Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to The Conversation, its not the spiralling gang violence, theft, rampant drug use and alcoholism which is driving doctors out of the Northern Territory, the real problem is climate change.
Too hot, heading south: how climate change may drive one-third of doctors out of the NT
April 10, 2021 8.47am AEST
Simon QuiltySenior Staff Specialist, Alice Springs Hospital. Honorary, Australian National University
Catherine PendreyVisiting researcher, Australian National UniversityA sizeable chunk of Northern Territory’s doctors are thinking about leaving the territory because of climate change, our new research shows.
Our study, just published in The Lancet Planetary Health, shows for 34% of doctors in our survey, climate change is already, or is likely to, make them consider leaving the NT.
If they do, this would leave a large gap in the territory’s health-care system, which already suffers from a fast turnover of staff. These doctors would leave behind communities already suffering from the effects of climate change.
…
Read more: https://theconversation.com/too-hot-heading-south-how-climate-change-may-drive-one-third-of-doctors-out-of-the-nt-156959
From the study;
…
The Northern Territory is being increasingly exposed to extreme heat, water insecurity, and violent storms.3, 6 In December, 2019, and January, 2020, the temperature in the Northern Territory was almost 4·0°C higher than the long-term average, and in 2019, Katherine, the third largest town in the Northern Territory, recorded 54 days of temperatures above 40°C;6 extreme heat that is associated with considerably increased morbidity and mortality.3, 4 Poorly maintained and overcrowded housing, energy insecurity, lack of air conditioning, and substantial socioeconomic disadvantages aggravate the health risks of the population in these areas, particularly among Indigenous communities with high rates of chronic disease.3
…
Read more: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00028-0/fulltext
What is going on?
The idea that climate change is a threat to doctors is absurd. Even prefabricated temporary structures have air conditioners.
My guess is a bunch of liberal city educated doctors had a good hearted impulse to travel to Australia’s blistering hot far North to help deprived communities. But when they got there they quickly realised it was too much for them – the ongoing threats to personal safety, aggressive bullying, having to treat a steady stream of drug psychotics and violent alcoholics, ugly overdose deaths, people constantly trying to scam them for pills, witnessing ongoing drug fuelled brutality, incest and rape, the lack of anywhere safe to relax after work, people following them home, all of this overwhelmed their gentle urban liberal sensibilities.
How does a traumatised urban liberal back out of such a disastrous personal choice? If they come clean and say “it was too much for me”, they look weak – their cancel culture “friends”, who have no idea what its really like in some of Australia’s remote communities, could accuse them of being insufficiently committed. But if they are victims of climate change, they wanted to help, but it was our global failure to address the great moral challenge of our time frustrated their good intentions. Instead of looking weak, they can claim to be climate refugees.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
You need to wonder why the 4°C above average is due to climate change of a degree warmer globe. Everywhere that has unusual hot weather is warming 2 to 3 times more than the global average but nowhere is cooling twice as much. Not Texas, not France when there is another beast from the east, nor Victoria Australia whose alpine areas have a good covering of snow 2 months ahead of the ski season.
Yet it all makes sense because of an energy imbalance of less than a third of a percent, which is due to an extra 3% of CO2 Gaia can’t cope with.
NT, Darwin specifically is the hottest place I have had to live in decades ago due to my husband’s job. Even though my own work building was airconditioned, the blast of hellish air that greeted me at the end of a long work day, was enough to send me reeling backwards. The struggle just to cross the street through the dense humidity felt a bit like swimming, I kid you not. Then there were the days ‘in the Wet’ when my run across the street to my car occurred in such heavy downpours that no umbrella could keep me from being drenched, especially my lovely Italian leather shoes! I soon swapped them for more practical ones…sigh! In our rented flat on our arrival we had been bemused to find small heaters in cupboards, gave me a giggle, coming from elsewhere. However it didn’t take long to realise their use as I saw my shoes covered with mildew! On a particularly hot day we decided to head to the beach. Quelle surprise. I had never encountered a beach before where you could actually see wisps of steam coming from the sand. I felt the land I could see in the distance must be Indonesia, no other excuse for Darwin being so darned hot! 🙂 The Darwinites said that it takes a few years to become used to the climate but we gave up and left after only two.
Wet heat.
Dry heat I am fine with. Spent two summers working and living out of Roxby Downs (central SA) when I worked in mining. Winters were sodding cold with sub zero nights being common. Summers were hot, but dry hot. Got to the stage if the weather forecast was 39C for the next day you wouldn’t even blink. Hit 40 and you showed a little concern, but basically you dark water constantly to protect your hydration levels and used shade whenever you could. It does take a bit of getting used to as the heat wants to dry your eyes so your eyes tend to sting a bit.
