Interested to hear your observations on unusual natural happenings/ observations.
Yesterday 18/12/06 saw an adder very much alive although sluggish basking in the sun!
6 weeks ago early Nov. I saw a fully formed, full size, speckled red deer calf born. It was dead at birth but looked ok. the hind licked it off.
I am still seeing gnats in the wood, one week before Christmas in North Devon.

Trans,

The last 2 years we have still had heavy hedgerow fruits at Xmas dut to the lack of frosts.

We still shoot myxy rabbits in the middle of winter because the cold doesn't reduce the flea burden.

I don't know if it is relavent but it also seems to take longer for my pheasants to feather up nowadays than I'm told it used to. A coupe of people tell me this is down tot the prolonoged warm weather.

FB

Trans/FB

l found a roadkill(in good condition)toad not a mile from the house last week, things are just a little "off whack" me thinks.

Regards.

Dave.
....

Not to be contentious or anything, but a common global warming scenario calls for the Gulf Stream current to be slowed or stopped by global warming. This would result in much COLDER weather for Britain and Northern Europe!

Wooly.

Yup, that's one senario... We've had all sorts this year, l've heard we've had something like the warmest year, the wetest autumn and the hotest day and sod knows what else... Well it's all par for the course round here...we like a good moan about the weather

ATB.

Dave.
....

Pretty soon Great Britain will be under water. That's one way to get rid of the 3rd worlders, but I would hate to lose some of my pals. Better move to higher ground, mates.

Bill.

l'd watch out if l were you mate, a good pal who winters in Az once sent me a photo from out there with bloody snow on the ground
The only problem l can see with a "flood out" round here is, most of the two legged vermin would manage to get to higher ground before Noah and Darwin did their bit

Regards.

Dave.
....

Is anyone looking for friends of Otzi [the Ice Man] ?? They should be easy to find !

quote:

Originally posted by Dave2431:
Bill.

l'd watch out if l were you mate, a good pal who winters in Az once sent me a photo from out there with bloody snow on the ground Regards.

Dave.
....

I am down in southern Az right now - Tucson - and it has been about 70 during the day. Perfect for my motorcycle rides. I am heading up north to Pinetop tomorrow. Snow country....but also wonderful elk country as well.

Bill.

Sounds wonderfull...have a great time

Dave.
....

Driest winter, spring and summer in history in Oz.

My fruit trees are starting to bud. Hopefully this will be the last winter I have to shovel snow! Let it warm up, the cold weather sucks! In fact, if global warming can keep me from shoveling snow, I´ll start using CFCs again, and throwing plastic on the fire (just joshing).

Mike

Snowing in Israel. Don't the Jews know about global warming? Or is the Lord telling them it's bullshit?

Two feet of snow on the ground, and a couple of weeks ago it was -30 plus wind. Global warming my half frozen ass. - dan

In southern Finland the december was 1C warmer than in all of recorded history.

For example average temperature in Helsinki was +4C. The last record was recorded in 1929 and it was +2.9C.

I think we also had the driest summer in my lifetime. We had 59 days of more than +25C which is a record. We had > +30C days during every summer month which is record because it normally happens only every 10 years. Note that Finland is located around the Arctic Circle. It didn't rain for 8 weeks. Now during the winter we have seen record rain fall in exchange.

Grey partridges only just starting to pair Jan.(month later than usual)
See how the yanks and Canadians have infiltrated European forum to deny there is a problem !!-despite the fact I just heard they were sun bathing in NY central park yesterday!!

I do not wish to imply by my earlier post that I do not believe we as humans are influencing the world climate. The point I was, and still am, trying to make is that we must quard against grasping individual and isolated occurrences and extrapolating them to global phenomena. I was not being facecious when I stated that a common global warming scenario calls for the Britain and Northern Europe to locally become colder. Thus, occurences of abnormally cold weather could also be considered to be evidence of overall global warming. Individual anecdotes don't carry much weight. Systematic and long term gathering of climate data does carry weight.

We may or may not have reached a tipping point in the earth's climate, but we seem to have reached a tipping point in public opinion.

There is definetly something going on ! I was asked to do a job to Kazachstan last Nov,I couldn`t go, so a friend of mine went, I was telling him about the weather and the temps it could get down to, and when he got back, he said it never got below minus 10, and wasn`t alot of snow about.
The last winter I was there it hit minus 50 and snow was v deep !

