Pics that make you smile

climate has made things worse, major problem is the amount of fuel available which was previously managed but has not been for some time due to the know nothing do gooders getting involved
When it gets to 70 degrees C in the "Snowy Mountains", surely it is more than a lack of woodland management?
(That is 158 Fahrenheit.)

A wind gust of 128 km/h was recorded at Cabramurra in the western Snowy Mountains. It also recorded an incredible top temperature of 69.8C at 4.30pm.
"The situation appears to be that an intense pyro-cumulonimbus cloud formed above an intense fire to the east of Cabramurra during the afternoon," the bureau said in a statement explaining the temperature spike.
 
I in a year when we had record temperatures around the world, record hurricanes, record tornadoes, record rainfall, etc. , it is hard to claim that the fires have not been made significantly worse by climate change. The problem is made vastly worse by a combination of climate events that 100 years ago would almost certainly not have occurred together but should now be expected.

Do you remember the dustbowl of the 1920's and 1930's? How did man made global warming cause it?
 
Do you remember the dustbowl of the 1920's and 1930's? How did man made global warming cause it?

The dust bowl was caused by a combination of factors including well intentioned but misguided federal land and agricultural policies during the late eighteen and early nineteen hundreds which created a massive influx of inexperienced pioneer farmers who proceeded to over-till and over-plant their land and engage in other types of poor prairie land management practices, coupled with an extended period of extreme drought. Rising wheat prices in the 1910s and 1920s and increased demand for wheat from Europe during World War I encouraged farmers to plow up millions of acres of native grassland to plant wheat, corn and other row crops. As the United States entered the Great Depression, wheat prices plummeted causing farmers to tear up even more grassland in an attempt to harvest a bumper crop and break even. The eventual Dust Bowl of the 1930s was very much a man made disaster. Global warming had nothing to do with the Dust Bowl. Global climate change didn't begin to arrive until 100 years later (now), but THAT is a separate and different man made disaster.

@country_hick, I don't know how or why you repeatedly come up with these ridiculous over simplistic theories and alleged explanations for these things but as I've suggested before, read your history!
 
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Wasn't much of a year for tornadoes (one of my interests) but interesting weather worldwide otherwise and not always in a good way. Poor farming techniques contributed to the 30's "Dust Bowl" in the central US, but nature was the main cause. Even with the rather limited climate records we have it's clear that Nature is very variable everywhere so I can't see how we can know for certain how much effect we humans are having on the climate. What is clear is that something bad for us is happening and looks like it's going to continue.

We should try to take good care of our planet and take reasonable steps toward that end, for if we don't it will become our own end. Nature will do what she will, same as always, and this is not the first weather trend like this that has happened. All we can do is work around what we're given and try not to make things any worse. Poor land management and use practices by us make all forms of natural events worse for humanity; we CAN do better and we should do better but my guess is that we won't. Darwin is going to come fetch us all away someday because we're not as smart as we think we are.

Phil
 
The Dust Bowl would not have been the Dust Bowl if the native grasslands were left intact or had been properly managed. The drought would have simply been a drought without the plowing up of many millions of acres. The dust storms were indeed man made.
 
Not to argue, but the "Dust Bowl" era saw almost none of the usual rains, and what little spotty rain did occur was neither enough nor at the right time to save the farmers. There are pretty good records of this. Another thing which caught them out was that the preceding decades had been wetter than usual and they came to expect that would continue. "Contour plowing" wasn't happening there at the time, nor was any attempt being made to make best use of the rainfall. My Dad's family were farmers in Nebraska and lived through this- they were lucky in that their area did get some rain at the right time and the worst of things was well to the east.

Nature put the grasses there and they were generally effective in keeping the soil in place, but it was so dry that even the grasses were dead and dying; nature did play a part. And the Native who had lived on those lands for thousands of years knew of similar dry times where nothing grew on the prairies, but nobody believed them at the time. Our land mismanagement made what was already bad into a catastrophe, that's all. Once the abandoned lands saw rain again, grasses and crops grown in better ways solved the problem. One of the solutions was the widespread adoption of irrigation, but now the aquifers that water comes from are depleted and running dry, so we're going to be beaten by nature once again- it's just a question of time. We ain't smart.

