A wet Australian summer predicted.

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Out trendy urban hispters are now using their own mugs instead of the plastic cups for their lattes which end up in the Bass strait.

Hey will you boys stop picking on my favourite palaeontologist
You know full well that La Nina years are rare...
plus when all the rain comes in one wet season they have to let the dams overflow anyway.
So it's not like one wet year is going to solve all our water issues, is it?
I think you're just jealous of Tim's sex appeal

I'd like to see the full transcript of what Flannery was saying, it looks like he's been quoted out of context.
He knows a lot more about climate science than Alan Jones, that's for sure.

And, hey, I never said anything about not building dams.
(Personally I think they'd be a better way to go than desalination plants, if you have to have one or the other).

Found this interview from 2019 on the ABC, which puts Flannery's comments into better context:

Tim Flannery, how likely are Australian capital cities to end up living permanently under some form of water restrictions?

TIM FLANNERY, CHIEF COUNCILLOR, CLIMATE COUNCIL: Well, look, it depends upon how water is managed.

At the moment what we're seeing is a widespread use of desalination to provide water but that's expensive.

So, you know, Perth gets about half of its water from desal. Adelaide gets up half of its water at various times from desal. Melbourne gets water and we're just about to turn the taps on in the desal plant in Sydney. That will add about $25 to $30 a year cost to water for the average consumer but I guess that's the cost of using it prolifically.

LEIGH SALES: As you mention, Perth and Adelaide are getting about half of their water from desalination plants. Other than the expense, have there have been any lessons learned from that?

TIM FLANNERY: Look, yeah, it is obviously expensive. There can be environmental consequences.

So Perth has had to turn off its desal plant occasionally as very salty water has pooled on the coast, causing environmental problems.

So yeah, there are consequences. I think you're much better off managing your water properly, looking after your climate so you don't have to bear these costs.

LEIGH SALES: How much progress has Australia made into other water efficiency measures?

TIM FLANNERY: Look, by and large, I think we're still fairly poor at managing our water.

The big impacts are going to be in the inland, in our agriculture regions because out there, you can't really utilise desal the way we can on the coast and also, hotter temperatures are making things much more difficult.

So, you know, last summer was the hottest summer on record for Australia, and we also had the third most severe drought, which we're still experiencing. So add those two together and you get a lot of demand, you get a lot of stress on water.

LEIGH SALES: You mentioned high temperatures. Given the pressures of climate change, how likely is it that Australia's dams will ever return to full capacity?

TIM FLANNERY: Well, you know, we have to see. There may be an odd weather event that brings them up to 100 per cent again but by and large, the trend has been for greater evaporation, so less water actually getting into the dams, and less rainfall in southern and eastern Australia.

So those factors together tell us we should manage carefully what we've got.

LEIGH SALES: What are some of the low hanging fruit in terms of better water management in Australia? What could we do fairly easily?

TIM FLANNERY: Well, Brisbane really has led the way in times past in this and what they've done is issued people with their water bills, and in a way that gives them a comparison with their neighbours.

And in that sense, you see how much you're using relative to people around you and I think that spurs on action.

The other thing that Brisbane has done is build a fantastic water recycling plant, again, a common-sense thing to do but last time I looked, that hadn't been utilised because people weren't comfortable with drinking recycled water - slightly crazy given if you visit London, that's what you're drinking.