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Aussie Data Centres Brace For Dust Storm Barrage
An anonymous reader writes "Data centers and telcos in the Australian cities of Sydney and Brisbane have shut off external ventilation systems, restricted loading dock access and attended false alarms after a major dust storm choked the cities today. The storm is said to be the worst of its type ever recorded in Australia. Macquarie Telecom disengaged automatic deployment of fire-prevention gas from the fire alarm to prevent gas being released on a false alarm. Other major data center operators reported clogged air filters and heat exchangers and said they would be performing cleaning and maintenance operations this week."
You could taste it by about 11am (still can). Water restrictions will be lifted for a few days to allow people to hose things down. Latest reports suggest there is a lesser dust storm due here by Saturday. Damn Kiwis are stealing our country by stealth!
You never catch me alive
Climate change is a farce. im a sydneysider, this is the worst duststorm we've had in 70 years, IE: 70 years ago, it was this bad. It's the first year of el nino, the ground is going to be dry, it happens. its also not the worst dustorm in the country, the 1984 one in melbourne was worse. the arctic icecap is melting too, curiously in line with the friggin range of underwater volcanoes spewing hot magma into the ocean.
That's certainly how it felt. I was up at the crack of dawn and what an eerie red dawn it was. Never seen anything like it. It was interesting that earlier in the morning near dawn it was easier to capture the dust as it was stronger where I was.
Mind you it's nice and Sunny in Sydney today, so as usual this story's a little late.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
This was posted on one of the Aussie mailing lists I'm a member of, absolutely sureal. Wish I could have seen it, bit of a drive from the West coast and I believe they were grounding planes at one point.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
Americans thinking they are in a position to laugh at another countries beer. Now I've seen everything!
A) it is not the worst on record at all, it is the worst in 20 years. There have been significantly worse dust storms in Australia over the past 200 years. B) it is was NOT a high energy climatic phenomena, it is was the results of strong (but not excessive) winds over central Australia picking up the red dust, the prevailing winds happened to coincide nicely with this REGULAR outback phenomena to blow the cloud over major cities. This has about as much to do with global warming as a penguin farting in antarctica.
Yep. Here's what it looked like yesterday:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/E_Aust_dust_storm_-_MODIS_Terra_1km_-_23_Sept_2009.jpg
The coast of Queensland is that as-yet-untouched bit up the top-right there. :-)
In Soviet Australia, outback visits you!
"Climate change is a farce."
No, farcical is believing an obvious lie such as the claim that an active super volcano is melting either or both poles.
Also you haven't defined "worst dustorm"? - I would assume TFA is measuring the duststorm by the area it covered. In which case this one would be the "worst" of the two since it streached from South Australia to Queensland where as the 1984 one (that I experienced as it rolled over Bairnsdale) only covered Victoria and parts of NSW / S.Australia, at a rough guess that's about 1/4 of the area.
"It's the first year of el nino, the ground is going to be dry"
El Nino has not kicked in yet and it is NOT forecast to do so this year, this dust has accumulated under El Nina conditions. When ENSO does in fact flip to El Nino conditions the ground is going to get even dryer than it already is.
Did you (while reading up on non-existant volcanos), fail to notice that the majority of Aussies are living with strict water rationing laws? Are you unaware that practically all the state capitals in the country are frantically pouring billion$ into building some of the largest desal plants on the planet? Have you not noticed that most aussie grain harvests over the last 10yrs have seen a 50-60% drop in size when compared to pre 1990 averages? Is there not a giant scar on the Victorian bush from what was an upnprecedented firestorm (I say this having wittnessed first hand all three major fires in living memeory, 2009, 1984 & 1968(?) ). Are the hydro plants in Tassie not silent due to lack of water in their recently completed dams? Is Melbourne currently not at it's lowest winter water reserves on record?
Please also explain to us (without invoking invisable volcanos) why an entire forrest of 600yo river red gums has not survived this particular drought, when according to you conditions have been much worse at various times in the last century or so.
Like some of the other replies, I really have no explaination for why people post bullshit like the steaming pile in your post, is it attempted gallows humor? Are you paid?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
How do you shoot down a simple argument of logic?
It's been this bad 70 years ago.
70 years ago we didn't pollute ANYWHERE as much as we do today.
If our polluting nature is supposed to be the cause for climate change, which would then lead to, say, DUSTSTORMS, how come the same thing happened when we had barely begun the polluting?
Climate change is real. It happened since the beginning of this dirtball. The question is, how much of what we see today is natural and how much is man-made. Considering that they also found that CO2 rises came after our atmosphere warming up and not before, I'd like for you to give me a few examples of shut down points in favour of us not having much to do with the situation.
It's easy to say "Everyone KNOWS that your arguments won't hold up". But have the common decency to prove it instead of making blanket statements about our intelligence.
I am fucking fed up with this behaviour. Time and again, people had to lower their eyes in shame after they had made fun of others for their outrageously unpopular statements and then being proven wrong after all. How can any sane and halfway intelligent being continue doing that when none of us have any kind of insight into the bigger picture? Have you ever checked which scientists have proclaimed human induced climate change? Have you checked their work? Have you checked their numbers? Their conclusions? Have you checked whether their institutes are low on cash and just freaking needed the publicity?
Same goes for any opponents of human induced climate change, by the way. Same rules for all of us. The difference between you and me is that I don't call you stupid just because you have a different opinion than I have. All I call you is frickin' rude.