The climate change debate continues.

[facthunter]

We will cause our own elimination by sheer pressure on the planet and self interest. Nev

[old man emu]

 

[spacesailor]

Ooooh

I don,t even swear, were will l endup.

DEAD

OR

108 years old  . LoL twice.😅

PS. l know it,s serious .

.

spacesailor

[old man emu]

58 minutes ago, spacesailor said:

were will l end up.

DEAD

And that is the problem faced by we 20th century people. "I'll be dead. Not my problem", is not the response we should be making to the mess we made, or are we still children who still expect Mum to clan up our bedroom?

[willedoo]

The climate in my area has definitely changed for the worse. I've lived here for 50 years and in days gone by, have known older locals whose weather knowledge of the area predated mine by decades. With that in mind, I can't pass it off as some cyclical change. For almost 10 years now, the change has been significant.

 

We used to have one of the nicest climates in the country with four seasons. Spring and autumn were pleasant, winters were mild. Summers were hot, but nothing like now. In the past, if you added together all the notably bad summer days, it would total maybe around two weeks worth. Now we're lucky if we get two weeks worth of nice weather in summer.

 

Summer now is five months; you turn on the fans or air conditioning in October/November and turn it off at the end of March or early April. It's then bearable for six months. Blink and you miss winter. The hot days now also have a lot more burn to them and the humid days are much more oppressive than they used to be. High temperature heat wave days that were once so unusual that they would be remembered by everyone and talked about for years are now the norm. Nobody remembers any specific extreme heat event anymore as it is so frequent.

 

Rainfall has also changed. A very dry drought period from the middle of the year is broken by the sudden onset of extreme heat and destructive storms. We rarely get the old set in wet season rain that this region was known for. Now it's straight from drought to bang, crash, damaging storms. The majority of our rain now is thunderstorm rain.

 

I miss the old climate. The change of climate is one of the two major factors behind my decision to sell up and move. The other is the obvious one in a growth area, overpopulation.

[nomadpete]

Where can you move to, Willie?

There really aren't many options that I can think of. After watching that clip, I think I have to pal up with Elon Musk - I need to hitch a ride to the nearest goldilocks planet.

[willedoo]

1 minute ago, nomadpete said:

Where can you move to, Willie?

Classified information at this stage. I was thinking one possible option, maybe I could move into Marty's shed. Keep an eye on him and make sure he finishes that aeroplane.

[nomadpete]

I warn you, hiding in Marty's might be hard work. Cut'n and split'n his winter firewood alone will break you.

[willedoo]

8 minutes ago, nomadpete said:

I warn you, hiding in Marty's might be hard work. Cut'n and split'n his winter firewood alone will break you.

That's ok Pete, I have chainsaws. I just hope he's got enough floor space for all the Antonov bits & pieces. And the Cessna motors & King Air stuff. Also the ejection seats. Actually, he'll probably have to move his plane into the corner to make room. Apart from that, I have my own tools and a fur hat for winter. He'll hardly even know I'm there.

[Marty_d]

4 hours ago, nomadpete said:

I warn you, hiding in Marty's might be hard work. Cut'n and split'n his winter firewood alone will break you.

Ah, I've found the trick of that.  This winter I only went and felled smaller dead trees (150mm or so at the base).  Voila, no splitting required!

 

Willie, I'd never knock back a knowledgeable and interesting house guest such as yourself, however you will have to share with the bloody big rat I saw down there the other day.  Gets a bit cold in winter too.

[facthunter]

It's probably a Tasmanian devil he's painted with rattle can cold Gal. . Nev

[Marty_d]

At least we don't get those dreaded Drop Bears that are endemic to the big island.

[willedoo]

5 hours ago, Marty_d said:

Ah, I've found the trick of that.  This winter I only went and felled smaller dead trees (150mm or so at the base).  Voila, no splitting required!

 

Willie, I'd never knock back a knowledgeable and interesting house guest such as yourself, however you will have to share with the bloody big rat I saw down there the other day.  Gets a bit cold in winter too.

Cold's no problem; have lots of arctic capable flight gear to wear.

 

I saw an interesting video on youtube once. The bloke was American or Canadian and lived in the woods. The video was about why he didn't split much wood anymore or gather kindling. He did the same - cut timber that didn't need splitting. Then he would put in some paper and fire starter blocks from the supermarket, and smaller logs followed by bigger ones when the fire got going a bit. He worked out the amount of time and toil per year splitting wood and gathering kindling and weighed it up against the very small cost of a few packets of fire starters. It was a no brainer. And as he said, it was just a matter of waiting a little bit longer for the fire to take off as opposed to getting it going fast with a lot of kindling and small split pieces.

[Old Koreelah]

5 hours ago, willedoo said:

He worked out the amount of time and toil per year splitting wood and gathering kindling and weighed it up against the very small cost of a few packets of fire starters. It was a no brainer….

Missed the point totally; gathering the kindling and splitting the wood gives every muscle and joint in your body a thorough workout and warms you up for free.
I do it every day in winter.

