Wet Stuff

Raindrop reflections

Hey its raining this morning, splattering warm large drops over my “The Weekend Australian” paper. Although we mock our daily discussions at home about the weather  I actually find Weather, its variances and impact on the earth and humanity, really fascinating! Whilst we have all enjoyed, as well as moaned about our unusually extended snowfall over the winter, it is incredible when you read about the weather over the last few weeks here in Australia.

The paper quotes:

“A summer of calamity without precedent has been compounded by poor planning decisions and unheeded warnings about the menace of extreme weather and natural disasters.”  These have included the enormity of the floods in Queensland, bushfires in Perth city, Cyclone Anthony and Cyclone Yasi in Queensland and near Brisbane.

Should we be surprised?

“The telescoping of so many natural disasters into a single summer has never before happened in settled history”!

Scientific opinion apparently continues to be divided over how much these disasters owe to the “La Nina” effect (learned about that in higher geography) or to the wider impact of global warming. Munroe I know you will have strong views on this bearing in mind your academic background and previous discussions.  Whilst we cannot accurately predict detailed long term weather forecasting the scary thing is that it doesn’t seem to matter where you live in the world, we are all at the mercy of politicians and their “strategies”.

A Perth Council (Oz) adopted a contentious recommendation re controlled burn-offs, a biology undergraduates 1994 flawed research paper as a basis for its Bushcare Programme (the words of the man who wrote it and subsequently acknowledged  his understanding of land management plans had increased since he was a student and his original paper was deficient and inaccurate in parts).

However the Australian nation can now rest easier in their beds knowing that:

·      “the new disaster resilience plan to improve  disaster mitigation, emergency warnings and insurance coverage  was endorsed by  the nation’s police and emergency service ministers In Canberra yesterday”

·      they have agreed to change government programs to encourage betterment of infrastructure that is regularly  damaged by natural disasters and they agreed to an insurance shake-up to remove disincentives  to governments and individuals taking out private insurance cover”.

Mmmmmm?