LOL!  That fellow's been mighty quiet of late, hasn't he? :-)

The western portion of Australia is, by and large, pretty arid. But
in
the SW corner, there's a modest portion where there was, at one time,
quite a bit of predictable winter rain. At some locations, over 100
cm
was common. This made the area agriculturally rich, with wheat and
wine being reliably produced there.

Before the area was settled by Europeans, the area had been covered
in
a spiny plant called 'kwongan' which turned the place into a huge
native garden every winter. The Europeans cleared the land of course,
and for about 149 years -- (1829-1975) reliable winter rains made the
area wealthy. But in 1976, rainfall started falling at an annual rate
of about 15%. According to the models, climate change accounts for
about 50% of this loss, as rainfall zones are pushed southward and
into the Great Southern Ocean. The other 50% is probably due to the
damage done to the ozone layer, which cooled the stratosphere and
hastened the circumpolar wind currents, pulling the rainbelt
southward
even more quickly.

Of course, the difference between a crop sucess and crop failure and
crop sucess is a few tens of millimteres of well timed rain. Take
wheat for example. In the 1960s, a million acres of kwongan was
cleared by bulldozers each year, leaving behind vast expanses of sand
-- which was utterly worthless as it stood, from an agricultural
point
of view. The farmes weren't troubled though. They put in the wheat,
sprinkled fertiliser liberally and waited for the unfailing winter
rains to come to their aid with water. After 1976 though, less and
less rain fell, and because they couldn't afford to add water, wheat
began moving west, replacing dairy farming. At some point, they will
run into the Indian Ocean ...

Of course, that's not the end of the problem. Most of the rain they
do
get is now erratic *summer* rain. Cropping and fertilising is an
expensive business, and unless you're sure of getting rain, you can't
afford to do it. Inevitably, the rain falls on bare fields where the
sandy soil allows the water to penetrate to the water table, where it
meets crystalline salt that has been accumulating there after blowing
in from the Indian Ocean for millions of years. Under each square
metre of land lies between 70 and 120 kg of salt. Pre-landclearing,
this wouldn't have mattered, because the kwongan and other vegetation
used pretty much every drop of water before it penetrated and the
slat
stayed crystalline.

But as the summer rains worked their way down, water more saline by
far than the ocean began rising killing everything in its path. The
creeks became undrinkable and many are now little more than salty
drains. The damage bill would be in the billions, if there were
anything that could feasibly be done about it. Sadly, we're still
scratching our heads on that one. And yet we must figure out what to
do, because the area of seriously saline land is increasing by about
a
hectare per hour.

Bad stuff ....

Fran

Because it is  a tad commercial sensitive  and if you are in WA  drop
me a line off Ng

My (uneducated) guess would be that a turbine would be a lot more efficient
than an old-school steam engine. Spinning a turbine would have to be easier
than accelerating and decelerating a great big piston over and over again.