Hard times and dry land

[Cam85]

Hey everybody it's been a while since I've been on here just wanted to check in I trust everybody is going well.
Been having a look around lots of interesting things been put up in the last year I've been away.

I roared laughing at someone's comment on Aussie outback operators yep u gotta b keen.

Hey scrub or anybody else who might b interested have u ever seen the country this dry have been pulling timer out Mitchell morven way and then went up to the curry through long reach then back across to townsville and I gotta say I'm very warried about the dry there is no stock to mention and the am out of drovers on the road is well overwhelming.

Even been back in the saddle myself this year trying to keep cattle alive and most of them are so poor they have the smell of death on them u know that pussy smell.
Tractor work has been hard to get and an offsider that knows how to thin timber with a chain even harder to get.

Was also wondering if u have struck pammerlier b4 was running a couple of nines down stgeorge way a couple of months back and watching the stock drop from the pammerlier it's the first time I've come across it.

I reckon it's gotta b a wild plant because not even the goats will stand it do u know wat it does to em.

The worst thing is there doesent seem to b any rain in sight.

Cheers cam 85

 

[Marsh Mutt]

Global warming is making a more pronounced appearance each year, it seems. With California suffering droughts of increasing severity each passing year, one cannot but wonder how many more years existing water supplies can sustain the USA West Coast, UNLESS some major investments are made in sea water desalination. The brown landscape down under in Australia looks so similar to the parched hills of Southern California, so the drought this year really is hitting most continents hard.

Hope y'all get some rain soon. Can't imagine what it would be like to watch crops and livestock withering away due to water getting so scarce.

 

[movindirt]

Global warming is making a more pronounced appearance each year, it seems. With California suffering droughts of increasing severity each passing year, one cannot but wonder how many more years existing water supplies can sustain the USA West Coast, UNLESS some major investments are made in sea water desalination. The brown landscape down under in Australia looks so similar to the parched hills of Southern California, so the drought this year really is hitting most continents hard.

Hope y'all get some rain soon. Can't imagine what it would be like to watch crops and livestock withering away due to water getting so scarce.

We here in the midwest USA have had one of the rainiest years on record, its amazing how the weather patterns can change!

 

[Marsh Mutt]

The northern UK is taking a major drenching at the moment, for sure. There may be some validity to the opinion often expressed, that current extreme weather trends are not necessarily consequences of man-made global warming, but rather may be due to Mother Nature's own eons-old cycles of climate variation that would still occur regardless of whether or not zero-emissions energy generation technology is adopted worldwide in the next few years.

 

[d9gdon]

Global warming is making a more pronounced appearance each year, it seems. With California suffering droughts of increasing severity each passing year, one cannot but wonder how many more years existing water supplies can sustain the USA West Coast, UNLESS some major investments are made in sea water desalination. The brown landscape down under in Australia looks so similar to the parched hills of Southern California, so the drought this year really is hitting most continents hard.

Hope y'all get some rain soon. Can't imagine what it would be like to watch crops and livestock withering away due to water getting so scarce.

Are you getting your information from the current occupant in the White House?

No offense, but it's called weather and it's been happening for about 4 billion years now. Some years are dry, some are wet, and some are in between those extremes.

 

[Marsh Mutt]

I'll go ahead and blame CNN for bombarding me with programs about the melting polar caps and such. Sure hope the scientists are wrong, what with all their bleak forecasts regarding the increasingly frequent droughts being recorded in places like California and Australia.

 

[kshansen]

Are you getting your information from the current occupant in the White House?

No offense, but it's called weather and it's been happening for about 4 billion years now. Some years are dry, some are wet, and some are in between those extremes.

Not I, I'm not thinking about newcomers to the subject how about this guy:

http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/06/20010611-2.html

Any way you look at it there are problems for many places that will suffer no matter the cause.

 

[movindirt]

Not I, I'm not thinking about newcomers to the subject how about this guy:

http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/06/20010611-2.html

Any way you look at it there are problems for many places that will suffer no matter the cause.

Al Gore was preaching global warming in the 90's, just a way of the political machine to make money off the hard working taxable folks here in the great US of A. :cussing The rules say no politics so I better stop there.

 

[Scrub Puller]

Yair . . .

Gotcha Cam85

Just saw your post. Hard dry times indeed . . . I'm heading off and running late will catch up in a day or so.

Cheers.

 

[brianbulldozer]

Where I am sitting right now was under three thousand feet of ice about sixteen thousand years ago. I think global warming might predate the SUV and Al Gore.

 

[Delmer]

Brian, you know what they say it's like only a hundred miles down? hotter than hell, or a minute sitting between Gore and Hillary in the back of a Geo.

While we're on the subject, has anybody seen any reference to the nitrogen cycle in any global warming projections or models? I've googled occasionally and it seems kinda odd that something so basic doesn't seem to be taken into account.

Extremely locally we had an unusually dry summer but it was also cool so I haven't heard of how bad the corn yields were down, it looked pretty good. Texas had some dramatic rainfalls, I assume they're back to average for soil moisture for the most part. California has plenty of water for agriculture and cities, they just have to conserve a little when the courts say half of it has to go down the drain to keep the fish happy. Growing alfalfa in the desert doesn't help either...

 

[old-iron-habit]

Al Gore was preaching global warming in the 90's, just a way of the political machine to make money off the hard working taxable folks here in the great US of A. :cussing The rules say no politics so I better stop there.

