Climate Change Disaster Strikes Austrailia

[Vyan]

Source: Thinkprogress

“Australia has warned that it will have to switch off the water supply to the continent’s food bowl unless heavy rains break an epic drought - heralding what could be the first climate change-driven disaster to strike a developed nation.”

The Prime Minister, John Howard, a hardened climate-change sceptic, delivered dire tidings to the nation’s farmers yesterday. Unless there is significant rainfall in the next six to eight weeks, irrigation will be banned in the principal agricultural area. Crops such as rice, cotton and wine grapes will fail, citrus, olive and almond trees will die, along with livestock.

A ban on irrigation, which would remain in place until May next year, spells possible ruin for thousands of farmers, already debt-laden and in despair after six straight years of drought.

Australia is the only major industrialized country other than the U.S. to reject the Kyoto Protocol.

Read more: http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/22/climate-change-disaster-strikes-australia/

[MADem]

1. They should get on the horn and call the Chinese....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3893671.stm

....Drought-stricken central Henan province has been using a method called cloud seeding, in which chemicals are shot at clouds, the China Daily reported.

The method did bring rain to Henan - but not equally to all areas.

Meteorological officials in one city accused neighbouring colleagues of over-using the method, the paper said.
The five cities of Pingdingshan, Zhumadian, Luohe, Xuchang and Zhoukou have all been suffering from drought, but were finally blessed with rain as a result of cloud seeding on Saturday, the China Daily reported.

However, while Pingdingshan received more than 100mm of rainfall, less than 30mm fell on Zhoukou.

One Zhoukou official accused Pingdingshan of intercepting clouds that would probably have drifted to other places. ....

[SpiralHawk]

5. The Aussies should also put in a call to Commander AWOL

and his cohort of corrupt republicon cronies.

Who are in totalm money-making denial of the FACTS.

Why do republicons HATE our planet earth?

[pretzel4gore]

7. Zhoukou should send up jets, to guard the clouds!

i don't like the sound of Pingdingshan! who would trust people from there?

[rodeodance]

2. Howard had a duty to educate his peopl about climate change, not denial and

he failed, just like Bushco has!!

the drought, no doubt would have still came-----yet preparing the people is of primary importance.

Shameful.

[mcscajun]

3. This is horrifying. And from a global perspective, it's just beginning.

If indeed there is no relief of rain, the effects of curtailing irrigation in Australia's crop heartland will be felt for years, perhaps decades. The basin that is drying up is where 40 per cent of the country's agricultural produce is grown. Livestock losses will be huge, along with crop deaths: rice, citrus, olive and almond trees, cotton, and vineyards will all be devastated. The death of fruit trees and olive trees cannot be rectified in a moment, as they do not yield their fruits until they have matured (if indeed conditions are altered to allow them to be replanted.) Food prices in Australia will soar as more imports are required to feed the nation. The long term outlook is daunting from any perspective: The UN report predicts "20 per cent more droughts by 2030. And it said the annual flow in the Murray-Darling basin was likely to fall by 10-25 per cent by 2050. The basin, the size of France and Spain combined, provides 85 per cent of the water used nationally for irrigation."

On a purely US domestic note: Kiss Australian Lamb and Shiraz (and all their other varietals) goodbye. Most of the Aussie wine grapes are grown in the Murray-Darling Basin.

[ixion]

6. Southern Florida is also in a drought

but global warming isn't happening. :eyes: :sarcasm:

[TheMadMonk]

9. Well some East Coast products will remain,

But on the whole you are right.

In my more "weed" fueled momnents, I consider how we could do something with a bit of geoengineering.

A variant of the Red to Dead sea canal idea, would be to do the same from the Great Bight to Lake Eyre. In this case the simplest solution, An open unrestricted channel with the intention of flooding the entire basin.

• Electricity can now be generated efficiently from just centimeters of "head"
  
• There will be considerable evaporation from the shallow basin hopefully bringing more rain to the East Coast and MD region as well as some currently arid regions.
  
