Climate change. | Page 8 | Vital Football

Climate change.

in_the_top_one said:
False alarm. And my apologies for spreading fake news.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/11/koalas-near-extinction-myth-australia-fires/?cmpid=org

It will happen soon but we're not there yet.
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Your fake news is understandable, that would probably have been inferred from Aus newspapers. In fact in NSW they're not doing well partly due to them being slow movers and breeders, nothing's in their favour. And you hear more about them because they're shown as being nice and cuddly and looking great in a photo to send to the folks back home. All of our animals, birds, fish etc are in the same boat and if our weather stays the same for the rest of the year they are all going to look pretty sick. If this carries on for the foreseeable future it's byebye to the lot of them, and maybe us too.
 
Koalas are the marsupial to get all the attention. On the North Coast of NSW there's a Koala shelter/hospital run by volunteers I think and in the current busy situation they've got a bit tight for cash so someone put out a Gosave me type of entry on facebook. So far its raised nearly 2 million dollars and still going strong.
Good job they weren't talking about rats.

The storm which we had on Tuesday which caused so much damage has resulted in 13,000 homes and businesses still without power until Sunday, maybe even later than that. A number of telegraph poles were snapped off at their base, the wind was that strong. The folk who suffered said it was more like a cyclone, something we don't get down here, perhaps a sign of things to come.
 
One more thing about koalas. When you're posing with one for a photo and holding it to your chest or breast just remember that the first thing it will do is pee straight down your front.

:lol:
 
This is serious, just after 7 in the evening here and I've just walked in after watering and looking at a brown sky, smoke that is. In NSW we have 122 bushfires burning at the moment, over half of them out of control with 2700 blokes on the ground doing their best but not getting far plus quite a few aircraft. My wife is having a few days in the outback , touring with a couple of friends, and she's just phoned to say that at one stage they were in the middle of a dust storm and couldn't see a thing, also that there's no grass and the ground is brown. Also that the roads were full of trucks carting bales of hay, mainly from West Australia and some other states.
Temperature today has been up in the 30s, same forecast for the next few days. Shortly we are going on water restrictions, we can only water the garden with a bucket. And the forecast for the next few months is more of the same and no rain. Australia has just recorded the driest Spring on record. I won't bore you with more of the same but it's only yesterday that I read that India and China were using more coal than ever. Great stuff.
Eventually all this will have to be sorted but by then it will be too late, thank God I won't be here to listen to it.
 
Amen.
Time for more international cooperation (and authority), not less.

Also, while China is obviously a massive polluter, they are also world leading in green tech. Their revolution is not complete, but very much under way. Don't slag them off too much. That narrative then gets used by politicians and other idiots as an excuse not to do anything.

Brazil on the other hand...
 
I have some sympathy with China and India and some other countries like them in the sense that they are trying to lift the living standards of their people and they have quite a way to go. Then there's other countries even worse off that would know very little about climate change. And then there's the rest of us who in general are not moving fast enough. It's an impossible situation.
Australia has always been a dry continent and it's no surprise to me that we're possibly feeling the effects at an early stage. And it's not pleasant.
 
700 homes lost so far in NSW and 2 major fires out of control on the outskirts of Sydney. And the heat building up again, the forecast on Tuesday next is 44 degrees for the Northwest Sydney outskirts, that's us.
 
The fact that we need to start cleaning up the environment is now beyond doubt, as if it ever should have been.

I was in a meeting yesterday regarding a project called Humber Zero, the basis of which is to capture and store all the CO2 produced in the Humber region, offshore in the old oil and gas fields.

https://www.humberzero.co.uk/

The Humber region is the biggest producer of CO2 in the UK, with a number of refineries and steel works in the area.

Drax Power Station has developed a carbon capture process which is now being scaled up to see if it can operate at commercial levels.

Previously carbon capture schemes had been very energy intensive, so the commercial and technical practicality of the process wasn't there.
This development essentially uses principles already in place for common clean up systems on coal fired power stations. At present they believe that they can capture at least 40% of all of the stations CO2 emissions. It is hoped that this will increase as the technology develops.

The idea is that this gas will be then pumped out to sea where it will be put back in the ground.
The steel works, refineries etc will all have their own carbon capture plants, and they will too pump into the pipeline.

How far this actually gets is very much open to question, some of the timescales suggested would probably see the steelworks and at least one of the refineries closed first.
With Drax however, they are a biomass fuelled station (in the main) and as such are regarded as carbon neutral generator. (The wood is only sourced from forests that are being replanted).
If this plant is scaled up to commercial sizes then the station will be come carbon negative. As it stands they hope to be in that position in about 18 months, and fully completed by 2025.

It doesn't help much at the moment, but does show that this problem now has some real resources supporting it and momentum is gathering to find workable solutions.

This is a real change in thinking and shows that ignoring environmental changes is now as acceptable as smoking.

Hopefully its not to little to late
 
The fires do promote unease amongst some city folk though as we've had quite a few days now where the sun appears as a blood red ball in the sky and all of a sudden people are appearing in the streets wearing paper masks, they obviously don't know that these things are completely useless. This, together with the forecast showing no decent rain for the next few months is starting to bother a minority, the smoke has increased in intensity and has also resulted in increased attendances at hospitals.
 
