October

October, from Latin octo. (So called because it was originally the eighth month of the Roman year.
I love this period in the south, where I am, as I write this, in the Alpes Maritimes. Each day the colours are slightly richer until they reach their autumn colour crescendo. In principle the colour compliments of their original, spring time, mature display of tints of various greens.

 

It’s an ephemeral celebration that makes one smile, gives one confidence, feelings of thankfulness and nostalgia.
This in spite of the panic of the seemingly faithless, convinced that climates are changing in ‘unnatural’ ways, due to the folly of humanity.

 

Perhaps I am old enough to claim the privilege of repeating myself, in saying that I have seen quite a few climate changes. Late autumn and winter smog, for example, on the outskirts of London, sometimes so thick that one couldn’t see more than a yard in front of oneself. True it was caused by low atmospheric pressure, and the general use of coal, before the smokeless kind was developed, but no one panicked or jumped to conclusions that the planet was in danger. We all thought it was quite natural, and accepted it as such.

 

However, in view of our beautiful planet’s extraordinary climatic history throughout its venerable age of 4.543 billion years +, long before humanity somehow arrived on the scene, a mere 200,000 years ago, I have far more faith in universal law (and God) than in pretentious claims of man-induced climate change.
The seasons have always remained stable. They have done so for many thousands of years, so why make such claims? Why exploit fear in such a futile yet mercenary manner?

 

Admire rather the fleeting colours of autumn, and be happy with the thought that 2021 should be a good year for wine, certainly in Italy.
Wine has almost always accompanied civilisation. Its production dates as far back as between 6000 BC and 4000 BC. An ancient winery was discovered in Armenia. Surely this deserves great respect. And aren’t such thoughts reassuring? 

 

I have seen the autumn displays of this particular region for over twenty years. They are always spectacular, some years even more so than others, naturally depending on the weather. So this year we are especially privileged.
Other fabulous characteristics of this region (of an altitude of over 1200 metres) are the variety of sky-scapes, especially sunrises and sunsets. One can see examples of these that I have captured at various periods among the listed links of ‘Photographic works’ on the right. They represent rare, fleeting moments. Similar to the good fortune of seeing and being able to take a closeup of a beautiful, rare butterfly feeding on the nectar of a mountain flower, just before it flutters off, completely oblivious to the claimed perils of dreaded ‘climate change’.

 

Already lower down in the pine woods there are a few small (thus so far spared by the little white gourmet worms) ‘sanguin’ mushrooms, and the beginnings of chanterelles’, but it’s still too early and too warm. Some rain and colder weather will make all the difference when one returns in November.

 

Climate change denial’ is a new offence that seems to be considered as bad, if not even worse than alleged racism or LGBT prejudice. Yet denying climate change would be as ridiculous as, let’s say- ‘oxygen denial’ (half of the world’s oxygen is produced via phytoplankton photosynthesis in the oceans. The other half is produced on land via photosynthesis by trees, various shrubs and grasses, etc.). Indeed it would be very unnatural and worrying if climates ceased to changed. Naturally they are in constant evolution according to universal laws as well as the seasons governed by the Earth’s tilt (axial inclination or obliquity). Would it not be a shade pretentious to believe that this evolution is greatly influenced by the follies of humanity?

🌈

Text and photographs © Mirino. Octobre, 2021

Epoch of hypocrisy

We seem to be living in a particularly nefarious epoch in which fear, guilt, dishonesty, or even incoherency is being used to try to accumulate more power and personal gain. An epoch that will be remembered for its hypocrisy. Covid-19 is no doubt ‘man made’, but instead of taking legal action against those responsible, those who tried to cover up the truth of the origin of the virus that has caused, and is still causing, endless negative consequences; instead of what should be regarded as a necessary process to try to insure that such a murderous outbreak will never happen again, innocent people, theatre, restaurant and hotel owners are being punished, while it’s still business as usual with China..

Similarly, so called climatologists keep harping on about man-made climate change. But in this case where is the incontestable proof?
Obviously atmospheric pollution has some influence, but even there, where is the proof that it’s causing any change of climatic cycles?
Volcanic eruption is a natural phenomenon which certainly causes a great deal of pollution. Life itself, and all forms of energy, even so called ‘green’ energy produce pollution.
One wryly notices that the term ‘global warming’ is used in the summer, whilst ‘climate change’ is used in the winter, perhaps because the seasons are as perfectly stable as they should be.

