During my travels while running errands yesterday I drove along a road that has a broad view of the lake and the one thing that stood out was the lack of ice. While there was ice in the smaller bays and coves, the main body of the lake was ice free between the southern and northern shores as far as I could see. While this is not unprecedented - I can remember more than a few winters when the lake did not freeze over entirely - it’s been a good 30 years since I can remember a dearth of ice to this level.
The lack of ice forced the relocation of our annual pond hockey tournament, moving it from Meredith Bay in the northwestern part of the lake to one of the small nearby lakes in town. There’s also an annual ice fishing derby hosted by the local Rotary Club which is supposed to start next weekend, but the lack of ice is certainly going to affect that. That daytime temperatures over the next six days or so is expected to be above freezing, with one or two of those days expected to be close to 50ºF, isn’t going to help things either.
Again, this isn’t the first time this has happened as I remember a winter a little over a decade ago like this. It’s happened a few times in the derby’s 45 year history.
Paradoxically, we have plenty of snow cover so skiing, snowboarding, and snowmobiling activities haven’t been affected.
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Are the layoffs we’ve been seeing at a number of newspapers, magazines, and websites a harbinger of the collapse of American journalism? Is it heading to an “Extinction-Level Event”?
When journalism has devolved from something that used to report the Who, What, Why, Where, and How of day to day events into something that resembles propaganda, or in the more extreme cases, is blatant propaganda, it is no longer journalism. The media no longer just reports the news, they also tell you what you’re supposed to think about the ‘news’ they report. There have been a number of times when the media gets creative and leaves out facts that would change one’s conclusions about what happened and why it happened.
It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of ‘journalists’.
Of course there is a downside to all of this, that being as layoffs continue it is likely those who are blatant propagandists will be the ones who will retain their jobs while those still retaining some semblance of journalistic integrity will be the first ones to be laid off.
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I came across an interesting sounding link to Real Climate Science, in this case a post that discusses 10 years since the end of snow.
However, there was a small problem, that being it took a long time for RCS’s “secure link verification” app to do its thing and put it’s “Click here if you are a real human being” box to appear so I could see the post. So if you click on the link be ready to have to wait a few minutes before you can access the post.
OK, now that we’ve got that out of the way, I think many of us remember the NYT’s article 10 years ago titled “The End Of Snow?” which told us that there would be no more snow going forward. Now that we have ten years between that prediction and today and we can see how accurate their prognostication was:
Not even close.
And the hits keep on coming…
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It seems the anti-nitrogen/anti-farming big wigs in the EU are finding out the farmers they want to put out of business are having none of it.
First it was farmers in the Netherlands protesting about measures the government was taking that would put many of them out of business. Then it was Germany, then France. Now it looks like Poland’s farmers are going to do likewise this coming Friday. But there’s more to these protests than just the EU’s anti-farming moves.
Polish farmers from the Solidarity trade union plan a general strike starting next Friday with a blockade of border crossings between Poland and Ukraine, it said, joining similar protests, opens new tab all over Europe.It’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out.
Farmers in France, Belgium, Portugal, Greece and Germany have been protesting against the constraints placed on them by EU measures to tackle climate change, as well as rising costs and unfair competition from abroad. Polish farmers have been particularly vocal about the impact of cheap food imports from neighbouring Ukraine.
“Our patience has run out. Brussels’ position on the last day of January 2024 is unacceptable for our entire agricultural community,” the trade union said in a statement dated Thursday.
“Additionally, the passivity of the Polish authorities… regarding the import of agricultural produce and food products from Ukraine leave us with no other choice but to declare a general strike.”
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It seems a lot of Democrats running for election or re-election to the House and Senate are trying their best to distance themselves as much as possible from Joe Biden as they see him as political poison.
...Democrats running for reelection this year in the ever so important battleground states are keeping their distance from Joe Biden. According to an analysis by The Daily Caller, Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.), and Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) and Senate candidates Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) "have hardly mentioned Biden in social media posts on X since launching their 2024 bids, but overwhelmingly vote with him in Congress," and when they have mentioned him, it's often been to criticize him or his policies.Is it any wonder why they are trying to put as much distance between themselves and Joe Biden? He’s an anchor around their necks, one they placed there willingly and are now regretting as Biden’s moves have seriously damaged our economy, our energy independence, the security of our borders, our international relations and reputation, all while weakening our military. They know he’s a walking disaster, yet they supported him anyways.
“Whether they have the guts to say his name or not, every single Democrat running for Senate has enabled Joe Biden’s disastrous agenda,” National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Tate Mitchell told The Daily Caller in a statement. “They are directly responsible for the open border, rising crime, and sky-high prices that are hallmarks of Biden’s failed leadership, and American voters won’t forget it.”
They must figure that by not mentioning He Who Must Not Be Named the voters will forget they helped him do so much damage to the nation. I have a feeling that it’s too little too late as their Republican opponents won’t hesitate to use it against them.
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And that’s the news from (the still not frozen over) Lake Winnipesaukee, where we’re expecting sunny skies and warmer than normal temperatures, lively School District and Town Deliberative sessions, and where Monday keeps coming back.