Nonfiction

[barton]

Before presuming the illogic, investigate a little Ice-Age for yourself; which took place in Europe, Vikings were excited about the possibilities of Vineland, by comparison to home. It gradually chilled Italy on the western coast at least as far as Naples.

Maddie, I've read extensively on the Little Ice Age, which predated the Industrial Revolution and carbon spike -- climatologists have related it to a small drop in solar output (based on reports of sunspot observations in the 1600s) and to a drop in 10 ppm concentrations of CO2 that followed major reforestation of areas that were abandoned due to plague deaths (and epidemics in the Americas).

There is no evidence that supports the medieval cold spell as resulting from global warming.   And there is no evidence that current spikes in CO2 and atmospheric methane (and deposition of soot on snow fields, which also increases surface absorption of solar heat) are leading anywhere in the direction of an ice age -- indeed, we may be prolonging an interglacial period to a degree that no species has ever done before on this planet.

[barton]

"Cold" by Bill Streever, which Do recommended, is fascinating.   And it really puts local weather in perspective, helps foster a tougher attitude towards the chilly weather of the temperate zone.   I get out of bed before the furnace has come on and I think about the hardy Fuegans of S. America and their nudity while sleet falls on them.

[madupont]

Feel sorry for Sir Ranulph Fiennes, instead. Although i forget which part of his anatomy he froze off before they found him just in the knick of time.

[madupont]

Here try this on for size.
http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia/little_ice_age.html

[madupont]

Ps.
If it doesn't start to make sense, including that we will have higher water levels at this latitude and others by next summer, I'll remember to  give you Mosca's "King Harry's" mumpsimus award.

[weezo]

Barton,

Tell more about "Cold". Is it about the people who withstand cold temps around the world, or what? In reading about the Powhatans, they started each day with a plunge into the nearest river, even the small babies, to "toughen them up". Even, when they had to break the ice on the surface to do so. One of my young men in Ghana is really interested in the weather here, and I am telling him weekly about the weather progressing through the fall. I think about the African hauled here for slavery. The story of Phillis Wheatley arriving in early spring in Boston, and standing on the auction block, a slip of a girl of 6 or 7, without a stitch of clothing on. They are a truly tough people to have survived and thrived!

[barton]

Well, "Cold" is an unsual book in that it provides a lot of information, engagingly written, about people and various flora and fauna living in cold climates,  plus the exploration of cold climates (so you get a nice dose of history), plus there is quite about the science of low temperatures below those found on this planet -- all this while he maintains a somewhat quirky point of view, he being a resident of Alaska and lover of roughing it outdoors in the most extreme arctic conditions. 


Maddie -- I am familiar with what you were talking about, the possibility of overall global warming leading to a disruption of the Gulf Stream which would actually make Britain and western Europe colder than they are now.   The rest of the world, however, would generally be hotter, as expected.   

[madupont]

i recall hearing something in a nytimes blog-a-thon meant to replace forums several years ago that it is felt it will extend to this continent and then we can cheerfully migrate to Canada and watch the wheat grow. We will then still have bread. 

I was going to do that anyway but not particularly at the moment that I read the average nytimes. com reader's take.  Since then the political reality in Canada has changed. So I'd better start reading French again because the British part of that country is hell on wheels  compared to what it used to be.

[barton]

The climate model that includes a British ice age is one in which the Atlantic "conveyer"  (science jargon) aka the Gulf Stream is halted by a rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet.  Because less warm water is carried up and across to the coastlines of Britain and western Europe, there is more heat concentrating in our hemisphere, so most of North America is definitely warmer -- it's true that Martha's Vineyard, which has a toe dipped in the Gulf Stream, might be the exception.   Places like Cornwall, which the conveyer hits head on, would suffer the most drastic climate change in this scenario, going from its present nearly subtropical weather to something more like Newfoundland.  Cornish resort towns would not prosper.

 

[madupont]

The climate model that includes a British ice age is one in which the Atlantic "conveyer"  (science jargon) aka the Gulf Stream is halted by a rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet.  Because less warm water is carried up and across to the coastlines of Britain and western Europe, there is more heat concentrating in our hemisphere, so most of North America is definitely warmer -- it's true that Martha's Vineyard, which has a toe dipped in the Gulf Stream, might be the exception.   Places like Cornwall, which the conveyer hits head on, would suffer the most drastic climate change in this scenario, going from its present nearly subtropical weather to something more like Newfoundland.  Cornish resort towns would not prosper.

 

Gads yes, I'm familiar with "the Atlantic conveyer"; a now deceased, retired member of the Electrical Union in New Jersey  thought that I'd never heard of it but, remember, I'd lived there and had watched my first hurricane during the McCarthy hearings. 

As a Midwesterner, I'd never seen anything like it.  In those days, we didn't fuss about watching the palm trees blow horizontal on the coast. We'd just keep watching television until Barbara's husband got back from the Battery on the tip of Manhattan, and I don't remember anything but rather mild weather with beautiful Springs of flowering trees in the Oranges(West,East,...the closest urban area was Newark).

You know how they always say if there is a tornado or hurricane, climb into the bathtub? Wouldn't have done us a bit of good, as we stayed up on the third floor of an old fashioned house,and the bathtub was where Barbara did her dishes.  In between, we could watch Roy Cohn, Percy Dovetonsils and his wife Edie Adams.  I lived in two rooms, and shared a bathroom, down the street and down the hill from the Harris'  quiet neighborhood at the top of the hill.  I do not remember ever going shopping. Just to the Library. I was reading Somerset Maugham,  Evelyn Waugh, Thornton Wilder, and various assorted New Orlean's reminiscences.