It was actually more comfortable to avoid aircons as much as you could as coming from 40C outside into a crib room with the air con set to 18 (and then been closed up and allowed to cool since morning smoko) was very uncomfortable.
But yeah, dry heat.
Get to about 25C with high humidity and I am throwing my toys out the cot and complaining like a two year old.
In decades ago!
Thank you for your experience in NT
Yep, ‘stinking hot’ just about sums it up. I worked as a mud logger on a well ‘near’ Derby WA in the summer of 1982/3. 46C in the shade on bad days when it rained a bit and the sun shone.
The aircon in the logging trailer could get the temperature down to 30C, which was quite pleasant in comparison.
The locals were a tough lot. I worked another job that was a long way into the great Sandy Desert. The truckies who drove in with the heavy equipment called it a ‘three crate trip’. That was the number of crates of beer they would drink on the trip from the main road to the rig site, grinding along the desert tracks ioften at little more than walking pace. Not a place for snowflakes.
Aaah , but of course its ‘ climate change ‘ that’s making the locals more violent .
Especially if the clinic/medical centre is nearby to a pub/hotel .
The big problem in Australia is that we have the urban areas where about 90% of population lives, country and then rural. About 2% (guess) live rural.
In the city everything is about ‘First Nations’ and ‘Traditional Elders’ and ‘Reconciliation’. Companies fall over themselves to ensure their happy little employees do their Cultural Awareness training, that their formal emails have a ‘Acknowledges the Traditional Owners’ footer and that every single cultural event/week/day is recognised by having corporate IT change the walkpaper on our screensavers.
That is the urban areas.
We mention the Traditional Owners (aka the first wave settlers who were later displaced and effectively exterminated by the more aggressive second wave roughly 20,000 years ago… oppps… do I have that wrong?) at the start of any public speech and buy the official sporting merch issued by the mega sports corps during Indigenous Round and smile at each other about how progressive we all are, unlike those nasty Right Wing people the ABC keeps warning us about.
In the Rural Areas they get to watch drunken ‘First Nation’ representatives fight each other in the streets in a cycle of drug and alcohol filled black on black physical and sexual violence that doesn’t respect either age or gender. Got a problem? Punch it in the face till it goes away.
Everyone knows it happens.
Everyone is too scared of being branded a racist do speak out about it and, since apart from casual theft very little of it affects non-indigenous people directly, it is easier to just ignore it. Got to respect their culture after all.
It is an utter disgrace that so many members of our media and ruling class want to pretend that non of this ever happens and if it does it is clearly Captain Cook’s fault.
Australia has a sick underbelly and if the political and activist class don’t accept it then the rest of Australia is going to just stand back in disgust and watch the shame continue to the logical and terminal conclusion.
Carbon Neutral has sod all to do with any of it.
The year 1974 ended in Darwin NT with Cyclone Tracy that destroyed many areas of that city and suburbs. I spent a lot of time in the NT that year servicing construction equipment at a bridge site now inside Kakadu National Park, the road was at that time under construction and a narrow gravel road was used for through traffic mostly consisting of construction related vehicles.
To claim that climate change has caused a change in weather conditions is nonsense, all who know the NT are aware of the Wet Season and resulting “going tropo” (tropical), a condition resulting from heat, high humidity and excessive intake of alcohol.
I travelled out to the construction site from Darwin on one visit in a petrol engine single rear axle Toyota prime mover pulling a well loaded tri-axle trailer heavily loaded. The driver after a while suggested that we move out onto the running boards, cabin doors tied open to the bullbar, to avoid the engine heat on an already very hot evening. The prime mover that was normally used was written off following a collision with a feral Buffalo Bull that stepped out in front of it.
Of course in modern Darwin doctors work in air conditioned premises, the climate hoax tale is ridiculous.
From NASA adjusted station data for Darwin Airport, Jan 2020 29.40, Jan 2016 29.50, Jan 2002 29.49, coldest January ever 1905 at 26.34.
December 2019 30.75, coldest December 26.27 in 1934.Only 5 years in 120 4 degrees or colder than 2019.
Oh and don’t forget Darwin Airport is both civilian and military airport so has just a wee bit of that nonexistent UHI
Darwin temperature is one of the most fudged in the world.
Airport 1905 ?????
