Freeze frame

THE fruits of global warming The Tasmanian Fire Commission’s prediction of an early start to the fire season have some parallels in the northern hemisphere.

The Mediterranean is in the grip of a severe and long-running drought, which has left the countryside in tinderbox condition.

Southern Australia is also in a long running drought. A weekend of high temperatures has seen the Mediterranean region placed on full-scale alert against a further devastating outbreak of forest fires. These conditions are expected across Spain and Portugal, the south of France, Italy and Greece as a wave of hot air arrives from Africa.

In Portugal 17 bushfires were blazing on the 5th of August, while in south-eastern France the authorities were coping with the aftermath of three huge fires which forced 17,000 residents to flee. France buried the two pilots of a water-carrying firefighting plane that crashed fighting a blaze in Corsica.

A fire apparently sparked by a barbecue had already killed 11 firefighters in a nature reserve east of Madrid. The drought is Portugal’s worst ever. The southern Algarve region, one of Europe’s main holiday destinations, is warning of possible water cuts, and tankers are making daily deliveries to some 53,000 people in rural areas whose taps are dry.

Two-thirds of France is living with water restrictions. Fountains have been switched off, rivers and streams are drying up and campers have been banned from cooking with naked flames. Authorities have urged consumers to save water by showering instead of bathing, and not to run washing machines and dishwashers unless full.

Not in 65 years of record-keeping has Spain seen such little rain. Reservoirs are running low. Nor is relief on the horizon: the Spanish Meteorological Institute predicts clear skies and 100F-plus heat for the rest of August.

Flash floods

In contrast, Bulgaria and Romania are suffering from torrential rains and flash floods that have submerged villages and left thousands homeless.

The weather turns from one extreme to another with an apparently greater frequency. Are we more sensitive to it, is it the rapidity of the electronic media or is the emergency bell ringing, the emergency light flashing whilst we remain head bowed, captive of the daily grind.

In northern England at least 20 people were taken to hospital, three with serious injuries, when a tornado ripped through Birmingham. Trees were uprooted and roofs and chimneys torn from buildings as the tornado swept across the city on the 28th of July. A section of the city, centred on Sparkbrook, was left resembling a war zone with glass, masonry, tyres and furniture littering the streets.

In southern England it’s the year of the apricot. In the remorseless march of global warming, a small golden ball of fuzzy fruit hanging from a branch may not appear to be a bell, but it should ring out loud to all.

In early summer this year, that sweet sun-loving fruit from the lands of vines and olive trees grew on a branch in Kent, part of the first-ever commercial harvest of apricots in the UK.

Sainsbury’s has marketed them in 250 stores so it was more than 1 tree.

Will Tasmanian farmers have to import banana benders or date harvesters for their new crops?

phill Parsons notes another week without effective action on the greenhouse emergency, the Tasmania government’s attention taken with their short term survival. On the national front we see lead times of 30 years and a cost of hundreds of millions to sequester carbon when action on water heating would lead to a reduction of some 30% of carbon released from the generation of electricity from coal burning. Geosequestration can always added later. Denial is the hand maiden of disaster when the changing climate goes from a greenhouse emergency that is probably manageable through a period of generating one crisis after another to being one of its very own.