Paying the Price !

Here we are, on the cusp of winter and we are enjoying the type of hot weather that usually ceased many weeks earlier.  If this is the result of global warming there are many people who would consider it a very good thing.  Unfortunately, it is not as good as it seems.

Along with those blue skies comes a persistent drought that has dried up the countryside and looks likely to impose water restrictions on Sydney.   Warragamba dam is hovering just above the half way mark and the costly desalination plant is running again to supplement our water supply.   We had hoped that rain associated with a cyclone might have been drought breaking, but it fell short and our farming sector continues to face tough times.

We are actually importing Canadian wheat because the eastern states wheat crop failed during this past year.  Our scientists tell us that global warming is changing the ocean currents that determine rain patterns and combined with an el Nino effect Australia will be a drier continent in the future.  It is worth noting that Warragamba supplied our drinking water when Sydney was a far smaller city. If our population continues to grow at the present rate it begs the question of where will it draw its water needs in the future  ?

It seems strange that we are considering opening a new coal mine at a time when coal use is blamed as one of the main reasons we are having a hotter world.  Coal was the fuel that enabled the industrial revolution to take the world from farming to factories and along with oil and the motor car it is pumping out the huge amounts of carbon dioxide that is poisoning the planet.

Our enthusiasm for that new mine in Queensland is conditioned by the jobs it will create, but this is fast becoming the age of robotics and artificial intelligence and both of those will feature heavily in how this mine operates and there is a huge risk that its exports will harm both the Great Barrier reef and the artesian water table.  When we excavate deep into the earth we are interfering with the flow of water that has sustained a dry continent for millions of years.

There is another aspect of a hotter Australia that seems to have escaped notice.  This week a case of dengue fever was confirmed in the Queensland city of Rockhampton.  The victim had no history of overseas travel or having visited the far north of the state and this is the first known outbreak in thirty years.  It is a reasonable assumption that the cause was a bite from a mosquito.

This has resulted in a " full outbreak " response by the Queensland health authorities as Rockhampton is known to harbour pockets of the Aedes  Aegypti mosquito which is a carrier of dengue fever and a lot of other tropical diseases - including Malaria.

Along with those warm summer day extensions we find so pleasant will come a new host of dangers and not the least of these will be Crocodiles.  The warmer inhabitat is causing them to creep ever south down our eastern and western coast and they will pose a danger to our tourist trade.

It seems some degree of global warming is unstoppable, but we will pay a price as with warmer weather comes the tyranny of diseases and pests we previously thought safely restricted to our far tropical north.