Again, the age of planet Earth is 4.543 billion years. Man, women (and perhaps even the first LGBT participants) somehow arrived on the scene only 200,000 years ago, which is a blink of an eye in comparison with the age of Earth. Its climatic history, long before humanity arrived by some sort of miracle, is phenomenal. Not only were there several ice ages, but there were eras of very high temperatures that make our so called ‘man-made global warming’ theory seem all the more ridiculous.
One was during a geologic era termed as the Neoproterozoic that took place between 600 and 800 million years ago (give or take a few centuries). Extremely hot temperatures have also somehow been climatically assessed and recorded between 500 million and 250 million years ago. Long before humanity graced the planet. During these ages, far more CO2 was produced than that of today.
It therefore seems a shade pretentious to claim that man is responsible for climate change. Even more pretentious is the claim that man can correct whatever changes are taking place, when such changes are naturally governed by universal laws.

In Italy and southern France the month of May this year was one of the coldest Mays experienced for several years, but then the ‘experts’ paradoxically put it down to the effects of global warming, claiming that the Arctic, warmer than it should be, is sending its cold air south. Why did it not do the same thing in May 2020? And why has it stopped sending its cold air south since May?
The man-made climate change theory is however, an excellent pretext to make the innocent fearful and guilt ridden. It’s a great pretext to rake off billions which, needless to say, have no effect whatsoever on natural or divine phenomena.

In his diaries Samuel Pepys refers to terribly strong winds that one couldn’t stand up against, and an unusually scorching summer in London. He wrote of the Plague of 1665, and the Great Fire of London that destroyed much of the city’s centre including part of St Paul’s Cathedral. Never would he, or anyone else of his epoch, have advanced a theory that such rare phenomena were due to an excess of horse farts, or even divine punishment. This although he was a devoted Christian and husband, despite his endearing weakness regarding women in general.

I mentioned this before. In my youth I ‘clearly’ remember periods of thick smog, on the outskirts of London, especially during autumn days when atmospheric pressure was low. We then thought it was ‘natural’, and put up with it. But this was before smokeless coal was produced. It’s probable that Paris had similar periods of smog in the 19th and early 20th century. The industrial revolution would also have greatly contributed to this.

Years of experience, and faith itself, would add to one’s doubts regarding the assertions that man is responsible for climate change. Years, because one has experienced the gradual changes, the cycles. One is also aware that there is always a reason for everything.

Deforestation, for example, contributes towards flooding and landslides. The peasants who long ago tended the forests and river banks, repaired terrace walls that supported the soil for pastures, etc., no longer exist. The asphalt covering roads is not always porous, whereas the earth it covers naturally is.  Deforestation and extensive periods of excessive rain can therefore undermine roads and cause them to collapse in certain vulnerable locations. Obviously there is nothing unnatural about this. We have to assume the consequences of our own actions, and what we regard as conveniently necessary.

There are times (like last year) when local vines become infected with some sort of malady. There is nothing one can do about it. The local cultivator vintner will shrug, and trust that the following year will be better, which is in fact the case. Such things are not necessarily caused by humanity’s veering off the righteous, politically correct path towards global utopia. No doubt it has been the natural course of events regarding the production of wine since the Greeks or the Georgians of South Caucasus as long ago as 6,000 BC.

Indeed, putting things into perspective, when one refers to history, especially the climatic history of the Earth, many millions of years before humanity somehow appeared; a civilisation that gradually detached itself from nature, thus reality and eventually even faith, and developed its own bombastic, pretentiously divine, self-importance, isn’t one a little more capable of seeing things in a clearer, rational, thus saner manner?

🌠

Text and image © Mirino. August, 2021

 

Parisian crash course

Paris, about fifty years ago.
After working in Amsterdam for three years, I wanted to go to Paris. As an artist illustrator I needed freelance experience. I also wanted to improve my French. I believe I left Holland in the winter of 1970, but I’m not sure. I was still in a sort of dream..

At that time I had a blue Fiat 850 coupé, (they seem to have since become extinct). It was cold and late in the day as I drove south.
In Belgium the roads were then cobbled in certain places. There was verglas. At one point the car slid hard against a high curb and the shock broke the front right disc brake. I could no longer use the foot brake and it was too late to have repairs done. In any case my budget was very tight. I therefore thought I had no other choice but to continue, and had to rely on the hand brake only. I was scared stiff, but fortunately at that time there was not a lot of traffic, so I succeeded in carefully getting down to Paris.

