I'm hoping members will not construe this as a political topic. Of course it does get used politically, but it is much more basically important to this earth than any policy, whether or not its most prominent announcer is right or not. We use too much of everything anyway so let's stop doing it! A couple of weeks ago in Sydney they turned out all unnecessary lights for a night. Last night on our Inventors programme one chap came up with a device to replace venetian blinds and reflect all daylight up onto ceilings up to 20 metres into buildings to save electricity.[of course this will spawn a need for dimmers and "lightostats"] We now find that our coal deposits will run out quicker than it will take to work out how to nullify the bad effects out of burning the stuff. Well, climate is certainly changing here, no rain for 13 days, but it's not hot now as it was during the 33 day dry Jan-Feb. Sheep, cattle and horses normally grazing have to be fed hay and that is running low. It is autumn yet after the little rain in March crab apple trees came into flower. Jane
Here in Scotland we have had a most odd winter. Hardly a winter at all in fact. Nov, Dec and part of Jan were VERY wet with cold winds ( one day of snow) but since then it has been almost spring like. The last couple of weeks it has felt more like summer --- in April, with virtually no rain now for about three weeks !!! The plants too don't know whether they are coming or going. In autumn some plants were blooming for a second time in the year and others are now blooming ---weeks ahead of their time. I usually judged my summer bedding plants could be planted out the first week of June --- this year it could be well into May. People the world over are very slowly waking up to what is happening and what we need to do --- but will BIG BUSINESS listen or continue to pollute while raking in large profits. Time -- if we've got it--- will tell.
Cameron Sure wish we were hot and dry in April. We have had the coldest Easter in memory and almost nothing but rain and or freezing weather after having the warmest winter on record. Flooding here now with snow in New York etc. I haven't been warm since we returned from Florida. Annemarie
I'm further south than Jane, living in Melbourne and we are on stage 3 water restrictions with not much outside watering allowed, but at Phillip Island where we have a holiday shack the local reservoir is down to 10% capacity and no mains water can be used outside. We've had a rainwater tank put in - possibly just in time!
Things are worse in China than we have them here accoring to yesterday's Sydney Moring herald. Chongquing [chugking] has had no rain since last july. Between it and the new Dam 300 km downstream the river was planned to rise 75 metres. In 2002 we saw the sign for the projected waterline high above us. New white cities were being built, the lower dirty grey ones were being dimantled. We were hoping to video a comparison when we are there in a month's time, but the river is lower than it was when we were there. Poor China! This scheme was to prevent dowstream epic floods by contrlling levels, and to generate a fantastic amount of power. The Yangtze starts up in Tibet - the Himalayas. The snow melts and sends torrents down steeply through gorges. We also saw Tiger Leaping Gorge several hunderd Km above our cruise area, not far south of the Tibetan border.it is sad to think there may be only a trickle coming down there. The effect on the already poor and hungry people will be quite shocking. Chugking, the city, has population of whole of Australia all heaped up on few hills. Jane
We had an unusual winter here as well. in Jan and Feb it was unusually warm, but we had one of the coldest days of the year in April! We all sit around hoping for real cold springs, as if we have real cold and late springs, the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico do not get as warm that year, and if they are not as warm as normal, we will get fewer hurricanes.
Our weather in the Southeastern United States is certainly changiing. A few years ago (when I ws younger) we got our frist snow in November, our last one in late March; but they could be 18or 20 inch snows.
We have not had a winter for the pasr five years. It snowed two days here in the Valley (about and inch each time and about a month apart) and it was gone the next day. It was cold, however. Got down to low 40's in the daytime and low 20's at night.
Then instead of Spring . . . one day we bounced into Summer, with high 80's low 90's for daytime and high 60's to low 70's at night. After a couple of weeks of this we had a freeze (two days) which killed all our flowering plants. So, my azalias (and I have over a hundred) did not bloom, nor iris, nor tulips, and wild things, like bloodroot, just failed to come up.
However, it is warm . . . and this old bod tolerates the warmth better than the cold.
[spoiler] Since starting this topic in April our part of Downunder had some winter rain, well at least it grew the weed effectively but drought returned too soon and crops are seriously threatened. After some years of verything chrivelling up we have replumbed our rainwater tank to serve a small part of garden through a timer, and switched the house to public water, hard as nails. Even with that we catch the cold draw off in buckets and pour it into a small tank to fill watering cans to add fertiliser. We catch our grey; laundry water in a small tank on which we have plastic continers of and to filter out impuities as well as choosing detergent carefully, [it takes the day to catch and slowly pump back the overflow. this can be pumped to long hose with a watering fork on the end and is occasionally dribbled on some but not all flower beds, but mostly under the cumquat tree from which I am about to make marmalade. This is all very labour intensive for octogenarians. Too late now to save the crops, prices will rise. Our lettuces, broccoli and parsley are not enough to sustain us
