Glow Bull Warming

Is causing this cold weather. I just heard it on the Tee Vee so it must be so. Tee Vee is heavily populated with little talking heads that are too young to remember when this was just normal winter weather. I recall dating a guy who went off to college in Grand Junction, Colorado, when I was in high school. A gigantic snow storm locked down all the airports on Thanksgiving, and another on Christmas and so on all through the early months of the year and well into what was supposed to be spring. I didn't see him for months and months and months because he simply couldn't fly home. They called it global cooling then.

And don't you just hate it when the person in charge of the idiot box....an apt name indeed....goes to sleep with it tuned to lamestream media news? Me too. I used to have my own remote control for moments like those and I swear, even though I never watch it voluntarily, I am going to get a new one.

On a brighter note, I was standing at daybreak watching the morning erupt outside the big windows in the living room (wherein resides the propaganda portal) when I saw a magical sight.

I was birding. I am always birding. And here came this great, bird, hooking his long, hard wings over the thin, cold breeze. Right up to the window, lower than the roof, he had to grab air pretty hard to get over the house.

A bald eagle. He looked pretty fancy in the pink light of dawn. And awesome. I know there are places where they hang around dumps and scavenge fish off the fishing boats, but here in NY, at the breaking of another cold, sharp, day, they are awesome. 

Yesterday

This cold weather seemed so far away.

Now it looks as though it's back to say.

So relieved by yesterday........

Yeah, it was sixty yesterday and I didn't care a crumb whether it was anthropocentric global warming, a delayed January thaw, or just a fluke. It was wonderful. Went outdoors in the mud luscious and puddle wonderful as often as I could.

We have all been moaning and groaning about how hard it is to get anything done...no energy...just want to crash and burn all the time.

I can tell you now it is weather-related. A few hours of warm and sunny and the work almost (but not quite) did itself. Had a lovely phone call from the boss's dear aunt, who is just a huge favorite of mine, which added a certain special something. She is such a sweet person.

Back to cold with wind, but the nice weather was a reminder that better days are coming......and I don't think I smell like a pea cock any more, but maybe I have just gotten used to it.

Global Warming

We hazit.

Or we did for a grand total of around twenty hours. Temps in the fifties and howling winds. It felt like March. Now we are back in the deep freeze (or deepish anyhow) at 12 and feeling like just like January.

The warm wind did dump a goodly part of the snow off the barn roofs...which is good.

I looked out the window just after breakfast and saw heifers running toward the house...which is not good. Snow fell on the roof of their pen, spooked them, and they climbed up on a pile of frozen feed and jumped out. Came right over to visit us. Of course, as is nearly always the case when somebody gets out, the boss was gone, so with the help of whomever hadn't left for work or school, I chased cows in my house shoes.

Again.

For today it is cold and windy and the windows are all iced up. Global warming is just a distant memory. As Alan always says, I do my share. I drive an SUV (nothing less will do the driveway). So where is my share of global warming, anthropocentric or otherwise?

A second calf was born yesterday to one of Alan's cows, Verona. Both of yesterdays new ones are bulls.

Hey, Copenhagen

Gotcher Global Warming right here. Yeah, as we read about naturally occurring gasses, (essential for all life on earth.. like the CO2 that keeps all the plants we depend on for...well for everything...alive and thriving)..... being regulated by a greedy bunch of money-grubbing hypocrites, all in the name of Anthropogenic Global Warming (try typing that before you have finished your first cup of coffee) it is not warming here. We have had a cold, miserable summer. One of the coldest Octobers on record. November was warmish, but alas it is over.

Today NY has a storm. It is not in any way, shape, or form a warming storm. (Maybe we are just not global enough.) Traffic, what there is of it, has slowed to a crawl, even down on the usually speedy Thruway. As I lay under about six covers, including three knitted afghans, this too darned early morning, thinking about getting up....but procrastinating, even though it is milk tanker day, the room was aglow with reflected light. Um....unless there is a really big moon, and right now the moon is smalling down pretty quickly, that means lotsa snow. I came downstairs and plugged in the coffee maker...Houston...we still have power. However, it didn't look too pleasant down across the river. The sky is pink from the lights in town bouncing off a curtain of snow. It is frigid.

And indeed Gael would not go out to tend to Mother Nature. Just stood on the porch shivering and glaring at me...well, alright, but you'll be sorry later.

Yeah, we gotcher Global Warming...it is falling all over the ground and piling up on the trucks and fences.