Phil
 
Not to argue, but the "Dust Bowl" era saw almost none of the usual rains, and what little spotty rain did occur was neither enough nor at the right time to save the farmers. There are pretty good records of this. Another thing which caught them out was that the preceding decades had been wetter than usual and they came to expect that would continue. "Contour plowing" wasn't happening there at the time, nor was any attempt being made to make best use of the rainfall. My Dad's family were farmers in Nebraska and lived through this- they were lucky in that their area did get some rain at the right time and the worst of things was well to the east.

Nature put the grasses there and they were generally effective in keeping the soil in place, but it was so dry that even the grasses were dead and dying; nature did play a part. And the Native who had lived on those lands for thousands of years knew of similar dry times where nothing grew on the prairies, but nobody believed them at the time. Our land mismanagement made what was already bad into a catastrophe, that's all. Once the abandoned lands saw rain again, grasses and crops grown in better ways solved the problem. One of the solutions was the widespread adoption of irrigation, but now the aquifers that water comes from are depleted and running dry, so we're going to be beaten by nature once again- it's just a question of time. We ain't smart.

Phil

Not to argue? :rolleyes:

So you're suggesting that the dust bowl would have occurred anyway even if there was no intensive plowing up of millions of acres?

Periodic droughts have been with mankind for a long, long time and they can leave a prairie dry and barren but you simply won't get a dust bowl unless you massively disturb vast areas of soil.

Deep plowing methodology was one of the contributing factors in causing the dust bowl. "With insufficient understanding of the ecology of the plains, farmers had conducted extensive deep plowing of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains during the previous decade; this had displaced the native, deep-rooted grasses that normally trapped soil and moisture even during periods of drought and high winds."
plowing_dustbowl.jpg
 
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Hehe "DERAIL " :)
The dust bowl was indeed something else, people on the prairie back then must have been WTF with the knowledge they had at the time.

We Danes have been plowing just as deep, but in most places we don't have the same soil issues.
But back in the day we did have our own little sand bowl going on, and in the northern Jutland we still have a huge pile or two of sand slowly making its way across that part of the country to finally fall in the sea to the east.
And in general when it come to ruining a country with a plow and other stuff i doubt many countries are at our level, we have cut down forests - we have plowed all over - we have drained wetlands and lakes / bogs to get more farmland, we have even turner the heaths into farmland, and thats about as meager soil as you will ever see, we have blocked and straitened out rivers, and we have buried toxic chemicals right on the shoreline and then turned our backs.

This are probably also why we are also leaders when it come to nature restoration, cuz for decades we have been "hard" at work fixing some of our mistakes,,,,, though the cadence for this are not what i would like to see.
BUT we will never get back what we have lost, at best we will have a facsimile of that, and a poor one.

If Americans want to match us, they will have to put the Colorado river in a tube and fill up the grand canyon to farm it.
 
We Danes have been plowing just as deep, but in most places we don't have the same soil issues.
The trend in UK over recent years is to abandon plowing since it has been decided by the scientists that in most situations it does more harm to the soil than good, and it certainly is not environmentally friendly on fuel use, and agriculture is our 2nd biggest contributor to CO2 emissions.

So what is Jake's experience?
Well his malting barley, pea and oilseed rape crops all did about as well as the national average.
His wheat was a little variable but overall slightly better than the national figures.
Meanwhile the cost of production for wheat has gone from £120 a hectare to just £60 and fuel use is down just over 40%.

So why did people ever plough their fields? Because they didn't have the new technology:

Jake has had to invest a large sum in a huge piece of machinery called a cross slot drill, which is used to plant seeds directly into the cover crop.

Controllers.jpg

Seed-coulters.jpg
 
Derail, yes. There were no pics being posted for like a dozen posts.