Cornwall was a place of coconuts and pineapples.  Do you remember when it was revealed that Scotland, a bit nippy climate, was suddenly growing huge vegetables in the 1970s by something esoteric like Angel Power?                   

[madupont]

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/57292,news-comment,news-politics,why-is-amanda-knoxs-conviction-so-upsetting

One of the commentors on this article suggested a book that is the nonfictional account of an infamous case in Italy, known as:
The Monster of Florence. He went on to suggest reading the Afterword in the latest paperback copy (but I can't find any access to an "Afterword" at amazon.com) re: Mignini vis a vis the Amanda Knox conviction for murder.

To my surprise, however, there she was, definitely listed in the Index of a book that became popular somewhat before most of us became
aware of either the crime or her name:  Amanda Knox, pgs.313-314

[desdemona222b]

Katrina. Although I have read lots of articles about Katrina and her aftermath, I had never read a book about the event. Now I have. Nine Lives:Death and Life in New Orleans by Dan Baum. I heartily recommend this book.

Moving onward in time from hurricane Betsy, Baum follows the lives of 9 people (and all the people these nine interact with) through the years up to when hurricane Katrina hit, then on past into the near now of what's happening in New Orleans.

Most the of these people live(ed) in the 9th Ward.

I now am better able to understand New Orleans as it was, and as it is now. Therefore, I am better able to filter the news I hear about this city from what I learned from this book.

Recently president Obama visited New Orleans for a couple of hours. Many residents there hoped he might mention something about Charity Hospital--which has remained closed since Katrina, and has since been turned over to LSU. This hospital opened in the early 1700s to serve the poor and had been in continuous operation to that end until Katrina. Now there is no medical facility for the poor in New Orleans. Here is an article about Charity Hospital. Scroll down to the Ginsburg piece.

http://www.counterpunch.org/ginsburg09042009.html

New Orleans now has half the population that it had before Katrina. And it seems to me that the powers that be--local, state, federal--tend to lean heavily towards a New Orleans with very few poor (or any) living in it.

I imagine Mary Landreau's extraction of something like 100 million dollars specifically for Louisiana with the Health Care Reform bill will take care of that situation, donot.  I really don't think the author of that article knows what he's talking about.  I lived in New Orleans for about 17 years and when I tell you that Charity Hospital was a monolithic, outdated, dump of a building, I'm not exaggerating one bit.  It would take a good deal of time to replace it whether it was restored (which is probably not going to happen due to the extreme age of the building and the consequent outdated plumbing, electrical, insulation, etc) or completely built over again from scratch.

I really don't think any of the powers that be in New Orleans could ever be stupid enough to think that they have ridded the city of the poor - they're everywhere in New Orleans, not just in the 9th ward. 

Also, Charity has always been affiliated with LSU as it has been the teaching hospital for the university forever.  There is another charity hospital in Baton Rouge (Earl K. Long) - I guess the interns must be using that now.

 

[desdemona222b]

BTW, the book sounds really interesting.  I'd be interested in reading that myself.  I'm going to find out what they do about medical emergencies, accident victims, etc there now from my old friend who is now the director of emergency services in New Orleans.  Will let you know.

[madupont]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_DeBakey

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulane_University

Hi! desdemona, above is the name of the surgeon whom my husband studied with in preparation to go overseas as a Korean MASH Unit battlefield surgeon. DeBakey like Helen Thomas is a Lebanese Christian who spelt his name slightly differently(Debaghi?) when he was born at St.Charles. DeBakey did part of his own training at Charity Hospital.

After the war, and after using his G.I.Bill for more education, taking his Masters in Psychology, he continued to work in DeBakey's field, the development of the heart pump for circulation of the blood  outside of the usual circulatory system during heart surgery. That is what you see him holding in the photo used at the  first site. He lived to be 100, of course.

Charity Hospital was one of the first places that I heard about being overwhelmed with the flood, the night that I became aware of Katrina. I recalled having numerous web-sites in the city that I had saved for shopping (I don't know if I saved anything more useful from days when I and Red had discussed African and African American literature[and arts, including films] at the nytimes.com Book forums.  I had checked out numerous sources on Jackson Square where records are kept at the Cabildo, etc.) but I was able to find a switch-board at the Times Picayune and messages were coming through from various hot spots. One of the hospitals getting messages out knew that their phones would go, also the electricity, so it really was just a matter of time and of notifying other sources of assistance to let them know what was happening to those New Orlean's hospitals.

New Orleans always seems to get the worst of the brunt of any tropical disaster, whether weather catastrophe or epidemic diseases; there are remarks in the Tulane  wiki-site about the founding of the school as the result of Yellow Fever (this goes on and on, cholera, dystentery,etc.; but the mosquito-borne diseases were some of the first that I learned about from my father when just a kid.  Believe it or not, Dengue is still moving northward in the US, we were warned in New Jersey to cover all of our Green, ecological water-barrels, to prevent Dengue fever.

I think possibly my previous mentioning at nytimes. com that my husband had trained there (he often came into town where his father was born, to experience it for himself and mostly night-life) may have been what you recalled vaguely and why you asked if I went to school there with the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, when I mentioned living on Ursulines street.

[desdemona222b]

Hi, Maddie.  When are you going to tell weezo that Diane isn't your name?   

My friend says emergencies are sent to Slidell Memorial, which has a state-of-the-art trauma center.  Bet you anything that emergency room didn't handle trauma back in the day.  She said she assumes LSU interns share Tulane Hospital with Tulane interns now.