It might have been brunch at the Ritz in our salad days, but nowadays the perfect New Year's Day breakfast for us is homemade Eggs Bennie -- in the kitchen for Tuck, above, with the latest issue of Road & Track -- or computerside in the studio for ourselves. There are a zillion secret recipes out there for Hollandaise, but we like our own Heavenly Hollandaise best: Bring the water in a double boiler to the boil and turn off the heat. Whip up two yolks with a coupla squeezes of lemon in the top of the boiler and add 3/4 cup butter at room temperature by the tablespoonsful, whisking to blend. 'Makes enough for Eggs Benedict for two. It doesn't get any better.
"But there’s bound to be some weird weather somewhere, and we will react like the sailors in the Book of Jonah," writes John Tierney in his latest NYT Science Times shout into the wind of "popular wisdom" regarding man-made global warming [AKA anthropogenic climate change]:
When a storm hit their ship, they didn’t ascribe it to a seasonal weather pattern. They quickly identified the cause (Jonah’s sinfulness) and agreed to an appropriate policy response (throw Jonah overboard).
"I didn't realize the sailors threw Jonah overboard as the cause of their troubles," we imailed our sis this afternoon [our Unitarian upbringing was strong on the wonders of nature but weak on scripture]:
We: Bush's Fault™ comes to mind.
She: A story as old as time. Look how they treated Moses.
We: Can you say JESUS!? He was despised . . . rejected. It's wonderful to have someone like Tierney at the Times speaking sense to nonsense.
More words of wisdom from Tierney:
Today’s interpreters of the weather are what social scientists call availability entrepreneurs: the activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels . . .
When the Arctic sea ice last year hit the lowest level ever recorded by satellites, it was big news and heralded as a sign that the whole planet was warming. When the Antarctic sea ice last year reached the highest level ever recorded by satellites, it was pretty much ignored. A large part of Antarctica has been cooling recently, but most coverage of that continent has focused on one small part that has warmed.
Woohoo. We've been saying as much from our snail blogging days in the 90's on down. Nice to have John Tierney on our side.
More of the same. Intellectuals who are paid too much and find life too easy. "Lets put ourselves in the limelight and also receive grants for fake research." The intensity of the sun's rays varies over the centuries, and that has and always will affect the temperature here on earth.
Posted by: goomp | January 01, 2008 at 05:50 PM
Agreed, I was delighted to read that in the NYT. Bit of a sea change going on here, and it's about time!
Posted by: miss kelly | January 02, 2008 at 12:51 PM
Pretty soon they'll be calling it "global cooling" or "nuclear winter" again, just as they did back in the late 60's early 70's. And once again they will not find it incongruous that they have done a complete about face in the matter. They will simply ignore what came before because we all know... if they don't talk about it, it never existed. *sigh*
Posted by: Teresa | January 02, 2008 at 03:58 PM
Interestingly, Jonah volunteered to be tossed overboard - perhaps, owing to his guilty conscience, he had a deeper understanding of what was placing the sailors and their ship in danger.
Two decades ago, scientists were getting all panicky about a possible impending Ice Age. Maybe we'd be better off creating a prosperous, resilient world economy in which humans can thrive regardless of the ups and downs of the environment.
Posted by: Elisson | January 04, 2008 at 08:50 AM