• High salinity aquaculture? (Don't know much about this.)
  
• Would help ameliorate rising sea levels to a small extent.

On the con side there will be considerable disruption to many ecosystems. However, such disruption is now a given no matter what our actions, so we might as well try to pick which species get to live and which to die. One advantage that we have is the ability to transplant species to like climate zones. Dump 10-50 individuals and see what happens.

Another given is that quick fixes and localised interventions are not going to work in the long term. The goal has to be a global environment friendly to up to 10 billion human beings and as many other species as is possible. Aim has to be long term stability over large areas. Plant forests with a mind towards both harvesting and constructing viable ecosystems. Do it botanic garden style to the extent of cramming as many species as possible into any given area. Plant rare and valuable species such as ebony.

The ecosystems of much of the world have been so severely disrupted by human intervention that the concept of natural is essentially meaningless over much of the continent. Perhaps the reason Africa is the last true refuge of the mega-fauna is that they and humans evolved side by side there whereas elsewhere humans were an invasive species who "humanoformed" the "conquered" territory.

Today we can "humanoform" with purpose and direction. AND do it with a mind towards maximising robustness in species diversity.

We can't put it back. That's an impossibility. But the possibility exists that we can fix what's broken.

[NashVegas]

4. Best Stock Up On Your Favorite Aussie Wine

Before the prices go through the roof.

[Honeycombe8]

8. It's not like they weren't warned. Hate to see innocent people suffer...

if only it could be contained to the skeptics like Howard.

That's what's so bad about the ignorance of the skeptics and those against environmental controls. The harm done affects us all....if only we could keep the oil spills and the environmental damage and the climate change in THEIR back yards alone. But dirty air goes all over the globe, and global warming affects all areas.

[Amonester]

10. That crazy bushbot (to remain polite) Howard was elected, didn't he?

Surprise! It seems a majority of Australian voters got what they asked for?

[anakie]

13. and using your arguement comrade

you are reaping the benefits of twice electing Bush.

Peace

[depakid]

14. Thinking it'll be different this year with Kevin Rudd

After all, Latham and Beazley weren't exactly the strongest leaders Labor could have fielded.

[anakie]

15. we are actually cautiously optimistic about Rudd's chances

Howard has been in now for 12 years and the electorate is feeling it is time for a change. Howard is appearing old, stale and reactionary and in many ways Rudd is setting the agenda. Of course with Howard being the consumate politician of the current generation he can always pull something out of the hat - usually the fear card - and come out with a win.

IMHO Rudd is adopting what I call the Blair factor. He is moving to the right and taking out many of Howards policies by agreeeing with many of them - forcing Howard and his government to move even further right. As Blair positioned himself when he was first elected as the heir of Thatcherism - Rudd, it seems to me, is positioning himself in a similar vein.

Rudd is not as divisive as Latham was, and poor old Beazley was just too nice a bloke for an opposition political leader and could never lay a blow on Howard.

The election will follow pretty closely on the heels of the 2007 APEC meeting which will be held in Sydney and will just about shut the city down for the best part of a week. Howard gets to strut his stuff with the big boys and look like an important world leader. But he is also linked to Bush, this will show that, and with Bush being even less popular with us Aussies than he is with you guys may push Rudd and Labor over the line. We can only hope

Peace

[Amonester]

17. Bush never was elected. n/t

[anakie]

20. yet he is still president

my point, friend, is why are you dissing all Aussies because of our elected PM when your 'unelected' president is still in the Whitehouse breaking untold laws, causing untold devastation around the world and generally ruining your economy for years to come.

From where I look, both in the 00 and 04 elections approx 60-65% of Americans either voted for him or didn't vote for the Democratic canditate. Seems a majority of Americans are getting what they asked for.


Peace

[lonestarnot]

11. Mikie, you be fucked over there! Come back!

[Up2Late]

12. Sorry, I hate to Rain on this Parade but, Why is this posted in LBN?

This is not really LBN to anyone here and it's basically secondhand news coming from a Blog!

