Discussion: Sydney's Weather

[ATO2]

Let's do a price comparision: My electric company charges me: 22.25c kw/hr.
In addition, there is an $11.25 monthly supply charge. My two month power bill is $140 (gross) with a discount for prompt payment of just under $15.
So, net I pay $125 for 2 months.
Gas I don't have on but I recall my mother was paying $1 a day supply charge.
Heating is by the wood burning eco fire (built in wood stove), output to 16 kW. Cost of firewood for season: $160. Season is spread out annually, as I burn fires at the drop of hat any night of the year.

These are kiwi dollars: so let's do the exchange thingee:
say 1 kiwi = 0.81 Aus
So power for me is about AUD 101 for two months. The fire wood is about AUD 129.

[TokWW]

We have a large 1930's house no wall insulation, 10ft stud, 4 bedrooms, lounge and large living room, 4 kids and lots of showers $350/month plus have two wood log fires. OUCH!

[ATO2]

Originally Posted by TokWW

We have a large 1930's house no wall insulation, 10ft stud, 4 bedrooms, lounge and large living room, 4 kids and lots of showers $350/month plus have two wood log fires. OUCH!

hell, that's a big ouch!

[rainfan]

Gosh TWW, thats a whopper!

[rainfan]

Well I must say it was a big pity today's weather didn't occur over the weekend .

After a cold start with cold light to moderate westerlies, cloud & a min of 8 degrees, cleared to a mainly sunny day til after 1pm when streaks of high cloud started creeping in, more widespread/thickening after 3pm. Sunset was quite colourful tonight with orange/red streaks.

Temps rose to 21oC in the city for the first time since the 1st as winds turned warmer NW, cooling down from mid afternoon after moderate NE winds kicked in during the afternoon. A very pleasant lunch outside in the park. Temps across the MA ranged from 20 - 23 degrees with the highest max of 23oC at Olympic Park. Airport reached 20oC after min of 7oC.

Currently 16oC with light to not much wind, very nice evening, did hour's brisk walk on the beach after work, quite a lot of people promenading.

[TokWW]

Sounds like the dawning of Spring for you!! I missed the temps on TV tonight, (I missed the Weather section completely!) but I'm sure the northern places would have gotten to 18deg at least as KeriKeri did, not sure about Kaitaia. It was a max of 17.4ºC here at 2pm before more advective clouds came in, thunderstorms later around 5:30pm. Strong lightning CL-CL mainly, some horizontal, some vertical. Lasted about 15mins that I saw. It was over 10 miles away as it passed over towards Rotorua and disappeared behind a hill.

[ATO2]

Sounds as if you have some great weather on its way, rainfan!
Been decentish here last few days: 17.6 degrees on Monday, 17.2 degrees yesterday.
Certainly brings out the people walking around places, that is for sure.

[rainfan]

Well there's not many people "promenading" today at the beach for sure , due to cold SE winds being strongish.

Mild overnight with low of 9 in city with little wind. Rose to 17oC mid AM before a fresh SE change which ensured that the rest of the day was cold with fresh southeasterlies, more strongish on the coast with temps dropping to 14-15 & remaining so for the rest of today. Sunny/cloudy periods with few light showers from Cbs. 9/17 at airport.

Days over 20oC number just 3 MTD, certainly the lowest number since 1990 (2), next lowest is 1992 with 5.

[rainfan]

Some overnight/early showers . Quite cold today with fresh to strong southerlies, more so on the coast. As in yesterday, cloudy/sunny periods but more cloud today.

City: 8/16
Airport: 7/14

Rain to 9am today:
City: 2.6mm
Airport: 2.0mm
Rose Bay: 3.2mm
Highest daily fall: 15mm at Berowra

There's quite a lot of controversy about a new tele-movie called "Sorched" due to air on Sunday night, to which I'll be watching, which will deal with Sydney, 2012 where it hasn't rained for 200 days; chronic water shortages; battling severe heatwaves & bushfires. Might be a bit far-fetched in some sense but on the other hand if this really happens in the future then will definitely pack up & move to NZ immediately!

Article from:
S
Sign of the times or just climate porn?

By Matthew Warren August 28, 2008 06:00am


New tele-feature paints a doomsday scenario

Series blurs the lines between fact and fiction

But is Scorched realistic or just climate porn?

BY Christmas Eve in 2012, no rain has fallen in Sydney for more than 200 days and, despite its new desalination plant, the emerald city has run out of drinking water. The effects of climate change have created the conditions for a ring of bushfires that surround the city, but authorities don't have enough water to put them out.
This is the plot synopsis for the Nine Network's new tele-feature experiment called Scorched, which will screen nationally in prime time on Sunday night. Promoters have hailed the production a "major television event" with an all-star cast, fake news broadcasts from authentic Nine newsreaders and a comprehensive supporting website.

