The top comment right now is hijacking this story to talk about climate change.

>Last summer was the hottest on record, and in Menindee, where temperatures regularly top 38 Celsius (100 Fahrenheit), another scorching season is expected.

Climate change is very implicit in the context of the article, even if not explicitly stated.

The first two points (hottest summer on record, average temperatures) are facts about recent weather patterns. The third is simply a prediction (I don't know what the source was for that).

Was the article incorrect in any specific way? If that is the case, I would love to know where it was wrong, specifically.

There are literally no weather conditions that won't be cited as evidence of dangerous climate change sooner or later. Wetter, dryer, hotter, colder, etc. It isn't so much being triggered as just saving time and hurrying the conversation on to its likely destination.

If the point isn't to talk about climate change there isn't much to this article. Australia frequently experiences droughts. They are taken with a high quality camera but all the photos are basically classic Australian bush scenes.

> If the point isn't to talk about climate change there isn't much to this article.

Sure there is. The article talks about non-climate-change human impacts, like the use of upstream water for irrigation. There's discussion to be had around that.

There are a lot of interesting things to discuss in the Murray-Darling basin, the water market and associated system of dams and waterways is one of Australia's subtle-but-serious national achievements.

However the article is a puff piece and is at best alluding vaguely to those more interesting issues. It is only inspiring discussion of them as people are trying to find lenses to interpret it that aren't climate related. It'd be lovely if HN suddenly decided to take a deep interest in irrigation systems but I'll wait for a few more articles on the subject to hit the front page before I start believing it. The comment threads look more like we are playing a game of finding links that aren't climate related.

There's an equally useful conversation around unsustainable use of resources - for instance overuse of water which would seem to be particularly precious in a region known for frequent droughts. Climate warming may worsen those, or they may happen more frequently, yet there's a whole world of potential human stupidity and short-sightedness to consider before that rates a single mention.