Climate Change (fair discussion)

[Dweller_Benthos]

Do you guys remember "spikes?" Like, car tyres with metal pins sticking out so you could get some grip on ice and snow? They're forbidden now.

Absolutely, I have them on my car right now. It would be nearly impossible to drive around here in the winter without them. The snow plows do get the roads cleared eventually, but usually not when I need to be driving. Many times I have followed someone driving very slowly in slippery conditions only to have them turn sideways in the road because of inadequate winter tires. Once they run off the road into the snowbank, I can then get by them and continue driving as the studded tires I have (made in Finland, I figure they know something about snow) are excellent and pretty aggressive. I very rarely have an issue driving in the winter. It's quite common to hear a car passing by or pull up at the gas station and hear the distinct sound of studded tires. They may cause some slight wear and tear on the roads, but not nearly as much as the snow plows do, I often find pieces of the road asphalt dug up by the plow and tossed into my driveway (where my snow blower then picks it up and tosses it into the woods, after spending a few seconds loudly being banged around the inner workings of the machine) or onto my front lawn where they hide in the grass once the snow melts and I hit them with the lawn mower.

Here's what they look like https://www.nokiantires.com/tires/passenger-car/studded-tires/ I don't recall if I have the 7 or 8 model, but they are pretty similar.

[PZ]

Unfortunately in my area the studs are wearing wagon wheel like ruts in the asphalt because we do not fix the roads for long time periods. When you drive in the ruts, it feels like you are driving on a cobblestone road the noise and vibration are so great.  Move out of the ruts close to the white painted lines or the right edge of the road and the asphalt is still perfect - and the road feel smooth - naturally I drive at the side extremes 

I use studless winter tires - Michelin Ice, and have never had any problems on the road in winter, and I live on a hill with steep roads.  However, I have these on a Honda Mugen SI, which is low to the road, so if the snow is deep I'll have problems,  In these instances studded tires would not help me anyway.

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[Art Blade]

yep, those studded tyres (hehe, here we use yet again an English word "spikes" that isn't the English term for it..) look like those that I remember. We do have "winter tyres" but never studded. Maybe it's regional, so maybe in the mountain region they're allowed to use those, but as far as I know they're not allowed anymore over here.

[BinnZ]

Well if you plan on investing one trillion dollars on your infrastructure I bet you want to get rid of any studs 

[Art Blade]

 

[fragger]

Driving in snow or on ice is not something I ever have to worry about

I enjoyed your earlier post BinnZ I agree with you that the loss of animal habitats and large areas of deforestation are factors which often take a back seat to the more common themes of greenhouse-gas emission and general pollution in most climate change debates. I'd also like to elaborate on the subject of introduced species which you mentioned, and how that can affect climate, because I believe that here in my country there is a very glaring example of that very thing.

Which is this: In 1824, one Thomas Austin, a British settler, arranged to have 24 rabbits shipped out to Australia, which he then planned to let loose in the wild. His reasons for doing this were twofold: firstly, he wanted to see some more familiar form of life scampering out onto the lawn instead of those frightfully alien kangaroos and emus; secondly, he wanted to be able to host shooting parties so he and his trigger-happy chums could blast said cute little bunny-rabbits off the lawn and back into the bush again. So once the coneys arrived, good old Tom let them loose in the bush - and never saw them again. Nor did anyone else, until their numbers exploded over the ensuing years to the point that people started seeing way more of them than they wanted to. Apart from the havoc wreaked upon farmers' crops by these little nibblers, they have also devoured most of the native grasses which held what little topsoil there was in this country in place. This topsoil has steadily been drying out blowing away to sea ever since (which can sometimes even show up in satellite photos, and in the right conditions can blanket he eastern coast in severe dust storms). As a result, the loss of grasses and the baking orange dust which gets left behind once the topsoil blows away has resulted in a drier and hotter climate.

As a result of all this, Thomas Austin's name is pretty well mud in this country nowadays. Other misguided immigrants have introduced blackberries, cane toads, prickly pear and Indian Myna birds, to name but a few other species which have had deleterious effects on this country's ecosystems and, less directly, its climate.

This continent is essentially low and flat, with little in the way of large mountain ranges and no major inland bodies of water to help moderate the interior heat build-up. With the loss of what native grass there once was, there is now even less to help cool things down inland. Australia is actually hotter and drier now than it was before Europeans and other settlers arrived and brought their animals with them - not just rabbits but dogs, cats, and even foxes. Foxes were introduced so that the hoity-toity set from England could continue to hold their beloved fox-hunts. This didn't w0#k very well though because unlike England with its quiltwork of bordered fields, hedgerows and fences to help contain the foxes, the little blighters in Oz simply beelined into a zillion square miles of dense, rugged bushland where the toffs on horseback couldn't possibly follow. Since then, foxes too have become a major source of pain for farmers and indigenous life-forms.

