Our Climate Is Changing...
I find it amazing that there are many still not believing that the overall climate of our world is changing. What can you say? When it’s cold they say...”See I told you...It’s still cold not warm!”
Here in Australia last summer we had the most devastating bushfires in
history...ever!
I watched a programme on TV last evening where we were taken around where
the bushfires occurred. Just so sad and the loss of animal life is
insurmountable. Figures can only estimate billions of animals were killed.
Whole ecological systems have been destroyed. Eucalyptus trees five hundred
years old, could even be up to a thousand years old, completely dead and they
will never regrow. Many smaller ones are returning to life but the big old
trees that supported so much life are gone. So are the birds. Now you would
think they would just fly away and return after the fire but the many insects
they would feed on were killed also in the intense heat.
So not only the birds are gone..reptiles..the whole ecological system has
changed, even from rare frogs in small streams that were cooked in the intense
heat, also every insect you can think of has gone the same way.
Koalas just climb higher in the trees...they can’t run from the flames...
and just drop to the forest floor dead. Thousands and thousands of them.
Kangaroos can move quickly but for even them many thousands were lost; cut off
in the intense heat.
Sad for all the animals but even sadder that 15 people were killed in the
fires. It could easily have been more..should have been more but for sheer luck
in many cases. So many were lucky...very lucky to escape with their lives. No
possessions but their lives!
One thousand homes were lost and the fire actually started in July 2019
which is in the middle of our winter and burnt through well into our summer
months. Summer is often a time for bush fires but nothing like this!
Usually fire fighting ‘planes are sent to Australia from the northern
hemisphere to help our fire fighters but the fire fighting seasons overlapped there and here and the
‘planes could not at first be sent as they usually are because they were
fighting their summer fires. If you remember Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece
were also consumed by huge and dangerous forest fires. Remember when California also had extreme
fires President Trump..as he was then...said the forests should be “swept more”!
I mean...
In Sydney it was the hottest and driest year on record reaching a mind
blowing temperature of 48.9 in January. The highest recorded temperature
ever!
January was the hottest ever temperature globally. Antarctica reached a
record temperature of 65F....not hot for us here in Australia..but it is for Antarctica. Siberia in the Arctic Circle where it is always thought of as cold and they even had record fires; 3.2 million hectares burnt out.
The bushfire enquiry came to a
conclusion the fires were on a scale never seen in Australia in recorded
history. Extreme and extremely unusual. The decision reached that climate change
clearly played a part in the disaster.
One media outlet were saying many of the fires were caused by
firebugs...this was disproved and quickly.
Our Prime Minister Scott Morrison was overseas on holiday in Hawaii when
the fires were raging but he returned two days early when two fire-fighters
died. Public opinion was well and truly against him being away.
NASA put out an interesting article as there’s too much to write about here
but it is worth a read. I have enclosed the link.
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