra Swamp consisted of marshland at the foot of the declining sandstone and shoal ridges of Marrickville, in a relatively narrow area surrounded by low hills. At the mouth of the Gumbramorra Creek were mudflats, which were also evident in the swamp itself. Behind these mudflats and mangroves was the characteristic salt marsh. These conditions supported abundant wildlife. The Gumbramorra Swamp was a good source of food for the Aborigines.

I think that should be “sandstone and shale” ridges, by the way. I can imagine it, the low hills with dry sclerophyll eucalypt forest giving way to casuarinas followed by fresh-water mangroves and mudflats in a narrow strip along Sydenham (previously Swamp) Road. Given that it was elevated above the Cooks River it was in effect a large hanging swamp, with another such smaller swamp above it around Addison Road, Marrickville. It would indeed have risen and fallen with La Nina/El Nino events but afforded some sort of regular food and freshwater supply most times. It’s hard to believe that now, of course. It basically looks very drab and industrial in the most part.  

Of course it got developed, we know that, but surprisingly it was for cheap housing at first… until disaster struck.

Sydenham

In 1881 the tramway was constructed along the western boundary of the swamp, now Victoria Road. Part of the original line for the tramway was laid down in the swamp as an incentive to development.

The Tramvale subdivision was then offered for sale in 160 lots with double frontages. The subdivision targeted the working class, stressing the availability of employment within ‘a centre of a manufacturing district’ with a ‘certainty of a rise in value’. The estate was badly designed, afflicted with regular flooding and poor drainage. It lacked basic sewerage facilities. Tramvale was notorious for its stench, which the breeze carried all the way to nearby Marrickville, St Peters and Tempe. Its inhabitants also suffered from a range of diseases, including typhoid fever. In summer the mosquito plagues reached epidemic proportions.

The stressed owners of Tramvale would never see a return on their investment. After five days of heavy rain in May 1889, Cooks River flooded and the water rushed up Gumbramorra Creek and into the swamp. Tramvale was the worst hit, with residents having to be rescued as their homes went quickly under water. There was a public outcry and questions were raised in the NSW Parliament about the ethics of developers who sold cheap land, which was both unhealthy and subject to regular flooding, to working-class people, who would never be able to resell.

And the fix was to make it industrial land only (for the most part, as some houses were built later). A pumping station was also built in Carrington Road and later the stormwater system of drains and pits was constructed. One such drain runs parallel with Sydenham Road and intrepid adventuring school kids have attested to its easy traverse to Sydenham. They can probably also attest to blind panic during flash floods after summer storms. 

And to quote my own work…

Alexandra canal | Out out damned Blog!

The principal access roads to the Marrick village were Illawarra Road, a narrow track running south and Swamp (later called Sydenham) Road, running from the west to the south-east. A western track ran from Parramatta Road through Petersham and downhill to link up to Swamp Road, later becoming Petersham Road, and another (again from Parramatta Road) became Livingstone Road. To the south (on higher ground) was another track which became the present Marrickville Road. As now, it ran from current New Canterbury Road to the swampland at Sydenham. Crucially, it connected all the north/south tracks in an east/west fashion and came into its own when the trams were routed down Victoria Street (Road) and the Bankstown railway line came into being.

Another Council document on the History of The Gumbramorra Swamp is worth a look, especially this extract: “early settlement of the upland areas naturally impinged on the swamp. Since much of the region was given over to grazing and timber-getting, the edges of the Swamp served a useful purpose to the inhabitants who worked the later Wardell estate. The existence of habitation on both sides of the Swamp encouraged some traffic across. By the 1840s, a track, and then a road, ran across the swamp to Unwin’s Bridge Road. This ‘Swamp Road’ is Sydenham Road“.