Actually in the late 80s and early 90s the same bloodsuckers on government income was saying that if the weather kept cooling off we would have a unrecoverable ice age. Lots of published college and government papers in the system from then. Some predicted complete chaos and starvation by the year 2,000. The same ones are still on the take and now preaching globel warming. All working with data that only goes back with any accuracy about 200 years. This earth has been hot and cold for millions of years and will continue to do the same.

 

[lantraxco]

Several reputable scientists recently have published articles damning NASA for altering the base data on temperatures, the true raw data shows a slight cooling for the last few years with a flat line for a decade before that. One article stated we are coming off a double high energy cycle for the sun and we will have another ten or fifteen years of cooling from today. The Artic ice sheet is no smaller than it has been during previously recorded melt offs, Antartica however is at an all time high for ice and is growing every year.

 

[Buckethead]

I think something weird is going on with the weather. I was putting up Christmas lights this year in a t-shirt, and not chilly at all. I am only about 30 miles south of where I grew up. I remember helping Dad put them up when I was a kid, wearing all the winter clothes I had and still freezing. I don't think I toughened up that much since then, lol.

 

[old-iron-habit]

I think something weird is going on with the weather. I was putting up Christmas lights this year in a t-shirt, and not chilly at all. I am only about 30 miles south of where I grew up. I remember helping Dad put them up when I was a kid, wearing all the winter clothes I had and still freezing. I don't think I toughened up that much since then, lol.

The weather has been weird as long as I been alive. Some warm, some cold, we had 3 freezing springs in a row until June until this past spring was normal. We have had snow in every month of the year at some time or another in the last 60 years. Only thing normal about the weather is that it is inconsistent.

 

[mitch504]

The weather has been weird as long as I been alive. Some warm, some cold, we had 3 freezing springs in a row until June until this past spring was normal. We have had snow in every month of the year at some time or another in the last 60 years. Only thing normal about the weather is that it is inconsistent.

Amen! We've spent a few christmases in shorts, and even had 1 in the single digits!!!!

 

[movindirt]

I think something weird is going on with the weather. I was putting up Christmas lights this year in a t-shirt, and not chilly at all. I am only about 30 miles south of where I grew up. I remember helping Dad put them up when I was a kid, wearing all the winter clothes I had and still freezing. I don't think I toughened up that much since then, lol.

I don't know, I'm not all that old and I can remember plowing snow on Thanksgiving a few times, other thanksgiving's it has been 65* outside. It's all cyclical imo.

 

[Scrub Puller]

Yair . . .

In reply to Cam85 upthread.

Climate change, natural or man made, or just a natural cycle in the great scheme of creation things are desperate in Western Queensland and this big dry is heading into regions we have never been.

Millions of acres have been destocked and the only things surviving in some parts are snakes, lizards, crows and dingoes that are feeding well on drought weakened kangaroos.

I am told the highway into Longreach in places is lined with road kills and the stink is overpowering . . . as Cam85 mentions there are not good prospects in the future for any decent rain.

It is truly a desperate situation for folks in those far flung droughted areas, for some this will be the fifth year with no rain . . . can you imagine a five year old child who has never seen a puddle?

The pimelea Cam85 mentions is a native plant that tends to take over drought stressed country . . . it is an early germinator with a little bit of rain.

We used to call the poisoning "St George" disease and it is characterised by cattle scouring, loosing condition and, in the later stages swelling of the under jaw and brisket.

Apparently the plant causes constriction of blood vessels in the lungs and I remember I was amazed when as a young bloke seeing it for the first time I could actually hear the heartbeats of the poor bloody cattle before I shot them.

Cheers.

 

[Cam85]

Thanks scrub so in effect it attacks the lungs.
For as long as I can remember people or land holders have been griping about drought and I alwase said it is mostly man made from overstocking and poor infistructure and no matience.

But I gota say this time round it is truly heartbreaking and I don't own the land.

Fair enough I went into dozer work everything from gas,mining,council work,subdivision work and cow cocky work but my
roots have alwase been on the land and I really believed the backbone of Qld was is and alwase will b the man on the land

But man oh man what the hell,s going on the Chinese are buying up land there is men families and sutch walking of there blocks banks tacking the land back men swallowing bullets and no end in sight.

Even when the seasons do change how the hell are the cockys meant to restock.

One bloke I was working for tryin to keep a 155 komatsu open cab direct drive piece of junk going had me on the dozer pulling mulguar one day and in the saddle the next the sorry minding stock on the road the sorry mob of cattle he was trying to keep alive really got to me I've seen cattle on the march b4 I've seen drought stock b4 and pulled em but I've never wanted to shoot em all out of mercy b4!

It was woeful and it's unnerving to c the land that has been so very good to me in sutch peril

 

[Marsh Mutt]

Jeepers, Scrub Puller, that made for the sort of unsettling read that one wishes could have been confined to the world of science fiction. Drastic changes in the course of human history, brought about directly by climate change and prolonged drought, are manifesting right now in our time, and the Apocalyptic scenes you describe are straight from one of the most drought ravaged locations on the planet. Five years without rain is a sobering statistic to contemplate.


In the near term, by harnessing the abundant wind-power available along most coastlines, so as to meet the energy needs of desalination plants the world over, the human race will buy itself much more time than there may be at present, before crunch time. Solar power is going mainstream finally, and dedicated shoreline solar panel farms could also contribute to the vast amounts of the energy needed to extract fresh water from sea water, that truly limitless resource.

/ rant over