Almond hunt

Never heard of hunting for almonds? It’s an excellent pastime.

A burst of almond blossom stands out amongst the olive groves

It’s true that almonds don’t dodge around like animals do, but then you don’t have to stalk them for hours, you don’t have to carry a gun, and there’s no killing involved. Which I feel more than makes up for the lack of suspense a wilier and more evasive quarry might provide.

Besides, to be strictly accurate, we weren’t hunting almonds, but almond blossom. ’Tis the season. Nearly the end of it, in fact, since global warming has brought the season forward a bit. 

I know, I know. I keep being assured by authorities as authoritative, or at least authoritarian, as the White House, that no such warming is happening. But hey, I’m a bit old fashioned, and stick with theories I’ve come to be familiar with, even if that does mean disagreeing with that fine Mr Trump.

Sunlight strikes through the clouds on the almond groves
at Famorca, in the hills above Alicante

We travelled down from Valencia, where we live, to near Alicante, a couple of hours by car. Which would have been tedious alone, but fortunately we had two American friends with us, and they were – are – excellent company, so there was no boredom. We even had the dogs, who made us proud by quietly lying on the back seat, each with her head in the lap of one of the passengers (one of them being me).

The higher we climbed into the hills, the better the display of almond blossom became: the non-existent global warming phenomenon may have advanced the season in the plains, but in the hills the it was still in full swing.

Almond tree near the village of Quatretondeta

We even found a bee visiting one blossom-laden tree. A sight, sadly, that is becoming increasingly imbued with nostalgia these days. Oh, to see the bees come back…

Bee at work among the almond blossom
Bottom right if you can't spot it.
I tried to get it pose for me so I could focus properly but it was too busy
(or do I mean buzzy?)

By way of a change from looking at blossom, we also had fun looking around the village of Millena, which had kindly crocheted winter coverings for some of its trees. I’ve seen that before in other places in Spain, but it always makes me smile when I see it again.

Keeping the trees wrapped up warm

The same town had a sculpture at its entrance, as do many around this region. In most cases, they’re pretty unprepossessing, but at Millena it was rather better than most. It seemed to be concerned with trees, though quite what's going on in it I can’t work out: it looks like villagers are trying to set up a tree without its roots. Commendable to want to put trees back up again but, hey, guys, without its roots, I wouldn't bank on its longevity.

Villagers raising a (rootless) tree at Millena

Still, the sculpture’s also quite curious for the way it echoes the iconic photo of US marines raising a flag on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima.

Marines raising the US flag on Iwo Jima

Eventually, we became hungry. One of the pleasures of driving around the Spanish countryside is that every little town has its little local restaurant where you can get a set lunch – ‘set’ in the sense that the choices for each course are highly limited: two, perhaps three options at most. It goes for a song and usually the cooking is anything between acceptable and good.

We decided to have lunch in Millena, the village with the pampered trees. The set mean was certainly more than acceptable, and we enjoyed it. Especially in the company which was, as I said, excellent. In an unnecessary move, but one that was as kind as it was unexpected, our friends even insisted on covering our lunch.

Of course, we then had the two-hour trip back home, but the conversation was as good as ever. All in all, it had been a great day. We’d seen some attractive places and some lovely blossom. And enjoyed the company.

Which is what I regard as a successful almond hunt.

Global warming: the deniers may be shrinking in numbers, but they're keeping the volume up...

It was no doubt naive on my part to imagine that fewer and fewer people could seriously still be denying the reality of climate change. You know, I thought it might be the Trumps of this world who know no better, but few others. The overwhelming consensus building up among scientists, and the constantly growing frequency of damaging weather events that all seem to point in the same direction, seemed to make denial untenable.

Well, I was wrong. Or, if I was right, I had underestimated the sheer vociferousness of the dwindling band left. They seem more than capable of making up in sheer volume for their shrinking numbers.

I’d made a couple of references on Twitter to the way the floods in England seemed to provide additional evidence for global warming’s grip. And I found the deniers coming down on my head like a torrent of brimstone.

One of the best responses pointed me at a post by NASA concerning the ice cap at the Antarctic. This, it seems, has been growing, not shrinking.

Let me repeat that. There’s more ice and snow at the Antarctic than there has been for ages. So I could stuff that in my pipe and smoke it, because it certainly refutes the notion of global warming, doesn’t it?

Antarctic sea ice at its greatest extent recorded, in 2014
The previous maximum is shown in red

Well, no, actually. My correspondent didn’t just put up the picture, he pointed me at the whole article. And I read it. Here’s how it starts:

Sea ice surrounding Antarctica reached a new record high extent this year, covering more of the southern oceans than it has since scientists began a long-term satellite record to map sea ice extent in the late 1970s. The upward trend in the Antarctic, however, is only about a third of the magnitude of the rapid loss of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.

