A Darkness at Noon

A storm in February used to pass by unnoticed, it was the kind of thing you expect, happened every year, through out autumn and winter we'd have storm after storm. A few dustbins would get blown over, maybe a tree or two, a power outage ( to use the American term) was not unknown. But it was winter, you expected it and got on with stuff. Nowadays everything has to have some malign anthropogenic cause and we'd better beat ourselves with birches until we come to our senses and/or die and leave the planet to all those cuddly animals and nice trees and flowers and grasses ... The chiliastic numpties gather in their covens and murmur misanthropic millennial doom and say we must expect these "extreme weather events" even more frequently now that there's so many people on the earth all making nasty carbon dioxide. They are, as I've said before, quite mad and completely wrong: we have fewer storms these days ... but mere facts never faze a craze.

Also crazy is giving these passing Atlantic depressions names: today's puny effort has the name Ciara which means "dark haired"; apt given that it was getting quite pitchy at just gone noon when I took my photo coming back from Tesco.

My bin blew over (almost!) , we must expect more events like this ... We shall rebuild! I don't know if the trauma will ever  leave me.

¿Qué gigantes?

¡Válame Dios! —dijo Sancho—. ¿No le dije yo a vuestra merced que mirase bien lo que hacía, que no eran sino molinos de viento, y no lo podía ignorar sino quien llevase otros tales en la cabeza?

                                                                                            Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

I've been trying to find out exactly what climate is and I've failed completely. You'd think with all the stuff and nonsense spouted out it would be easy to say climate is such and such; but no, no-one can come up with an agreed definition. So I haven't a clue what is meant by the term "climate" (and I'm guessing you don't have much idea when it comes down to it). I read that "climate is what you expect; weather is what you get" but that isn't really helpful in tying down a definition, is it? Best I can figure on the matter is that climate is past weather all averaged out (and maybe fiddled with by clever folk with fancy machines) but it's past weather nonetheless, that is to say, climate is history and it's also an artefact, something that only exists because we say it does. (To some poor folk climate has developed almost god-like properties, and it's an angry god too that needs propitiatory sacrifices such as cutting off the electricity to appease it... these people are completely mad it goes without saying.) Now just as history can't be changed, so climate can't be changed; only the weather can change. Now if you've ever read the small print on investment opportunities you'll be aware that past performance is no indicator of future returns. So worrying about climate change and doing something about it is just tilting at windmills ...

These desaforados gigantes are near Thorne between Goole and Doncaster on land, Hatfield Chase, reclaimed from marshes nearly four centuries ago by our friendly Dutchman Cornelius Vermuyden when the climate was cooler than it was yesterday so they say.