Essay by Eric Worrall
The Guardian has resorted to interpreting evil omens and portents, to try to bolster their push for climate climate action.
How lightning killed nine Queensland cattle in one strike – and what it has to do with climate change
Experts say lightning strikes 1.5bn times a year, but global heating is causing them to shift further away from the equator
Natasha May Thu 17 Mar 2022 16.39 AEDT
Nine cattle were struck by lightning and killed in central Queensland earlier this month during an incident experts say could become more common with climate change.
Grazier John Ellrott said a heatwave that was affecting his property at Morinish and the surrounding Rockhampton region on 7 March culminated in a dry electrical storm. The next day Ellrott discovered his cows dead in a heap in a paddock.
…
Bluff grazier Cathy Hoare also lost two cows and two calves at her Rockyview property 80km away.
…
How common is it?
Mark Collins, chair of Ag Force’s Ag Business Committee, said the occurrence was not common, but does happen.
He lost 10 head of cattle 20 years ago in a severe electrical storm.
However, he said it’s unusual to have severe electrical storms in central Queensland at this time of year, since they typically occur through spring to early summer.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/mar/17/how-lightning-killed-nine-queensland-cattle-in-one-strike-and-what-it-has-to-do-with-climate-change
What can I say – back in the old days the ignorant and superstitious blamed witches for mysterious cattle deaths, so I guess there is a kind of cultural symmetry to some people today attempting to blame the carbon demon for anything unusual which happens.
Exxon was seen adding eye of newt to a cauldron?
Have you price eye of newt lately? No wonder gasoline is so expensive. 😉
It must have happened on “Mass Cattlemas Grieve”
Or was it the Dreaded St Gretas Eve”
Refers to a Mustard seed. Most of the ingredients of the Witches Brew in MacBeth were herbal.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon’s blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.
Now for a bit of an off topic rant.
Shakespeare did a good hatchett job on MacBeth who was a grandson of Malcolm II and could trace his ancestry back to Kenneth I (Canead) MacAlpin first king of a united Scotland. Lady MacBeth, Gruoch, was also royal her grandfather was King Kenneth III MacAlpin King of Scots. At that time8t to 11th century primogeniture wasn’t how kingship worked in Scotland but Tanistry was used. MacBeth ruled for 18 years and went on a pilgrimage to Rome in 1050, ‘scattering money like seed’.
Very much like the haatchet job done on CO2 by climate science today
Herbal? I think every thing mentioned was animal:
snake
newt — frog
bat — dog
Adder — worm
Lizard — owlet
baboon
Nary an herb.
Definitely not vegan.
“Chicken isn’t vegan?!”
+42
Great pop culture reference -for those of us that know!
“Definitely not vegan.”
Don’t forget that Shakespeare (26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) wrote after 1521, a time when they had a Diet of Worms…
https://people.howstuffworks.com/is-eye-of-newt-real-thing.htm
I think we are also seeing a bit of the casual assumption (even when the play was written) that words mean EXACTLY the same then as now.
‘King’. Yes. We all know about what ‘Kings’ are. Royal families. Princesses. Castles. Divine Right. Heir to the Throne and all that stuff.
Slightly different example – the title of ‘Sargent’. We all know what that means, right? Senior NCO. Position of respect and authority and, in many cases, a large degree of Badass.
Historical context? Closer to ‘servant’.
Other annoyance while we are on the topic – ‘Nation’. Sorry, that word has a modern context. It doesn’t translate back in time. When MacBeth was a boy there was no ‘nation’ of Scotland, there was a ‘Kingdom’ or similar, but not a ‘nation’ as we would know it. Nations evolved and came into being as the population slowly began to change their views regarding their collective identity and sense of geographical belonging. It is a tricky concept to explain quickly, but loosely explained as rather then there being a king and the people under his rule being part of a collective, there is a collective and a king/leader is assigned (via whatever process) to rule/lead/exploit over it.
Point being, if you just casually fling words back and forward in the timeline you are not getting a proper understanding.
So, Rome was built in a day?
Define ‘day’! sarc
Guardian dabbling in the occult again.
They are part of a Cult that subscribes to a religion that inculcates sacrifice of virginal human lives for social, redistributive, clinical, and fair weather causes. A wicked solution to a purportedly hard problem.
Too true. Once society accepted abortion as legal and not murder, it accepted any other crazy idea readily. Just be mad and sound convincing as you declare your new right to something or call to arms to fight the climate emergency boogeyman – just like old Adolf.
