45.1˚C here today

[wotavidone]

Re: 45.1˚C here today

Ultimately we will not be able to sustain an economic model based on growth when the planet's resources are finite. This realisation is being understood by the public, while being ignored by governments and big business.

So very, very true. The "growth" that economists love depends entirely on an ever increasing population that simply cannot grow indefinitely.

At least the current government of Oz refuses to subsidise unsustainable businesses. It's a start I guess.

[david s]

Re: 45.1˚C here today

Ultimately we will not be able to sustain an economic model based on growth when the planet's resources are finite. This realisation is being understood by the public, while being ignored by governments and big business.

[Greenman]

Re: 45.1˚C here today

Well if the Japs kill all the whales, the whales be won't be eating the Krill.

But seriously, the French were way out of line. It gets back to what I've been saying all along - people should not kill people over the environment. I have no time for extremists on any side of the equation. And that is a sad thing - there are sides.

In any case, we all selfishly exploit resources.
From the greenie who gets his little patch of paradise in a forest somewhere, then protests like buggery when some developer wants to build houses for other people, or wind turbines to generate some electricity, to the rich man who buys a length of coastline and does his level best to stop anyone else using "his" beach, to the person who just has to wash his car every week and buy the latest phone even though his old one still works, we are all selfish.

When we build a brick oven, someone fired those bricks, guaranteed they didn't use a renewable energy source to do it, ditto the cement and the lime. If we cared at a personal level, we'd build a cob oven with clay we dug ourselves and not use up so much non-renewable energy.
At least mine was built from salvaged pavers, I guess.
I don't like factory ships either. But the question remains, would they be out there if no-one was buying the fish?
I'm curious. I work in a lead smelter, making lead so people can have their lead acid batteries to start their cars and store their nice "clean" solar power for when the sun goes down.
What do you guys do for a living?
Aussies now have the biggest houses in the world. Is that a selfish use of resources?

I spent most of my life farming and working in and managing prisons. Not a 'clean' environment but I gave a lot of men the opportunity to try a different path and by and large I am happy with the results of my life's work.

I live in a modest house, heat my water from the sun, run a solar bank that covers my needs and have a generator if I need backup in an emergency rather than a lead-acid battery bank, grow most of my vegetables and catch enough seafood to sustain my needs. In another life I had my own beef and goats as well but there is only so much you can do when you downsize to an acre.

Much of the fish the factory ships harvest ends up in fertilizer and food to feed to the farmed fish that make people feel warm and fuzzy about eating 'farmed, sustainable' fish. Ships like the 'Abel Tasman' are a good example of floating greed without a conscience and the sooner that it is dispatched back to from where it came the better. It is giving SA a bad name where it is, even if it is not being used.

I am not a radical but feel strongly enough about the way people are abusing our planet to at least speak out from time to time. We all take from the environment and use the fuels that we can find to manufacture things like bricks and regardless of if they are recycled or not they all used energy in their manufacture. Bits of evil that we will always have to endure but at least once it is built the oven is able to be fuelled by sustainable resources.

The other thing is that the food is better and at least we thought about it before we did it. Most of the WFO community pride themselves on the economy of their ovens, unlike many others. I am happy to be part of the WFO community.

It is all about maintaining the balance I expect.

[wotavidone]

Re: 45.1˚C here today

Might be time for people to get a grip. It is all about the exploitation of resources (wherever they are) for the personal gain of someone and their cronies who fund this hunting. Pantagonian Tooth Fish, Krill, Whales, Orange Roughy - all will be endangered soon enough. It is all about greed.

Might be time to piss all of the harvesters with the huge factory ships off out of the last of the frontiers before they want to drill/mine and generally stuff the place. How long will it take for people to learn that when it is gone...... it is gone.

Watson got too hot to handle but the rogues need a bit more than a bump in the night to let them know that they are not welcome. The French had their own way of letting Greenpeace know they were unhappy when they took things into their own hands in NZ. Good for the goose............. TIFI

Well if the Japs kill all the whales, the whales be won't be eating the Krill.

But seriously, the French were way out of line. It gets back to what I've been saying - people should not kill people over the environment. I have no time for extremists on any side of the equation. And that is a sad thing - there are sides.