25 years ago these same people who are telling us to beware of global warming were telling us that we were headed into another ice age. The planets weather has been changing from the very beginning thats why we find sharks teeth in Montana and fossils of sea critters in the oil sands of Alberta. Thats why there are fossilized trees in the Antarctic.The weather on this planet is going to change no matter what we do.The experts tell us that the last ice age happened X number of years ago and the planet has been warming up ever since.What happened did we reach a point now when that the warming up is going to stop?The little blip in time that we have been recording temperatures doesn't mean much when you look at the big picture. We can say and do what ever we want but it won't make much difference in the end. Just my view

Right on! It"s all a load of government fueled garbage which helps them to keep your eye off the ball!
A few generations ago you"d have been burnt if you said the world was"nt flat.
If I had a job paying a hundred grand a year, maybe I could come up with some scary ideas to make myself sound indespensable too!
Genesis 8v22 "while the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease"
good shooting

quote:

Originally posted by prairiewolf:
25 years ago these same people who are telling us to beware of global warming were telling us that we were headed into another ice age. The planets weather has been changing from the very beginning thats why we find sharks teeth in Montana and fossils of sea critters in the oil sands of Alberta. Thats why there are fossilized trees in the Antarctic.The weather on this planet is going to change no matter what we do.The experts tell us that the last ice age happened X number of years ago and the planet has been warming up ever since.What happened did we reach a point now when that the warming up is going to stop?The little blip in time that we have been recording temperatures doesn't mean much when you look at the big picture. We can say and do what ever we want but it won't make much difference in the end. Just my view

Prairiwolf,

I tend to agree with you for the most part, but the problem is that only a very narrow range of climatic conditions suits the human race espeically in the developed nations...

As I see it, mans inpact since the Industrial Revolution seems to be accelerating a natural change in climate to a point where it could be devasating for the human race...

I believe this cycle would probably take place anyway, but our actions are bringing it forward and accelerating it. We now know that a relatively small increase in gobal temperatures caused by our CO2 emmissions could be enough to melt the permafrost across Siberia and the rest of the Northern countries. This is not a wacko prediction by some mad eco scientist, but the start of this is being observed now...

This is resulting in a huge release of methane that was previously trapped in the frozen ground. As methane is five times worse than C02 as a green house gas, you can appreciate how the whole scenerio has the potential to escalate very quickly in geological terms.

Some scientists think we have reached this tipping point all ready; others think a reduction in C02 emmissions now might still return the process to its more usual rate of change..

Regards,

Pete

That's a good summary Pete E.

How it's all going to work out is anybody's guess.

A couple big volcanic ash belches and we could be headed the other direction in a hurry. Rumor has it we are way overdue...

Canuck

As long as I don´t have to shovel my driveway, let´s keep this globe warming up.

quote:

Originally posted by NitroX:
Driest winter, spring and summer in history in Oz.

A strong rumour (I personally heard it from the 'horses mouth') is that if good rains do not occur before March (unlikely unless there is an unseasonal flood), the Murray River will run dry and the city of Adelaide will have no or little drinking water (ie 1 million people).

The grape vintage here will be starting a month earlier than I've ever known it before.

quote:

Murray River will run dry and the city of Adelaide will have no or little drinking water

Do you mean Adelaide or the cotton and rice farms up stream of Adelaide? I suspect politics may cause some farms (and vineyards) to dry up first.

No. There are no cotton or rice farms in SA. They are thousands of kms away in Queensland.

Just what I said. The Murray where the pumping stations are for the city, is expected to run dry in March.

That is the strong rumour. And it came from a source not distant from senior levels in SA Water.

But the government is too weak to actually tell anyone, and probably hope God sends some rain to get them out of trouble, because they have no foresight.

Mid january and lots of midges in the woood this morning. Just nailed a rabbit for the ferrets and she had youngsters inside, that's a month earlier than I'd expect hereabouts.
Pigeons dying of mast poisoning, instead of lead poisoning on osr.

I thought there was quite a bit of agriculture off the Murray closer to Adelaide than QLD. Those QLD farms are so far upstream, it's proabably too late do anything with that water, but if Adelaide runs dry, the outcry may well endanger the future of those farms regardless. I don't want to be rude, but aren't the Barossa farms using Murray water? What percentage of ADL water comes from underground sources, if any? It's hard to imagine a metropolis like ADL truly drying up. What a mess! I was living in MEL last year, and the water restrictions had just come off, but the relatives tell me they are back with a vengance this year. Adelaide's one of my favorite cities; I'd really hate to see such problems become persistent. On the flights from ADL to MEL, I remember seeing the Murray halts at the sand bars at its mouth, and that wasn't such a dry year, so I'm not amazed, just disappointed. Hopefully some rain will hit, but it would probably be just reprieve. I remember the rains from early 2005 in MEL, and I do hope for a repeat performance this year.

quote:

Originally posted by asdf:
I thought there was quite a bit of agriculture off the Murray closer to Adelaide than QLD. Those QLD farms are so far upstream, it's proabably too late do anything with that water, but if Adelaide runs dry, the outcry may well endanger the future of those farms regardless.

High water usage cotton and rice farms in a virtual desert are absolutely ridiculous. They should be closed down or relocated to Northern WA where there is plenty of water.

Cubby Station uses almost an entire river systems flow by itself and in my opinion is an environmental disaster. At one time the SA State gov't was thinking of buying Cubby Station to close it down, but the Queensland gov't said they would legislate against it.

Incredible greed, that a dozen farms at the headwaters think they can use a huge percentage of a few rivers flow, when these rivers have thousands of kilometres more to flow to get to the sea.

quote:

I don't want to be rude, but aren't the Barossa farms using Murray water?

Yes, but a relatively small amount. This allocation has been reduced to 60% of usual quotas.