From the article: “Experts say lightning strikes 1.5bn times a year, but global heating is causing them to shift further away from the equator”
BS (Bad Science).
It’s cooling now, not warming; 0.7C since the 2016 highpoint. The lightning must be moving back towards the equator now, following this logic.
https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/most-cows-killed-by-lightning
Yes pure bullshit that is the world record 68 cows in NSW in 2005 and more south than this 9 cow event.
So one could postulate that increasing CO2 decrease cattle mortality in lightning strikes.
The same as 1893 being the biggest floods CO2 pushing down flood levels.
Why does it happen?
Because it happens
Roll the bones
Let’s not RUSH to judgement….
Here’s a good link to a listing of U.S. fatalities by year since 2006.
Maybe the stats are different in the U.K., or maybe it’s because cattle deaths are included in the U.K., 😉 and they are not included in the U.S. numbers.
Lightning Deaths | National Lightning Safety Council
I can connect any weather event to Kevin Bacon in only 6 steps or less.
Bacon? Is that when lightning hits pigs?
Not in “Green-Land”.
In Green-Land pigs can fly away from such piddling Natural realities as lightening.
(Besides, they have tree-ring-reading unicorns to warn them CO2-powered lightening.)
The Guardian ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Here in South Africa we have very powerful weather witches. Climate change is real and it’s happening. See?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzg3RbLx83M
John Ledger
Holy cow, I wonder if they used a bull dozer to clean that up.
Lighting killing cattle is not unusual, making a big deal about it and blaming climate change is.
Yeppers! A friend here in North Central Texas lost 23 to a lightning strike. Guess no one told those cows not to gather under a big old oak tree during a thunder storm
Fewer witches burned at the stake lately, more cattle killed.
Coincidence? … or something else?
How about 56 elk?
Lightning is blamed for killing 56 elk in the Mount Evans Wilderness during the second week of August. The elk were above timberline on a ridge at 12,200 feet, four miles south of the Mount Evans summit, when the bolt struck. “We^ve found big game animals before that were killed by lightning – it^s probably something that happens every year in Colorado,” said Janet George, wildlife biologist for the Division of Wildlife. “But it^s quite rare to find so many animals killed in one incident.” George and District Wildlife Manager Russ Mason rode into the remote area on horseback Thursday Aug. 19 to inspect the animals after being informed of the loss by a hunter who found the elk during a preseason-scouting trip. Forty-eight of the elk were grouped together within a 60-foot circumference, five other elk were located 75 feet away and three others were located about 130 feet away from the main group. “While this is certainly a tragedy for these animals, the elk population in the Mount Evans area and across the state is in excellent shape,” George said. “From a management perspective, this loss has negligible ramifications for the local or the statewide herd.” Colorado is home to approximately 216,000 elk, with the Mount Evans herd estimated to contain more than 2,400 animals. According to Mason, the loss of 56 elk shouldn^t be a big factor for wildlife watchers or hunters. Few people even make the arduous trip back into the area where the elk died and with well more than 2,000 other elk inhabiting the Mount Evans area, wildlife watching and elk hunting opportunities should be maintained this season, he said. Past incidents of big game animals being killed by lightning have occurred in Colorado and elsewhere. In 1997, six bighorn sheep were killed in Colorado^s Kenosha Mountains; in 1986, 12 elk were killed by lightning along the Continental Divide just north of the Eisenhower Tunnel; and outside of Colorado 53 caribou were electrocuted by lightning in Central Alaska in 1972. Of the animals killed on Mount Evans, nine were calf elk, 34 were cow elk and 13 were bull elk. Of the bulls killed, all were under four years of age. No large, branch-antlered bulls died in the incident. The Division of Wildlife plans to let nature take the lead in disposing of the carcasses, George said. “This was a natural event in a remote area and the obvious best course of action is to let nature finish what it started,” she said. “The carcasses are already well decomposed and a variety of wildlife have been feeding on them. “One thing^s for sure, there are a lot of happy ravens, eagles and coyotes up there right now.”
Cattle are dumb and because the have 4 legs cannot avoid ground strikes – the lightning dissipates across the surface at millions of volts per meter.
Humans with just two legs on the same radius – no problem – your mate standing next to you at right angles gets killed.
See lightning striking the corner flag at a soccer match in South Africa – generally those players on one leg or both feet on the same radius suffered no ill effects those with both feet on the ground radial to the strike got clobbered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VcBQOio54M
No one was struck directly.
