Vic Socotra

10 July 2009

Zanjeer Zani

(Zanjeer Zani religious flagellation device.. Cavendish photo)

I had plenty of time to think behind the wheel of the trusty Bluesmobile as I flogged it downstate. It’s a ine car to drive in a crisis, a lot like taking your living room couch out on the highway. The police model has the big engine, heavy suspension and drive-train, beefed-up brakes and an extra oil cooler.

Sure, it is a little pricey to operate when oil is high, but it is a consummate example of old-fashioned American know-how.

Virginia rolled by in shades of cool green. Cool again for July, with a spritz of rain. Our biggest customer was stopping by the office of the operating unit that supports him down south of Brandy Station, so it seemed prudent to be there and look attentive.

There is a dead-zone for public radio south of the old battlefield where the largest cavalry battle ever inflicted on the equine residents of North America transpired more than a century ago, and I had to piece together the story from the Group of 8 meeting from the slick Washington station and the eccentric College outlet from Charlottesville.

The DJ down there was a smug UVA kid who informed me his listening audience that it would be temperate the rest of the week, though he didn’t mind the heat or the humidity that is the hallmark of central Virginia.

I sniffed and took a sip of the tepid Diet Coke lodged in the cup-holder. A hundred degrees and 80% humidity for a week or so would bring him to his knees, I thought, and that is what President Obama was seeking to prevent in Italy, or so the commentary went.

The reporter was pretty dramatic about it, and sounded hopeful that the rich and developing nations would unite in a common crusade against global warming. I use the term ‘crusade’ with full knowledge of the semantic weight it carries, and I cringe a bit when I heard it drop from Mr. Bush’s fractured syntax at the dawn of the War-on-Extremists-Who-Just-Happen-to–Be-Muslims.

The climate discussion has now taken on the trappings of religion, complete with world view. One must accept that it is the corrupt West that has brought the world nearly to its knees, and that great penance must be paid. It is an article of faith now, not one of logic. Carbon has become the manifestation of sin, and the sin naturally must be expunged.

Scourged, if you will. I got an image of Shia Pilgrims flogging themselves with tose fancy cat o’nine blades- zanjeer zani is the term for the flail- as part of the Ashura ritual. Friends in Bahrain used to have cocktails and watch the processions discretely from behind their tall white walls back in the day.

It seems as if we are all expected to join in these days. I looked at a weathered sign advertising The Steak and Pig Restaurant in Madison, and made a mental note to stop some day when I have time.

It smacks of the whole post-Colonial Liberation theology thing. Mr. Obama seems to relish returning America to a leadership role in the theological matter, and convened a clearly eager to restore America’s leadership role. He convened a special side meeting of seventeen countries, including the G8 principles and added China, India and seven other developing nations. As a group, they account for 4/5ths of the production of world’s greenhouse gases.

As you can imagine, the developing nations take the line that this is the fault of the old Colonialists, and thus the West should sacrifice first. They refused to commit to a goal of a fifty percent reduction in carbon levels by 2050, a year in which I fully commit to not be driving police cars, or anything else, across the lush pastures of the Old Dominion.

The breathless account of the great enlightenment made me queasy, since the European approach to the carbon problem was presented as Revealed Truth, and there didn’t seem to be any discussion about the sunspots issue, or the fact that locally warmer urban areas have swallowed up many of the temperature reporting stations or the fact that perfectly reasonable scientists have doubts about the effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

My pal in the warning business chartered his people to take a look at the claims from the Denial Community about the impact of the sunspot cycle- that we are in fact in a cycle of global cooling. The breeze through the open window of the Bluesmobile suggested to me that there might be something to it.

Real Government Meteorologists took a look at the claims of Dr. David Archibald, one of the leading heretics of the Sunspot Sect. Here is what they found regarding the three key parameters of his 2008 forecast concerning solar cycle 24:

“These parameters appear to be accurate, or are still on track at this point some 15 months later. Verification was done by using observed data via NASA and solar observatory web sites…. there seems to be growing evidence with this line of thinking. In March 2009 there was an International Conference on Climate Change. The theme was “Global Warming-was it ever really a crisis?” The answer was“no” based on more than 75 papers and keynote addresses by some of the world’s leading climatologists, economists, policy makers, and other leaders.”

That got my attention. The schism in the scientific community appears as deep as that between Shia and Sunni. Meanwhile, the President managed to get the seventeen nations gathered in Italy to agree to an “aspirational” goal of preventing global temperatures from rising more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. The worth of aspirations being what they are in this recession, that is not the sort of religious fervor one would hope to see.

I’m OK with that. I dislike True Believers on general principles. Another pal, a known lawyer, is also a Ham radio aficionado, and is more in tune with solar activity, since it directly affects the propagation of radio waves. He wrote me to ensure that I didn’t drift too far off the path of orthodoxy:

“Hey, bulletin from SpaceWeather.com <http://spaceweather.com/> has a bulletin: "Solar observers haven't seen an active region like [#1024] in more than two years. It is big, complex, and rapidly growing. The magnetic polarity of the sunspot, revealed by SOHO magnetograms, show that it is a member of new Solar Cycle 24. This makes sense: New research shows that solar jet streams are beginning to stimulate new-cycle sunspot production. Sunspot 1024 appears to be a sign of the process at work, heralding more to come."

That would be a good thing. Global Cooling is no better than boiling to death. It might be worth a minute to see which one is imminent, though, since we will have to pick out suitable wardrobes.

If we are targeting 2050 as a real year for action, things should be clear enough by then.

I will put away the zanjeer zani for the moment, and refrain from the self-flagellation. I might suggest a brief “cooling off” period to see what is really happening.

We will see whether or not things are getting warmer, or not.

That said, I am no fool. I will continue my enlistment in the Pickens Army, since that is just common sense. We need to burn less oil for a lot of reasons, one of which may be the production of excess carbon.

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