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.
Well, a few winters ago, we had a thunder blizzard. So, strange thing do happen.
” Nine Cattle Killed in One Strike ” ???
Unprecedented!
So, spring / early summer storms occur a few days before spring. That seems like it isn’t catastrophic. The result is similar to something that occurred 20 years ago, so again, nothing new. Sounds like a good reason to destroy your standard of living and economy to me!
March 7 when this incident occurred was 20 days shy of spring this year. But spring is when these rare incidents are supposed to begin. I guess that this means spring was 20 days earlier this year. Gotta be climate change. Proof positive Griff?
Correction – 13 days.
This happened in Australia. It’s Fall there now, not Spring. Or did I get the date of the lightning strike wrong?
“carbon demon” Eric ??
This ain’t no underling Eric, this is the big red dude himself. Six protons, six neutrons, six electrons.
The number of the beast …. 666
…. and, with that trident, he’s selling Lithium too.
ROFL 🙂
Think of the children!
https://www.amnh.org/explore/ology/physics/atomic-mobile2
What a world…what a world…
Are they actually serious? I have seen as many as 30 cattle killed by lightning strike on a fence line. What a bunch of lie spewing wankers.
death by methane suicide
To be fair, the article doesn’t say it proves anthropogenic climate change – rather that God may BBQ more cows in the future.
It “could” signal ….just about anything.
If I bought a lottery ticket I “could” win $millions$ (or so the Georgia state government tells me.)
If they gave the cattle some seven-league boots, then they could quickly escape such storms. I reckon the Guardian would buy that.
I lived for decades in Eswatini (Swaziland) and I can tell you that witches are blamed for far more than lightning strikes.
In general parlance, witches are everywhere, witchcraft is ubiquitous and in certain areas, especially high lightning strike areas, nearly everyone practices it. People are particularly pre-possessed with the idea that lightning can be directed towards someone’s homestead in the Mankayane Region. Up there in the highlands, people frequently direct lighting to nearby homesteads of people thought to be directing lightning towards their own place. Sooner or later, lightning strikes one of other of the homes, and this confirms to the bewitcher that their medicine (which they refer to as “cooking up lightning”) is working – they got the formula right.
That Region has one of the highest lightning strike rates in the world. There is a huge amount of iron in the ground there. It is straight south of the Ngwenya Iron Mine. I figured that the people living there would be used to it, would pass it off as nature at work, not no! Every nearby strike is assumed to have been directed there by malevolent neighbours and jealous relatives. So instead of learning to cope, they learn to cast spells and fortify their homes against harm with lightning rods and elevated cables. Everyone knows, everyone else is jealous.
Losing 10 cattle to lightning would be interpreted as a very bad omen. It would indicate that the family’s protective saints had relaxed their grip and stood back, allowing the ever-present risk of lightning into their lives, because of something they had not done. It is not considered a punitive act by the ancestors, that is a European thing. In Africa it indicates that their relationship with those protective souls in the next world has been upset.
So, consider the Guardian’s interpretation. Is it a evil-witch-based calamity of the Euro type, or the African abandoned-ancestor type? The Guardian considers that “we did something bad” and that the dead cattle are the direct, punitive consequence; actually, vengeance.
How European.
How puerile.
How wrong.
I understand that according to Romanian witchcraft, their intention to write the article was sufficient to cause of the preceding event. It is upside down cause-and-effect, kinda like most climate science.
It’s an old cattle problem. Step-potential from just a single lightning strike near a cluster of 9 cattle could easily kill them all in one hit. Their feet are further apart than humans which means the ground potential across their bodies is higher during the discharge. The photo in TheGodian shows them together not spread out over the paddock. No need to conjure the idea of an extreme number of strikes … just blatant propaganda and/or newbee farmers?
Correct
GE developed downed conductor detection algorithms primary to stop cattle slaughter in Texas when lines are knocked down but protection doesn’t trip. The step potential of the cows is huge and pop goes the cow.
Awful way to die.
Pure sophistry. Unusual, but not uncommon…
Here in the Mid-Atlantic USA, thundersnow is unusual, but not uncommon.
Cloud to ground lightning strikes, kill people and animals. It’s called sh_t happens! Whenever cold fronts encounter warm fronts.
We had a thunder blizzard in Red Deer Alberta Sunday morning
Always fascinating
It seems that the alarmists are desperate to find anything and everything that could possibly get worse if the mid-latitudes were to get as warm as deserts or the tropics. It really is ludicrous!