From the greenie who gets his little patch of paradise in a forest somewhere, then protests like buggery when some developer wants to build houses for other people who like the area too, or wind turbines to generate some electricity, to the rich man who buys a length of coastline and does his level best to stop anyone else using "his" beach, to the person who just has to wash his car every week and buy the latest phone even though his old one still works, to the person who chooses to live "only" an hours drive from work, we all selfishly exploit resources.

When we build a brick oven, someone fired those bricks, just about guaranteed they didn't use a renewable energy source to do it, ditto the cement and the lime. If we cared at a personal level, we'd build a cob oven with clay we dug ourselves on-site and not use up so much non-renewable energy.
At least mine, and the one I built with my mate, was built from salvaged pavers, I guess.

I don't like factory ships either. But the question remains, would they be out there if no-one was buying the fish?
I observe the closed seasons on fish that we have down here, then watch as people who tell me they voted for the Greens go out and fish out of season, because "there's no way we do the damage that the pros do".
Really?

I'm curious. I work in a lead smelter, making lead so people can have their lead acid batteries to start their cars and store their nice "clean" solar power for when the sun goes down.

What do you guys do for a living? For example, a school teacher might think he is in a respectable job that is nicely unselfish, but his job depends on the rest of us selfishly reproducing, thus laying claim to an ever increasing slice of our ever decreasing natural resources.

They tell me Aussies now have the biggest houses in the world. Is that a selfish use of resources?

All things are connected and interwoven and there are no clear answers. For example, I drive a 24 year old ute. Am I being responsible by not buying a new car every few years, or selfish for not buying a new car every year?
It all depends how you look at it.

These environmental people who sail their ships all over the world, to do things that are probably counter productive in the fight for the environment, never mention how much of the world's oil they burn doing it.

Ditto all the road racing that goes on in the world - if we were serious about the environment, we'd ban it as a criminal waste of the world's resources. (Don't believe all that BS about researching improvements that make it onto road cars. It's about selling cars.)
Anyway. I guess I'm saying it ain't so black and white, and my fellow man disappoints me by not practising what he preaches.
However, I'm going to try to restrain myself from here in. While I feel quite passionately that we don't do enough to preserve our world for the next generation, and that there is a great deal of fault on all sides of the discussion, this is a forum about wood fired ovens and it occurs to me that I have allowed myself to drift waaay off topic, and people will only ever agree with you if they already agree with you. You almost never change anyone's views with the brilliance of your argument.

[Greenman]

Re: 45.1˚C here today

Might be time for people to get a grip. It is all about the exploitation of resources (wherever they are) for the personal gain of someone and their cronies who fund this hunting. Pantagonian Tooth Fish, Krill, Whales, Orange Roughy - all will be endangered soon enough. It is all about greed.

Might be time to piss all of the harvesters with the huge factory ships off out of the last of the frontiers before they want to drill/mine and generally stuff the place. How long will it take for people to learn that when it is gone...... it is gone.

Watson got too hot to handle but the rogues need a bit more than a bump in the night to let them know that they are not welcome. The French had their own way of letting Greenpeace know they were unhappy when they took things into their own hands in NZ. Good for the goose............. TIFI

[wotavidone]

Re: 45.1˚C here today

And we worry they are getting rammed or doing the ramming ???

What are you quoting?
However, in answer to your question, I worry about such things.
Ramming ships puts life at risk. Human life, which to me is the paramount consideration.
People who are prepared to put animal lives over human life are too extreme for me.
I've been doing more research, and the latest effort is actually from the Sea Shepherd organisation, founded by Paul Watson after Greenpeace kicked him out for being too extreme.
Apparently Greenpeace haven't collided with a Japanese whaling ship since 2006. Kicking him out is a point for Greenpeace, in my opinion, hence my deletion of my posts on the subject.
They too reckon Sea Shepherd are wrong risking human life to protect animals. See their website.
Of course, it was their actions back in the day, which occurred only a few years after I gained my own commercial marine ticket and was thus well aware of the laws of the sea, that first alerted me to the fact that all the footage being released can be interpreted more than one way.
I stand by my analysis of the rights and wrongs of the incidents in the Southern Ocean, I withdraw it only because I unfairly laid the latest incident at the feet of Greenpeace.
Mind you, I still told the three Greenpeace activists who accosted me in the street today that I reckon they are a bunch of hypocrites.

