Learning them talking points
Today a magic worker told me that global warming is just government propaganda. “They” want us to believe in this thing for some nefarious reason of their own. Not sure what that reason could possibly be or how such belief benefits the government or the corporations that are firstest and mostest at the public trough (like big ag, which depends on oil, which in turn doesn’t want anyone to believe in global warming). Those of us who do believe that global warming is occurring–in particular, thanks to the effects of the fossil fuels that humans are so fond of in industrialization of products, travel, and food and the growth of massive cities and whatnot–are deemed by such folk to be nothing but gubmint dupes and suckers. Who knew I was so frickin gullible? Baaaaaa!
Well, actually, I’m not. And that’s precisely because I am a witch. Being a witch means being out there in touch with the natural world. In my case, that happens through regular interaction with my own garden. I don’t just go out there and have a brandy now and then and gaze at the petunias. I plan it, I plant it, I care for it, I harvest it, and most of all, I study it. I listen to my little plot of land, because that is something witches do. Magic workers who assert that global warming is gubmint propaganda need to get the hell away from the altar, put down the grimoire, and get outside. Because I can say just from the perspective of being a witch that I don’t need anyone, least of all the gubmint, to convince me of global warming. It is in my yard, messing with my mandrakes.
This winter, for instance. Here in Western NY, we’ve had the mildest winter on record. The ground has never gotten totally frozen, even though typically the crunch of frozen dirt when you walk on it in winter is one of those sounds that become so familiar and so locked into the season that you don’t realize how symbolic it is until you don’t hear it. This winter, I have not heard it, because the ground is not in fact frozen solid. Gubmint propaganda?
This winter I was perusing my electric/gas bill and feeling puzzled. Normally in the winter I keep it at 64F during the day and 60F at night, but this winter I’ve been feeling my age and lack of carbs, and so I’ve kept it cranked up to 70F almost non-stop. And yet my bill was no higher than in the past. I wondered if maybe natural gas was just cheaper. Not enough to make a difference. Then I see that the average temp this year compared to last is ten degrees warmer. That’s huge. And last year was not especially cold. That is no gubmint propaganda.
Normal situation for black nightshade in winter in my garden
This winter we have gotten very little snow. Normal for us is 2 ft. We’ve had about 2 inches. All winter I’ve been checking the drought map, thinking we were going to be in trouble when spring came because we’ll be so low on ground water. But we are not low on groundwater or in a drought. So what happened? The precipitation is normal. Thing is, it’s falling as rain, not snow. That’s how warm it’s been. That’s no gubmint propaganda.
Black nightshade this winter - bare
I grew up in this area in the fifties and sixties and haven’t seen a winter like this. My neighbor is 90 years old and has lived here his entire life. He said he had never seen a winter like this. That’s no gubmint propaganda.
Actually, the gubmint is telling us that this winter is NOT an example of global warming. Just pay no attention and go watch some TV, folks. But then there’s the garden. And this is where the real witchery comes in.
Last year I had such a hellish time with the unpredictability of the weather that I actually considered just not gardening. We had jaw-breaker-sized hail, gale-force winds, intense heat early in the season followed by unseasonable cold, and then a long, dry, hot summer. Lots of my stuff got killed, and many plants that lived were very unhappy. Then there was the appearance of bugs I have not seen here before. We’d already had the experience a few years ago of getting late blight, which in the past has never come this far north; it requires a certain amount of warmth and wetness to occur, so traditionally, it’s a Southern thing. Not anymore. And that’s not gubmint propaganda.
I got a seed catalog the other day from a company that supplies mostly market growers in the Northeast. One of the main articles in it was how to deal with the unpredictability and violence of recent weather so you can still end up with a crop to sell at the market. They recommended buying early, middle, and late-season varieties instead of buying all one variety, regardless of whether that variety had been tried and true in your miniclimate in the past. So same amount of seeds and same profit for the seed co-op, but different varieties to hopefully cope with different weather. That was a first. No gubmint propaganda there.
The warmth we can work our way around. I doubt there’s a gardener out there who wouldn’t like to be in a warmer planting zone (except maybe the zone 11 people). I guess some people will argue that the USDA’s planting zone map, where all planting zones have moved northward this year for the first time in my life, is just gubmint propaganda. Thing is that the USDA says outright that this new zone map is NOT a reflection of global warming. They’re denying it. Quite the opposite from the supposed gubmint propaganda.
