ARCTIC SEA-ICE –Curses, debunked again–

We were assured over a decade ago we would see an ice-free Arctic Sea by now. What gives? The current graph actually gives one the impression sea-ice is increasing.

This graph is taken from the Danish Meteorological Institute site, and represents the “extent” of sea-ice as we approach the yearly minimum. The five lines of green and blue below the red line represent the past five years. The yellow-green line which is lowest is last year’s. It gave Alarmists some hope, for it is the second lowest “ever”, (or since 1979.) Last September’s minimum was barely lower than 2007, but not as low as 2012. Alarmists could cling to their strange hope that a calamity was occurring in the arctic. What they are thinking this year I can’t imagine.

Actually a calamity was in fact occurring, but it had little to do with sea-ice. Rather it had to do with truthfully reporting. But that is an explosive, political subject, and I prefer to study the serenity of sea-ice.

The above graph suggests we may see an increase in the “extent” of sea-ice at the minimum, which demolishes the “Death Spiral” theory Alarmists cherish. The “Death Spiral” theory involves a positive feedback which asserts less ice will create warmth leading to further decreases in sea-ice. Ain’t happenin’. It hasn’t been happening for years and years, and this year’s “minimum extent” will likely be well above 2007’s. The graph is going the wrong way. The “Death Spiral” is debunked yet again. How many times must it be debunked before the light penetrates thick skulls?

I wish I could just talk of the science involved. All sorts of interesting correlations are occurring. For example, the last time a summer was so cold up at the Pole was just after the (satellite era) record for lowest “extent” was seen in 2012. Compare this summer’s chill with the greater chill of the summer of 2013.

This summer:

2013:

I personally find it fascinating that a September with much open water at the Pole can, if not “cause”, be “connected” to a following summer of below-average temperatures. But Alarmists are not fascinated in that way.

I’m not exactly sure what fascinates them. Apparently it is something called “The Narrative.” What is “The Narrative”? It is something different from “The Truth”.

It makes me think of a prophet of around 3000 years ago who laughed about people worshiping a god carved of wood, rather than the God of spirit. The prophet was called Isaiah, and he went on at great length about what a joke it was, and how silly it was, that people bowed before a hunk of wood. I feel the same way about how modern people bow before “The Narrative.”

It reminds me of something.

A half century ago, (when I was 18), an authority figure, (aged 27), harangued me to attending a class, though I hated school. He said I should be ashamed of myself for being so anti-education. Shamed, I went, but I listened to the teacher in my usual guarded manner, accepting nothing without carefully weighing its authenticity. Yet, even as I regarded the professor in this skeptical manner, I glanced over to see how my authority-figure friend was behaving, and was dismayed to see he resembled a deranged kangaroo.

He looked like a kangaroo because he had both wrists by his chest, but what shocked me most was the way he smiled and nodded with raised eyebrows each time the professor made a positive point, and shook his head and scowled a pout each time the professor disapproved of something. He had apparently lost his mind. All that mattered was being a “good student” and even a “teacher’s pet.” He seemed more focused on being appreciated than on appreciating. Seeing such rump-swab behavior shrank that “authority figure” in my not-so-humble eighteen-year-old opinion.

In like manner many good and intelligent Alarmists shrink in my opinion when they put “The Narrative” ahead of the facts.

The fact is that a “Death Spiral” prohibits the following two maps. Sea-ice is suppose to be decreasing, but here is the NRL map from a year ago:

And here is the map from now:

The increase in sea-ice, especially north of East Siberia and Bering Strait, is so blatantly obvious that to talk of a decrease, and especially of a “Death Spiral”, is tantamount to blindness. Yet the “Fake News” does exactly that. And some Alarmists lap it all up, like a student nodding at a teacher in order to look like a good student and get an “A”, while comprehending zilch.

How many times must the “Narrative” be debunked before the light penetrates thick skulls?