'It's armageddon'

"Mother nature is on the warpath. It's armageddon," the publicity kit modestly proclaims. Media previews have described the plot as "scarily plausible". Director Tony Tilse claims the idea of a city running out of water is "basically a true story, but it just hasn't happened yet".
Oh, really? Perhaps what is more scarily plausible is that the producers of the program didn't bother to speak to Sydney Water or the Sydney Catchment Authority before going to air. They would have discovered that even in the worst-case scenario, Sydney already has enough water in its huge network of catchments to meet demand until 2014. The city's new desalination plant will come on line by 2010 and will be able to supply 15 per cent of Sydney's demand, but has been designed to quickly double its capacity to a half-billion litres of water a day.
Scorched is the headline act in a wave of climate porn to hit Australia in coming weeks. In 2006, Britain's Institute for Public Policy Research reviewed media, government and activist reporting of climate change and found it to be confusing, contradictory and chaotic, leaving the public feeling disempowered and uncompelled to act.
Most notable was the tendency to use alarmist language, or climate porn, which offered "a thrilling spectacle but ultimately distances the public from the problem".
Scorched producer Kylie Du Fresne says the telemovie is not meant to be seen as a documentary, but admits "we were interested in blurring the lines between fact and fiction".
A water disaster of this magnitude is like being run over by a steamroller. It's possible, but only if you do nothing. Sydney Water spokesman Brendan Elliott says the plot is "truly a work of fiction".
Given it's Sydney Water's primary job to make sure the city doesn't run out of water in the face of population growth and climate change, it's not surprising they have a range of strategies to keep moving in the face of the steamroller. These include desalination, increased water recycling and increased conservation programs.

Fears series will spark panic
Water Services Association chief executive Ross Young says he is concerned the show might spark a wave of panicked callers to water authorities on Monday morning.
"It's very important that the program is clearly labelled a drama and not a documentary," he tells The Australian. "Even though the chances of climate change are significant, there are processes in place to manage the consequences.
"The bottom line is our cities are not going to run out of water."
Climate porn is the latest manifestation of infotainment that flourishes in the no man's land between fiction and nonfiction: dramas loosely based on factual events and the communication of often credible and important ideas and theories sexed up with an extra dose of dramatic licence.
On October 30, 1938, Orson Welles caused panic across the US when he broadcast a dramatisation of the H.G. Wells novel The War of the Worlds. Like Scorched, the radio broadcast used simulated news broadcasts to create an aura of authenticity; some of the program's six million listeners thought there was a Martian invasion in progress.
Climate disaster movies date back to the release of Soylent Green in 1973. The dystopian science-fiction film is set in a severely over-populated and overheated (as a result of climate change) New York in 2022 facing chronic food shortages. Charlton Heston plays a detective who discovers to his horror that the newest food substitute (Soylent Green) is made by reprocessing dead people.
Then in 1995, Kevin Costner starred in the box-office flop Waterworld, a kind of climate-change crisis meets Mad Max movie set in a futuristic Earth where the polar ice caps have melted and the few survivors sail around or live on floating islands, inevitably fighting with each other.

Explicit climate porn
The most explicit climate porn may well be the 2004 blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow. Released two years before Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, it grossed 10 times more at the box office. Melting ice sheets and glaciers caused the Altantic Ocean currents to stop suddenly, plunging the entire northern hemisphere into a deep snap-freeze. The film was derided by most climate scientists and highlighted the real problem with creating drama about the effects of climate change: in reality the changes are not sudden, but slow and insidious.
In a review, US paleoclimatologist William Hyde observed: "This movie is to climate science as Frankenstein is to heart transplant surgery."
But even a genuine attempt to explain the science, such as An Inconvenient Truth, sailed close to the wind at times in order to sustain the level of drama in what is basically a 90-minute lecture.
In one example, Gore made much of the devastating impacts of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans as a portent of increased natural disasters caused by a warming climate.
The main cause of New Orleans' flooding was a poorly maintained system of levees holding back the Mississippi River and surrounding lakes. But holding this aside, scientists are still arguing over whether Gore's claim is actually true. Despite predictions to the contrary, the two subsequent hurricane seasons on the US Atlantic coast were well below average.
Climate porn is not just constrained to the cinema.

Ends.

[ATO2]

Crikey, that was a massive post, mate! But worth reading!
Climate porn...I shall use the words on my friends...
Yeh, I used to wonder what would happen if Sydney were to be ringed by fire and be short of water but then you put me onto Sydney water site, I think.
Sun is in charge here, atm...first blowflies are around...Spring is here.