Good luck. Only seen snippets on our national news, but it does look really bad. Flooding is terrible, but pales into insignificance (in most cases) compared with what you've got.
 
Just to give you an idea of the two fires within reach of Sydney the main one is actually 3 fires which have grown into each other with a firefront now of 60 kilometres. The other one is smaller but in some ways more dangerous as it's closer to housing. So far the big one has burnt out over 700,000 acres and that's a lot of country.
Tomorrow will be the real test, temperature forecast out here is 42 degrees with strong winds which are forecast to change direction in the afternoon, that's when the real trouble may start.
We live on 5 acres which includes 2 acres of bush, nowhere near the house but near enough for my wife to get the wind up except that she's away for a few days so I won't be getting the usual stack of instructions. We're in no danger though.

The general situation is horrible when I know that this extends to just about the whole of our Eastern seaboard and that's roughly 2,000 kilometres, and there are many more fires throughout the country as a whole.

It's good to know that our PM is sympathetic.
Who was the Roman who played the fiddle while Rome burned ?
 
Old Red Fart said:
Just to give you an idea of the two fires within reach of Sydney the main one is actually 3 fires which have grown into each other with a firefront now of 60 kilometres. The other one is smaller but in some ways more dangerous as it's closer to housing. So far the big one has burnt out over 700,000 acres and that's a lot of country.
Tomorrow will be the real test, temperature forecast out here is 42 degrees with strong winds which are forecast to change direction in the afternoon, that's when the real trouble may start.
We live on 5 acres which includes 2 acres of bush, nowhere near the house but near enough for my wife to get the wind up except that she's away for a few days so I won't be getting the usual stack of instructions. We're in no danger though.

The general situation is horrible when I know that this extends to just about the whole of our Eastern seaboard and that's roughly 2,000 kilometres, and there are many more fires throughout the country as a whole.

It's good to know that our PM is sympathetic.
Who was the Roman who played the fiddle while Rome burned ?
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Keep safe ORF.
 
Feco said:
BBC report on what I mentioned last week....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50712500

There are one or two errors in the report, but at least it made it onto the main news pages in an election period. .

Hope things have improved at bit for you ORF. The pictures from Sydney looked pretty bad yesterday.
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Thanks Feco, yes things are a bit better here as its been cooler now for the last 2 days, gives the fire fighters a slight rest. Even so the fires are still there, just that they're not getting stirred up by the wind and temperature. There's a couple of things that sometimes get overlooked at these times and the first is the effect on our animals, birds and fish. For example the koala is a slow mover and lives in particular varieties of native trees. And it only eats a particular sort of native leaf so that when a fire starts it will only climb higher until eventually it is burnt to death. Even if it survives that it is often left with no food and no water which gives it a slower death. You can imagine how lizards,snakes, and other floor movers go on. The drought has had a rotten effect on our rivers as well resulting in the death of millions of fish.
And some of these fires have been going strong since July resulting in millions of acres being burnt out. You can imagine the long term effect on Fauna and Flora with the forecast for decent rain some months away. We could do with a bit of your recent wet weather.

What makes it worse is that our PM refuses to take Climate Change seriously and is insistent in talking about all sorts of stuff that doesn't matter one iota.
We're bottom of the list for actually doing something about it. But the penny is dropping with the general public, last night there was a big meeting in the centre of Sydney which actually stopped the traffic so there's hope yet.
 
Old Red Fart said:
Thanks Feco, yes things are a bit better here as its been cooler now for the last 2 days, gives the fire fighters a slight rest. Even so the fires are still there, just that they're not getting stirred up by the wind and temperature. There's a couple of things that sometimes get overlooked at these times and the first is the effect on our animals, birds and fish. For example the koala is a slow mover and lives in particular varieties of native trees. And it only eats a particular sort of native leaf so that when a fire starts it will only climb higher until eventually it is burnt to death. Even if it survives that it is often left with no food and no water which gives it a slower death. You can imagine how lizards,snakes, and other floor movers go on. The drought has had a rotten effect on our rivers as well resulting in the death of millions of fish.
And some of these fires have been going strong since July resulting in millions of acres being burnt out. You can imagine the long term effect on Fauna and Flora with the forecast for decent rain some months away. We could do with a bit of your recent wet weather.

What makes it worse is that our PM refuses to take Climate Change seriously and is insistent in talking about all sorts of stuff that doesn't matter one iota.
We're bottom of the list for actually doing something about it. But the penny is dropping with the general public, last night there was a big meeting in the centre of Sydney which actually stopped the traffic so there's hope yet.
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I really don’t like the phrase Climate Change, it is so limiting.
In most cases mention Climate, people automatically think weather, and this problem is much bigger than just weather.

As you point out, habitat loss is a massive issue and is just as important to recognise. If it isn’t, the damage to the natural balance on earth will cause just as many problems.
We already know about the decline in bees and the consequences for us all if that keeps happening.

It’s great to see these continued protests, this must be kept in the public eye, it’s the only way the politicians will listen.

On that point, I notice that young Greta gave a speech in Madrid yesterday, but many of the delegates couldn’t be bothered to hang around and listen.
I just find that incredibly disrespectful. They may not like her, but she isn’t going to go away.
It just shows how this problem still only receives lip service from some of the most powerful countries and corporations.
 
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