[Jerry_Atrick]

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/indl-goods/svs/metals-mining/us-bank-bny-mellon-cuts-ties-with-adanis-carmichael-coal-mine-in-australia/articleshow/87586269.cms

 

Looks like ScoMo and/or Palaszuk (sp?) are the only ones left in the word that are prepared to put their name behind the mine (except, Adani, of course).

 

[onetrack]

8 hours ago, willedoo said:

I saw an interesting video on youtube once. The bloke was American or Canadian and lived in the woods. The video was about why he didn't split much wood anymore or gather kindling. He did the same - cut timber that didn't need splitting. Then he would put in some paper and fire starter blocks from the supermarket, and smaller logs followed by bigger ones when the fire got going a bit. He worked out the amount of time and toil per year splitting wood and gathering kindling and weighed it up against the very small cost of a few packets of fire starters. It was a no brainer. And as he said, it was just a matter of waiting a little bit longer for the fire to take off as opposed to getting it going fast with a lot of kindling and small split pieces.

But where's the fun in that? Building a bloody great block splitter of your own unique design, is a major part of establishing your manhood credentials, in those bitterly cold climates.

You get even more street cred, when your home made block splitter design doesn't have a single safety feature of any kind, and is enough to make any OH&S Nazi scream in outright fear.

Naturally, you can be readily identified as a home made block splitter constructor, by the number of missing digits or hands.

 

For me, I've spent far too much time splitting big ugly, tough mallee roots with an axe for fires, to ever want to burn any wood ever again. My fireplace is blocked off, and I have 3 RC A/C's for when it gets a bit chilly. I also made sure I moved to live near the coast, where the climate is much more amenable.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 8, 2021 by onetrack

[Marty_d]

4 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/indl-goods/svs/metals-mining/us-bank-bny-mellon-cuts-ties-with-adanis-carmichael-coal-mine-in-australia/articleshow/87586269.cms

 

Looks like ScoMo and/or Palaszuk (sp?) are the only ones left in the word that are prepared to put their name behind the mine (except, Adani, of course).

 

Even Adani don't want their name on it, they've changed it to Bravus.

[Old Koreelah]

Digging up coal is on the nose, but I have empathy for those still dependant on it for their livelihood. Lots of industries come and go; people adapt.

 

What jobs were available in those towns before the coal-mining boom? 
People adjust to economic change. I did, my parents and siblings did.
It was traumatic, but we survived and prospered.
It’s hard to admit, but we’re also better off. So might coal miners.

Australia has a bright future as a renewables superpower, but the LNP dinosaurs have held us back; we might miss the boat unless we drag them kicking and screaming into that new era. 
 

 

 

[Yenn]

A job that should be available would be re furbishing the horrible mess made by those coal mines. They look so bad that big earth berms have been built and trees planted on them to hide the mine sites from passing motorists.

[old man emu]

At the start of the Industrial Revolution, when coal mining was a new growth industry, who then could have imagined the massive machines and infrastructure that now serve  that industry, and the relatively few people actually employed per thousand tonnes mined.

 

Close down coal mining and people will find some other way to earn a crust. The perfect example of adaptability has been seen during COVID. People locked out of their normal occupations have devised new ways to use their brawn and brains. 

 

In the immediate aftermath, all those big machines could be used to carry the spoil back to fill the holes mining created. Obviously the holes won't be filled to their original surface levels, but think of the immense amount of water storage the unfilled holes would provide. Once filled we could introduce aquaculture using our native freshwater fish species and yabbies and marron. Not to mention the recreational and irrigation possibilities. 

[facthunter]

Water in old open cut would have heavy metals and probably methane fugitive emissions from the exposed coal seams.. Left it will have clouds of toxic dust that is presently "Controlled"?? by spraying water which concentrates the heavy metals even more. Where are ALL the restored mine sites?  They ALL claim to be short of money or dispose of them to some "entity " that has no capital.  Same with oil and gas platforms . Left for the taxpayer to fund the disposal. Nev

[Old Koreelah]

[old man emu]

6 hours ago, facthunter said:

Water in old open cut would have heavy metals

Depends on the type of rocks in the overburden.

The Sydney Basin contains rocks of Late Carboniferous to Middle Triassic age. These rocks are a mixed assemblage of marine and non-marine sedimentary rocks, predominantly siliclastics and coals. The maximum thickness of the basin’s entire sedimentary sequence varies between 4.5 and 6 km. Heavy metals usually come from rocks of igneous origin, or from sedimentary rocks that are "cooked" by igneous intrusion. That results of igneous activity in the New South Wales coalfields have long, long ago been eroded away and removed from the environment.

[Yenn]

Yes OME we have seen the ingenious activity in NSW coalfields. Hiding the mess from sight and of course when the coal runs out the company will go broke and the taxpayer will have to worry about rehabilitation.

The only good thing about mining is that the draglines are usually run on electricity, not diesel. But that electricity is not green produce.

[Old Koreelah]

Australia’s Intelligence community warned their political masters of this threat forty years ago, yet the government still does nothing!

 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/28/australias-spy-agency-predicted-the-climate-crisis-40-years-ago-and-fretted-about-coal-exports