News The Rain and Floods

[Shinboner1]

 

[Val Keating]

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The Anglers

 

[Hojuman]

The Anglers

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Aptly named.

 

[koshari]

Aptly named.

they were expecting it.... silly place for a building.

 

[Val Keating]

they were expecting it.... silly place for a building.

Good for an afternoon beer though.

 

[Tas]

Tas, can’t agree that the big polluters are doing nothing. You talking China and India here? Or Alcoa / mining?

China, India, USA and Africa are the four main polluters and three of those are considered developing economies and not required to cut CO2 pollution levels, China is putting online a ridiculous amount of coal fired power plants, far more than they need so by the time they are required to make reductions, they will be able to cut surplus reactors down without harming their economy. This gaming of the system is disingenuous at best and we have places like Solomon Islands bitching at us because of sea level rise and also getting into bed with China, the worst polluters in every sense, not just CO2.

Having been on both sides of this, as a serious polluter (coal/gas physical trading) and later as a Right-wing Greeny where I went and sold solutions to my old clients (renewable energy/BESS/micro grids) and developed solar farms, I can see how someone who theoretically knew what they were talking about, but wasn’t at the front line, could make that error.

Companies are being forced into Solar and Battery solutions at a remarkable rate because at current prices (31c p/kWh in 2022 and 2023), with very little relief and prices likely to remain above 12c all the way to 2026. Most big businesses will have paid off the Solar (not battery)investment prior to that.

Companies are whores, they will do whatever is in the best interest of their bottom line. The vast majority of private funding for renewables is from the fossil fuel industry, they know all our fossil fuels has an end date, when those reserves are depleted, renewables are the ultimate future.

I think there has been some encouraging technological developments, particularly to battery technology, research this year of different types of batteries, some that don't use lithium and have up to 3x the capacity, also development of faster charging technology, they could fully charge an EV in 10 minutes. Better quality solar panel technology, this type of renewable technology requires a lot of funding, but it also requires time. Whatever exists now is just the starting point, where it ends up will be radically different.

I mean, we can generate far more energy from solar than all combined fossil fuels, the problem has been "real cost" and storage. Storage is critical with intermittent energy. Old solar panels are a bit of an environmental nightmare, new panels are meant to be 90%+ recyclable. We just haven't factored the cost of recycling into the system yet.

I agree with your sentiment, in that I’m not sure it’s fixable, but * we kinda have to try for our kids - don’t we?

Everything is fixable, it comes down to how much time, effort and money we focus into problems. For species that have been snuffed out of existence, it will be too little, too late, but the focus should always be the future.

Reneweconomy is a good website to keep track of live energy generation mix if you are wondering how we are tracking. Most days, contrary to what you hear, we are about 40% which is a good start.

But forget Net Zero, we will be Net -500 at some point, possibly -800 —> whether that helps?

I watched a documentary on the North-West Passage, that is some scary s**t - soon we won’t even need the Panama Canal to transport goods from the Pacific to the Atlantic.

Even if we eliminate all man made CO2, the glaciers will eventually melt, they have been melting before mankind even sprouted, we realistically wouldn't have even existed without that melting process, life is fragile but life also adapts. We built our civilisation at the edge of the water, but where that edge has been has never been a static point. We have this mindset that the planet is something that is static because we have been here for a tiny fragment of it's history. The reality is that the glaciers have made the planet cooler, but more mild in terms of the weather.

Once we can harness absurd amounts of energy it will radically change humanity, it will give us the capacity to completely alter things like temperature of the water, the weather, etc. We will get there eventually, we just have to make every effort to live in equilibrium with the planet and stop making it worse.

 

[DEVO]

I hope everyone is okay.

I checked about two dozen locations on the BOM and the highest daily rainfall total I saw was just over 75mm, and the months prior at those locales were relatively dry. Compared to what NSW and Queensland have gone through this year it doesn't look as damaging.

For those who did suffer damage from the storms, I hope you get back on feet as soon as possible

 

[ferball]

I know mate. It’s real. Though it’s just interesting to watch the each far end of the spectrum when it comes to stuff like this, the best thing is 99% of them don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.

We've lost around 8,000 homes to climate disasters in the last three years on the East Coast, give or take a bit. Some are repaired and people move back but not all of them. But cos of covid we've had other stuff to talk about. Otherwise it would have been big news.

I'm moving my family to Tassie some time next year (even tho the North just got smashed) and that's part of the reason. The lows we get up here have started to rotate over the last 10 years. Its only a matter of time now (and a degree or two hotter ocean temp) before they start forming proper cyclones over Brisneyland.

