WTF!!

Where the hell is that global warming I've been promised?

This is what fighting an apartment fire at -13 temps looks like
(two nightsago on the U of M campus near where I once lived).

Since we had just a taste of unseasonable winter warmth when the mercury reached 46 degrees last Saturday, the most recent five days have looked like this: morning low -13 to an afternoon high  of 1; low of -13 to a high of 2; low of -8 to a high of 1; low of -12 to a high of  1.

If you average the hourly figures, the average temperature during this stretch has been -7. And that's been in the balmy urban island of Minneapolis. A couple hundred miles to the north, the lows have been -27, -33, etc.

Back in high school physics class, we were taught that cold is really nothing more than the absence of heat energy. That is utter horse shit, because anybody who lives in a northern climate can tell you that cold is an aggressive,  active force that is much more than the mere absence of some other principle. Cold hunts you in the winter here, aggressively and slyly. To say that cold is the absence of heat is like saying Mike Tyson is the absence of Scarlett Johanson.

Another falsehood is the claim that once you get below zero, all cold feels pretty much the same. That's also horse shit, because cold takes on a different feel when you get down to about -15. This is the point where a car when started in the morning will have squared off tires for a few minutes until they roll themselves out to roundness again; where the foam seat cushions in a car are stiff as hardened sand; where the power steering system shrieks at you before the system warms up enough for fluids to flow liquidly. This is also a temperature where the snow will squeal in pain when you walk on it, and where the inside of your nose will crust with ice after moments of breathing through your nostrils.

And it doesn't end there. The coldest air temps I've personally experienced are  in the -35 to -40 range, and at this temperature, actual clothing begins to stiffen, and ice will form on the liquid lubricating your eyeballs. If you spit into the air at this temp, the spittle with freeze with an audible snap and drop to the ground like a hail stone.

And it doesn't end here, either, though I'm fortunate not to have experienced the -55 to -60 below

Not a terrorist. Just a typical business executive commuting
by bus in a Minneapolis winter. 

temps known in parts of northern Minnesota. That's a zone where home furnaces can really never keep up with the attack of the cold on a dark winter night, and where you'd damned well better have a wood-burning heat source to back you up in case the furnace breaks down altogether, which does happen when a furnace is forced to roar constantly for six or seven days at a time without a break. People up there sometimes sleep in fully insulated snow-mobile suits, because furnaces may be able to keep indoor temps only slightly above freezing, and if they break down may cause death to sleepers. I've known cabin owners in the north who literally burned all their furniture in the wood stove in the dead of winter when a propane furnace went bad during weather that left roads impassable.

This morning, before walking to the bus, I donned:

Two pairs of socks, including a thick woolen pair
Long underwear bottoms
Sturdy pair of gabardine business casual slacks
Long-sleeve undershirt
Long-sleeve dress shirt
Long-sleeve v-neck sweater
Thin fleece North Face jacket
Insulated boots
Thick full-length woolen overcoat, reaching to mid calf
8-foot long woolen scarf, wrapped several times around my neck
Woolen driving cap
Woolen earmuffs.

At the bus stop corner, I first bought a cup of steaming coffee from Starbucks, but could not drink it fast enough, because ice began to form on the surface within five minutes of standing outside. And despite the sartorial statement my clothing made, I was experiencing numbness in my toes, hands, and face within 20 minutes of waiting for a bus that was running late.

At the shop downtown where I bought a breakfast sandwich, the clerk mentioned that he had found a great spot to ice-fish for crappies (a pan fish similar to a sun-fish) on one of the city lakes over the weekend. "How's the ice?" I asked. "Okay so far," he said. "Two feet thick right now, but I'm afraid it won't be by end of January. Could be three feet thick by then. My auger may not reach far enough."

This is a climate where a common winter complaint is that the lake ice is too thick to allow for ice fishing.

* this grumpy essay is spoken entirely tongue-in-cheek. I'm well aware that man-made climate change is real, and that the overall temperature of the planet has increased dangerously  in recent years. I just wish a little of that heat would visit us in Minnesota in December and January.

The New Puritans

John Winthrop, Puritan
and all-round great guy

—This article contributed by The Professor—

When the Puritans seized power from the English monarchy, one of the first things they did was close all the theatres.  On the heels of this edict, much of the priceless stained glass that adorned English churches and cathedrals was destroyed under the justification that it was idolatrous.  In short, the Puritans obtained power, and they were not shy about imposing their view of things on the world of their time.  After all: salvation was at stake!  The Puritans have received “bad press” over the years, which can overshadow the fact that here were energetic, sincere, intellectually vigorous people, who made significant personal sacrifices to further their vision of a world in which the “proper” order of things was created and maintained.  

Today we have a new form of Puritanism.  It is nothing if not sincere; it is characterized by a high level of intellectual energy; and its copious idealism and vigour is employed in the pursuit of a form of salvation: the life of this planet.

