crimsone

I'm not going to say anything either for or against global warming, but I will say that this event proves nothing of the sort. If you nudge a tub of water of a particular depth with enough force that some spills out over the edge (relate the depth of the water to temperature - thus creating an overall cooling effect), as the water moves from one side of the tub to the other, you get a very shallow spot ( much colder) - but along with it, you get a very deep spot on the other side (much warmer), untill the water finally settles again at a slightly shallower depth (a bit colder). The weather over the globe is a little bit like that - creating a change in one area may create an opposite change somewhere else (being the complex, fluidic system it is), untill some form of equilibrium is reached. When people look at temperature vs decade graphs loking for trends, they are looking for signs of that equilibrium - where the temp would settle if given the chance.

From somebody that grew up in the Valleys of the Land of Sheep, I say natural wildlife is a part of farming, and farmers are largely responsible for wiping them out in the first place... in such ways, that doesn't make Farmers the honourable custodians of the countryside - it makes them the greedy destroyers of it. The selfish, greedy, "steamroll over any possible threat to my little empire that I've worked for" attitude of some farmers would often find a better home in the corporate boardrooms of the concrete jungles or the housing market.

Yes, I would like to see wolves re-introduced to the wild... but only wolves that are akin to those that are supposed to be native here.

The word there is probably GW... It's probably to the extreme that HIV developed from the SIV that affects chimps in Africa. It's also known that SIV in humand can usually be overcome... but beyond that, we know nothing with absolute certainty save that the first known HIV infections for all major strains were in the 40's or so and it somehow got from Africa to Haiti, where an epidemic started, leading to it being found in America. and further into the US. What allowed the crossover to occur could well be bushmeat, but that's merely a likely theory. In said colonial times, well, it could have been anything. It's not lost on me that the virus didn't take hold until the early/mid 1900's, and Africans have undoubtedly been using chimps for bushmeat for many centuries. http://www.avert.org/origins.htm

Well, late last night there was hail... intense hail... It was on and off untill the morning... at about 11am I heared that loudest and most profound crack of thunder I have ever heared... for a while I didn't believe I'd heared it it was so loud. later today, maybe 2/3 pm, looking out of the window, a passing cloud looked particularly stormy in colour, with areas of quite well defined mammatus... it seemed to be on the back of the front, as there were lines fo cloud behind it amongst the patchy sky. I think it safe to say that there's ben at least one storm here, even if I didn't see the lightning.

Just has the most amazing and intense downpour of small hail that I've seen in a lng time... back to rain now though.

HIV came from Africa? 'tis news to me!

My sister in Hainburg an der Donau in eastern Austria (between Wien (vienna) and Bratislava (in Slovakia) ... a relatively low lying area of Austriahas reported two good downfalls of snow over the last few weeks. By the look of the photo's, and from her description of it being up past her ankles, I'd say probably about 6 inches of it for the first downfall. For Austria at least, I think it's going to be a cold one this winter.

Yes. That also.

Trouble is, GW, that on a forum such as this, opinions and the way in which language is used to express them is all anybody has to go on.

thought as much ... dig big holes and throw the bodies in... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...22/nfowl222.xml ... though it does mention cremations too.

It's really quite a jump to assume that humans are spreading it. I would suggest that application of occams razor offers a more likely conclusion in that either an infected migratory bird made two stops- one at each farm- , or two infected migratory birds each made one stop. Of the thousands if not millions of birds that pass by, given that they are the most likely original vector, it's far far more likely.

There were reports of a few (literally) of the workers from the site of the first discovered outbreak being treated with tamiflu.

Consideration for our other neighboring species is a good starting point. We are not alone on this planet, and it doesn't belong to us - we just like to think it does. If it did belong to us, the risk of extinction wouldn't even be a thought in our minds... We belong to the planet if anything, not vice versa. Even if extinction wasn't a thought on our minds, it still wouldn't suggest that the planet belonged to us, because such ownership as we see it is merely a very human societal concept... applyng your beliefs to others that don't share them is at wrost illogical, and at best wrong - they are inapplicable. It's no different than an elderly lady, on her own and about to die, wanting to make sure her house is clean before she goes. It sounds od, but it's a mark of civilisation.. for the opposite scenario is that where somebody knows that the end is coming, and so becomes violent, goes on a rampage, and destroys what he/she feels like because he sees no point in caring anymore. Self interest is not the "be all and end all" of existance.

It won't matter. Once a h2h H5N1 pandemic happens, the virus will be everywhere for a while anyway, and the flu virus only has a limited shelflife when outside of the body. Rather than bodies lining up in cremetoriums, or big bonfires of bodies, chances are that the tried and tested method that has been used successfully for centuries would be equally effective and a lot easier... dig a big hole and throw the corpses in. They's want to dispose of the bodies by the most efficient means possible to avoid infection, and that would probably be the quickest. There's a town somewhere that survived bubonic plague twice with that idea. The first time lots of people died. The sencond time, they dug their hole far to big.