LOCAL VIEW –Soggy Summer Sonnet Sequence–

It was the wettest July I can remember. Fifty miles to our south, down in Worchester, Massachusetts, they actually set an all-time record for July rainfall. We were close, (though, two decades ago, the July ex-hurricane Bertha passed through and we got more on a single day). Also I recall a very rainy June, around ten years ago, when my deeper potatoes turned to slime, but I grew the most amazing spinach crop ever, with plants four feet tall.

Ordinarily I’d be fascinated by the extremes of New England weather, but the madness of the “Swamp” tends to spoil my enjoyment of life. My moods resemble a yoyo even in ordinary times, which is all well and good, as the agony and ecstasy are fuel for poetry (and I fancy myself a poet). But the infuriating behavior of politicians has made me a yoyo on steroids. Is there such a thing as a rocket-powered yoyo? That is what my moods have resembled.

My moods tend to bound between complete despair over the idiotic shenanigans of the moronic elite down in the “Swamp”, and a strange, joyous certainty God has them hooked, and is about to land them like flapping flounders.

In any case, my garden has suffered a certain amount of neglect. Partly this is because I recognized my skills have slowed, and planted the rows farther apart so I could use the rototiller rather than a hoe. However the rains turned the soil to a mire. If you stepped into the garden you sank in mud above your ankle. Obviously using the rototiller was impossible, so I desperately sank to my knees to weed by hand, but even that was ridiculous. Ordinarily you shake the soil from the roots of weeds, which causes them to perish swiftly, but this past July the roots were like a hippie’s wet hair, and rather than shaking dirt free you just whipped mud all over the place, and to add insult to injury, the weeds didn’t die. You merely transplanted them, for they re-rooted where you lay them.

Not that such excuses make a whit of difference, if you actually depend on your soil for food. However I (hopefully correctly) determined that famine will not stalk our land in 2021, but rather in 2022. Already I am planning for next year, and abandoning parts of this year’s garden to the weeds. (It is called “letting land lie fallow”, if you need an excuse). In the present one can still go to the grocery and buy bags of rice and bags of beans, plus boxes of pasta and jars of pasta sause, (and I would highly recommend people do so, though some may call it “hoarding”.) In 2022 those shelves may be empty, and excuses don’t make a good lunch.

Another excuse for not weeding was a crop we raise called “grandchildren.” It is very rough on us decrepit elders when they insist upon being born far away. On July 4th I had twin granddaughters born prematurely in Portland, Maine. The NICU up there is not in easy reach of weeds in my garden.

Meanwhile another daughter-in-law is on the verge of birth in NYC, with all its nonsense. NYC is not in easy reach of weeds in my garden, either. But I went there, and studied the people midst the coronavirus illogic. Meanwhile the weeds flourished in the drenching rains.

In some ways I was living like we are a free people in a free land, driving to Portland Maine and NYC and never wearing a mask, but I was nervous how long it would be allowed. Not that I need a mask or the vaccine. I have God’s vaccine, for I have had the virus.

At this point I should be blunt, and state that local people have seen examples of the vaccine killing people. One example was a sixty-year-old woman who was scared to death of the virus and stayed home for months, wearing a mask even at home, and who was eager to take the vaccine so she could leave home, but who promptly died. Another case was a healthy young man who played basketball at the local courts and who got very sick when he got the first dose of the vaccine, but recovered and took the second dose, and died. Such incidents do not make the network news, but local people know the local people who died. And in my case I had a long-distance friend, Robert Felix, (who ran the “Ice Age Now” site), and was shocked when he died within weeks of having the vaccine. His rheumatoid arthritis, which was under control, went out of control, and he was in a wheelchair within days, and died in a few weeks. In any case, there is reason to fear the vaccine more than the virus, especially as local people over ninety years old have had the virus and recovered with symptoms not much worse than a cold’s.

