Parched: Australia faces collapse as climate change kicks in
Geoffrey Lean and Kathy Marks report on the worst heatwave in the country's history
Digg
del.icio.us
Facebook
Reddit
Google
Stumble Upon
Fark
Newsvine
YahooBuzz
Bebo
Twitter
Independent Minds
Reuters
A man sunbathes on the beach at Melbourne yesterday as temperatures broke records, staying above 43C for the third day in succession. More than 20 people have died from the heat
enlarge
Leaves are falling off trees in the height of summer, railway tracks are buckling, and people are retiring to their beds with deep-frozen hot-water bottles, as much of Australia swelters in its worst-ever heatwave.
On Friday, Melbourne thermometers topped 43C (109.4F) on a third successive day for the first time on record, while even normally mild Tasmania suffered its second-hottest day in a row, as temperatures reached 42.2C. Two days before, Adelaide hit a staggering 45.6C. After a weekend respite, more records are expected to be broken this week.
Ministers are blaming the heat – which follows a record drought – on global warming. Experts worry that Australia, which emits more carbon dioxide per head than any nation on earth, may also be the first to implode under the impact of climate change.
At times last week it seemed as if that was happening already. Chaos ruled in Melbourne on Friday after an electricity substation exploded, shutting down the city's entire train service, trapping people in lifts, and blocking roads as traffic lights failed. Half a million homes and businesses were blacked out, and patients were turned away from hospitals.
More than 20 people have died from the heat, mainly in Adelaide. Trees in Melbourne's parks are dropping leaves to survive, and residents at one of the city's nursing homes have started putting their clothes in the freezer.
"All of this is consistent with climate change, and with what scientists told us would happen," said climate change minister Penny Wong.
Australia, the driest inhabited continent on earth, is regarded as highly vulnerable. A study by the country's blue-chip Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation identified its ecosystems as "potentially the most fragile" on earth in the face of the threat.
Many factors put Australia especially at risk. Its climate is already hot, dry and variable. Its vulnerable agriculture plays an unusually important part in the economy. And most people and industry are concentrated on the coast, making it vulnerable to the rising seas and ferocious storms that come with a warmer world.
Most of the south of the country is gripped by unprecedented 12-year drought. The Australian Alps have had their driest three years ever, and the water from the vast Murray-Darling river system now fails to reach the sea 40 per cent of the time. Harvests have fallen sharply.
It will get worse as global warming increases. Even modest temperature rises, now seen as unavoidable, are expected to increase drought by 70 per cent in New South Wales, cut Melbourne's water supplies by more than a third, and dry up the Murray-Darling system by another 25 per cent.
As Professor David Karoly, of the University of Melbourne, said last week: "The heat is unusual, but it will become much more like the normal experience in 10 to 20 years."
View all comments that have been posted about this article.
Offensive or abusive comments will be removed and your IP logged and may be used to prevent further submission. In submitting a comment to the site, you agree to be bound by the Independent Minds Terms of Service.
- Print Article
- Email Article
-
Click here for copyright permissions
Copyright 2009 Independent News and Media Limited
Comments
How about some fact checking there in the UK?
Yep, that's right. Just when we ought to be shrinking the population, we're actually paying-out to increase it. Nice one.
So come on - post the facts instead if abusing "Denialists" like me who think that AGW is unproven.
As for Minister Penny Wong - she should start checking facts for herself rather than listening to hysteria from "Warmists". A growing number of Scientists are, finally, getting up the courage to question AGW (more than 31,000 signed a recent petition).
We are talking potentially about the end of an inhabitable biosphere. If in years to come the global warming phenomenon and man's role in altering the climate are debunked, I will humbly accept lashings of smugness from the 'deniers'. In the meantime I would prefer that the world's power brokers take some meaningful steps towards the dodging of a colossal bullet, in the same way that I pay premiums against the possibility of my dropping dead before I finish this sent
oh yes, there's probably a whole lot of those carbon-emitting SUVs on the planet before 1870!!
more here
A crippling winter storm has plunged about a million customers into the dark from the Midwest to the East Coast, and thousands of people in ice-caked Kentucky have sought refuge in motels and shelters.
This report, incidentally, is currently less than one hour old:
Dozens of deaths have been reported and many people are pleading for a faster response to the power outages. Some in rural Kentucky ran short of food and bottled water, and resorted to dipping buckets in a creek ?
Local officials grew angrier at what they said was a lack of help from the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Oh, hello. It?s a Katrina moment for President Obama.
Emergency Management Director Randell Smith ? said roads are littered with fallen trees and people shivering in bone-chilling cold are in need.
?We?ve got people out in some areas we haven?t even visited yet,? Smith said. ?We don?t even know that they?re alive.?
Smith said FEMA was still a no-show days after the storm.
Guess I?ll stay in Melbourne after all. Wait till they figure out Kentucky's weather.
It all comes down to money and at the moment it is profitable for scientists to Big up Global warming / Climate change as that allows governments to GREEN TAX (money) out of us all. Oh if money could simply solve all the global problems without having to change our ways.
I can remember when the ozone layer was "The end is nigh" but oh look its fixed its self, but we haven't reduced our emissions?
