(Ice mass either encroaching or retreating. We forget which year this was. Image courtesy WorldAtlas.com)
We thought we had done this year with our recognition of the really big enormous climate crisis with the observation of Earth Day. That began a long time ago, and in 1970 we were assured that great mountains of sheer ice faces would shortly begin sweeping down from the barren frigid Northland.
Apparently they are back, and we may want to look in the back of the closet for those nice snuggly blankets we put away in Global Warming. We had been assured by the UN Secretary General that we would soon be boiling in our chairs on The Patio, and he is an elected official of a semi-democratic organization of some prestige, so we relied on his judgement.
This morning there are more judgements to deal with.
It is about to get cold again, and we had hardly started to break a sweat. The word comes from Northumbria University in Britain’s Newcastle. On their staff an astrophysicist named Valentina Zharkova has announced “There’s nothing we can do about it.”
That is pretty much what we are used to hearing from the Cooling/Warming/Changing community of assorted disparate experts. There are reasons, of course, as they always are when the narrative gets too far out of synch with the observations of what is actually going on.
Professor Zharkova explained it in terms even we non-astrophysicists could grasp. “This is due to the changing solar activity,” she explained. “Only uneducated people could call for a reduction in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The media is full of reports about record temperatures, the elevated readings likely have a lot to do with thermometers being placed increasingly in urban heat-absorbing areas. The recent warming has very little to do with carbon dioxide.CO2 is not our enemy.”
She went on to assert some sciency-sounding facts, including the one that indicates the people who say “CO2 is bad” are obviously not very good at universities or wherever they study. Only uneducated people can come up with such absurd talk that CO2 should be removed from the air.”
Here is the basis for Scharkova ‘s calculations. “The Earth’s average temperature will fall by one degree Celsius over the next 30 years and not rise. The sun’s lower solar activity will lead to cooling. I only feel sympathy for the people who have invested in solar systems,” said the Professor. “During the last period of low solar acticity- the Maunder Minimum- there were years when there was no summer at all. There was a brief spring, then fall, then winter again. And if there’s snow on your solar panels or the sky is cloudy, they’re useless.”
“Whatever we do on Earth, we can’t change the orbit of the sun and the big planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus,” she explained. “There’s nothing we can do about it.”
We were a little bemused by that part, since our unsterstanding was that all those planets, big and small, orbited the sun. If the sun is orbiting something else, it must be really big and way out there.
In the meantime, we are keeping a pair of shorts along with the down parka in the front closet. That way, if the temperature drops a full degree Celcius in only 30 years, we will be prepared.
Imagine how intimidating it will sound if we still use Fahrenheit in 2054! That could e almost “2 Degrees (F)! We need to do something about that, you know?
Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com