You might think that all of upstate NY is a cold, snowy place in winter, but where I live has traditionally always been sheltered from the worst of heat, cold, and wind by the Fingerlakes. Rochester, two hours north on the other side of the Fingerlakes and on the shore of Lake Ontario, gets 3 ft of snow a year, whereas we get 2. They get more extreme heat, extreme thunderstorms, extreme wind, and heavier rain than we do. They always have. It’s part of the deal. And we always haven’t, also part of the deal. That is why it is so strange to be getting hail the size of jawbreakers here in summer, like we did last year, or winds that knock down our power lines, or tornadoes, or temperatures over 100F for days in a row. These are things we just don’t get here because of the moderation of the Fingerlakes and because we are far enough away from the Great Lakes and the Atlantic to miss the worst stuff. But all bets are off now.
And how do I know this? Not from gubmint propaganda. From growing plants in my own yard, year after year after year, harvesting seeds and other plant materials from my own yard, and just generally observing the weather through the lens of gardening. Being in touch with plants is something that witches do. It’s real and lived, not “knowledge” cadged from a bunch of TV talking points.
Dirt. It’s good for your brain.
I so agree with you. I especially love this quote: “Magic workers who assert that global warming is gubmint propaganda need to get the hell away from the altar, put down the grimoire, and get outside.” I often wonder about magical practitioners like that…
I live in Northern NY above the snow belt. I’ve only been here for nearly three years. Before that I lived in the Mohawk Valley. I still have family there and, like you, the weather has been odd, odd, odd. Above the snow belt, everyone asserts that there’s always been an abundance of ice. We’ve hardly had any. It will snow buckets one night then melt away the next afternoon. The farmers up here are worried.
I have friends in Central NY and they’re talking about the daffodils and crocuses coming up at least a month early! It is so true that people who deny that it’s happening just don’t seem in touch with the Earth Mother…
Yes, a friend of mine north of Binghamton has daffodils poking an inch above the soil already. My trees and shrubs have fat buds on them already.
As someone with eyes and a brain, it is sort of obvious to me that something is very much going on with the weather. It is clearly getting warmer. I’m currently in northern Finland, where it should have been -30 Celsius since around November, but we only reached that level in late January, and it has since begun to warm again. The evidence is there. However, it is not evident that this warming is anthropogenic. I think that’s where a lot of people have issues. We have no clear evidence that humans are causing this shift, or even that we can. These sorts of changes in climate are natural. They have happened before, and they’ve been a lot more severe.
Actually, it is obvious that it is anthropogenic. See, for instance, here:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070202085036.htm
But let’s pretend it’s just an accident and it has nothing to do with our actions. We STILL have to quit using so much fossil fuels simply because of Peak Oil. We STILL have to modify our behavior here in the US because our position as top bulldog in the world has slipped and will slip further as China, India, and Brazil take over that position, meaning we no longer have the economy to support our wasteful behavior.
Personally, I think global warming is the Earth’s way of shaking us off. We act like parasites on this planet, so it’s treating us like that’s what we are. I don’t think that means we are all going to die, but I do think it means we are all going to change.
I also agree with you. I live in Wisconsin near the shores of lake Michigan. Normally late Jan/early Feb, I see feet of snow and below zero for a solid week. It hasn’t got below 25 for what feels like weeks and maybe 6″ has fallen all winter.
Just go outside and be a witch. You can feel something in the wind, and hear the pleas from the land. The spirits of nature are not happy, not happy at all!
Jeez, it is hard to believe that there are people out there who still think that climate change or the thought of peak oil is just some hippie-dippie-b.s. propaganda. You ask the most conservative of farm folk up here {especially the old-timers} and even they will admit that something is off.
Traditionally one could count on our Northern Ontario winters being long, cold, and snowy. This year half of February has been rainy. While my garden should be buried in a couple of feet of snow, I had many of my plants exposed, so we had to move the very little snow we had left to try and cover them all. Nope, nothing out of the ordinary here!
Meanwhile…countries that enjoy equatorial climes are experiencing colder temperatures.
I haven’t been able to find any stats showing that.
