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High temperature in Melbourne was 39.4°C at 5:58pm, before the change hit sometime around 8pm.
Other parts of the state up in the direction of the center of the continent were higher.
Walpeup hit 47.1°C at 2:25pm.
And that was with it overcast and grey all day (and concomitantly humid). It was worse when the sun broke through the clouds.
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Murdering Eagles to Save the Climate?
The Downside of Wyoming’s Wind Energy Boom
Transmission towers connecting thick high-voltage power lines will stand 180 feet tall, slicing through prime sage-grouse, elk, and mule deer habitat and Colorado’s largest concentration of low-elevation wildlands. The TransWest Express will pass over rivers and streams, chop through forests, stretch over hills, and bulldoze its way through scenic valleys. Many believe this is just the price that must be paid to combat our warming climate and that the impact of the Chokecherry and Sierra Madre projects, and the TransWest Express will be nothing compared to what unmitigated climate chaos will otherwise reap. Some disagree, however, and wonder if such expansive wind farms are really the best we can come up with in the face of climate change.
“This question puts a fine point on the twin looming disasters that humanity has brought upon the Earth: the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis,” argues Erik Molvar, a wildlife biologist and executive director of the Western Watersheds Project, a Hailey, Idaho-based environmental group. “The climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis are of equal importance to humans and every other species with which we share this globe, and it would be foolhardy to ignore either in pursuit of solutions for the other.”
Even though onshore wind farms kill birds and can disrupt habitats, most scientists believe that wind energy must play a role in the world’s much-needed energy transition. Mark Z. Jacobson, author of No Miracles Needed and director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford University, notes that the minimal carbon emissions in the life-cycle of onshore wind energy are only outmatched by the carbon footprint of rooftop solar. It would be extremely difficult, he points out, to curtail the world’s use of fossil fuels without embracing wind energy.
Scientists are, however, devising novel ways to reduce the collisions that cause such deaths. One method is to paint the blades of the wind turbines black to increase their visibility. A recent study showed that doing so instantly reduces bird fatalities by 70%.
I’ve seen a lot of wind turbines by now, but never with blades painted black.
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Interesting. This has apparently been under investigation for a while; the study linked in footnote 9 of the MIT article (from Paint it black: Efficacy of increased wind turbine blade visibility in the Wiley Online Library publication Ecology and Evolution - may be paywalled) is from mid-2020. I also found this interview with one of the authors, Roel May:
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Cross posting this here because of the information about changes to warning systems - and what is still needed:
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Tangential to climate change, I think.
According to Daskalova, when people left, a poorer version of nature took over. “The blackberries are suppressing the growth of anything else,” she says. Daskalova says the blackberries are suffocating the community of birds and plants that used to live here in gardens and orchards.
Interesting problem, but one that could be immensely improved by the introduction of large herbivores. I suspect that allowing time for normal succession would fix it as well.
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Indeed, a blackberry takeover does sound temporary.
It’d also be nice to see some of that land become relatively small, multicrop farms.
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There are a lot of abandoned farms in marginal areas of Ontario. In the Ottawa Valley for example, upstream of where the wafer-thin topsoil gives way to an ancient beach, then the granite of the Algonquin Highlands. The Petawawa military base is on that beach. The granite bedrock of the Algonquin Highlands makes the area so unproductive that they were only summer hunting areas for the First Nations, and the origin of the Wendigo myth.
A lot of people tried and failed in the 1920’s to make a go of it. As a kid, friends and I would disappear into the woods and find old farm cabins and crab apple orchards.
Nature seems to take over in around 50 years.
Old highways and Cold War runways seem to take longer.
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Nature has taken a pretty good toll on a big chunk of concrete near me, but it is in direct contact with the ocean on one side, and nature on the other… it was abandoned in the 80’s.
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There are some of those around here as well. Wooden structures do not fare well once the upkeep ceases. Nature takes over pretty rapidly in the very fertile valley soil.
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That joke isn’t funny in this context
Both goals came after Luton lost captain Tom Lockyer early on after he collapsed on the pitch but the defender was taken to hospital where the club have confirmed he is “responsive and talking” to his family.
Then six months later
Is the risk of lifelong health problems really worth it?
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It always strikes me that people claiming that anthropogenic climate change isn’t real because the climate changes naturally are akin to someone saying, “People die of natural causes all the time, therefore murder can’t exist. Ignore the 30 knife wounds in the guy.”
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