Dripper fed vineyards are also very water efficient compared to many other types of agriculture. If a "water trading scheme" existed they would quite easily compete in terms of volumes needed to product output values.

quote:

What percentage of ADL water comes from underground sources, if any? It's hard to imagine a metropolis like ADL truly drying up. What a mess!

None I think. Some from catchment in the Adelaide Hills and a lot from pumping stations on the Murray River. Which is why Adelaide drinking water is the worst in Australia.

What we need is a nuclear power and desalination plant.

quote:

I was living in MEL last year, and the water restrictions had just come off, but the relatives tell me they are back with a vengance this year.

Some parts of Australia have banned showers because of the lack of water due to the drought.

quote:

Adelaide's one of my favorite cities; I'd really hate to see such problems become persistent. On the flights from ADL to MEL, I remember seeing the Murray halts at the sand bars at its mouth, and that wasn't such a dry year, so I'm not amazed, just disappointed.

In an emergency bid to save face and look like they are doing something, the SA stste gov't is building a new weir across the Murray just before Lake Alexandrina. To store up some more water for Adelaide as an emergency measure.

I think so they don't get dumped at the next election due to their incompetence.

This will really ffffup the lacks and the Murray mouth plus destroy fish breeding and migration up the river. Also breaches various international conservation agreements.

A weir instead of some planning and foresight. The Murray has been a problem for twenty years, and they've done ffff all. Now they have been forced to do something.

quote:

Hopefully some rain will hit, but it would probably be just reprieve. I remember the rains from early 2005 in MEL, and I do hope for a repeat performance this year.

Usually after very bad droughts, we have very bad flooding. Hopefully this waits until after my vintage (grape) crop is off this year, unlike last year!

Thanks NitroX for all the information. I assumed the vineyards were taking little. I had visited some of them and was impressed with the irrigation systems used. In an emergency, vineyards and orchards would be the very last to go since they require such long times to get the plants re-established. One CSIRO site says 40% comes from the Murray and most of the rest from catchments in SA; I wonder how the latter are holding up?

The allocation of water resources as property seems the only solution in the end. QLD opposes SA buying the farm since it would permanently weaken the economy in that vicinity, but better a few rural villages than the entire city of ADL. Such disputes over water will only get worse across the planet in the coming decades--too damn many people! The US is getting precarious as well in the West. Both the US and Australia have resorted to immigration to forestall problems in funding their social programs for the elderly, and neither country's environment can afford massive immigration flows.

An interesting conversation gentlemen. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle ground. I think you'd have to be mad not to thing that pollution isn't having some effect on our climate. But wether or not it's actually causing global warming, or even if global warming actually exists is less certain. Scientists seem to be divided on the issue, and as for politicians/governments they'll jump on any bandwagon, especially if they think it means they can screw more money out of you by some spurious "green tax".

Saw the first three immigrant swallows arrive yesterday.N.Devon coast landfall..1st. April 2007. Didn't go looking for a roebuck because it was a Sunday and didn't get up early enough this morning.

I heard Earth isnt the only planet experiencing ''Global Warming'' various other planets in the solar system are warming also !! its something to do with the Sun have a higher [for some reason ?]output of solar radiation ,energy etc ,while humans must have some effect ,its miniscule compared to what the sun is capable of ! if you have a look at the difference in size between the Earth and the Sun [which is mind boggling]it makes alot of sense [at least to me]

There was a facinating programme on the subject on Channel 4 about a month ago. They made several very interesting points.

One was that the environmental brigade are manipulating the temperature data to boost their own argument. When you look at temperature fluctuations over much longer period, say 2,000 years, what is happening now is perfectly normal. It is even possible whe have been in a realitively cold period over the past 50 years. They discussed the Greenland icecap and how Greenland was well populated and farmed over 1,000 years ago. Some of our scandinavian friends will know the details of that.

They linked the earth's temperature to solar activity, in particular, periods of increased temperatures due to solar flares, which apparently have been very active over recent years.

On the other hand, there is no doubt we are using up the earths resources at an ever increasing rate, particularly in the third world. Whether or not this is effecting the climate is not proven in my view.

Slow change drives evolution.
Fast change results in mass extinction.
20 years ago the worlds greatest fear was the "nuclear winter" as a result of a global nuclear war.
The possible effects of swift climate change are in the same order of severity.
Even if were not sure we can change things, is it really worth the gamble?

What CD said...

That programme was rreally interesting, and I thought the most important point they made was that CO2 and temperature ffluctuations are indeed very correlated. When modeled however the high correlation also shows up an 80 year time lag of CO2 top temperature changes that basically "proves" that temperature rises (due to solar activity) create higher levels of CO2, not the other way round as is popularly bandied about.

The bottom line is that the green industry id a multi billion pound business now not to mention the tax it generates for global economies, and like most things if enough people beleive the theory to be true it may as well be, regardless of the facts...

After all, I keep getting told that Elephants and Leopards are protected because they are endangered and close to extinction... Must be true then.

Rgds,
FB

This is the scene that greeted my outside my door this morning (April 10). It has pretty much looked this way since last November

Front Door


Side Door


Based on this, the only way I would know global warming is going on is the relentless beating of the media drum.