Weather

Weather

I don’t think this is the post time I’ve been moved to write about the weather. I suspect that many of our ancestors constantly had an eye on the weather, especially those on the land.

In the old days we had to just wait and hope. Then we could read a forecast in the daily or weekly newspaper. Now we can look at the radar images online.

This is what’s coming my way right now:

I’m in Hornsby, a small dot in the centre. The storm is coming from the south-west to the north-east – right towards me.

It’s coming, and it’s getting loud!

Climate change action

T Dust storm Hornsby 23 Sep 2009 oday (Thursday) is Blog Action Day, and the theme today is Climate Change.

Here in Australia we’ve had almost weekly reminders that the weather is changing, and although we are often told that the changes we are seeing are not due to global warming, we have our suspicions. Where I live in Hornsby, in northern Sydney, we’ve had a dust storm, blown in off the farms and desert of inland Australia, and a hailstorm that caught me on the way home from my sister’s, all within a couple of weeks.

But it’s much more serious than this. It doesn’t matter so much that I have to hose the dust off my pot plants with water from my rainwater tank, or that my car has a few dents from the hail.

Whole nations such as Tuvalu are being swamped by normal tides. The ice caps are melting. There are twice the number of hurricanes than 30 years ago.

Even if the weather we’re seeing can’t be proven to be the result of global warming, and the evidence seems to me overwhelming that it is, is it worth the risk? Once it’s too late it will be no use to say, “oh, we thought they were over-reacting”. The planet will have changed, and there’ll be no going back.

The time to change is NOW and there are many things you can do:

Find out more:

An Inconvenient Truth

United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 in Copenhagen

Climate Change presentation on Google Earth

TckTckTck Explore the Orb

Facts and Figures

Top 100 effects of global warming

Do something to make a difference:

10 Solutions for climate change

Sign a pledge

Take Action to stop global warming