The new Antarctic sea ice record reflects the diversity and complexity of Earth’s environments, said NASA researchers. Claire Parkinson, a senior scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, has referred to changes in sea ice coverage as a microcosm of global climate change. Just as the temperatures in some regions of the planet are colder than average, even in our warming world, Antarctic sea ice has been increasing and bucking the overall trend of ice loss.

“The planet as a whole is doing what was expected in terms of warming. Sea ice as a whole is decreasing as expected, but just like with global warming, not every location with sea ice will have a downward trend in ice extent,” Parkinson said.

So the phenomenon of Antarctic ice growth is (a) too little to compensate for ice loss in the Arctic, and (b) a local event compatible with global warming overall.

Local cooling within global warming? Most of us have got used to this paradox. It seems the deniers struggle with it.

What’s more, the article is from 2014. A year on, NASA reported, “2015 Antarctic maximum sea ice extent breaks streak of record highs.” My denier was quoting last year’s news; this year’s lends itself even less well to his argument.

In fact, he decided to hammer his point with another NASA study on the sheer extent of the growth of the Antarctic ice cap. Again, the headline seems to strengthen his case: “Mass gains of Antarctic ice sheet greater than losses.” The devil, for him, was in the body of the article, when it quoted glaciologist Jay Zwally:

But it might only take a few decades for Antarctica’s growth to reverse, according to Zwally. “If the losses of the Antarctic Peninsula and parts of West Antarctica continue to increase at the same rate they’ve been increasing for the last two decades, the losses will catch up with the long-term gain in East Antarctica in 20 or 30 years — I don’t think there will be enough snowfall increase to offset these losses.”

What this suggests, according to Zwally, is that the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was mistaken to think that Antarctic ice melt was adding to rising sea levels.

“The good news is that Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 millimeters per year away,” Zwally said. “But this is also bad news. If the 0.27 millimeters per year of sea level rise attributed to Antarctica in the IPCC report is not really coming from Antarctica, there must be some other contribution to sea level rise that is not accounted for.”

My correspondent must have focused on the fact that the IPCC had got it wrong. He didn’t take into account that the error was on a matter of details. Overall, the picture is if anything more worrying: if the Antarctic isn’t contributing, then the effect of other causes of sea level rise must be even greater than we feared.

Now, I don’t want global warming to happen. I take no joy from the fact that reading the evidence thoroughly only confirms the bad news – after all, it is bad news. I wish we could deny what’s happening. I’m simply amazed by the extent to which deniers are prepared to go to support their rejection of evidence.

It’s faith, and faith at its worst. It sees what it wants to see, and reads what it wants to read. And if it gets its way, it’ll lead the planet, blindfolded, into desperate straits.

Knave or fool: David Cameron and climate change

It seemed an extraordinary boon: this morning, the cost of fuel at my favourite petrol station was below a pound a litre, for the first time in years.

It makes the point about the glut of oil on world markets. There’s so much of it around that prices are just collapsing. In principle, that would be good. If we were really beginning to wean ourselves off the stuff, supply would indeed outstrip demand. Weaning, however, seems unlikely to be happening. If there’s a drop in consumption at all, it’s much more likely to be down to economic slowdown rather than changing habits.

On the other hand, we can take a great deal of satisfaction from one recent event. On 12 December, the climate change conference adopted the Paris Agreement and, for the first time, gave the world some hope that nations at last had the will to tackle global warming. As UK Prime Minister David Cameron, said the accord represented “a huge step forward in helping to secure the future of our planet”.

Indeed, he went on to point out how the government he leads is working towards achieving the objectives of the agreement:

Britain is already leading the way in work to cut emissions and help less developed countries cut theirs and this global deal now means that the whole world has signed to play its part in halting climate change.

This makes it all the more interesting that less than a week later, his government won parliamentary approval for an extension of fracking operations in the country. In particular, it allows fracking under national parks or sites of special scientific interest.

Area newly authorised for fracking
Just what we need?

So at a time when there’s a glut of oil on the world market, and within days of a new agreement aimed at reducing dependence on the fuel, Cameron wants to see companies extracting more of it in Britain. He wants that to happen despite the oil glut, the possible damage to some extraordinary parts of the country, and his warm words welcoming the Paris Agreement.

His government followed up that initiative with another which would cut the subsidy previously available in Britain for solar panels by 65%. So Cameron’s government also wants to reduce the pursuit of alternatives to fossil fuels, just as he authorises further operations to extract more of them. But “Britain is already leading the way in work to cut emissions”?

Is it simply that he’s completely brazen in his hypocrisy? Or is he just too intellectually challenged to see his own incoherence?