IT HAS been unseasonably cool, but Sydney still can't escape the ugly side of summer in Australia.
Beach crowds have been down and air-conditioning retailers have been struggling.
Although last year was one of Sydney's four warmest on record, last month saw the city's coldest December days since 1999 and the coolest December nights since 1996.
That has made chilly news for the air-conditioning trade. Lok Subedi, of Harvey Norman's Moore Park shop, said air-conditioner sales, which picked up in November, slumped with summer's arrival.
"Since December it has been down," he said. "It hasn't been good at all. We have a drop of probably 70 per cent."
The manager at Bing Lee's Pitt Street Mall store, Sreesha Sounderam, confirmed the trend. "There is a definite drop in the number of air-conditioning units we're selling so far this summer, and it's definitely because of the weather," he said.
"Normally I would say that we sell around 50 air-conditioners a month, but this time around we've only sold maybe 20 or 30."
Sydneysiders who already have air-conditioners may have been leaving them off. EnergyAustralia's spokesman, Anthony O'Brien, said electricity use last month was six per cent down on December 2005.
Ironically, yesterday in Narrabri was quite hot- but it has been a very cool summer to date.
So funny to read this at this particular time. We have the TV on to the news at the moment and all they can talk about is global warming! Oh, how I wish I could read this to them!!!
ReplyDeleteI'm finding lots of articles written by some prominent scientists who are now either refuting global warming or saying it's been way over-exaggerated.Some recent articles point out the following:* we can see a relationship that CO2 levels in the air and temperature. But there is no evidence that more CO2 causes higher temperatures. It could be that higher temperatures cause higher CO2.* other planets in the solar system are also experiencing higher temperatures at the moment, caused by increased sun activity. Wow-who would have thought that the sun being hotter would cause the planets to get hotter?* if you survey scientific articles comparing measured effects with what the same people predicted say 5 years ago you find something interesting. You would expect, on average, that about half would say it's worse than we thought back then and half would say it's not as bad as we thought. Interestingly 80-90% of articles say that it's much worse than we thought. This suggests that there is some kind of censorship taking place in the scientific community- either people are not submitting articles that say "it's not as bad as I expected" or the journals are not publishing them.* you see this in the media all the time. Global warming is always bad with no up-side. Farmers can't grow their crops any more- "we'll all be ruined!" Well farmers are adaptable and the farmers in cooler climates can grow more warm- weather crops.* you have to wonder about the interaction of government, media and science. To get research funding, it's obviously an advantage to overstate the extent of the problem. The media knows that bad news sells. Governments like to keep people afraid- it stops them voting for the opposition usually (at the very least!)* I think at the heart of this mess is the loss of faith in God by western culture. If you believe that there is a God who loves His creation and actively cares for it, then you don't have to go into paroxysms of fear. I'm not saying that we don't have a responsibility to care for the environment and be good stewards of the world. But when you say God doesn't exist and we are the only ones who control our own destiny, that places on humanity a HUGE responsibility and makes us susceptible to great fear. * I also think that we have fallen for the green propaganda, which is basically "let's all be poor" philosophy. The fact is that is the rich countries that can spare the resources to care for the environment. Last year there was almost a zero net loss of trees in the world as richer nations replanted nearly as many trees as were cut down in developing nations... but the greens will never admit to that. * I think the ultimate in "we are doomed" was an Australian scientist who recently said that when the developing countries such as India, Indonesia and Malaysia get their air pollution under control that will be bad news for northern Australia which will then become drier as the air particles have produced more precipitation. So even when the environment gets cleaned up it's bad news for somebody..
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