The distrust towards the government is at a level I have never seen before. At a local hospital five nurses quit rather than be forced to take the vaccine. I have heard things which ordinarily would strike me as conspiracy-theory and paranoia, from doctors and nurses who are not ordinarily inclined towards hysteria, and usually strike me as a bit too down to earth (because they are uninterested in poetry.) I have heard you can tell from a person’s red blood cells whether they have taken the vaccine, as the cells are “not normal”. Why expose children to such experimental dangers, when children seldom even develop symptoms from the virus, and seem perfectly able to develop antibodies on their own? Then there is an actual video of Bill Gates stating over-population is a problem which a vaccine might “cure.” How can ordinary people trust such a man? I heard the distrust expressed like this: “Why should a government which condones the abortion of millions of babies be trusted with the lives of millions of children?”

I suppose to even report that such distrust exists could get me cancelled by “cancel-culture”, but I simply report what I see. It is upsetting to see Freedom of Speech under attack.

All I can do is act within my corner of the world. Speaking only for myself, I will refuse the vaccine, and see what happens. And to express myself, I’ll write my sonnets, untroubled if they are canceled, and snickering because someone will have to read them in order to cancel them.

I have done all I can. That is enough.
I will not waste my time with bemoaning.
I plant the seeds, and then luck can be tough
With cutworms and crows; my telephoning 
God about frosts and floods is my first and last
Resort. What else (besides work) can I do?
I look up and half the summer has passed
And, though defeated, I feel my virtue
Is good enough. God can't ask for more.
Even in ruins I find serenity.
My body is grounded, but my spirits soar.
Life as it is is good enough for me.
Our Creator is great, an this much I know:
I may plant the seeds but I don't make them grow.

Once again I am losing my war with weeds.
Where other men can sit and watch corn grow
I know woe. Where a wise man concedes
He's getting old, I do not seem to know
How to age gracefully, and, full of fight,
Take on foes that might make a young man blanche.
Mouse fights lion; raging Dylan's dying light,
I still want to wrench small plots to a ranch.
I claim that I can, though I know I can't.
Wee flea gets tough with big elephant.
Old farmer gets mugged by the seeds he'll plant.
I rush, but eleven steps makes me pant.
I'm determined to prove my life's not complete 
Until punctuated by my final defeat.

If I were Augustus, I would not want 
This month named for me. Everything begs
For long days to linger, but dawns taunt
By cracking later, and sunsets cut the legs
From twilight. Too late to plant; too early
To harvest; a time even the dawn-song
Of a robin taints a morning's pearly
Sky with rue, for, (though it may well be wrong
To think this way), before August is done
Robins flee south. Dawns become fearful.
Is this song their last? Fret foils August's fun.
As songs depart daybreaks will grow tearful
Unless you lift eyes from the shade up the trees
To see golden rays in the high canopies.

Uplift us, O Lord, from mire we're bogged in.
We've made ourselves strangers in our own homes.
Nothing feels right. Our sorrows are maudlin.
Our songs are all flat. Our affection roams
Seeking what is missing, and that is You.
You should be the reason church bells ring
But they clank. You are the salt; it is through
Your grace life makes sense, but the flavoring
Is absent, and the guff that men pursue
Is hollow-hearted. Yet with just a glance
You could make people dance; make dull skies blue
And dull days rich. Please give us a chance
For without You the mire only gets deeper
And climbing out just gets steeper and steeper.

They are fools. Fools! A world full of fools
All rushing to board a swift-sinking ship.
Like housewives at a sale, nobody cools
The madness; they push and shove; gripe and grip
Straws breaking camel's backs as they pass through
The eye of a needle hid in haystacks.
The madly mixed metaphor they pursue
Makes them look like a dog which attacks
Its own tail. In circles they're not sure who
Is last and who is coming in first
But they shove aside kindness, kick the true
In their rush to sate insatiable thirst,
Yet all this greed, lust and hate they promote
Is sure to fall flat when God clears His throat.

 

Psalm 73 v 18-20:

"Surely you place them on slippery ground:
You cast them down in ruin.
How suddenly they are destroyed,
Completely swept away by terrors!
As a dream when one awakes
So when you arise, O Lord,
You will despise them as fantasies."