[TropicalCoasting]

Re: 45.1˚C here today

The Sanctuary is the scene of an ongoing controversy between Australia and Japan over whaling.
In 2008 the Australian Federal Court ruled it was illegal under Australian law for the Japanese whaling fleet to kill whales in the Sanctuary.

And we worry they are getting rammed or doing the ramming ???

[Greenman]

Re: 45.1˚C here today

Seems that you folk are getting all of the extremes. Some reports of the rain causing flooding and taking the exposed topsoil in some areas.

There has also been talk of a cold front! I hope it all evens out for you and you can get back to some sort of normality.

[wotavidone]

Re: 45.1˚C here today

Fire is out. Getting one fifth of your average annual rainfall in 24 hours will do that for you.
Took a drive over the ranges yesterday. Struck by how selective the fire was.
Some areas burned to bare earth, next door a few singed trees.
Wongyarra looks awful.
Germein Gorge Road closed.
Not from fire - the downpour has washed out the road!
All the creeks are running - but the water is a black slurry of soot and ash.
Caught up with a couple of mates. All safe.

[BOOMERS WFO]

Re: 45.1˚C here today

So far Mt Lofty has had 46 mm of rain today. A welcome relief particularly as I had to cart water last week to ensure I kept enough for fire-fighting. Hopefully, when I get home the tank level is at a level where I won't need to cart anymore.

With luck the widespread rain today and tomorrow will give the CFS and residents a much needed break.

Cheers

Craig

[wotavidone]

Re: 45.1˚C here today

Talking to one of the Fethers' boys the other day. Their farm went OK because they'd run enough stock to eat most of the stubble down. He reckoned the sheep just stepped over the flames.

One of the hobby farms on the Survey Road didn't survive. Apparently a previous owner had done the cool hippie thing and built the garage around a gum tree.

Looks cool, I'm sure, but according to Fethers when the tree caught it took the garage and the house with it.

In the last wek I've seen two headlines that just leave me confused. One says the Bureau of Meteorology
reckons that they can conclude that this run of really hot weather is definitely the result of human activity.
Another says that a prominent global warming scientist admits that we've had a 13 year plateau in global temeprature rise.
There is only one thing for it. You don't have to believe, just recognise that it might be so. Then anyone with half a brain can see that if it is possible, perhaps even probable, then in the absence of irrefutable proof we should still be prudent.
This is why I have a four cylinder car, live within five minutes of my work, have a small house, recycle everything that can be, and according to my water bill (received today) use no more water than a single person with a small garden.
The cure is at a personal level, in my opinion.

[nissanneill]

Re: 45.1˚C here today

I hear and fully understand what you are saying.
My relatives in and around Wirrabara forest have been evacuated 3 times in the time that fire started, only a wind changed saved their home and sheds by 200mm, but they lost most of their fencing and 90% of their grazing stock feed. Miraculously, the 400 stock were untouched, how nobody knows. The fire came back and they were on tender hooks again and only 2 days ago they were again evacuated. What an (or should I say 3 experiences in as many weeks)
The pics are around a property surrounded by scrub and pine forests. 90% of all the plantation pines have been burned and the ones in the pic are privately owned. You can also see the orchard through the burned gums, so you can see how close they came to being wiped out, very scary!
Great to see the rain, at least it will help to quell the fires but history has shown that even 8 months after afire, embers from smouldering tree roots were blown out and rekindled yet another bushfire.

Neill

[wotavidone]

Re: 45.1˚C here today

It's raining here right now.

Forecast for tomorrow is 100% chance of 25-50mm.
i.e. the Bureau of Meteorology is virtually guaranteeing us 1 to 2 inches of rain tomorrow.
That should put the fire out, though for now the radio is still broadcasting the "run like the devil is on your ass" message.

Thank goodness for that.
Usually, if you build in the hills you accept that there might be the odd fire or two come through.
Generally, we say, "Of course we'll give you a hand, we'll throw everything we've got at it, and welcome. Volunteer firefighters will come from all over the country and work 'til they drop. But, FFS, don't build right under the trees. Have a bushfire survival plan. Clean your gutters out come spring, and service your fire fighting pump and make sure your swimming pool or water tank is full."

