27 April 2008

Snow snow! (maybe)

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Well, looks like winter’s beginning to well and truly dig its heels in…(if you couldn’t already tell after today) Below is a road weather alert issued by BOM at 4:18 today. Looks like it’s time to crack the gloves and scarves out again. Sigh.. But then again – if it’s this cold now, looks like it may be a good ski season! (The only thing that makes it worth bearing this crap weather!)

ACT ROAD WEATHER ALERT
Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology
ACT
Issued at 1618 on Sunday the 27th of April 2008
Motorists are advised of slippery conditions on wet roads with significantly
reduced visibility at times. Snow may settle to 900 metres early Monday morning.
Source: http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/wrap_fwo.pl?IDN38200.txt

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Absent Diane10:49 am 02 May 08

The name plankton is derived from the Greek word ???????? (“planktos”), meaning “wanderer” or “drifter”.[1] While some forms of plankton are capable of independent movement and can swim up to several hundreds of meters vertically in a single day (a behavior called diel vertical migration), their horizontal position is primarily determined by currents in the body of water they inhabit. By definition, organisms classified as plankton are unable to resist ocean currents. This is in contrast to nekton organisms that can swim against the ambient flow of the water environment and control their position (e.g. squid, fish, and marine mammals).

Yay! An on topic post! Let’s hope it keeps going hey?

neanderthalsis10:26 am 01 May 08

I flew back in from Melb yesterday afternoon and there was a LOT of snow on them there hills.

In a way I kind of miss the acid rain hype, life was so much simpler in those days.

Anybody still not believing in Climate Change might want to go talk to the inuit people. Their complaint about CC is they keep falling through the melting snow and dying.

global warming, global schmorming – global starvation is a sooner threat, so if you don’t eat your greens they’ll have to send them to the starving africans and no ice cream…

and by the way, can we have everyone stop pointing at global warming when we get one hot/cold/severely rainy/etc day, please? – GW is a subtle yet inevitable shift in mean temperatures over larger tracts of time, so not to be noticed on a day to day basis. the change in the weather we’re seeing in this thread’s genesis is just called ‘seasons’…

barking toad10:00 am 30 Apr 08

Gorebull warmening hit us again this morning despite my pyromania last night.

And for those kiddies who wish to indulge egos with carbon off-sets, go here and get as much smug as you like – for free! http://freecarbonoffsets.com/home.do

load up though ‘cos a polar bear will cark it whenever you print a certificate

Gungahlin Al8:42 am 30 Apr 08

Crikey, I guess this is why I didn’t read the rest of this thread…people get themselves so het up on this site sometimes.

Spideydog – if you can point to these companies, do so, because they are ripping people off. There are accreditation processes for legitimate offsetting companies, but no national scheme for accreditation which blurs the entire market:

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/business/items/200705/s1933075.htm

Offsetting misses the bloody point anyway. Use less and you save both money and the environment.

Yes you are right, and I’m not arguing against that. My point was that some are exploiting “global warming” to make money from nothing (not doing anything for the environment at all) at the expense of mums, dads and families that are doing it hard, but do want to do thier bit as well.

Yes but reform has to start somewhere. You don’t get the perfect solution first off.

But doing nothing is not the answer either.

I can tell you something for sure about “global warming” It’s a good excuse for governments and private companies to guilt trip everybody into paying more for everything “we are protecting you from yourselves…” We are going to charge you extra taxes/services because….well… it’s saving the planet.

Pfft..lol – there may be some genuine organisations out there, but a lot of it, is a load of BS for them to make an easy extra buck, because they know it wont face opposition from the general public thats been brain washed into thinking they are doing good for the environment.

CanberraResident5:54 pm 29 Apr 08

dalryk said :

I have a theory that every time a retard post is made on RA, baby jesus cries causing it to rain. Therefore, to finally break the drought, I propose that further conversation along the lines of the above be entered into.

Go to it people!!!!!!

HHmm. And you read my “retard” post because you were genuinely concerned about my mental state?

OR, were you just sitting there playing with your marballs bored out of your particlesque mind?

Once again you try to dodge the issue – you insert that particular piece of “humour” into everything weather or science-related and you’re not the only one. I’m calling out everyone around here who does that. In effect, you are propagandising, and it’s my right to point it out.

Don’t like my calling you on it, don’t read it. I’m not being precious, I’m pointing out what I think about your behaviour.

Fair call, but my original comment was hijacked, considering it was an insignificant joke.

Except that you and Toad and others introduce that “joke” (which is lame and unfunny and has been done to death) into any thread that is in any way science-related. You mock the subject which in turn undermines it. That was my entire objection.

Stop inserting your unfunny joke into every science-related topic and I will stop objecting to it.