This shouldn't be here. GD maybe, Environment and Energy, absolutely, but not in LBN.

[Psephos]

16. Was the great dustbowl drought of the 1930s also caused by wingnut-induced global warming?

Or the Medieval Warm Period of a thousand years ago, when temperatures in Europe and North America were considerably warmer than now?

Did Howard cause the drought in Australia? If he hadn't been elected, would the drought not have occurred?

Or are we letting political dogma obscure the truth that we do not understand the most interlinked, nonlinear, multivariate physical system on Earth?

Bush and Howard can circle jerk each for all I care, but the cartoon logic that shrieks they're the evil causes of it is *not helping us with the millions of people who don't share our political rabidness.* Most nonpolitical people hear that on the same wavelength as they hear jihadists screaming about the Joooooooos.

Global warming IS happening, that's a given. Why it's happening is not well enough understood for anyone yet to have crafted a model that can accurately predict what already happened in the past, given historical data as inputs. A big part of the problem is that the mathematics that describe atmosphere/ocean interaction are crude and inelegant, while the granularity of weather data is large. The two together yield low-confidence theoretical predictions.

Human activity IS a contributing cause. Some think it's one of several contributors; some think it's the only one worth considering. Anyone who says it's already settled has more in common with a fundie preacher at a cinder-block church than with a scientist who knows skepticism and the experimental method are the engines of scientific progress.

When a scientific matter is settled, no one gets upset arguing about it anymore. We're a long, long way from that. In the meantime, all the fury and the name calling and the attempts to censor those whose views are different point to one thing: this is a war of dogmas, and the clash has disturbing similarities to religious conflict, such as that between Christians and Muslims a millennium ago.

The "practical progressive" should focus on a simpler message: as a society we must plan for the worst, while we hope for the best. We'll probably end somewhere in the middle on both, and can shift the landing point considerably through concerted action.

We on the left should be double-wary of using the same science-bending rhetorical techniques wingnuts use for things like evolution and abortion. Vilification Does.Not.Work. On sites like DU, it does nothing except feed political masturbation fantasies. I assure you the same thing happens in mirror reverse at Little Green Footballs and similar sites. The resulting viciousness greatly complicates getting anything useful done on a national scale. IMO, it's the biggest single problem preventing progress currently.

We need to shift ASAP out of fossil fuels, work to sequester carbon, pursue non-greenhouse technologies such as nuclear, wind, and solar, and encourage each person to think a more about how to avoid wasting resources.

Meanwhile, our knowledge of how climate works will continue to improve, and so will our responses to it. One day, no one will argue about it anymore.

Peace.


edit: typo

[gorbal]

18. It just bothers me that it is only horrifying becasue it is DEVELOPED

I guess all those UNDEVELOPED countries that have had disasters don't count:(

Hey, wait a minute? The US is developed, isn't it? What do you call hurricaine Katrina? A fluke?

[NNadir]

21. This is PRECISELY how it is.

One hundred million Africans could die next week from climate induced famine and no one in the West would even notice.

[Dead_Parrot]

23. You're right, they don't count

There's a series of threads - the latest is on the greatest page at the moment - along the lines of "3332 Reasons Why The DSM is Important".

There's actually at least 620,000 reasons, but most of them don't count. Apparently, 1 brown person < 0.005 white people, even on DU.

:rant:

(edit: not finger-waving at brett, just having a raw day. :()

[and-justice-for-all]

19. Howard is an idiot and a 'Loyal Bushie' at that....

People like that are going to cost MILLIONS their lives.

[pscot]

22. Nature has no politics

The Australians could have elected Al Gore and it wouldn't have impacted the weather. The western U.S is vulnerable to the same phenomena, and George Bush has nothing to do with it. This is our doing. Us. The generation now in its prime. Over half the petro-chemicals ever produced have been consumed in the last 20 years. You want to know who the culprit is, take a good look in the mirror. You want to do something about it? Park your car.