It is also here, where my good friend Earl needs a Zamboni for his kitty dish

And here, where one of our lovely Lindas has been without power and is freezing at around 35 below in this "warmest decade on record" weather

And here, where our other delightful Linda is also experiencing something less than toasty, sunny and warming

And here, where if you click on the picture of Loveland Pass, as seen through the window of a tractor trailer, your heart will probably leap right out of your chest like mine did...well almost....seriously, hop over there and click on that picture...

They have Global Warming down in North Carolina too.
Pennsylvania
Knoxville Tennessee
SoDak Maine

If that nasty little conference in Denmark got to experience a big, fat, weeklong blizzard it would be poetic justice, which is about the only kind we are likely to see within ten thousand miles of it.

Climate Audit

Joated over at Compass Points has a good post on the broken hockey stick graph and other climate change shenanigans. Check it out.

Climate Audit

Artificial Trees to Fight Global Warming

Sound ridiculous to me.

Real ones are so easy.
And prettier
And cheap

And someone I read this week, sorry I don't remember who or where, pointed out that we would die without Carbon Dioxide.
Inconvenient that.

***Another Turkey of an Idea***
(Or ,really, I like to look out the window by the computer to see what I can see and yesterday what I saw was Lucy)

Climate Change Bill Bad for America

Typical New York Congressman at work

Seems a lot of people outside the beltway who pay for their own cars and groceries don't think this bill, for the most part unread by the people who are voting for it, is much of a birthday present to our great nation.

Here is a letter to the editor written by a local lady who has always "gotten it". Despite serious illness she recently took the time to instigate some back and forth dialog with the editor of the paper to get this piece printed. I admire her for it. We all should be talking to our newspapers and legislators right now. Even if we agree with this kind of expensive and unproven legislation, seems to me we should ask that it be read before the voting.....Of course I admire this particular lady for most everything, from her fantastic paintings to her spaghetti sauce...and you probably would too if you knew her, but she is so right about this issue.

Anyway this fine lady is comparing the new Climate Bill to the old Cardiff Giant. I'll bet there isn't a one of you local folks of a certain age that didn't get hauled to the Farmer's Museum in Cooperstown to have a look at that famous hoax. You can just figure that Cap and Tax is going to be a money maker of a similar style, but on a staggeringly grander scale. And it will be coming out of your pocket for every single item you buy.

I don't agree with the New York Times that even a seriously flawed climate bill is better than no bill at all....and neither does my wonderful mom. Hope you have a minute to read her letter....thanks....

And, by the way, I write this on a typical April day here at Northview....or maybe even late March. It is 63 degrees, the wind is howling and it has been raining overnight and is going to rain again. We have had such a non summer that the boss does not have a suntan. Can you imagine a farmer in July with no suntan? We still have calf coats on some of the babies. I have washed and put away the winter polar fleece jackets, sweaters, pull overs and hunting coats....in fact, I have washed them and put them at least five times.... by the time it gets summery enough to keep them in the drawer for a while it will be time to get them out again for winter. I am persistent in the wearing of shorts department, because wearing shorts is what I do in the summer...but some days it takes a lot more courage than it ought to...

Anyhow, have a great Fourth of July, each and every one of you. Fireworks tonight...don't forget to crate the doggies.

From Linda and the Dennis Ranch

More on global warming.

HT to Just Another Day on the Prairrie and the the Dennis Ranch

Stormy weekend, windy Monday

I guess the worst is over, although the weekend mostly lived up to the weather fellas' dire predictions. Liz made it into school for her advanced ruminant nutrition final, although there were accidents everywhere. It isn't really all that hard to drive in this kind of snow, but you can't drive fast and careless, yakking on your cell phone and changing CDs. People have to try though.

The wind was wild last night. It shook the house (and this house is not easily shaken). This morning the sculpted snow drifts are scattered with box elder seeds. They cling much more tightly to their parent trrees than do the seeds of most members of the maple family, but last night's wild tumult freed them. Next spring the hardly, weedy, little trees will crop up everywhere. (I can't believe that the company that I linked to there actually SELLS them. It seems like selling dandelions. If you want a few thousand, just give me a shout next spring.)

The common winter birds are here in force. I sure didn't need to pish to call them out of the bushes Saturday (which is a good thing, since mostly the only thing that comes when I do is Gael). They wanted to fill up their tanks and practically mobbed me when I went out to fill their feeders. Today they are gleaning the brushy areas more than eating at the feeders. (Maybe they like box elder seeds.) Or maybe they just don't like the wind.


Hope you are warm. Hope the guys can get the hydraulic lines back on the spreader tractor (heifers pulled them off and everything is frozen-boss is not happy.) Hope summer is thinking of us down where it is hibernating.