Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

Saturday afternoon; 26 January 2019
A brief update

This is going to be the Year of Reinvention as I have recently dubbed the theme of the next installment of the series and ambitious plans for the season briefly outlined in the previous installment. However things seem to have gone south along with the deep penetration of the Polar Vortex plaguing even Texas and the Southland yet again.

Having the El Niño run out the clock on the remainder of January was apparently too much to hope for. But the return of Norseman's Hell a couple weeks ago has become a strange paradox of plummeting temperatures and skyrocketing doomsday predictions of 2 degree C or more warming of the globe. Like this recent one that says we only have 25 years now to change course and avert catastrophe.

https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-09-13/scientists-say-25-years-left-fight-climate-change

Mark your calendars for this one! It could be the next “ 5/5/2000: Ice the Ultimate Disaster”. Except this time around its being propagated by actual scientists and government policy makers as opposed to fringe religious leaders and pseudoscientific cranks. How many times have we heard this before? How many milestones of mass starvation, dead oceans and snow becoming a thing of the past have we passed ; where in the words of Isaac Asimov writing about the end of days predictions of various preachers who had their flocks gather on hilltops in the late 19th Century awaiting the Second Coming—"and the day passed without incident". When are environmental alarmists going to be held accountable for their failed predictions? Their track record is getting just as bad if not worse than that of Christian millenarianism - which apart from the preacher who got a lot of coverage for setting a date for the end of the world several Septembers ago- seems less given to crackpot thinking these days.

As for paradoxes—the alarmists continue ramping up their doomsday claims. The Weather Channel at times seems to be another propaganda wing of the progressive government / media complex second only to CNN (Commie News Network): fear mongering documentaries on climate change and doomsday scenarios of super quakes triggered by hydraulic fracking abound and results of a recent poll they are airing has something like 75 percent of the population believing that climate change is real and human activity is causing it.

Meanwhile a story is running about alligators sticking their noses out of the water in North Carolina so when it ices over; they can still breathe—albeit at a very slow rate as they go into a state of hibernation.

https://www.livescience.com/64592-alligators-weird-snout-behavior-winter.html

This is not unprecedented from a natural history perspective—as it gets cold in the Southland sometimes and alligators on the northern periphery of their natural range do hibernate for several months of the year. What astounded me about this story was the fact they endure having part of their anatomy sticking up in the sub-freezing air and I always assumed they dug dens in the banks of rivers and swamps to shelter above water level underground. Yet it can't be any worse than my old male Louisiana Gulf Coast Box that still lives in the care of a friend many years after being frozen in the ice of his watering pan with his back totally exposed to the brunt of winter weather.

That led to a sense of false security resulting in the loss of the two males last year. Learning from that costly and tragic mistake I have since redesigned the method for wintering my flock to prevent that from ever happening again and so far it is working pretty good with the thermometer sitting on top of the storage crates I have them in hovering in the range between 0 and 10 degree C where to keep them safe from freezing or premature waking. So far so good.

And efforts to go forward with renovation of the Florida Room in my basement were stalled due to a combination of gridlock of the clutter and dealing with the fish in a tank on a stand that needs to be moved so the project can go forward. These and other developments will be detailed more when the actual installment of the Winter Edition is ready.

That will happen in another month or so. I figure in that time there will be a few newsworthy events in the way of weather related stuff. So far the named winter storms like the recently departed Harper and some of the others have been a major disappointment—though I'm not bemoaning it as I have enough problems to deal with.

As I hope to get started again and make a little headway and break through the gridlock that stands between me and the next step forward in putting my house—in the case; basement—in order. And maybe enjoy the brief warmup—if you can call highs not much above freezing a warmup—before the next bout of polar air descends upon the region later this week.

Highs in the single digits and subzero lows. Can't complain too much because it could always be worse. Like the situation of Ray in Wisconsin where the gates of Norseman's Hell vent their full apocalyptic fury.

Global Warming my ass!