One of my sisters lived in the 16ème and kindly put up with me until I found and rented a small, virtually unfurnished pied-à-terre near le Bois de Bologne. (500 francs a month. Can you imagine!) I can’t remember buying any furniture so it must at least have had a bed. As there wasn’t a table, and I didn’t have a desk, I began by carrying out my illustrations, commissions for book covers, page illustrations and even film posters, on my square, black, suit-case on the floor!

In the mornings, for apparently a long enough period, I went to the Alliance Français for my French lessons. ‘Officially’ I was a student. I had no work permit or titre de séjour. But in those days, if a young man, (même un étranger) was caught with a girlfriend in a public park after it was closed late in the evening (for example) the police would, tongue in cheek, reprimand the young couple. They might not even demand identification papers. At least that was the case for me at one sweet time..
At the Alliance Française there was a canteen where one could eat quite well for very little cost then.
But in Saint-Germain-des-Prés one could order a menu of steak, frites, salad, a glass of red, sliced baguette and desert for about 10 francs, or plausibly it was even less. It probably was if, during that frugal period I could sometimes afford it.
Apart from that I regularly ate evening meals of sardine and tomato sandwiches.

Trying to get appointments for work was often frustrating as one had to use jetons to telephone in those days. Invariably one was kept waiting by a casual receptionist, (maybe varnishing her nails) so precious jeton time was too often used up fruitlessly.

At one time during this Parisian crash-course (that I would have recommended for all young people) I was quite ill. I had caught a severe throat infection. Eating became extremely painful. Tomatoes especially cause excruciating pain. I had a high fever but was lucid enough to know that I had to do something about it without delay. To this day I don’t know where I went, how I managed to find a doctor, or who he was, but miraculously, this was what occurred. I must have knocked on his door. As soon as he saw me he ushered me into his house. But I remember nothing. Blank. All I remember is that he cured me and expected nothing in return. NaturalIy I shall never forget that. A God sent saviour. Bless him, whoever he was.

Driving in Paris, round the Arc de Triomphe, for example, was a joy in August when most of the Parisians would have migrated south. One feels one has the whole city to oneself. And Paris was beautiful, very special then.

Work wise in Paris, as no doubt in all European cities, there were good people and less good people. The latter took advantage, and the former helped. It was thanks to those who understood and helped, that I was able to take my next step in life. But that’s another, very long, illusive, but certainly more creative chapter.

Text © Mirino. Top Photo with thanks to Coralie, line drawing/letter, with thanks to 'Nathalie'. June, 2021

‘Metical’ change

‘Metical’ is Mozambican money. Its origin, to quote, is Portuguese, based on Arabic miṯqāl, from ṯaqala ‘to weigh’. It has absolutely nothing to do with the following, apart from being an anagram of ‘climate’... 

Climate change. A fascinating subject. kaleidoscopic. Each day is different, unique, and this has been the case since the birth of planet Earth 4.543 billion years ago, give or take a year or two, a month, a week, a minute, a second. Even the last measure is important because if, for example, in a certain location one anticipates a spectacular sunrise or sunset, and wishes to capture it with photography, seconds are of momentous importance. It would be inopportune to then decide to change a lens or filter. 

Today we are blest with sophisticated means to forecast the weather. Observer satellites that film the movements and the build up of cloud formations, means of anticipating and calculating atmospheric pressure, humidity rates, levels of pollution, wind force, and wind direction changes. Marvellous computer technology. Yet, despite all that, the meteorologists often get their forecasts quite wrong. For an example, in the location where I am now, as I write this, only two days ago the weather was forecast to be 100% rain today. Nevertheless, this morning we were blest with clear blue sky. At 13h this was still the case. The forecast was naturally changed to accord. The change forecast that it would rain here 40% at 15h. Later this was changed yet again to 40% rain at 19h. Now it has been changed to 30% rain at 21h this evening, and so it goes on. Climate change... Doesn’t this mean that universal laws are often unpredictable, like life itself? Certainly, and it’s just as well. 