If it’s not actually getting worse, they’ll make it sound like it is.
“Did you know there have been more named winter storms since 2013 since there had been in the 30 winters before 2013?!?”
More importantly, were the cows fully vaccinated?
Even more important than that, were they fully flatulated?
(Feedbacks and all that.)
Have we really outgrown fear and superstition? The tactics of only a couple of hundred years ago are being used yet again. If humans really have outgrown such superstition, we would be calling out this rubbish, but alas, some people are still stupid enough to make feeble excuses to justify tyranny to be imposed on all of us. For those that have taken heed of Aesop’s fable-the lamb and the wolf, the message that tyrants use the pithiset and feeblest of excuses to justify their tyranny. Which is worse-the tyrants that use pithy, feeble excuses to justify their tyranny, or the woke bedwetters that make equally pithy and feeble excuses to justify the tyranny. Looks like the woke bedwetters are tyrants themselves!
The human brain has not evolved in 10,000 years – we are as smart and as gullible as those that sacrificed virgins in live volcanoes. Indeed, the same people that were fine to see human sacrifices in the past are fine with human sacrifices from experimental quackccines and destroying cheap, reliable energy, which is the cornerstone of our civilization.
“While it was at first thought that the lightning iL the storm which broke over Toowoomba on Sunday night had not caused any damage, it is now learned that Mr. Ted Hehir, of Drayton, had three valuable milking cows killed, while a fourth is suffering from shock. The milking herd was in a paddock about 200 yards from Mr. Hehir’s home, which is situated on the main road. An examination of the carcases of the dead animals revealed that they had suffered severe injuries, all three being badly scorched and blackened. One had her horns buried some distance in the ground, indicating that she was knocked to the ground with considerable force. There was a black mark, two inches wide, extending from the hip to the head on each of the animals. Mr. Hehir’s loss is no small one.”
23 April, 1932
Only three killed, not 6. Must be climate change.
Lightning Science: Five Ways Lightning Strikes People
https://www.weather.gov/safety/lightning-struck#:~:text=Ground%20Current,a%20victim%20of%20ground%20current.
(snip)
“Ground Current”
“When lightning strikes a tree or other object, much of the energy travels outward from the strike in and along the ground surface. This is known as the ground current. Anyone outside near a lightning strike is potentially a victim of ground current. In addition, ground current can travels in garage floors with conductive materials. Because the ground current affects a much larger area than the other causes of lightning casualties, the ground current causes the most lightning deaths and injuries.Ground current also kills many farm animals. Typically, the lightning enters the body at the contact point closest to the lightning strike, travels through the cardiovascular and/or nervous systems, and exits the body at the contact point farthest from the lightning. The greater the distance between contact points, the greater the potential for death or serious injury. Because large farm animals have a relatively large body-span, ground current from a nearby lightning strike is often fatal to livestock.”
I love the way a friend of mine described the Guardian “just a ranting left wing rag”!
To quote Professor Philip Stott “I’ll believe in ‘man made’ global warming when the Guardian stops advertising cheap flights”!
Shouldn’t we be burning witches then?
I guess they got tired of blaming aliens.
However, he said it’s unusual to have severe electrical storms in central Queensland at this time of year….
And unusual to have yet another 1 in 1,00 year rain event?
The Guardian of 2022 is not to be confused with the Guardian of yore. It is now a purveyor of agenda driven drivel and untruths written by a chattering class that has forgotten what neutrality, objectivity, and morality is, just like the sponsors who wouldn’t support it but for its compliance with their demands. It must think it is in such splendid company and that will prove its greatest weakness. It was once loveable and friendly for all its many flaws. Now it is just dangerous.
It reminds me of the old “joke”: Putting “climate” in front of “scientist” is like putting “witch” in front of “doctor”. 🙂
Why is anybody surprised after the last two years?
Just like many people once believed that garlic would ward off vampires, many people STILL believe that some cheap, filthy, two-layer piece of cloth in front of their mouths will ward off COVID. Invisible “killers” require a ritual to be safe, and it rarely matters what the ritual is.
Humans are extremely vulnerable to superstitions because it meshes well with the pattern-matching way our brains work. Logic and reason are hard — seeing a picture of Elvis or Jesus in a piece of toast is comparatively easy.