Less talky..... Lol

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Been out on a little drive today, saw many freshly plowed fields along my route, i can only guesstimate some farmers think the winter are over.

You don't have to go all that many years back here, before fields was cultivated to within a few feet of a river, and then fertilizing with manure much of it went directly into the river.
Nowadays we have no cultivate areas along rivers, and spreading manure like that are no longer legal, and many farmers are selling off marginal lands which will then be set aside for natural growth.

Smarts have of course also found its way into Danish farming, from AI solar powered robot weed pickers to you name it.

Farming are also a big contributor to emissions here, both CO2 and even worse Methane,,,,,, they do however seem to make good progress on modified cows that don't burp methane.

Cow-backpack-cropped-alt-.jpg
 
Derail, yes. There were no pics being posted for like a dozen posts.

Less talky..... Lol

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk


For better, and sometimes for worse, this thread goes "off topic" on a fairly regular basis as it has for it's entire five and a half year history. Sometimes an image or set of images instigates a discussion or even an argument but interacting with one another is why we are all here in the first place. As it happens, the "Pics that make you smile" thread resides in the "Off Topic" sub-forum of all places. ;)

I'm glad you enjoy visiting this thread for your entertainment and amusement but I find your current complaints a bit curious in light of the fact that not once that I am aware of have you ever contributed a single item of interest to it other than in these complaints.
 
For better, and sometimes for worse, this thread goes "off topic" on a fairly regular basis as it has for it's entire five and a half year history. Sometimes an image or set of images instigates a discussion or even an argument but interacting with one another is why we are all here in the first place. As it happens, the "Pics that make you smile" thread resides in the "Off Topic" sub-forum of all places. ;)

I'm glad you enjoy visiting this thread for your entertainment and amusement but I find your current complaints a bit curious in light of the fact that not once that I am aware of have you ever contributed a single item of interest to it other than in these complaints.
I'm subscribed and look at the pics being posted, hoping they'll make me smile. I didn't know I had to contribute to do that?

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
 
I'm subscribed and look at the pics being posted, hoping they'll make me smile. I didn't know I had to contribute to do that?

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

You are certainly not required to contribute but if you don't participate along with everyone else and then have nothing to offer but complaints, they come across as being somewhat nugatory IMHO.
 
Maybe I just need to unsubscribe from this thread so I don't keep getting notified of all these posts that are just a bunch of talky-talky and no pics.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
 
Been out on a little drive today, saw many freshly plowed fields along my route, i can only guesstimate some farmers think the winter are over.

You don't have to go all that many years back here, before fields was cultivated to within a few feet of a river, and then fertilizing with manure much of it went directly into the river.
Nowadays we have no cultivate areas along rivers, and spreading manure like that are no longer legal, and many farmers are selling off marginal lands which will then be set aside for natural growth.

Smarts have of course also found its way into Danish farming, from AI solar powered robot weed pickers to you name it.

Farming are also a big contributor to emissions here, both CO2 and even worse Methane,,,,,, they do however seem to make good progress on modified cows that don't burp methane.

Cow-backpack-cropped-alt-.jpg

In the agricultural community where I live the ground is frozen solid like concrete at the moment and covered in snow (and ice, as of this week..ugggh!) So, no plowing until Spring actually arrives. And even when Spring arrives there is a period when the fields are too soft and muddy from melting snow to plow right away. Denmark must be having a mild winter (or is that normal in your climate?)

What's with that cow? Here in the US (and elsewhere I understand) a different approach is being taken to address the issue of methane emissions from ruminants. Research is underway to see if feeding cows seaweed will reduce methane emissions. So far it seems to work but they are studying which types of seaweed work best. ("methane emissions were reduced by 24 percent to 58 percent in a dozen cows that ate one variety of the Asparagopsis genus of seaweed")

https://www.pressherald.com/2019/12...to-cows-cut-methane-and-help-save-the-planet/
 
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