The climatic history of the Earth is incredible. There was a geologic period  known as the Neoproterozoic (600 to 800 million years ago) when the Earth’s weather was exceedingly hot, which comparatively makes today’s ‘global warming’ theory, or scam, absurd. And naturally there were several exceedingly cold ice ages. Yet life obviously survived, certainly before mankind (and womankind) graced the Earth, beginning a mere 200,000 years ago. We have come a long way since then, despite gruesome periods of abstruse, social regression. 

The experts may get their forecasts wrong, but we must never try to contradict the idea that mankind, womankind, (and whatever of today’s dreamed up variant humankind) is responsible for ‘climate change’. Seemingly we are being fed this pretentious assertion which defies proof as well as natural logic, in order to try to render us guilt ridden and fearful. But the radical climatic changes of planet Earth that occurred many millions of years before human-beings mysteriously arrived or somehow evolved, make the experts’ ‘man-made climate change’ assertions appear pretentious and ridiculous. 

The experts have affirmed that the unusually cold spring weather in Europe, even in the south, is also due to global warming... They say that as the Arctic Circle is a few degrees warmer than it should be, it’s sending its cold air south. Why would it do that? Mind you, for some strange reason this year, this may well be true, but why did it not do the same thing in the spring of 2020 and the year before, etc? A year relative to universal time is a moment, a wink of an eye. 

Why use the term ‘global warming’ when it’s evident that such a phenomenon is certainly not global? Over thirty years ago I remember when it snowed in June in Southern Europe, but no one came up with incoherent theories. In my youth I remember fog (smog) in the outskirts of London so thick that one couldn’t see more than a metre in front of oneself. If prior to the descent of smog one had been driving one’s car, someone had to walk in front of the car waving a scarf or handkerchief to enable the driver to slowly crawl home, providing the motorist’s home was reasonably near by. Otherwise the car had to be abandoned. Whilst walking outside in such conditions one wore a handkerchief over one’s nose and mouth (although this was not a governmental law). Once home the part of the white handkerchief that theoretically ‘protected’ one’s lungs, was black from the smog. Yet no one panicked. It was not unusual at that epoch in cold, humid winters when coal was used to heat houses, in low atmospheric pressure, before so called ‘smokeless coal’ had been developed. 

The same scare tactics referred to above regarding ‘man-made climate change’ have certainly been used for the so called pandemic, seemingly for similar, lucrative, mercenary motives. Were fortunes made from the bubonic plague which lasted from 1346 to 1353 and which caused the death of possibly up to 200 million people in the world? If so it was nothing compared to the fortunes made from Covid-19 which is alleged to have caused the death of 3 million people in the world. The death of possibly up to 200,000,000 people in the fourteenth century was naturally far more significant than that of 3,000,000 people in relation to the world’s population count then and now. The number of alleged victims relative to the world’s population today should categorically cancel out Covid-19 as a pandemic. Yet we have been persuaded by the authorities and the complicit, constant televised reports, to dread the virus. One suspects that this is for reasons that have far less to do with how dreadful the virus really is. These ‘lucrative, mercenary motives’ must be very personal if certain authorities are even willing to ruin their national economies in the process of ‘protecting’ the population. 

To return to climate change. To pretend that man is responsible for whatever comparatively insignificant climate change that’s in the throes of taking place, is also suspicious, to say the least. And to rake off billions pretexting to counter whatever claimed ‘man made climate change’, is plain fraud if nothing effective is done to reduce pollution. The latter is the only possible factor that would have some negative influence. Paying to pollute is obviously not the solution. Dismissing nuclear energy and all progress in this field without bothering to invest in order to solve the problems, is incoherent. All more so when one is prepared to ruin the countrysides with ugly, expensive to maintain, comparatively inefficient, limited energy producing wind turbines. 

The seas and oceans cover 70% of planet Earth. Their energy producing potential is obviously enormous, but to my knowledge there is only one small, ingenious country in the world that has succeeded (over eleven years ago) in very effectively and ecologically tapping sea energy: Israel.  

 

Referring once more to this subject already alluded to here and here, is not necessarily repetition due to advanced age or obsession. If anything 'advanced age' gives one the advantage of having seen and experienced climate change phenomena long before, and in forms that were then accepted as fairly commonplace, but in fact they were far more harmful than what's considered harmful today. 

🌈 

Text © Mirino (images NASA with thanks) May, 2021