Absent Diane said:

Absent Diane said :

I personally believe that the bigger issue is overpopulation – I think that has a greater impact on the environment (resources aren’t unlimited, equilibrium etc etc) and that global warming (if it is true) is a symptom of that.

Yep. Totally agree. And this, and the last government desperately urge people to breed more and give them our taxes to do it, rather than concentrating on real solutions to a huge and growing problem. It’s madness.

Gungahlin Al3:54 pm 29 Apr 08

Well Thumper, I didn’t think much of it was relevant to the lovely view up on the hills, so what was one or two more from me going to hurt? 🙂

And of actual relevance to the original topic, the snow I can see has almost completely melted over the course of today. Guess my tiddly winks won’t get to go visit it this weekend…

I have a theory that every time a retard post is made on RA, baby jesus cries causing it to rain. Therefore, to finally break the drought, I propose that further conversation along the lines of the above be entered into.

Go to it people!!!!!!

CanberraResident2:12 pm 29 Apr 08

Yep, we should calm down. All this heated argument can’t be goo….

Can’t be goo …? Can’t be good? Can’t be gooddd? Can’t be gooDDD!!!

CanberraResident2:06 pm 29 Apr 08

Isn’t this just luverly, and quite typical of Canberrans I might add. We get a nice little thread about “Snow, Snow”, starting with “Well, looks like winter’s beginning to well and truly dig its heels in”, and what happens?

It turns into an all out debate about climate change, the ice age, hypotheses, theories, peak oil, pollution, resources, scientfic methods, global warming, more scientific yadda yadda, hippies, Debbie Does Dallas, consequences of current inactions, magnetic poles, independent replication, sustained considerable scrutiny, observed facts, yadda, yadda, yadda.

You can’t say debate isn’t alive and well in this little humble abode we call Canberra.

Now, back to basics:

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire,
Jack Frost nipping on your nose,
Canberra folks do never tire,
And folks dress up like Eskimos.

Absent Diane2:02 pm 29 Apr 08

c’mon Thumper get a grip mate – if you mock it.. it will only make it worse – don’t you know that climate change feeds on negative energy.

Gungahlin Al1:58 pm 29 Apr 08

Yeah we’ll have a reversal of the magnetic poles too Thumper. We’re overdue by about 400,000 years if I recall correctly. So that should be happening any time soon now – next 500,000 years for sure…

Gungahlin Al1:42 pm 29 Apr 08

IGB: actually in scientific terms, that’s a hypothesis. And after repeat and independent replication of testing, it comes accepted as a theory. Although popular media has confused the meaning of theory, the scientific community has no such confusion on the scientific method.

*rolleyes*

I am not a hippy. I am serious about climate change because people like Thumper and Toad mock it constantly in just about every topic as a “joke”. To some of us who will still be alive in 50 years, it is no “joke”, because we will be dealing with the consequences of current inaction.

Thumper, refer to ingeegoodbee’s post. I know what a theory is. Let’s see – tens of thousands of studies from across the globe all point to the same thing to the point where it is now undisputed in the mainstream (ie. non-wacko, non-lobbyist or hired-gun) scientific community. I’ll call that a “proven theory”.

You want to talk about baseline data, let’s look at atmospheric concentration of GHGs for a start. CO2 up 35%, CH4 (6 times more powerful a GHG than CO2) up 70%, other powerful GHGs up hundreds of % since the 1800s. That humans have changed the composition of the atmosphere is indisputable. It is measured fact. Very simply, change the composition of a closed system and you change its equilibrium. The geological record tells us that changes in GHG concentration alter the planet’s temperature (read climatologists on this as it is a complex subject – realclimate.org addresses it well). Observations at the tops of mountains (ie. glaciers/tree lines/etc) and at the poles (melting rates) tell us that warming is already occurring 10-100x faster than at any time in the geological record. And I could go on and on, but what’s the point?

I don’t know why I bother debating people like you on this as it is quite clear that no level of evidence would convince you to change your mind. You prefer a head in the sand approach. That way, you don’t have to act, just the way you like it.

Oh, and climate change is only one of a myriad of environmental problems that will affect our everyday lives this century – peakoil, other non-renewable resource depletion, toxic pollution, disappearing fisheries, soil degradation, etc etc. All related to overpopulation and hyper-consumption. No-one wants to know though, because that would mean taking some responsibility.

CanberraResident12:18 pm 29 Apr 08

Ingeegoodbee said :

AD, I’ll type slowly this time so it should be easier for you to grasp – in scientific terms a ‘theory’ is an attempt to explain a number of observed ‘facts’ that appear related and it is an attempt to explain the relationship between those facts.