Warmer weather will lead to fewer tornadoes. link
Since tornadoes and thunder storms are caused by the same thing …
So less cattle, less methane. Isn’t that what they want?
So, this would mean that more CO2 = more lightning = more dead livestock = less methane = lower temperatures, therefore CO2 causes global cooling and we are all going to freeze to death. Send money for research
All mammals have flatulence that produces methane. The bigger the mammal, the larger the fart.
Wasn’t it Greenpeace that wanted to save the whales? Now they want net-zero. Bizzaro world.
Perhaps another example of Willis’ ’emergent phenomona’ in a self-regulating world.
Now, if that lightning strike was the 2nd time it had struck that same place, that would be news.
But hitting the ground as some random cattle just happened to be hanging about there – no big deal.
Man, The Guardian is getting desperate to flog its flaccid news efforts.
(and once again, thanks for reading this tosh for us Eric, and saving us the nausea)
Wouldn’t be news, then, either. I’ve seen lightning hit the same place several times – and not where anything is sticking up, either. (I’ve often wondered if there is something under the ground in those places. Not owning the property, I can’t satisfy that curiosity.)
Well there you go.
You sure there wasn’t a mob of cattle lurking under the ground there?
That wouldn’t be surprising. Many years ago a city slicker friend of ours was visiting us on the prairies, and at a friend’s farm, when he mentioned there were more cattle “down below” she thought there were cattle underground, perhaps like in a subway tunnel!
Did she also ask –
“what are their names?”
Hold on your horses, or is it the cattle?
This proves that atmosphere is at same time drier and wetter as ‘caca verde’ people were claiming all along.
Drier atmosphere makes for a greater electric charge, and wetter atmosphere makes it more conducive hence such an unprecedented event.
To protect your livestock in the future please wrap your cattle in tin foil, attach a metal chain to the collar so it trails on the ground. In case of a Carrington type solar storm you cattle will be protected from subsequent damage or injury. This is farmhouse husbandry measure advocated by Mr. Michael Faraday, well known cattle farmer from village of Newington in Surrey nearly 200 years ago,
Not only wetter and drier but it’s worse than we thought, vuk.
The cows are 6% deader. Ask griff.
97% consensus
Tin is about $30 / kg. Aluminium is about $2 / kg. You rich people can afford tin, I have to use alfoil.
We have reaching a new tipping point. Pranksters will not be the only reason for cows tipping over.
My daughter was married in SW France twenty years ago. Between the ceremony and the all night party only six cows were struck by lightning.
I do believe that geography is also a factor in lightning strikes. I know a city well with large level areas and others that are hilly with far more lighting strikes on the latter. A number of people have also been struck on golf courses but I am not so sure what climate message that has.
Haven’t you ever watched “Caddy Shack”?
Cows are not as resilient as golfers. Lee Trevino, struck at least 3 times in his career, talks about tempting fate:
https://www.golfchannel.com/video/lee-trevino-feherty-talks-getting-hit-lightning
“Not even God can hit a one-iron”..
Just when I think climate alarmists couldn’t say anything more stupid……
This sort of climate change claim reporting is placed to keep the righteous hysteria pump primed.
WUWT ran a video by Jim Steele just a couple of months ago that referenced a peer-reviewed paper that showed the rate of severe thunderstorms has declined almost throughout the world. Once again, the Guardian is wrong and is intentionally misleading its readers.
Sounds like Frankenstein’s idea of a barbie.
> “in a paddock.”
Let me guess. A ring of heavy steel and a big tub of water out on an open plain.
OR a lateral or pivoted sprinkler boom
Large parts of Queensland powered by”swer” power lines – single wire earth return. Sometimes the earth part fails, and dead cattle next to the pole is an indicator that this has happened.
It’s not the greater frequency of lightning strikes, but the greater spread of the legs of cows in the increasingly hotter weather due to climate change (also, cows spread their legs further in extreme cold). This increases the potential difference between legs when lightning strikes nearby, increasing the voltage going through their body and into their hearts. A bit like opening the doors wider in the Capitol building let more Trump supporters through.
This is consistent with predictions of modelling, done this morning.
https://pin.it/qRMXzNn
Climate change makes weed longer and more dense so cows grow a lot faster and cover more earth area. Duh!
I’ve got some sheep scapula and a hot iron poker that I can lend to them if they want to try the ancient Chinese method.
I warned him not to give those cows kites to pass the time………
In one ear and out the udder.
More “weather cows” ( https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/17/explosives-may-be-used-to-dislodge-frozen-cows/ ) but now they have been promoted to “Climate Cows”.