Yes, I am referring to the confident, intelligent, striving zealots of today:  the broad coalition of activist groups that might be referred to as the climate change movement.  They share many of the admirable traits of Cromwell and his lot, but—perhaps inevitably—they can display some of the downsides of zealousness as well:  judgmentalism; intolerance of opposing viewpoints; a penchant for overstatement; and a confidence in their own point of view that can border on hubris.  We all can show these characteristics when we feel strongly invested in an idea, but there is something “special” about a movement which undoubtedly considers itself liberal, but which exhibits many qualities similar to the “granddaddy” of all intolerance: the Puritans.

Of all the things we think of when we think “Puritan,” one of the first is the Puritan Work Ethic.  The most important thing to learn about this influential social legacy is that—according to the Puritans’ protestant theology—it was NOT work that was going to win you salvation. [Much to the contrary, these Protestants most energetically protested the Catholic idea of “salvation through (good) works.]   Since salvation was achieved through grace alone, the important thing to a Protestant was having evidence that you were a recipient of such grace.  And what evidence did they aspire to accumulate?  Wealth, gained through hard work: not for wealth’s sake, but as a sign that they had received God’s grace and therefore were among the “chosen.”

Fast forward a few hundred years to the turn of the millenium, and we could see another interesting race to display one’s “chosen” status.  Two manufacturers of roughly equal reputation and roughly equal customer loyalty came out with progressive new automobiles employing hybrid technology of roughly the same type at roughly the same cost.  It was a huge leap forward for the “green” technology movement, and one assumed the sales of the Toyota Prius and the Honda Civic Hybrid would eventually be roughly similar. 

But then something happened to distinguish these two otherwise similar green vehicles: Honda felt customers would prefer to avoid the bulky, boxy rear-loaded look that many earlier battery-intensive vehicles had sported; it’s design team combined a brilliantly engineered smaller battery with a creative approach to the rear end of the vehicle and created a hybrid Civic that looked notably similar to a “regular” Civic.  Mission accomplished (and an impressive mission it was.)   

Meanwhile over at Toyota, a bold choice was made to display the difference, to make a virtue of necessity and design a vehicle that wore its battery and hybrid status on its figurative sleeve.  Along with the distinctive look, a distinctive name.  The rest is history: In the three years following both models being introduced to the market, the Prius outsold the Civic hybrid by a factor of almost 3 to 1, inducing product shortages and waiting lists.  It became a cultural phenomenon. 

Market researchers were—not surprisingly—anxious to determine how such an unexpected market phenomenon could occur.  They should have consulted John Calvin.  Overwhelmingly people, when surveyed, indicated a wish to be seen as driving a “green” vehicle by others.  Resonating with the Puritans, the car itself was not considered as important as what the car conveyed to others: Prius drivers were obviously one of the chosen, and it was important for others to realize that.

There is another more contemporary parallel between religious zealousness and the rhetoric of the sustainability movement.   Can there be a more bold, overstated claim to importance than “save the planet”?   The stakes are, of course, high (as they were in the 70s when there were confident warnings of a “perpetual winter” caused either by nuclear generated dust or by accumulated particulate matter in the atmosphere.)  

But motivating people to do the right, moral thing under the implied threat that the planet will die otherwise makes me think of the way fundamentalists seek to induce young people to do the right, moral thing in their sexual relations.  In the more conservative, intolerant subcultures across the U.S. it is not uncommon—in our aids-aware culture—to use a similarly overstated scare mongering as a cornerstone of sex education (when it is present at all.)  The basic idea: if you have sex you’ll die.  A basic, overstated, fundamentalist way of looking at things, nominally and bombastically? based on “science”—but no better for inculcating a thoughtful approach to a wonderful expressive act than “save the planet” rhetoric is to encouraging thoughtful environmental stewardship.

So, you may well be asking (and rightfully so): what’s the point—that environmentalists are bad people?  Far from it.  Thank goodness there are thoughtful, sincere, intelligent people on hand and observant enough to call our attention to the fact that we have lost our way in relationship to the planet we have been given to steward.  And thank goodness that there were thoughtful, sincere, intelligent people who called attention to the fact that the Catholic church had seemed to have lost its way in terms of articulating and expressing our relationship to the divine. 

The point in both of these cases is: we need to guard against an impulse toward eliminating alternative points of view (one of the central issues in the “climate gate” e-mails unearthed two years ago.)  We need to be appreciative but be wary of energetic true believers (To a hammer, everything looks like a nail; no reason to dislike the hammer, but be wary if your hammer wants to ban the staple gun from your toolbox.) In short, we need to exercise a respectful scepticism toward these valuable, self-sacrificing idealists.  We should value them, by all means, but when they come for the stained glass, we need to be ready to push back.