More to life than writing

[garyweston]

I have 2 books to write next year. (Yeah, I'm slowing down in my old age) but my thoughts at this time of year is for my good friend Julie with the terrible fires surrounding her city Sydney. All around her beautiful city the fires rage, the smoke chokes them all and unlike us Brits, no rain anytime soon. Huge demo's to tell their government that they shoulder some of the blame for global warming as they sell coal to China to run their dirty industries. 
Julie, my thoughts are with you and your country and I can only send my deepest sympathy. Go kick government ass. They need it. 

[djmills]

Gary, I agree to the demos but disagree on the reason for the demos. :-)

Ted, I will try to keep politics out of the following, but feel free to delete if you want. :-)

If Australia sells "dirty" coal, what country sells "clean" coal?

If Australia does not sell any type of coal, what revenue would be used to build our infrastructure like roads, hospitals, schools, etc? My opinion is we would slip into a third world country within a matter of years. As it is, our hospitals are so under staffed and overworked, and expensive, most of us will die while waiting to get on official hospital waiting lists. We even have waiting lists for the official waiting lists and secret waiting lists for the waiting lists to get on the official waiting lists.

Some facts:
If Australia had done "cool" burn offs over the past 20 years there would not now be a 45% fuel load in the bush, scrub, forests, etc for fires to burn during this current drought.

Main reason for no burn offs around Sydney is because the people in the cities would have been inconvenienced no matter when burn offs happened west of Sydney and they would have complained.

And in the countryside away from the main cities the local councils (who control when to burn off, not the Federal Government) decided to leave the fuel load because "someone" said it had to be left for wild animals to make their homes in the leaf litter, fallen branches and whole trees, etc. There are also massive $ fines if caught collecting fire wood in the countryside to take home for heating in winter. :-)

So, now, because of this long drought, when lightning strikes, the eucalyptus trees burst into flames. The flying embers set the fuel load on the ground on fire and the fire quickly spreads.

When the news reports list hectares of land burning or burnt, they do not list the number of hectares that are in New South Wales. Or the number of hectares that local government is responsible for managing. Or how many hectares are crown land, which is managed by state governments. Ask what percentage of land is actually burning. This is a very big country and only a small area is burning.

This fire season, not many people have died (6?), not like Ash Wednesday, Black Friday, and many other events over the years. Those that did die trying to fight the fires lived near me, no where near Sydney. More died during the volcano eruption in New Zealand.

However, having said all that, I am tired of vacuuming and dusting ash off every surface in my home. I am tired of having to brush ash off my car windscreen every time I need to drive somewhere. I am tired of having asthma from the ash and dust. Bring on the rain.:-)

As for rain fall, it is happening now. My tank, installed a month ago, is now half full. That is 2500 litres collected so far. Hopefully, we have another storm this afternoon to completely fill the tank. Sydney had a massive storm. Brisbane had a massive storm. I hope it is a start to this coming storm season. And as soon as monsoon season starts (north and west of Australia) more of inland Australia will see rain. :-)

And my grass is turning green again. Good for my hens who free range and eat the green grass. :-)

As for demos for climate change, why pick on Australia? There are more homes with solar panels on roofs here then anywhere else. And what about the rest of the world? Is anyone prepared to give up flying? Or stop using electricity to run phones, computers, lights, air con, etc?

As for the theory on "climate change" ... until I see the actual data used to come up with this theory, I will remain on the fence. Why? Because a scientist friend and other scientist acquaintances were fired from their jobs for saying the theory of "climate change" was flawed, because it did not include cloud cover stopping heating rather than raising heat. Because no one reported on thousands of scientists stating that the theory did not include certain facts.

I would rather see everyone from every country spend $1 or $2 billion removing the rubbish from our oceans, including fishing nets, plastics, etc. rather than see $79 billion spent on a flawed climate industry theory. Another question is who gets the money donated by different countries? Who is getting rich off climate change? I most certainly will not invest in carbon trading. :-)

I would rather see every country stop using diesel and petrol. How? I don't know, other than replacing them with hydrogen or electric motors. Or go back to horse and cart? :-)

[chelsfield]

Thanks for this, DJ