Tuesday 30 June 2009

Yeah, I know. But...

.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I have been mislead by the scientists who should know better. I should not have tried to apply logic to God's great plan. I should fall to the feet of Tom and Bartek and Avus and all those wise people who say we innocents are being hoodwinked by the climate change chorus.

But you can't avoid one fact...

This has been the driest start to the year here since records started to be kept.

I keep plugging away, pointing out the succession of new records being achieved here in Melbourne, as I can't help feeling, despite the wise and venerable panel of worthy gentlemen telling me otherwise, that if we keep hitting the dusty end of the superlative spectrum over and over again then, perhaps, something is really happening.

...

18 comments:

  1. I keep thinking of something that Jared Diamond said in a lecture I heard on the radio a couple of years ago, although I can't give you the verbatim quote. "I wonder," he said, "What was going through the mind of the man who was cutting down the last tree on Easter Island."

    I believe we're living the equivalent now. I don't know what's going through the minds of those who have the power to improve the world for my son as they dither, deny, argue and chop down our last trees.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Its been the wettest spring/summer here for us. We actually had 19 of 21 days with rain in May/June! Not sure which is worse! I totally agree that something is happening with our climate, although I tend to think its cyclical in nature. I just wonder how severe it will get and whether we, as a world, will be able to keep up.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I don't think I have ever refuted the fact of climate change. It is certainly happening as it always has over the age of the Earth. It just seems to me that puny man is too proud of himself in thinking that it is his "fault".
    8,000 years ago this country (UK) was covered in 3km of ice - from this ice age we are still emerging. Some millions of years ago this country was on the Equator but continental drift now puts us nearer the North Pole.
    Man has been on Earth but an eye-blink and will one day disappear again. I think we have too high an opinion of ourselves and our ability to influence the Earth. However, global warming, climate change - whatever it is called seems to have become the new religion where man's influence is concerned. As with all religions there are believers and unbelievers and each thinks they are right. I just think the Earth will do what it always has done.
    I believe it is happening, I believe we could one day have another "snowball Earth". I believe that man cannot do anything whatever about it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Theories? Are we asking for theories?
    Got none.
    Phenomenal changes in temperature occur at times here on the third rock.
    Changes that fluctuate from the extreme of cold to the extreme of hot...wet/dry.

    Now, our way wet period is about done. Although a bit more than their average, it isn't a record setter, yet.
    The dry spell you just finished with for Summer...records?

    And the Antarctic is greatly shrinking at alarming rates as is the Arctic.

    So....the poles are about to change again. North will become South and vice versa.
    That'll probably make for some fairly hard earthquakes in areas that have been spending five thousand years to establish their magnetic environment. Goes without saying that a lot of new places will also have interspersed earthquakes or movement involved if they sit on broken strata.
    Indiana won't escape it. We're on a major fault line leading clear up to the Great Lakes. That would be broken strata...

    More than likely it would start up a new major continental shift.
    The way it was going now, India had been climbing under China shelf. With a pole change, India may very well pull out from under creating thousands of small islands between the parting continents. India will be like another Australia, free from the previous landlock.

    My goodness. What fun!

    ReplyDelete
  5. If I have understood Boneman correctly (and is this possible ?), the earth is going to move for all of us. Something to look forward to at last.

    ReplyDelete
  6. The climate is in constant change. What I reject is the idea of anthropogenic global warming. It is silly and consists mostly of politically motivated rhetoric with very little real or credible science.

    And even if true, the consequences claimed by supporters of the idea are simply wrong. The Earth has been much warmer than today (the Medieval Warm Period for example) and humans actually flourished under the increased temperatures.

    With the little ice age ending a mere 150 years ago, of course the temperature has been increasing during the last century.

    Let's not forget, when discussing global climate change, patterns are measured in centuries, not a few years. A decade of drought in one part of the world is not necessarily a sign the climate is warming.

    ReplyDelete
  7. We have had some rain here, intermittent or short heavy downpours that catch you and drench you when you dont have an umbrella... but not what one would expect for Winter, today was beautiful, sunny and around 24ºC, more like Spring.
    I'm convinced the weather is changing. ♡
    Lee dear you havent been over to collect your award.

    ReplyDelete
  8. You bet!!
    it's rained most of June here. time to built the arc.

    ReplyDelete
  9. 3 words...Professor Ian Plimer.

    Who knows Lee, maybe you'll cross over to the "darkside" and join us!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Michael Ashley, Professor of astrophysics at the University of New South Wales: "Plimer has done an enormous disservice to science, and the dedicated scientists who are trying to understand climate and the influence of humans, by publishing this book. It is not "merely" atmospheric scientists that would have to be wrong for Plimer to be right. It would require a rewriting of biology, geology, physics, oceanography, astronomy and statistics. Plimer's book deserves to languish on the shelves along with similar pseudo-science such as the writings of Immanuel Velikovsky and Erich von Daniken."

    If you can appeal to authority, so can I.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Plimer is not saying that climate change doesn't exist ( after all he is a climate historian,geologist etc) he is saying that climate change is not human induced. That climate changes we are witnessing, are not unprecedented in history.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Maybe not unprecedented as such but the speed of it is.

    Pure logic says that the carbon balance of the is shifting to the atmosphere and it is most definitely a man-induced process; how does the good professor plan to return it to biomass or land storage?

    ReplyDelete
  13. Yep. Monoculture agriculture, fossil fuels, etc. etc.... there are things that have changed, almost as rapidly as the climate, which would be a trailing indicator...

    Instead of waiting for someone "in charge", we all need to be planting trees, restoring fertility to the soil so it can again be a carbon sink, conserving.

    but it's so much easier to complain about "management."

    sigh. sorry for the rant.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Phooey. My comment was lost. Mind you, it wasn't much of a comment. But I did enjoy reading a bit here and there to see what you've been up to; apparently the climate's undergoing some sort of change? I should get down off my little hill more often and see what's happening in the wider world. It's difficult to do, sometimes, as it seems I've either died and gone to Heaven (or some sort of Elysian meadow) or gone to the other place, but that's only on a bad day.

    ReplyDelete
  15. I don't recall denying climate may be in fact changing, at least in the short run. WHY it's changing, on the other hand, is something I would consider open to debate. Just as I'd happily discuss possible ways of managing it.

    FYI: We've had one of the coldest and longest winters here this year. Snow melted in June...but I won't say it's global cooling just yet ;)

    Hope you and Margaret are keeping well.

    We're off to Poland in August to tie the knot so preparations are in their final stages.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Late for the party here, but for what it's worth...

    I'm inclined to think, if as is most likely, all scientific research has to be paid for by and will be in the interests of someone, then the lobbies and interests behind the denial of (human induced) climate change are likely to be more suspect and probably venal than the other side, for which reason I'm more inclined to believe the latter alone.

    Additionally, even if climate change didn't enter into it at all, there are many very good reasons why the galloping, greed-fuelled using up of fossil fuels and other resources, and the destruction of trees and other natural habitats is wrong-headed and unsustainable. It's in our interests to believe the worst.

    Personal anecdotal evidence is not much to the point; here we are in the middle of the third cool wet summer in a row, but I wouldn't assert that that meant the earth overall wasn't heating up, or that there are other people much closer to the sharp end of that.

    ReplyDelete
  17. That got us all going, Lee!

    ReplyDelete

Moderation cuts in six days after posting.