No, just referring to a previous post by noggin. :lol: With a mortality rate like that, mass burials are a more practical solution.

Forget not that fatality rates drop quickly after the pandemic hits. The human body is pretty good at producing antibodies for most bugs, and as soon as they can be found and isolated, medical science is good at distributing them. How often do we hear about sars now? Unlike back in the times of the spanish flu, I suspect it'll be the first wave that does the most damage. If it wipes out a third of the human population, whether anthropormorphic global warming through Co2 emmissions is a reality or not, the problem will have been solved. Perhaps by this idea of a higher power balancing things out, or perhaps not, but artificial CO2 in the atmosphere whouldn't be an issue anymore - purely because there's be so many fewer people breathing. Not a nice thought to be honest, but just a point made to answer the question.

To the tune of "away in a manger"... I feel lucky this year. lol Away in FI land a cold spell awaits The forecast keeps changing: the 06z runs late. Past winters dissappointing. UK snowfall is dead. I will see my white christmas from an Austrian bed.

Anybody going to try their hand at "mary's boy child"?

to correct a piece of misinformation by knightstorm for the benefit of other lay-people such as myself, there are no hurricanes on the beaufort scale. A hurricane is a barotropic atlantic storm typically occuring below 30 degrees of lattitude with fairly even wind distribution, over a relatively small area. The beaufort scale only measures wind speed and so cannot offer such a classification. What it does offer, is "hurricane force" which has nothing to do with hurricanes other than a similar wind speed. Even that similar windspeed doesn't make hurricane force winds anywhere remotely similar to a hurricane, as the damage done by hurricanes occurs by different means, including the compact size of the storm (or particularluy, the storms center), and so the even distribution of the winds stresses land based obstacles in opposing directions resulting in greater weakening... additionally, barotropic systems are powered by the heat of the ocean, inevitably meaning absurd amounts of rain in many cases, usually on land that would usually be pretty dry. By contrast, baroclinic systems (the big ones with those isobars and fronts we see described as lows on uk weather maps) are often huge. Mitch might have been big enough to encompass the whole of th UK, but most baroclinic atlantic systems that move west-east across us are too... the difference is that their wind profiles are uneven, the distribution of wind and rain radically different, and it's spread over a larger area, with baroclinic systems being powered by differences in tempreture and dewpoint. Every now and then we get a particularly strong baroclinic system, such as in 1987, but it was still not a hurricane by any definition, including that of the beaufort scale. Back to the subject of Michael fish, he did indeed forcast the distinct probability of some nasty weather with high winds, which was right enough.

ah ha... so, assuming a lifespan of 70 years, that's about 20 consecutive lifetimes. You know, history seems pretty darned short when you look at it in those terms! At 5 inches a week, It seems fair to say that it'll be at least centuries before it reaches it's previous size (a long time at least... I don't do math without a calculator. lol) Thanks for the info... very useful. Was krakatau's 1883 eruption the last eruption of it's size, or has there been a bigger since that isn't so well known? (or a volcano the potential for something on that scale to come within the realms of my lifetime (I'm 25 lol)

yuck. I would imagine standing on a boat anywhere near there would be pretty slimey at the moment. Do you happen to know how many more lifetimes it will be before Anak Krakatau reaches the size of it's predecessor, Viking? I have to confess to being intrigued by the possibility of another krakatau disaster on a similar scale in the distant future, or is the volcano building itself in a different way?

that little glowing thing off the shore... is it a floating piece of hot rok, or a boat on fire?

well, no news is good news I guess, but it's still highly irritating. Erupt already! lol

A question, if I might, just out of interest... I see that Kelut is south south-east of Jakarta. I note also that the boxing day tsunami wasn't centered all that far away, in the grand scheme of things... while also realising that the tsunami of such magnitude and scope probably isn't a common event. What I am interested in though, is the potential power of a volcanoe such as this... and so... Is it possible, even in theory, for a major eruption at Kelut to set off any seismic stresses under the ocean floor (should those stresses exist in a sufficient force) and so create a tsunami wave of any magnitude (small or large)? If so, how likely (or unlikely) would such an event be? Basicaly, I'm just wondering about the potential seismic power of a large volcanic blast such as the one suggested, and how far reaching that power could potentially be. My own feelings based on what I think I know are that even if it were likely under other circumstances, the vertical forces on the plates were already relieved in the tsunami a few years ago, and so very little possibility of it happening... but in theory... had that tsunami causing earthquake not happened... what would be the case then?