Emotional week! It was 7.2 Degrees (F) this morning, the first noted single digit temps this year in Virginia’s rich Piedmont territory. If one does not count the decimal points, anyway. Since the morning chaos over messages and messaging erupted, we have gone up 16.7 degrees. That is the natural world, of course, unlike the one we are told sternly will devolve into all sorts of awful things if the average temperature rises more than 1.5 degrees (F). We confess we are occasionally struck by the incongruity of the claims about it all, particularly since satellite sensors run by the University of Alabama at Huntsville scientists say nothing much has changed in the last nine-point-something years. The result? Google banned UAH as “disinformation.”
We used to be OK with debate about science, since everyone at The Farm was taught that the nature of Science was questioning. Now, stuff that hampers the official Narrative is just censored and the originators banned from Facebook.
That narrative of doom has been going on most of our adult lives, and naturally has affected our perceptions of just about everything. We are old enough to recall the iterations of the story, and in fact participated in some of it. DeMille recalls an early attraction to something called “ecology.” It was an exciting connection between human activity and the natural world. That opened a wide field for all sorts of theories about why things are the way they are, and things we can do to avoid it. We were supporters of the Environmental Protection Agency when Dick Nixon was in charge, and a lot of good stuff happened. The Cuyahoga River has not burst into flames lately, and the smog in LA is not as bad as it once was.
About the same time some good things started, a new theory was introduced. Humankind apparently was directly responsible for the coming Ice Age. That was a popular belief, until it appeared that things weren’t actually getting much colder. The mantra changed to Global Warming, remember? It was a trace gas in the atmosphere that was doing it, rising dramatically from 270 to 440. That is parts per million. And we were going to turn into a Venusian-style swamp without swift and dramatic action.
This is the point in the morning screed that the Intern- actually, a pair of Interns of mixed or intermediate gender- would parade past saying, “Of course the climate changes, just like CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Humankind probably has an effect on that and we should watch it carefully.” The pair would stop, shake the posters vigorously, and march off with dignity while we change the relevant terms back to “change” rather than “warm,” since UAH says things have not warmed in a measurable fashion in almost ten years. Of course, that is based on what Scientists claim is the most accurate calibration of temperature, which comes from the UAH.
You know why the scientists are in Alabama, right? That is where those German scientists were shipped after the last global conflict because they knew something about rockets. But never mind.
Whether hotter or colder is a matter which requires much waving of Footnotes. The Writer’s Section has occasionally steered through some of the fog surrounding the matter and taken heat, or a chilling response from folks who believe what the larger Narrative insists: Humans are causing the change and thus Humans must change. Of course, only the wealthy can afford to do that, so one of the answers is to redistribute all that cash through virtuous organizations empowered to do the Public Good.
Splash waved for the cute couple to walk around the Fire Pit again. “Of course it changes. It always has. There is every reason to take steps to mitigate the impact of bad weather. The President signed a new Executive Order this week directing the US Federal Government to get to “net zero” on CO2 and Methane emissions by 2030. That is going to make some people incredibly wealthy and a bunch more people- “us”- pay a lot more.” He went on as the groans around the circle rose. “If we put something like that up for a vote- we hear a lot about Democracy these days- it would probably start with a clear understanding about what exactly the problem is, what the solution might be, and how much it is going to cost to do something that will only really impact ourselves.”
The debate went on, since recent polling suggests people agree this crisis is well inside the top twenty issues we confront, though not very high among them. There is measurably less support for actually paying any personal money to change things.
As noted above, this discussion about climate is frequently mixed up with weather, which we know from the Piedmont experience can provide some dramatic surprises. This is a good week for examples. Some pals on other properties have been without electric power for almost a week, visiting friends and family in more fortunate locations to charge phones and dine on cooked meals. We had to defer to Melissa’s skill on the iron griddle over the fire for a couple dinners right here after the back-up generator failed at the nine-hour mark of the deep chill.
But that is just periodic inconvenience, and not that unusual. Add the social vertigo associated with the Plague, we have had some real excitement. The Climate, Scientists tell us, can only be determined to be changing in segments of thirty years duration. That shakes out the difference with weather, which is a periodic phenomenon and inconsistent. It is getting a little warmer, though not doing so in a manner consistent with the theories, which promise real trouble, always ten years in the future.
Never mind, we have something else to panic about. A new version of The Plague has appeared that some Medical Scientists say is most closely associated with the symptoms and severity of the common cold. It can be bad, even requiring a visit to the hospital for fewer than 1% of those afflicted.
Splash waved for more Footnotes, fearing that we were not sufficiently alarmed about the proper crisis. The pair of young people with lesser skills stumbled out of the Loading Dock with signs that said “The first version of COVID-19 was no-kidding deadly and killed hundreds of thousands. Take it seriously!” The other sign was simpler: “We have lived with the Flu and the common cold for as long as humans have been around. Wash your hands, keep a modest distance, avoid sick people and wear a mask if you wish. Be responsible!”
There was some consideration for that, and considering the temperature is already up to 26 degrees today, a dramatic increase of almost 19 (F) since dawn, we need to stay alert. And we are betting someone is going to come up with a new crisis. Real soon. It also might get dramatically cooler toward sundown, and someone- maybe the Interns- are going to have to carry some wood.
Copyright 2022 Vic Socotra
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