In Australia, losses of habitat for koalas due to deforestation appear to be causing a steady decline in their population (introduced predators have played their part here as well). Some studies put the estimated national number of surviving koalas at as little as 80,000, compared to the millions which once existed, and these numbers seem to be decreasing. Admittedly, great numbers of them were shot for their fur from the late 1800s into the early 1900s, but even though that practice ended almost a century ago, koala numbers are still dropping. Domestic animals turned feral are another contributing factor, especially cats. Once-domestic cats that go feral have been shown to gradually increase in size over subsequent generations, to the point where feral cats have been observed to be almost twice the size of their domestic progenitors (cats have been going feral since colonial days, so they've had a good stretch of time to evo up). A cat that size is capable of killing a koala, although it wouldn't be a picnic for the cat - koalas have wickedly sharp claws and can deliver a pretty good slash if sufficiently motivated, and they have a very respectable grip strength.

Two mates and I once saw a large feline creature while driving back from a camping trip north of a town called Lithgow, which is due west of Sydney. We saw a big black cat about the size of a medium dog zip across the road in front of us, like a scaled-down puma, and disappear into the bush. There's been much debate over the so-called "Lithgow Panther" for quite a number of years, but my friends and I definitely saw what we saw. Whether it was an oversized feral cat we can't say, but it was big and definitely feline. I've often wondered if at some point in the past, some idiot has imported a couple of panthers and they have escaped and bred with feral-domestics. Or maybe feral cats have grown even bigger than we are aware of. Whatever it was we saw, it looked more than capable of killing a koala, and I wouldn't want to bump into it on a dark night in the bush...

This is typical of the debate, which has taken on an almost Bigfoot-like air of contentious enigma (incidentally, we have our own version of Bigfeet. We call them "Yowies", but that's another story):

Wild dogs too are a major nuisance, but they don't seem to do as well as cats do in the Aussie wild. Once-domestic dogs are not the natural-born hunters that even still-domestic cats are. Camels are another source of natural strife. Initially brought in for works projects in inland Australia, some escaped but most were simply turned loose once they were no longer needed. There are now an estimated 1 million-plus wild camels in the Outback, and they too are wreaking destruction upon native grasses as well as eating and trampling crops. We routinely round some of them up and export them to Saudi Arabia. Yep, we sell camels to Arabs, and that's no joke

[Art Blade]

crazy

[Dweller_Benthos]

Interesting, would be nice to find out what those creatures are, if they are just wild house cats or something more. From the video, it's hard to tell, but I would think it would take longer for a house cat to evolve into something that looks as large as what appears to be in those videos.

The same thing happened / is happening in the US in the southwest as far as losing grass land. Apparently, before cattle were brought there, large stretches of the southwest that is essentially desert now were grassland. Over grazing by introduced cattle put an end to that.

If this global warming would get on the ball and warm things up some more, I might not need those studded snow tires anymore!

[PZ]

If this global warming would get on the ball and warm things up some more, I might not need those studded snow tires anymore!

Cattle and sheep - sheep will eat until the grass is not able to regrow itself

[BinnZ]

I enjoyed your earlier post BinnZ

Thanx Fragger

Yep, we sell camels to Arabs, and that's no joke

You should try to get some brides in return

[fragger]

lol BInnZ

In my neck of the woods it's not common but not entirely rare either to see a man around my age or older accompanied by a much younger Asian woman. They are no doubt mail-order brides (or whatever they call them nowadays - "e-brides" I guess) from Indonesia or the Philippines. I think that's okay, they seem to make quite happy couples and it's beneficial to both parties. The man, usually a lonely farmer, gets companionship and the woman gets citizenship and a better quality of life in this country as well as a husband who will treat her properly (generally speaking, an older guy who is lonely and desperate for companionship isn't going to invest a boatload of time and money just to get some young thing to slap around). To be sure, some of these women are con artists who stay with their new hubbies just long enough to gain their citizenships and then run away, but that seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

That sort of thing is not for me, but if it makes people happy, I don't have a problem with it.

[Art Blade]

There are nasty people out there, fragger, I know it first hand from a customer who told me this: He keeps spending his holidays in those countries where women desperately try to get away from poverty, even if that means that they'd have to marry some old geezer from a wealthier country. So he first checks catalogues with pics of those women, arranges several meetings so he can see them in the flesh, arranges for the "best" of them to come over to his home.. and now the hard core part: sends them back after one month of "testing." He said he never meant to marry them ("Marry those? Are you nuts? I'm not crazy!") Apparently that catalogue guarantees something like "send her back if you're not satisfied." He was even proud of how clever he was. Disgusting! After he told me that story, I showed him out. You can imagine how desperate I was to get rid of that bastard.

[mandru]

One thing that kind of annoys me is the impassioned pleas begging that everyone take into consideration the plight of people who live in the zones that will be rendered inhospitable when the sea levels rise the 30 or so feet as if those affected are going to wake up one day and will find that they and their children have all drowned. 

In my way of thinking it's like if they don't recognize the peril over the projected 200 or 300 years it will take for that to happen and move to a higher elevation they kind of deserve it.

I don't see the big names who are making the most money from driving the fear of climate change making any kind of moves towards liquidating their oceanfront mansions while they still are marketable. 

[Art Blade]

I like that post of yours, mandru 

[PZ]

Absolutely - those that have ocean-front property and claim to believe in climate change deserve what they get. In fact, everyone that lives at ocean level deserves what they get in the long run.

I live high on a hill, and much of the country will be under water before my place suffers