The voracity of any theory depends upon the extent to which it continues to explain the relationship between those facts in the face of new information or alternate explanations for the relationship between those observed facts. When a theory has been able to sustain considerable scrutiny, over an extended period the scientific community may accept the substance of that theory as irrefutable – at which pont it may become a ‘law’

This is a classic!!!! You get a gold star for English. If I overheard this in a social situation, I’d think “wow, I wish I could speak like that !@#$%^&* !

Do you give lessons?

I hope that new fangled gas-turbine super heater in Hume(?) takes a bit of the edge off Winters in Canberra once it is commissioned!

Absent Diane12:08 pm 29 Apr 08

CanberraResident – wtf is a rats pooper scooper. And once again learn to read buddy!

Absent Diane12:06 pm 29 Apr 08

I don’t disagree with you. I never did. You are arguing over semantics.

Ingeegoodbee11:58 am 29 Apr 08

AD, I’ll type slowly this time so it should be easier for you to grasp – in scientific terms a ‘theory’ is an attempt to explain a number of observed ‘facts’ that appear related and it is an attempt to explain the relationship between those facts.

The voracity of any theory depends upon the extent to which it continues to explain the relationship between those facts in the face of new information or alternate explanations for the relationship between those observed facts. When a theory has been able to sustain considerable scrutiny, over an extended period the scientific community may accept the substance of that theory as irrefutable – at which pont it may become a ‘law’

Absent Diane11:58 am 29 Apr 08

We also should remember that every generation of humans as far as we know have been prone to the thought that their generation will be the last!

Life is certainly more exciting with the thought of impending doom!!

CanberraResident11:56 am 29 Apr 08

Absent Diane said :

hate to state the obvious it but it is called a sense of humour.

Will you be laughing when your grandkids, great-grandkids, and great-great-grand-kids are crying? I suspect you’ll be gone long before then, so you musn’t give a rats pooper scooper.

Mælinar said :

DDD is also Debbie Does Dallas.

I’ve said too much…

As for you, to link a comment I made about my kids doona with your pornographic comment above, just goes to show you find all sorts on this site …

OH! It was a joke was it? Jeez. It caught me by surprise. You see, it’s such a humourless site … that when someone actually tries to crack a joke, it catches me off guard … so sorry …

Gungahlin Al11:48 am 29 Apr 08

Ant: apologies for my assumption. Carry on…

Absent Diane11:45 am 29 Apr 08

rapidally!?!? rapidly..whoops

Absent Diane11:44 am 29 Apr 08

There is no baseline data for human damage however the rapid rate at which it is happening is from what I have heard is unprecedented. Which does lead us to a fairly logical conclusion.

However all things said and done it is best to maintain a balanced standpoint. The world does evolve (evolution is a fact not a theory, much like gravity which is a fact!!).. so it may be change coupled with human side affects. It is in my opinion best to err on the side of safety. Economically it is better to be environmentally friendly. So there is no reason to not be environmentally friendly. But in the same sense be realistic, don’t panic and don’t jump to silly conclusions ie the queanbeyan donkeywoman is rapidally becoming extinct due to GW.

I personally believe that the bigger issue is overpopulation – I think that has a greater impact on the environment (resources aren’t unlimited, equilibrium etc etc) and that global warming (if it is true) is a symptom of that.

barking toad11:22 am 29 Apr 08

Thumper, the global warming hippies (aka as climate change hippies if it’s cold) don’t have a sense of humour because they are all Chicken Littles and want to preach doom and gloom.

I’ve been doing my bit for the cause to get back to warming by throwing more logs on the fire for the last few nights, increasing my carbon footprint to stop the next ice age.

The shrieking alarmists can never explain what the exact global temperature is meant to be and who will have the job of setting the global thermostat. Maybe prophet Al can let them know.

Hippies are funny.

Ingeegoodbee11:17 am 29 Apr 08

Thumper – In scientific terms a ‘theory’ essentially brings together a number of observed facts that appear related and is an attempt to explain the relationship between those facts.

Gravity and electricity are both theories – you can test the facts associated with these theories by jumping off a cliff or jamming a knife into a power point ….

Woody Mann-Caruso11:09 am 29 Apr 08

When scientists say ‘theory’, they don’t mean what you mean when you say ‘theory’. As for baseline data, we’ve got about 740,000 years from EPICA – enough to cover the last eight glacial cycles.

And Google ‘elvis is alive’. It’s interesting reading, from both perspectives.

Gunghalin Al said

Gungahlin Al said :

So Ant, you could pump out big bickies each year for heating or you could spend $1500 for insultation…
And BTW, ACT Govt has funding available to help you ditch the wood burner for something cleaner.

Ah, the complacent joys of the suburban-dweller! Despite paying more in rates than you, I don’t actually get any services. My house is actually insulated well above the building standard, so provided it’s sunny, it’s quite warm for quite a while. If it’s not sunny, then being insulated is useless if there’s no heat source.

