KW-51 - The year ahead.

climate and weather

The good thing about having been writing this newsletter for well over two years now, and numbering each one for the calendar week / Kalenderwoche in which it was written is that I can look back and see what I was up to in years gone by. it seems that one of the biggest leaps forward from last year to this is that I have both new boots and new gloves, which is very nice.

At this time last year, we had had four weeks of proper winter already, and the digital thermometer had rarely read above zero since the beginning of December. We have already had a bunch of snow, but during the day, negative temperatures have been the exception far more than the rule.

With this idea tracking towards the front of the thought processes, it is time to commit my predictions for the coming next few months of weather.

2023 has been the warmest year. The easiest prediction to make for 2024 is that it will be hotter. The sun is hitting a maximum, the second year of El Niño is the hotter year, and we will have put more greenhouses gasses into the atmosphere this year than we did last year. Exactly the same as we have been doing since your grandparents were babies.

The more specific predictions are:

• From next week, for a month, it’s going to be insanely cold and hard. At least where I am, and most places in Europe north of here.

• The last day of winter will be March 16th

• At least one month next year will hit a global average of 2 degrees of warming.

The good thing about putting these down on paper is that if I am wrong, no biggie. But if I am right, it looks awesome!

And so shorter term. This week I shall be:

• As long as the sun shines, I am bringing logs under shelter to let them dry out a bit before sawing, drying, chopping, drying, bringing inside, drying, burning, not dying.

• Remodelling the office in the loft

• Tinkering in the woodshop. I am very much failing to get the dust extraction system working at the minute.

• Eating leeks and cabbage and potatoes and beans. Probably.

I haven’t said anything about COP. My position remains the same. That the only solution to the climate change involves the decapitation of the fossil fuel companies. If you want a summary, Dave Borlace, who I have recommended before, does the best job.

(I just went outside, without a hat on, to see about getting a photo or two for this newsletter. It’s dropped about 4 degrees since I fed the piggies an hour ago. I’m going to get me a cup of tea and stick my head somewhere hot!)

And lastly, thank you for a great year. I love going back over the comments and reading about what we were all up to over the year. Thank you, again, for reading and liking and sharing, and thank you again to the paid subscribers. You have kept piggies fed all year, and bought me boots and gloves. It is very appreciated. Again :)

There might not be a newsletter next week. At least not on Monday. I think I might delay it a day or two. I like being in your inboxes to start the working week. I don’t think I need to be invading your Christmas days!

I hope you have a lovely one. Enjoy your feastings and your families and, as always, please be excellent to each other

Much piratey love

Your Pirate Ben

xoxo

This time last YEAR:

(*edit: in the email, I wrote “week”. Clearly, I meant year! Sorry, it’s early and my brain is frozen!)

Currently Reading

I’ve been saying for years, much to the annoyance of fellow lefties, that capitalism isn’t all bad. Wha we have now is bad, but if you call it “capitalism”, you’ve probably not read Adam Smith.

There is a quote near the beginning of the book "there comes a time when something has evolved so much that is it probably best to call it something else"

Some call it “late stage capitalism”, I call “corporatism” and Yanis Varoufakis calls Technofeudalism. His name is the best of the three. The idea is the title and that’s just about the whole of the rest of the book from that, This rest of the book, though, is quite slim on ideas, but he’s definitely not wrong. If you want to read it, you can use my amazon affilliate link if you like.