Thread: Climate Change and our Land of Fire, Flood and Drought.

Originally Posted by AK83

[Snip]
But that's not due to climate change, more than likely climate change may be a consequence of the clearing process as much as it may be due to any number of influences.

Ta.
Yes, it's complex, but I think we could lay it at the feet of rapid population growth over the last fifty years as the driver.
Normally these changes happen over millennia unless there's outside influence like a meteor strike

Isuzurover posted an interesting diagram on FB recently showing that families having one extra child increased pollution and CO2 levels at a far greater rate than flying OS, burning coal for power, etc at current levels.

BTW under the sea is changing at a much more rapid rate than what is happening above the water line.

This is from the Washington Post but is behind a paywall.
Luckily Fairfax in NZ reprinted it.
On land, Australia's rising heat is 'apocalyptic.' In the ocean, it's even worse. - NZ Herald

Rick that is a most illuminating article. Thanks for dredging that up.

Not just Fruit Bats, Ringtail Possums etc but we have been concerned that this year for the first time in 30 odd years, we have not been visited by the Black Yellow Tail Cockatoos. Dropped out of the skies, killed in Eastern State & SA fires? We don't know, but they used to be as regular as clockwork when they arrived here for the Walnuts, but this year it appears as though we might see some Walnuts, but frankly we'd prefer to see the BYT Parrots.

There are still some Sulphur Crested Cockatoos around but even they are not in the numbers we normally expect.

some population perspective:
In the last 100 years the world population has increased seven fold
Even with the current population growth of 1.08% there is more than 10 times the entire population of Australia entering the world every year.

Time perspective:
To get an idea of how long humans have been around, stretch both your arms out to their fullest extent and imagine that width as the entire 4.5 billion year old planet . The distance from your fingertips of one hand to the wrist of the other is Precambrian. All of complex life is measured on the remaining hand, from that , if you took a nail file , with one stroke on your fingernail you could completely eradicate human history.

The only chance we have in future generations having any quality of life is to curb population growth and the most pain free way of doing this is to obtain zero population growth or better.
Nearly all governments work on a system of exponential growth and currently none will be elected if they were to go down the zpg path . Therein lies the ( very large ) problem.

There are some people who have a strong view on this ( quite rightly IMO ) as the answer to the worlds growing levels of unhappiness and climate woes, unfortunately they receive death threats and are called anything from extreme greenies to nazi's

My 2c

There are still some Sulphur Crested Cockatoos around but even they are not in the numbers we normally expect.

Ha Ha!
Do you want some of mine? But you have to take some flying foxes scrub turkeys and lorikeets as well.

We have plenty of black parrots also , but I don't know whether they are yellow tail or red tail as all they do is sit in the tops of my trees and snip off branch tips.

You can have some long beak corellas also if you want and some galahs. The Corellas make a hell of a mess of the golf course greens. As you know Corellas are desert birds.

They all came to the coast in the 2004 drought and liked it so much they stayed.

My point is that birds move away from drought areas to better pick and maybe return at the end of the drought.
Or maybe not.
Regards PhilipA

Originally Posted by discorevy

some population perspective:
In the last 100 years the world population has increased seven fold
Even with the current population growth of 1.08% there is more than 10 times the entire population of Australia entering the world every year.

Time perspective:
To get an idea of how long humans have been around, stretch both your arms out to their fullest extent and imagine that width as the entire 4.5 billion year old planet . The distance from your fingertips of one hand to the wrist of the other is Precambrian. All of complex life is measured on the remaining hand, from that , if you took a nail file , with one stroke on your fingernail you could completely eradicate human history.

The only chance we have in future generations having any quality of life is to curb population growth and the most pain free way of doing this is to obtain zero population growth or better.
Nearly all governments work on a system of exponential growth and currently none will be elected if they were to go down the zpg path . Therein lies the ( very large ) problem.

There are some people who have a strong view on this ( quite rightly IMO ) as the answer to the worlds growing levels of unhappiness and climate woes, unfortunately they receive death threats and are called anything from extreme greenies to nazi's

My 2c

Bloody hell give me break willya? I'm 83 & doing me best. Just need another 10 years is all, to see me GGkids growing up then old Nick can have me.

I am not one of those of the "I want it now" crap.

Originally Posted by AK83

I'll see your myths and raise you an alternate myth ...
The myth that tree canopy/forest coverage is somehow diminishing

While some areas do lose trees(ie. rainforest) and may recover slowly, you rarely hear of the opposite happening in sparsely wooded areas turning back into forests again.

So the news outlets again are to blame, or the hysteria seeking scammers may be to blame for that.
But it's little known that tree coverage, in global terms, has increased over the climate change period.

forest coverage study

Study was published in Nature, so it's not some righwing, redneck propaganda.
How many of us can honestly say that we thought that forest coverage has increased over the past 35 years, considering all the news we've read on what's happening to forests.

Makes for a more balanced information that just the doom and gloom scenario we're bombarded with that the Amazon is shrinking, tropical forests are being lost .. etc, etc.
I can't ever recall having read or watched any news item anywhere that global tree coverage on the whole has increased.

The only info that I've come across re tree coverage has been about the loss of this forest, and that area(eg. due to fires), or some protected trees having been illegally harvested or whatever.

So again, if climate change is doing anything, with the current info we have on it, it's 'balancing out' what we currently know of the world.
Tropical forest growth rates slowing, but reforestation is happening in other areas, and the net effect is that those forest coverage will be more balanced in the future than what we've previously known of it.

You're missing the point, the problem is not growing and burning trees, that is a "renewable" cycle, it is burning millions of years of "fossilised" trees in the form of coal, crude oil, gas. That study only goes back a few decades to 1982 (IIRC) more interesting would be to compare it to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution or back even further when Britain was known as the "Wild Wood". British wildwood - Wikipedia

Checked my dam yesterday (after being away over Christmas) - instead of a couple of feet of muddy water, as I expected, there is nothing but dry, cracked earth. Those who were at the AULRO 10th anniversary gathering here may remember swimming in it.

I have no idea where the wildlife around here is getting anything to drink - I expect the neighbours are the same - before Christmas one of the neighbours told me only one of his seven dams was not entirely dry. The other neighbour I believe still has some water, although all his dams are dry, he has a bore - but most of his water has come from the Talbragar River, which I am pretty sure is now completely dry through his property.

Originally Posted by 4bee

Rick that is a most illuminating article. Thanks for dredging that up.

Not just Fruit Bats, Ringtail Possums etc but we have been concerned that this year for the first time in 30 odd years, we have not been visited by the Black Yellow Tail Cockatoos. Dropped out of the skies, killed in Eastern State & SA fires? We don't know, but they used to be as regular as clockwork when they arrived here for the Walnuts, but this year it appears as though we might see some Walnuts, but frankly we'd prefer to see the BYT Parrots.

There are still some Sulphur Crested Cockatoos around but even they are not in the numbers we normally expect.

How many would YTB cockies would you like?

I've been living the Bellarine for 40 years, first saw a carefree pair flying over maybe 20 years max ago.

Since then numbers have increased around the coast and inland here. I've got 10 acres, half bush, in the middle of the Bellarine and see them most days because there's a pine plantation not far away. Less common in summer.

When they're all in one group there would be 300 (NO exaggeration) flying through my place.

I'll try to get a vid.

They don't nest around here though, but are common in the Grampians again where there are plenty of the tall hollow trees they need for this.

cheers, DL