This has gone waay beyond all that.
It's been absolutely unstoppable, and it wouldn't matter where you built, or what your plan is. 100 foot+ flames don't need to get anywhere near your home to heat everything hot enough for the roof frame timbers to burst into flames.
No-one dead that we know of. A miracle.

[wotavidone]

Re: 45.1˚C here today

My perception is that most environmentalist are also peace lovers and are not looking for fights, just taking assertive action. I also think that the IQ levels are pretty much evenly distributed on both sides of the argument.

My problem is with that word "most".
There is a vocal, and often violent minority, who love to protest, and often don't consider the human costs. I've seen 'em with my own eyes.

I once read an article about the campaign to stop fur seal hunting. The dismissive comments from the spokespersons for the anti-fur movement when asked what they thought about the local human population living in alcoholic poverty, now that their last industry was gone, made me stop and think.

I was once an environment officer for my company. A more thankless task is not imaginable. The day I ordered the plant to stop because it was making a mess shall stick in my mind forever. At the time, the losses were in the order of $32,000 an hour. Think I was popular? In the end I didn't get sacked, and the babies got fed for another day.

On the other side of the fence (literally as well as philosophically, she worked at the tree nursery next door) was a lovely lady named Maggie, may she rest in peace.
Her advice to her more extreme environmentalist friends was "If we were really serious about not having a lead smelter, we would all stop driving cars." i.e. most of lead production goes into lead-acid batteries - we used to say we don't make lead, we start cars.
Her push was for clean production, a point we had no trouble agreeing on.

The trouble is, I don't meet many environmentalists like Maggie.
Ask one what sort of electricity we should have instead of South Oz's major input from coal fired power, and they invariably say wind or solar. The fact that the sun doesn't shine all day, and that wind generators need to feed into a large reactive load, i.e. the coal fired electricity grid, seems to escape them.
These days, you can get battery backed grid connected solar, but guess what is in the batteries? Lead. And guess how much coal, coke, natural gas, and sodium carbonate (all emitters of carbon dioxide) goes into making the lead? And heaven forbid anyone mentions nuclear.
I still toil from within to make it better, but the environmentalists who stand on the outside throwing stones, with no viable cost effective alternatives on offer, give me the shits.
For example, all car batteries could be made from recycled lead, but would you all be prepared to pay three or four times as much for the battery?
I already know that people are not prepared to pay that much to save the environment, otherwise all the cars would have lithium batteries, and the lead industry would be stone cold dead.
And if we weren't here, who would consume all the old TV's? Yep, between ourselves, and one mob who ship overseas at massive cost, we have cleaned up all of Australia's stock of old television screens, recovering all the lead, zinc, copper and precious metals, and turning the glass back into sand, which gets sent to a cement manufacturer to be turned into cement.
There are good, level headed, sensible environmentalists out there, but the violent idiots who push over fences, throw paint over people, board ships at sea and throw acid and stink bombs, sabotage vehicles, farms and factories should all be locked up and the key should be thrown away.
Funnily enough, most of the truly sensible ones are working in industry or the EPA, busting their arses to keep manufacturing afloat while keeping the air clean enough to breathe and the water clean enough for the fish to swim in.
All the while paying enough tax so the rabid element can collect it's dole cheque, so it can afford to protest instead of work.

Having said all that I still agree there is no way they should be dumping dredge spoil at sea. When we widened our wharf, we found a way to cheaply dewater it on land. It can be done.
Unfortunately, once Greenpeace weighs into an argument, the cause is lost or at least in serious jeopardy. They have no credibility with the people who make the decisions. They are not seen as defenders of the environment, they are seen as the lunatic fringe.

Rant over. For now. Thanks for reading, I feel better.

[nissanneill]

Re: 45.1˚C here today

Well the bush fires up in the southern Flinders are back and with a vengence.
My cousins, who just missed the initial blaze had the second surge run through their properties, fierce fighting saved their sheds and houses, but they they lost pasture and fencing. I phoned my cousin who said that 90% of the Wirrabara forests have gone, only remaining forests are around the house/property where I was living as a baby before coming to Adelaide. Ash and dust blowing over burned paddocks and charred forest stalks.Some lost sheds and houses but the community will rally around them, I'm sure from what I have experienced over the years of visits.
Not looking forward to seeing it when I go up there for a family reunion in April.
Neill