Dear Cousin Wiarton Willie,
Many thanks for your delightful letter from last year--how time has been flying.
Phillina and our offspring are all fine, eagerly awaiting the onset of spring. As you may have read in the news, we've recently had some bitterly cold temperatures here lately. I guess that it was not any warmer in Canada. Our friends in Alaska are also writing about the frigid temperatures (like -44 degrees F) there but the Alaskans are used to that, or ought to be. Obviously, we are not allowed to have such cold temperatures here as our thermometers' scales only go to -40 (F/C)! (What a relief).
A Year Gone By
Luckily we had anticipated the approaching icy age well in advance and made sure that we had an ample supply of nourishments (especially of the liquid kind). But let me review the year gone by.
Yes, the last 12 months appear to have experienced a sort of "time-warp" event, they came and went in a great hurry, definitely faster than in other years. Of course, this could be a false impression or fake news of sort. These days it's increasingly difficult to determine what's true and what's not. For example, one day you read that the Antarctic ice is rapidly melting and the next day another one says the temperature there is 130 degrees (F) BELOW or less than MINUS 90 C.
Even that little bit of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere will freeze out to a hard solid then. Perhaps some entrepreneur will endeavor to mine it soon? With the help of a healthy startup funding via crowd cloud funding, and a few billions from the taxpayers, it could all be scooped up, shipped to Mars and dumped in the Korolev crater there.
Of course, right now it's summer season down under and the flamingos penguins there are getting their new offspring to test the warm still icy waters. It's a wonder that the polar bears, lazing under the Arctic palm trees in Iqaluit (Nunavut) and elsewhere, have not yet hitched a ride on one of them container ships, like the Venta Maersk, or sight-seeing cruise-ships, only to jump ship near the beach at one of those research stations in Antarctica; I'm certain the folks there would welcome some nice new company, like cuddly polar bear cubs.
Bi-Polar Earth
At the other pole of this bi-polar planet things look more stable. With the temperatures north of latitude 80 N at the long-term mean for this time of year, the polar bears must be dancing in the snow. And the nearby semi-continent, I mean Greenland, needs to get its act together too. It also seems to vacillate between rapid melting to massive freezing from one day to another.
Even in normally balmy Europe and the British Isles, temperatures seem to be plummeting and snow and ice is plentiful everywhere. Weren't there headlines like "UK weather--Brits urged to stock up on FOOD as -11C snowbomb to last all week and Met Office issue[s] new ice warnings" and "Britain is about to be battered by a country-wide whiteout threatening to close roads, knock out power supplies and mobile phone signals" to be all items of the way-way-past--never to be experienced again?
Didn't the UK Independent proclaim nearly twenty years ago, in 2000 to be exact, that "Snowfalls [in Britain] are now just a thing of the past--Children just aren't going to know what snow is." You may ask, "What has changed?"
Oh, "the Climate"--of course!
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"Climate Change
"
The term "Climate Change" (CC) has become the new catch-all phrase for everything that used be a common natural event. Warm or cold weather, dead calms or gales, snow, ice, rain, and, perhaps, even sunshine (??)--all are now clear signs of CC -- and it's all "manmade" to boot. However, there are many folks who think the Climate, respectively the Change of that, only needs to be taxed--and in due course, it will mysteriously rectify itself.
So, dear Willie & Wilhelmina, get ready to open your wallets for some hefty "climate reparations" to be paid to the needy UN so as to possibly help despots in poor countries--solely to prevent the seas from rising, and so forth. Not that the Arctic sea-ice is disappearing, or the ice-shield on Greenland is melting, or Antarctica is "greening" (as the sub-Sahara region DOES). None of that "melting" is the case. In fact, exactly the opposite is happening, at both poles of this planet. However, despite all evidence to the contrary, one of the most outspoken (and sternly acting) leaders in combating that "evil CC" must be Germany.
The "Vorreiter" ("Advance Troup") Germany
From what I read (or get from travel tales there), the whole country is being "verspargelt" (German for "re-forested" with windmills), from one end to the other. Moreover, after recently closing down the last working hard coal mine (Zeche Prosper-Haniel), they are also planning to shutter and demolish soon all kinds of other secure and steady electricity-providing systems, such as lignite (brown coal), nuclear, hydro and other (??) power plants. It's hard to believe!
Any potential power-shortfall, so Germany is reckoning, can easily be compensated with imports of cheap and reliable electric power from France, the Czech Republic, and elsewhere. It remains to be seen if that is so; time will tell.
At least here in the backwoods of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania things are chugging along quite nicely. The summers are warm and the winters are--brrr--cold. Of course, that's why we have well insulated burrows with all the supplies needed to keep us going until spring. In any event, my dear cousin, try not to get caught in what M Oberndorf recently called the "Groundhog Day time loop."
Happy Groundhog Day and keep warm and well supplied with all necessities!
Your cousin Phil
Dear Cousin Wiarton Willie,
Many thanks for your delightful letter from last year--how time has been flying.
Phillina and our offspring are all fine, eagerly awaiting the onset of spring. As you may have read in the news, we've recently had some bitterly cold temperatures here lately. I guess that it was not any warmer in Canada. Our friends in Alaska are also writing about the frigid temperatures (like -44 degrees F) there but the Alaskans are used to that, or ought to be. Obviously, we are not allowed to have such cold temperatures here as our thermometers' scales only go to -40 (F/C)! (What a relief).
