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demmiblue

(36,866 posts)
Sat Jan 19, 2019, 11:40 AM Jan 2019

'It's like hell here': Australia bakes as record temperatures nudge 50C

It was 48.9C last Tuesday in Port Augusta, South Australia, an old harbour city that now harvests makes solar power. Michelle Coles, the owner of the local cinema, took off her shoes at night to test the concrete before letting the dogs out. “People tend to stay at home,” she said. “They don’t walk around when it’s like this.”

It’s easy to see why: in the middle of the day it takes seconds to blister a dog’s paw or child’s foot. In Mildura, in northern Victoria, last week gardeners burned their hands when they picked up their tools, which had been left in the sun at 46C. Fish were dying in the rivers.

Almost every day last week a new heat record was broken in Australia. They spread out, unrelenting, across the country, with records broken for all kinds of reasons – as if the statistics were finding an infinite series of ways to say that it was hot.

The tiny town of Noona – population 14 – reached the highest minimum ever recorded overnight in Australia – 35.9C was the coldest it got, at 7am on Friday. It was 45C by noon.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jan/19/australia-swelters-as-relentless-hot-weather-smashes-records?CMP=twt_gu
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'It's like hell here': Australia bakes as record temperatures nudge 50C (Original Post) demmiblue Jan 2019 OP
Awful. nycbos Jan 2019 #1
Same here. demmiblue Jan 2019 #3
Same with me. nycbos Jan 2019 #5
so the "Chinese hoax" has spread? Hermit-The-Prog Jan 2019 #2
Mass fish death dalton99a Jan 2019 #4
K&R Scurrilous Jan 2019 #6
The Earth is about 2.5 million miles closer to the Sun during Southern Hemisphere summer. roamer65 Jan 2019 #7
You can thank the climate denying tRump. Joe941 Jan 2019 #8
The denying has been going on for decades Raine Jan 2019 #10
Obama wasn't a denier. Joe941 Jan 2019 #14
The media should be covering this, MSNBC, CNN, FOX Raine Jan 2019 #9
Bats are passing out from the heat. Behind the Aegis Jan 2019 #11
republican lies about climate change are dangerous for US & and the world Achilleaze Jan 2019 #12
50C equals 122F VOX Jan 2019 #13

demmiblue

(36,866 posts)
3. Same here.
Sat Jan 19, 2019, 11:47 AM
Jan 2019

It makes me appreciate the snow we are having today (feel-like temps in the single digits).

Hermit-The-Prog

(33,379 posts)
2. so the "Chinese hoax" has spread?
Sat Jan 19, 2019, 11:46 AM
Jan 2019

We are so far behind we may be cooked. Individual efforts at curbing greenhouse gas emissions are nowhere near enough without big changes in industry.

Have we lost too much government power to be able to constrain industries?

dalton99a

(81,534 posts)
4. Mass fish death
Sat Jan 19, 2019, 11:48 AM
Jan 2019
On Monday last week the hottest spot in New South Wales was Menindee, a river town that feeds the country’s largest water system, the Murray-Darling basin. It was 45C. It climbed to 47C on Wednesday, and by Thursday the fish were gasping.

Australia’s native Murray cod can live for decades under normal conditions, growing all the while. The oldest are a metre long, with heavy white bellies that have to be held with both hands. Last week, hundreds died, choked of oxygen due to an algal bloom that fed and grew in the heat, and collapsed when temperatures dipped.

Blue-green algae flourishes in hot, slow-moving water. Then, when temperatures inevitably drop, the algae dies and becomes a food source for bacteria, who multiply and starve the river of oxygen. The fish rise to the surface.

roamer65

(36,745 posts)
7. The Earth is about 2.5 million miles closer to the Sun during Southern Hemisphere summer.
Sun Jan 20, 2019, 04:46 AM
Jan 2019

More intense solar radiation on an atmosphere increasingly loaded with CO2.

Australia will become uninhabitable first, then Southern Africa.

Changing the composition of our atmosphere is akin to moving the planets “Goldilocks zone”.

Raine

(30,540 posts)
10. The denying has been going on for decades
Sun Jan 20, 2019, 06:15 AM
Jan 2019

it has taken longer then the last two years of denial for this to happen. It will only get worse with his denial but this is the point we're at and it started long before Trump.

Raine

(30,540 posts)
9. The media should be covering this, MSNBC, CNN, FOX
Sun Jan 20, 2019, 05:42 AM
Jan 2019

nothing to be heard regarding this but the sounds of crickets..

Behind the Aegis

(53,963 posts)
11. Bats are passing out from the heat.
Sun Jan 20, 2019, 06:44 AM
Jan 2019

No, I am not kidding. I read an article that bats are having such a difficult time, they are literally passing out from heat exhaustion! WTF!

Achilleaze

(15,543 posts)
12. republican lies about climate change are dangerous for US & and the world
Sun Jan 20, 2019, 07:24 AM
Jan 2019

republican lies about climate change are dangerous for US & and the world
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republican lies about climate change are dangerous for US & and the world
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republican lies about climate change are dangerous for US & and the world
republican lies about climate change are dangerous for US & and the world
republican lies about climate change are dangerous for US & and the world
republican lies about climate change are dangerous for US & and the world
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republican lies about climate change are dangerous for US & and the world
republican lies about climate change are dangerous for US & and the world

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