I’m not on a gas pipeline (or in fact any kind of pipeline). Teh ACT gov’t isn’t going to give me any money for anything, and without the wood heater, I’ve got no options.

Country Energy’s rural residential power rates are somewhat above those paid in the cities and towns, although I imagine at some point they’ll have to start increasing the city rates.

DDD is also Debbie Does Dallas.

I’ve said too much…

Gungahlin Al10:06 am 29 Apr 08

So Ant, you could pump out big bickies each year for heating or you could spend $1500 for insultation…
And BTW, ACT Govt has funding available to help you ditch the wood burner for something cleaner.

My new 6-star house isn’t even occupied yet, and even after tradies have been in and out of it all day, it was quite comfortable at 7pm last night. Can’t wait to see what it will be like with once we are in there.

And with crystal clear views out the office window to the Brindys today, the snow looks great – hope it lasts to the weekend so the kids can have some fun.

Absent Diane9:39 am 29 Apr 08

hate to state the obvious it but it is called a sense of humour.

CanberraResident9:30 am 29 Apr 08

Absent Diane said :

Stop saving our world you hippies, it’s getting cold!>/b>

hahaha love it!!

You might “love it” AMD but your grandchildren won’t.

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy9:09 am 29 Apr 08

With the flick of a switch my high efficiency ducted gas heating warms my home to a pleasant 21 degrees. Paying for extra insulation and high efficiency heating hurt a bit when I built the house, but when the cold snap comes… ahhh…

Absent Diane8:29 am 29 Apr 08

Stop saving our world you hippies, it’s getting cold!>/b>

hahaha love it!!

CanberraResident11:16 pm 28 Apr 08

… nothing like a good old fashioned hot water bottle to keep the ACTEWAGL bill waaaaay down …

The Mrs has pink. Mine’s blue.
Kid’s are too young so they get the DDD (duck down doona).

Too much information? Ok.

I blame global warming.

Yeah, me too. My house is freezing. My only heater is a wood burning thing and by the time I get home, there’s no point struggling around with it. I am sitting here puffing out vapour, and warming my fingers under the laptop!

It’s going to warm back up to the high teens this week, the sun’s still highish in the sky. Poor car was not happy about starting this morning.

The ANZAC day cold snap was a bit sudden this year.

I am soooo not ready to be this cold.

I don’t, It means I have to stand out in the cold at 3am … 🙁

Thumper, please STFU about global warming. Ooooo, it was a cold day, therefore the theory proven by thousands of scientists independently must be wrong! C’mon, pal, seriously, you’ve already admitted that you haven’t read the science and don’t know what you are talking about, so give it a break. But, no, you know more than all of the world’s great universities and scientific institutions. Well done on that. *rolleyes*

Personally, I love winter, bring it on.

CanberraResident7:15 pm 28 Apr 08

… even gave them old ear muffs a bit of a dust down today, for my daily trip to the mailbox … that was right before my better half misplaced her fluffy slippers … hang on a minute !@#$%^&*

..and Mt Taylor is 854m.

I can see snow on the brindies from my window.

Tthe highest point in the ACT Metro (Canberra City) is the peak of Mount Majura, at 888m (Mt Ainslie is 843m).
Neither of these will see snow, even when they say “Snow down to 800m”.

Highest point in the ACT is the summit of Mt Bimberi (1840m), where you can still find snow into late October.

Yep, quite a widespread covering on the Brindies, and also the Tidbinbillas. there’s some hills to the south that had a particularly good covering.

It rarely snows on the mountains in the city these days, due to the temperature inversion over Canberra (ie it’s too warm). Cities generate a lot of heat.

There’s often claims taht early snowfalls mean a good ski season but in recent years, it’s tended to result in the exact opposite. So hopefully it won’t be the case this winter.

Hah! you obviously havn’t looked at the brindabella’s today…..snow everywhere

Oh.. No snow by the looks of it after all. My friend did just text me though and tell me she could see a light dusting somewhere in the mountains. Is this right? Can’t see them.

green_frogs_go_pop7:36 am 28 Apr 08

i cant see snow.

and i can see the brindabellas!!

Either the snow comes and lands at my front door or it didn’t happen.

Right on time – ANZAC long weekend. Won’t warm up now until Rememberance Day.

Thumper: Didn’t you get the memo? We’re now approaching an ice age.

And it’s still all our fault.

Ah man! It appears the highest point in canberra is mount Majura at somewhere around the higher regions of 800-900m – hopefully we actually get it down that low! If not, it’ll be nice to wake up to a dusting over the hills : )

let it snow
let it snow
let it snow

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