And “in 1855 the 60 acre estate of Thomas E Chalder, called Marrick, was subdivided. It became the village named Marrickville (1861) and the centre of the municipality. The village remained small, with only the minimum of community services. It was bounded, generally, by Illawarra Road, Chapel St, Fitzroy St and Sydenham (Swamp) Road and was in the vicinity of the north-western section of the Swamp. The construction of the tramway along Victoria St, the principal north-south route on the western side of the Swamp, in 1881 promoted settlement in the district at a time of large-scale suburban expansion. At the same time, plans for the Illawarra Railway (opened 1884) concentrated on the eastern side of the swampland, adjacent to Unwin’s Bridge Road. The Swamp area was no longer a relatively isolated and neglected sector.”

Sydenham railway station (on the Illawarra line) was originally Marrickville Station, renamed when today’s Marrickville station, closer to the intersection of Illawarra and Marrickville Roads, was established.

The general area, courtesy Google Maps.

View Larger Map
Zoom into the centre to see the industrial area for a rough approximation of the swamp’s extent. West from Sydenham Railway Station along Sydenham Rd to Enmore road is dead flat but rises to a ridge along the east (Tempe to St Peters) with a gentler rise to Marrickville Road to the south and higher land to the north and west. Addison Rd swamp is to the north west. There are plenty of drains in evidence if you look hard and the heritage-listed pumping station and pit lies between Sydenham and St Peters stations. 

Gumbramorra Creek flowed into Cooks River to the south of the creek, so I expect the original course is along or near Carrington Road, where a steam-driven pumping station was sited.
View Larger Map

More soon, I promise.

Labor can never win with the Terrorgraph. It’s always wrong, wrong, wrong. Even when the link is tenuous, thin and weak – or even unfounded. Doesn’t matter, it’s just Labor.

So an ex-bureaucrat has seemingly spilled the beans that the NSW Department of Environment Climate Change and Water (not Labor directly but they were in government after all) has chosen not to publish either of 6 or 5 (take your pick, it’s a bit unclear if 1 of 6 was published) internal reports contrary to public policy. Were they weak reports, good reports, flawed or just uninteresting? Irrespective. the Terrorgraph suggests just that they were suppressed. So there may be a story there. or not. We just don’t know yet.

But from what is presented it’s a weak argument anyway. The tone of the article and the comments is somewhat denialist, and you could be forgiven for believing that the ex-bureaucrat Doug Lord is, too, denying anthropogenic climate change. Indeed the Terrorgraph has slapped this in the middle of the article: “Do you believe the science of climate change, or is it all one big con job? Tell us below“. Yet in the article itself he documents rising sea levels. And in his published work and on his own company’s website he admits to a belief that climate change is both real and that it has a human origin. What  Mr Lord draws attention to in particular here is an apparent linear, constant rate of mean sea level rise at one site in Sydney Harbour, whereas many other sites show an accelerating rate. Which is one reason why the accepted sea level rise predictions have a range of values, from low to high. Mr Lord’s position as stated is at the lower end of that range. But it’s still happening, and if other factors fall the wrong way it may well accelerate.

So do we sit on our hands and just deny, or do we take action to address a clear risk?

It’s worth noting that whilst having longitudinal data for one site is good, we have to accept that it may also be atypical. It’s in Sydney Harbour after all – and Sydney Harbour has changed a lot in the dataset’s 120 years. Whilst I am sure some correction has been made for hydrological changes (it’s Mr Lord’s area, after all) it’s still just one site. Drawing global conclusions from one dataset would be contrary to good science. But it does make for good press, apparently.   

Climate change science being stifled by NSW Labor bureaucrats | thetelegraph.com.au

SENIOR bureaucrats in the state government’s environment department have routinely stopped publishing scientific papers which challenge the federal government’s claims of sea level rises threatening Australia’s coastline, a former senior public servant said yesterday.

Doug Lord helped prepare six scientific papers which examined 120 years of tidal data from a gauge at Fort Denison in Sydney Harbour.

The tide data revealed sea levels were rising at a rate of about 1mm a year or less – and the rise was not accelerating but was constant.

“The tidal data we found would mean sea levels would rise by about 100mm by the end of the century,” Mr Lord said yesterday.

“However the (federal) government benchmark which drives their climate change policy is that sea levels are expected to rise by 900mm by the end of the century and the rate of rise is accelerating.”