When climate research became politicised everything can get blamed on others i.e its a global problem needing a global solution - we'll tax people and companies if they don't meet their carbon footprint this year and spend it on keeping the banks afloat that will solve the global climate- Surely? Cos then the banks can loan us the money back to spend on more global warming research.
Gavin in Thailand - oh yes breaking news the temperature here is the same as it has been year on year - will I get crop subsidy?
CFC emissions were slashed to virtually nothing following the Montreal Protocol: http://chemlinks.beloit.edu/Ozone/pdf/C
As usual, the deniers just make it up as they go along.
People who try to deny this are the same people who point out that there have been extreme weather events before we had SUVs and plasma screen televisions. Manmade climate change started with the industrial revolution so of course there were hot summers a hundred years ago...
AGW did not start with the Industrial Revolution. We have been coming out of the little ice age since about 1850 & Global Temperatures are STILL lower than in the Medieaval Warm Period (circa 1400).
Global Temperatures have been flat or slightly declining since 1998, Sunspot activity has also been declining in this Period & is now at or near a minimum (look up "The Maunder Minimum" for an explanation).
If you want me to believe in your AGW then PROVE IT!
Australia is getting the change of his money for its trillions of ring-barking trees fell, the mad agricultural practices growing water thirsty crops such a maize, cotton, cane sugar, tobacco & rice at the cost of forceful depletion of aquifers and their parallel pollution by the chemical fertilizers used.
Australia as such has no problem, the problem of Australia are that greedy, vulture minded, hard nailed & hard necked populace preying upon the land as the carrion crows upon a corpse.
As well the problem is in a clueless Political class getting its advices from equally clueless Universities Cretins wrapped in the false dogmas of a fraudulent Geology ... the one practice now ! Indeed contrarily to what is accepted, the Earth is NOT stable on Ecliptics and as a result of Global Warming is accelerating its drift on Ecliptics then with irreversible consequences of which the main ones are : Depletion of Aquifers, Invasion of the sea seeping in through continent up to 200 miles inland, conducting to irremediable loss of fresh water resources, falling crops and eventually famines.
Moaning and bleating as the Australians are doing now is not going to resolve their ignorance & the applications they make of it.
Yours faithfully
Sir Jean-Paul Turcaud
Australia Mining Pioneer
Discoverer of Telfer Mine ( Australia largest Copper & Gold MIne)
Nifty (Cu) & Kintyre (U, Th) Mines, all in the Great Sandy Desert
+ re-discoverer of the Rooney show aka Lasseter's reef (IMO)
Exploration Geologist & Offshore Consultant
Founder of the True Geology
~ Ignorance is the Cosmic Sin, the One never Forgiven ~
for background info.
http://www.tnet.com.au/~warrigal/gr
http://users.indigo.net.au/don/tel/inde
http://users.indigo.net.au/don/tel/n
http://members.iimetro.com.au/~hubbca/t
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/st
True Geology Foundation document :
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articl
wiped out by a tsunami over Christmas? That would really have moved the sea inland.
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/s
Luckily, the deniers like Bush and Howard who twiddled their thumbs as the world went to hell are the same ones who encouraged the bankers to crater the economy, creating an epic economic depression that will bring down greenhouse gas emissions faster than any voluntary measures could have done.
Cutting down on carbon emissions, using natural resources in a responsible way are two things that are important to do regardless of the cause of climate change. This means that the last thing we can afford now is another wasteful bubble who squanders resources for profit.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/dwo/20081
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/dwo/20081
In fact I found Indonesia more advanced in that respect and better-equipped to deal with the heat.
Moreover though, they still follow the British system of a 9-5 working day and don't seem to have a break in the middle of the day (siesta) as in many other hot countries when everything closes down, and then restarts when the temperature cools.
Instead of covering up many people wander around in shorts and T-shirts exposing themselves more to the heat of the sun.
It has to be asked why many third world countries can deal with this heat and Australia can't. I suspect it is related to Australia still thinking that it wants to follow a British way of life instead of adapting to the heat.
If anything its due to the running out of resources and getting us to reduce our outputs and feel guilty!
look deeper down the rabbit hole it gets worse
Peace and liberty
However, records show that London has got warmer since then. But that's partly due to the increase in population and therefore heating more buildings.
And what was the most common fuel?
King Coal which emits what?
CO2 which could mean that the Climate Change lobby is right.
Not so sure I want to find out. Perhaps it's better to be cautious and use less of everthing.
I'd prefer this to what will happen to Europe and GB if the Nth Atlantic Warm Current moves south due to Arctic Melting, Ice Sheets down to Spain!!!
Maybe you could send your Ice over here for our G&Ts!!
Come on Global Warming!
Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere retard the emission of heat from the Earth - they cannot physically do anything else. If this were not so, basic concepts of physics and chemistry that explain all other phenomena, must be wrong. I have never encountered a scientifically educated global warming denialist. Enough said.
If CO2 is significant in raising Global Temperatures, please explain why the Geologic Record seems to show CO2 levels as a lagging indicator of temperature?
Why, if CO2 is significant, do Global Temperatures seem to follow Sunspot Activity?
Why are they now STILL lower than they probably were 600 years ago?
Is that enough said or would you like me to give you several more "Inconvenient Truths" about AGW???