 

[koshari]

Good for an afternoon beer though.

seldom find bad places for said refreshments, but yes iam sure in the direr periods its quite pleasant, looks like its handy to walking / cycling trails which is a bonus, that was one if the things i loved about the UK, all those pubs on the canal tow trails, had a modest mountain bike i kept at helens parents when they were still in west midlands and on may a day when the wife went shopping i would ride the tow trails stopping off at various waterway pubs.

just hope that the lower story is setup to be easy to hose out and return to service.

"function spaces available" for scuba groups maybe?

 

[Hojuman]

We've lost around 8,000 homes to climate disasters in the last three years on the East Coast, give or take a bit. Some are repaired and people move back but not all of them. But cos of covid we've had other stuff to talk about. Otherwise it would have been big news.

I'm moving my family to Tassie some time next year (even tho the North just got smashed) and that's part of the reason. The lows we get up here have started to rotate over the last 10 years. Its only a matter of time now (and a degree or two hotter ocean temp) before they start forming proper cyclones over Brisneyland.

Where in Tassie Ferb's ? Mrs H.keen to retire down there.

 

[Val Keating]

seldom find bad places for said refreshemnts, but yes iam sure in the direr periods its quite plesent, looks like its handy to walking / cycling trails which is a bonus, that was one if the things i loved about the UK, all those pubs on the canal tow trails, had a modest mountain bike i kept at helens paretns when they were still in west midlands and on may a day when the wife went shopping i would ride the tow trails stopping off at various waterway pubs.

just hope that the lower story is setup to be easy to hose out and return to service.

It’s been been going down hill for a while now tbh.

 

[koshari]

Where in Tassie Ferb's ? Mrs H.keen to retire down there.

you blokes might have to keep your tassie relocation chat on PMs in case caro and corn begin lurking.

 

[ferball]

People are acting like the glaciers have melted and s**t is going down, it is a bit early to be building your Ark.

Glaciers have melted and s**t is going down. How much time do you spend outside?

We have been hit by three consecutive La Ninas, the warmer El Nino is something we more commonly are hit by, the cooler La Nina causes more rainfall, long stretches of El Ninos makes droughts more common, the La Ninas cause saturation, like our dams here are all between 95-100%, they let out as much water as they can without contributing to flooding, our catchments are full, saturated, this leaves nowhere for the rain to go but to flood the lowest points where rivers form.

Yes I know how the climate works. Why don't you analyse the amount of precipitation over the last 50 years and the changes as well as the changes in flood height this century. Its been one record after another in many parts of the country.

Normally we get mild La Ninas and El Ninos, but they vary in intensity. They think we will get more extreme intensities as the planet gets warmer. There is some interesting research on it... https://research.noaa.gov/article/A...ure-of-ENSO-under-influence-of-climate-change

Yeah I read this sort of s**t 30 years ago and the predictions that were made have happened.

And yet we haven't had a severe fire season since the last one, even though we still have plenty of forest land that was untouched by the last disaster. If we take more effort to clear the fuel, we wont get as extreme events.

Two - three years ago. Remember when severe fire seasons came every decade or two and didn't cause humungous losses in multiple states. you should cos you're old enough. We are unable to effectively "clean the fuel". Pre Invasion fire management was one of the major drivers of indigenous culture. Failure to manage fuel loads could be a cause for war between neighbours. If its properly managed we shouldn't even have crown fires any more. Modern forms of fuel reduction usually make the problems worse. Wytalibah was wiped out less than three years ago. It was one place where fuel reduction was an ongoing, well managed (or so we thought) process. It was destroyed within a few months of its last hazard reduction burning.

There are a lot of factors involved and our actions play a big role, there wasn't any ice on this planet before humans, it isn't the natural state of the planet, it is too close to the sun to have permanent ice, we have glaciers because the planet went through a cataclysmic event (without humans being involved) and the ice is melting and will one day vanish regardless if we are here or not. We are speeding up that process.

How long do you think humans have been here? As your graph shows ice has been on the planet for about a third of the last 500 million years. Humans evolved during the last ice age, after 1.5 - 2 million years of cooling. We are dependent on a planet with ice caps and its not a sure thing we can survive on one without them. Its certainly not a sure thing that our modern infrastructure can. I'd bet it can't.

I mean, the planet hasn't even warmed 1 degree since the 1900, if you think we are experiencing manifest changes due to the climate with such a small change it is a bit nutty.