In the 1950’s my Dad drove to Heathrow airport London to meet his brother. The airport was little more than a row of “Nissan huts” in a field. He arrived the night before, and pitched a tent on grass opposite the airport’s main entrance. He parked his car beside the road near the entrance.
70 years later Heathrow airport is a concrete and tarmac monstrosity the size of a large town. Temperature measurements at the airport no doubt show OMG warming.
Climate change? What else would it be?
From the study (ref 3)
”Overall, 362 doctors (25·7% of 1407 registered) took the survey.”
”85% of respondents reported that climate change is already causing, or likely to cause, negative effects on the health of their patients, and nearly three-quarters (74%) responded that climate change is already causing, or likely to cause, parts of the Northern Territory to become uninhabitable.”
That’s science brother!
But this is quite true:
‘The Northern Territory is being increasingly exposed to extreme heat, water insecurity, and violent storms.’
And I don’t notice any urban conservatives even making the attempt to go and help out…
WT* are you yabbering about this time, child-twerp. !
And no, it is NOT being increasingly exposed to any “weather” impacts.
Why ALWAYS with the LIES, griff…
…. is base-level DISHONESTY your whole existence?
Oh and, any conservative that does try to help and point out the problems gets howled down by leftist justice warriors, as being racist.. eg Tony Abbott.
The RACISM IS ALL FROM THE LEFT..
People just like you, griff….. with your HATRED of any real assistance being given to any country with a darker skinned population.
DENIAL of solid reliable electriciy to third world countries, on the basis of a FAKE climate agenda, being a prime example..
Correction: “And I don’t notice any…..thing.”
Keep screeching out your lies, it is all you have.
“A sizeable chunk of Northern Territory’s doctors are thinking about leaving the territory because of climate change, our new research shows.”
That’s interesting, one of my brothers in law lives up there and likes it. But he’s a robust sort and not worried about a bit of local weather inspired argey-bargey. He’s used to tropical cyclones and typhoons. If his doctor was thinking of heading south, I’m sure he would have mentioned it in our last family conference call.
On that topic; sister in law reported a brief shower of snow near Darwin, Northern Territory, of all places on the weekend of the 11th April. Make of that what you will.
Over 100 years of temperature data are available at both Darwin and Alice Springs. Both stations changed locations in the 1940s but is was possible to amalgamate the records.
My analysis showed that the temperature trends have been essentially constant over the past century. The greatest trend increase was for January (summer) temperatures at Alice Springs (+2.7 degC/century), while the greatest temperature DECREASE was for extreme winter minimum temperatures at Alice Springs (-1.1 degC/century).
https://briangunterblog.wordpress.com/2019/06/17/northern-territory-temperatures/
This would have rattled a few of them-
Gayle Woodford inquest hears man who raped, murdered outback nurse had been released on parole – ABC News
And note the irony for US citizens facing liberal progressive chants to defund the police-
‘The coroner heard a small police office would be built this year, but there would not be permanent police officers present and offenders that need to be detained would be taken to another station.
This comes after former traditional community officer Carl Roberts told the coroner last week that a permanent police presence would improve safety conditions for women and children.
Since 2013, South Australian Police has been able to employ up to 10 traditional community constables.
However, due to the challenges of recruiting local community members, there are only four currently employed.
“We have over many years tried many different strategies to fill those positions … we work very closely with the elders to try and identify individuals who would work with as a traditional community constable,” Chief Superintendent Miller said.’
Australia is moving north at about 7cm per year. That’s where the warming is coming from.
This study of soil carbon in north Australia over the last 30 years is a rare example of a climate study in which the authors allow experimental results to disprove their starting hypothesis.
There’s a lot of carbon in soil. Desperate to find ways that CO2 increase can have disastrous effects amplified in any way possible, scientists have proposed that increasing CO2 will – strangely – cause soil carbon content to decrease, leading to another one of their much loved positive feedbacks, in which soil holds less carbon and atmospheric CO2 is elevated still further, “wuss than we thought”.
These authors studied undisturbed soil in Queensland for 30 years, same method, same guy. Their starting expectation was that soil organic carbon (SOC) would decline over this time. But results showed the direct opposite. SOC increased. Rising CO2 was benefiting soil in every way.
To their credit, the authors accepted without equivocation that their starting hypothesis was “rejected” by the study’s findings. Carbon dynamics in soil under rising CO2 were better than they thought. Something you don’t hear often. Honest climate science is still alive, here and there.
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V24/apr/a6.php