We all are still sheltering in place, but I'm here to keep you sane and entertained.
One could hardly ask for much more than that, now could one?
Huzzah! It's Arbor Day - the day to plant a tree - the last Friday in April. I don't know the weather where you are (after all, I don't know where you are - I'm not Facebook nor Google), but I do know that it's far too cold to be out planting trees here in Michigan. How can it be that we've been plagued with snow and far-below-normal temperatures all this month?
Allow me to explain.
The only thing that's been holding off the Ice Age we've anticipated since the 1970s is the small amount of greenhouse gases we've added to the Earth's atmosphere. Now that the pandemic has the factories and cars and trucks mostly shut down, Nature is taking her course. Enjoy the fruits of the lack of labor, folks, and put another log on the fire.
"What are you talking about?" I hear you mutter. Allow me to elucidate with a bit of a quotation from a very fun novel (Fallen Angels, by Larry Niven, Michael Flynn, and Jerry Pournelle):
Keep Calm and Stay Away.
I'll be back tomorrow.
One could hardly ask for much more than that, now could one?
Huzzah! It's Arbor Day - the day to plant a tree - the last Friday in April. I don't know the weather where you are (after all, I don't know where you are - I'm not Facebook nor Google), but I do know that it's far too cold to be out planting trees here in Michigan. How can it be that we've been plagued with snow and far-below-normal temperatures all this month?
Allow me to explain.
The only thing that's been holding off the Ice Age we've anticipated since the 1970s is the small amount of greenhouse gases we've added to the Earth's atmosphere. Now that the pandemic has the factories and cars and trucks mostly shut down, Nature is taking her course. Enjoy the fruits of the lack of labor, folks, and put another log on the fire.
"What are you talking about?" I hear you mutter. Allow me to elucidate with a bit of a quotation from a very fun novel (Fallen Angels, by Larry Niven, Michael Flynn, and Jerry Pournelle):
"What's to lecture?" Needleton demanded. "It was all simple, and known before 1980. The sun is not producing enough neutrinos. Ergo, it is not fusing. Yet, according to the technetium levels in deep molybdenum mines there were plenty of neutrinos passing through the Earth during interglacial and preglacial periods."
"Excuse me, Bob," said Gregory Lutenist, "are you leading this discussion or am I?"
Bob waved a hand. "Sorry, Greg. Go ahead." In a near-whisper, "Gordon, it's a cycle. Fusion stops, the sun cools a bit, shrinks a bit, the core gets denser and hotter, fusion starts again, the new warmth inflates the sun. See? Is that a relief, or what?"
"Maunder Minimum!" someone shouted.
Lutenist beamed. "The sun goes through sunspot cycles. Lots of sunspots, it gets warm here. Few sunspots, colder weather. An astronomer named Maunder recorded sunspots and found that the last time there weren't any the planet went through what was known as the Little Ice Age, the Maunder Minimum." He paused dramatically. "And in the 1980s it became certain that the planet was going into a new Maunder Minimum period."
"Yes, yes, we know this," Gordon said. "Sunspots are important to us. But if so important to Earth, why do they not know cold is coming?"
Keep Calm and Stay Away.
I'll be back tomorrow.
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