When we came from NZ to Sydney/Australia at Christmas 1979, (our summer) we were told that it was the hottest summer on history, it was so hot that the birds were falling out of the trees dead.. When the wind got up, the air was so hot that it was literally like a constant blast from a furnace..
Inside our brick house, even the walls were still warm at midnight, and so as it was much cooler outside, we would try and stay outside until midnight.. We would spray the sheets with water, and then quickly try to get to sleep before they dried out…
You can’t make me believe in global warming, and we were told that with the melting of ice some islands were supposed to be flooded by now, but instead some are growing..
We have man made canals here in Queensland which were there before we came to Australia 39 years ago, and people built expensive homes on the banks with their own jetties for their boats. We pass these canals often and the water levels go up and down depending on the tides but otherwise they do not changed.
They have conveniently adjusted reported temperatures to make it look like we are heating up, but fortunately there are still old newspapers in outback towns which showed what it really was..
Gaye
The hottest day on record in 1828 – a blistering 53.9 °C
Back before “man-made climate change” was frying Australia, when CO2 was around 300ppm, the continent savoured an ideal pre-industrial climate…….. RIGHT?
This is the kind of climate we are spending $10bn per annum to get back to….. Right again?
We are told today’s climate has more records and more extremes than times gone by, but the few records we have from the early 1800’s are eye-popping.
Things were not just hotter, but so wildly hot it burst thermometers.
The earliest temperature records we have, Australia was a land of shocking heatwaves and droughts, except for when it was bitterly cold or raging in flood.
In other words, nothing has changed, except possibly things might not be quite so hot now! It’s as if history is being erased!
Silliggy (Lance Pidgeon) has been researching records from early explorers and from newspapers. What he’s uncovered is fascinating!
In January 1896 a savage blast “like a furnace” stretched across Australia from east to west and lasted for weeks. The death toll reached 437 people in the eastern states.
Forgotten history: …
Extreme heat in 1896: Panic stricken people fled the …
joannenova.com.au/2012/11/extreme-heat-in-1896-panic-stricken-people-fled-the-outback…
Newspaper reports showed that in Bourke the heat approached 120°F (48.9°C) on three days . The maximum at or above 102 degrees F (38.9°C) for 24 days straight.
The maximum at or above 102 degrees F (38.9°C) for 24 days straight!
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By Tuesday Jan 14, people were reported falling dead in the streets.
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Unable to sleep, people in Brewarrina walked the streets at night for hours, thermometers recorded 109F at midnight.
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Overnight, the temperature did not fall below 103°F.
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On Jan 18 in Wilcannia, five deaths were recorded in one day, the hospitals were overcrowded and reports said that “more deaths are hourly expected”.
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By January 24, in Bourke, many businesses had shut down (almost everything bar the hotels).
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Panic stricken Australians were fleeing to the hills in climate refugee trains.
As reported at the time, the government felt the situation was so serious that to save lives and ease the suffering of its citizens they added cheaper train services:
What I found most interesting about this was the skill, dedication and length of meteorological data taken in the 1800′s. When our climate is “the most important moral challenge” why is it there is so little interest in our longest and oldest data?
Who knew that one of the most meticulous and detailed temperature records in the world from the 1800′s comes from Adelaide, largely thanks to Sir Charles Todd.
The West Terrace site in Adelaide was one of the best in the world at the time, and provides accurate historic temperatures from “Australia’s first permanent weather bureau at Adelaide in 1856″.
Rainfall records even appear to go as far back as 1839. Lance Pidgeon went delving into the National Archives and was surprised at what he found.
The media are in overdrive, making out that “the extreme heat is the new normal” in Australia.
The Great Australian Heatwave of January 2013 didn’t push the mercury above 50C at any weather station in Australia, yet it’s been 50C (122F) and hotter in many inland towns across Australia in the late 1800′s and early to mid 1900′s.
You can’t blame those high records on man-made global warming!