I was watching a debate show on the TV about it today – is global warming real, is it not real, is it us, is it natural cycles. What blew my mind was how ferociously the global warming skeptics tried to back their corner, and how since they believe that it’s not man-made or man-aided, we can just continue on as we are now.
I think, man-made, not man-made, who cares – we are treating the environment irresponsibly and it is suffering as a result, even on a non-global warming scale – gulf oil spill, factory pollution, heavy metal posioning, loss of habitat for anything that isn’t human – and we shouldn’t be doing any of this, We know better.
(Though my peeps at the Zoological Society of London and the scientists and explorers they have backing them are spending 100% of their time trying to raise awareness of our substantial impact on global warming based on their research around the globe, and if anyone I am going to believe them.) Why do people not want to take responsibility for their effect on the planet?
Yes, I have noticed too how the “skeptics” are pretty ferocious. That is what I noticed about this person immediately saying that anyone who believed in global warming was a government stooge.
my family lives in the southern most part of india. it has been chillier there and in a few places it was closer to zero degrees. unheard of..actually, now that i think about it, i guess its more of an arid/tropical clime than equatorial..the equator probably passes way below the southern tip..somewhere in the indian ocean area.
Are they are Kerala or Tamil Nadu?
Both. Mostly in Tamil Nadu. This particular instance happened around mid jan this year(barely a month ago)in andhra pradesh where temperature went below freezing when family was visiting a region near vishakapatnam. Hyderabad, another city in andhra pradesh reportedly experienced 10-12 degrees Celsius..which is mind boggling to me because this is a city where temperatures regularly go over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. I remember visiting a friend there and her mother used to throw a bucket of water on the verandah to cool it down(this was wasteful..because the area has chronic water woes)..I recall watching the water hit the cement floor and literally evaporate in front of my eyes….the floor was bone dry in seconds….I had never seen anything like that before(or since then) Tamil Nadu is recovering from a chill spell..deep south will take a long while to recover from the latest cyclone. The storms had completely demolished the crops and destroyed swathes of forested areas. My mother cried over the phone when she had gone visiting and it wasn’t even her properties. Everything is crazy there wrt weather now. Even more interestingly, there are tiny little earthquakes occurring somewhat irregularly…this s a completely new phenomena. My first California earthquake, I was unfazed and somewhat amused because the concept was alien to me. Of course, now I freak out because I read the news and watch way too much television news. Oh well..
In 2009 we got snow. A lot of snow. In Oklahoma. Normally, our winter might see a total of 4″ of snow – we saw probably 5′ falling in big bursts, but really topping it off with a 3′ snowfall in a single day.
The summer had one of the worst droughts I’ve ever seen, our natural pond being reduced from over 6′ deep down to about 10″ – that May the first tornadoes in living memory (a neighbor had bought his land when the attack occurred on Pearl Harbor, and the people here told him “You’ll love it here. We never have tornadoes!”) for this area converged almost on top of my house. We began having frequent earthquakes.
2010′s winter was equally snowy. Heaping piles of the stuff, followed by drought. We had more tornadoes that summer. We had an earthquake over 5.0 one night.
This winter has been mild. Snowfall, but it didn’t stick. Hail and rain. All after Midwinter, like they’re supposed to be. The pond is low, but gaining. The daffodils are up, like they ought to be. Maybe a week ahead of schedule. I hold out hope that here, at least, things might be stabilizing.
Here in south FL my AC has been on half the winter. The bugs didn’t take their winter break. The plants and trees skipped their rituals as well. My (enclosed in a dog kennel) garden was overwhelmed with mosquitoes and poisonous spiders, so I had to abandon my herbs. Statistics and rituals aside, it doesn’t ‘feel’ right. From a practicing witch’s perspective, the world has felt off balance for years. You know that feeling, something is wrong but you can’t quite put your finger on it.
I hear ya about that feeling. Here this week it is 15-20F higher than normal temps. I am thinking this summer is going to be quite hot.
Climate change is definitely happening, its visible and tangible. I’m not educated enough in science to read the scientific evidence papers and form an opinion of whether it is caused by us (although with the unprecedented level of pollution in this age it certainly seems likely) or if it’s a natural shift, but as someone who pays attention to my land, there’s no denying that the weather has gone weird, something’s off kilter.
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