We are seeing manifest changes. They probably wouldn't matter so much if we weren't so dependent on fragile infrastructure and leveraged systems. The weather/climate is a dynamic system. Small inputs into dynamic systems can cause major changes in output in areas because those systems don't distribute energy evenly, they distribute it unevenly. So the average temperature may increase a small amount but the fluctuations (ie extreme events) can vary wildly. It doesn't take alot of warming to remove nearly 10,000 homes from the East Coast. As we've seen in the lst three years.

Just how long do you think humans have been around for?

there wasn't any ice on this planet before humans - Tas upthread.

I mean, it is going to get a lot hotter and the animal life survived fine without biblical floods on a daily basis. We would have to devise some kind of global air conditioner to be able to even slow down the warming, let alone stop it. I think it is important we stop making the problem worse, but the only thing we can control is which generation is going to have to deal with it.

We're already dealing with it.

Where I live over the last 15 years we've had four so called "one in a thousand year" floods and a bunch of record breaking fire seasons that got exponentially worse until very recently when records were broken smashed to pieces and places burned that hadn't for thousands of years. People already die because of climate change, economies and agriculture are already being impacted by it. Its not going to stop and we have * all control over which generation gets to experience it because we already are.

 

[ferball]

The Anglers

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That is mental. I used to be around the corner from there.

I saw footage today of the bridge. We used to jump off it in front of the pub. The water was about a metre below the bridge.

 

[ferball]

they were expecting it.... silly place for a building.

Its a great place for a pub most of the time. But its flooded before too. In the 80s.

 

[ferball]

Where in Tassie Ferb's ? Mrs H.keen to retire down there.

Beaconsfield. Where the gold mine is. I have a house there. My mum and nan were born in it so i've always wanted my daughters to live there for a little while at least. And if covid hadn't happened we might have moved by now. I want to be there before the eldest girl starts high school, which is 2024.

Next year for footy season hopefully. Might be the only good thing about games in Hobart...

 

[ferball]

You must have copped it more than Wbool. Think we've had about 50 ml here.

is that alot down there? Honestly 50mm isn't unusual here. 350 in 24 hours is, but it happens.

 

[ferball]

Might have to leave here soon.
******ing basin and street flooding.
Absolutely cactus.

Hey all the best mate. Good luck.

 

[Usayed Givashe]

is that alot down there? Honestly 50mm isn't unusual here. 350 in 24 hours is, but it happens.

Can confirm.

I’ve seen 50mm in an hour up your way.

Greenest part of Australia.

 

[ferball]

I reckon the power goes out soon.

You still got power?

You okay generally?

 

[ferball]

Can confirm.

I’ve seen 50mm in an hour up your way.

Greenest part of Australia.

We had 600mm plus in about two hours when Debbie hit back in 2017. That was *en insane. Probably had similar back in Feb this year. We were cut off for a few days. Really serious land slippage everywhere too. In some places there were sandstone cliffs formed. That particular sandstone hadn't seen light or air/water for 140 million years (ie since it was formed.) The rain is stuipid. No one has ever seen anything like it. Even 80 year old + people, who've been dead for a decade or more wouldn't have seen anything like it considering what they thought of the 2008 flood.

Its so green, (in more ways than one. ) There is a point on the road from Tenterfield to Casino where you suddenly hit that green and its a shock to the system. Especially if you've driven from Melbourne and the rest of the South east is in drought.

 

[Waussie]

Take care all you Vic's and NSWelshmen, looking pretty horrific over there.

 

[koshari]

Rain being replaced by wind now, not a great day for the Moe cup, lucky we have poppy keeping an eye on proceedings.

 

[rippersnipper]

My old man's uncle stayed to defend his property with a couple of blokes in Carisbrook and that seems to have worked out but haven't heard anything since this morn; me grandad lives near a creek in Castlemaine which also copped it but seems to have escaped the worst of it, and my uncle's estate was cut off in Marong but not actually threatened so they're just awaiting it out but can't go anywhere. Seems like it's all okay so far though thankfully.

 

[Heaps of fun]

You still got power?

You okay generally?

Power stayed on. Funny because we've lost it from much smaller storms several times over the last couple of years. I'm all good but I don't know about the brushcutter and some other stuff in the garage. Went down to Melbourne today by driving backroads I've never used before. Saw the Maribyrnong, it's completely ****ed, flooded on both sides where the trains to North Melbourne cross. I'd never seen flooding that bad before there.