This Holiday Challenge Begins Monday November 16 And Ends: Fill & Download for Free

The most important thing to remember about the War on Christmas is that it is not real. There are, nevertheless, people who erroneously believe the War on Christmas is real, and plenty of people who are willing to act as though they believe it is real. They derive real benefit from this imaginary war, so while we can — and should — insist on the truth that the War on Christmas is not real, we also cannot pretend that this imaginary thing isn’t also important.With that said, the short answer to this question is that the War on Christmas — according to those who claim it exists — will not begin this year, because it is always ongoing. It is part of a larger cultural reaction that embraces conspiratorial thinking rather than accept demographic shifts for what they are.That’s the short answer. If you’d like a longer answer that runs a few thousand words, keep reading.I. The Historical War on ChristmasChristmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, which makes it — from a liturgical standpoint — one of Christianity’s less important holidays. We are talking about an event that two of the canonical gospels, John and Mark, omit entirely, which implies that Jesus’ birth was far less an important event than either his baptism or his crucifixion. None of the gospels explicitly give so much as the season of his birth.[1]One does not need to read implications into the omissions of various books of the Christian canon, either: early Christianity demonstrably did not attach much importance to Jesus’ birthday. There is no record of Christmas being celebrated until roughly three centuries after Jesus’ death. Irenaeus, who lived in the second century, did not record it as a feast in Christianity, and neither did Tertullian, who lived into the first half of the third century. There is also record of people condemning the very idea. Origen of Alexandria — Tertullian’s contemporary and a highly influential cleric later recognized as a Father of the Church — ridiculed the idea of celebrating birthdays, pointing out that the only examples in canon of people doing so were wicked men such as Pharaoh and Herod, whereas the virtuous (such as the prophet Jeremiah) even went so far as to curse their own birthdays.Skip ahead about half a century from Origen’s death in the mid-250’s, and that’s when you start getting records of Christmas being celebrated. The Donatists — a heretical North African sect[2] — definitely celebrated the holiday, which implies that it was a feast at least in part of Christianity by the early 300’s. This still leads us to an important question: if Christmas’ liturgical significance has always been at least kind of shaky, how has its celebration become such a juggernaut?Putting it bluntly, paganism.European celebrations of Christmas have liberally stolen elements from various pagan religions. Once you move away from creches and Nativity plays, you’re probably looking at a decontextualized or recontextualized pagan practice. Mistletoe, the Christmas tree, and even gift-giving have their origins in other mid-winter festivals such as the Germanic Jól (Yule) and the Roman Saturnalia. These practices are, let’s be honest, fun, so it’s not hard to understand why the holiday associated with it is also a popular favorite.[3]This should, under no circumstances, be taken as some great revelation. The pagan origins of many of Christmas’ traditional celebrations has been known for centuries, and it has been acknowledged by numerous Christians. In the seventeenth century, following victory in the English Civil War, the parliament of England banned celebration of Christmas in the country, a ban that would last from 1647 to 1660.[4] The Church of Scotland, a Presbyterian endeavor, discouraged celebrations of the holiday, which in turn led the Scottish parliament to abolish observance of the holiday in 1640.[5] And that’s only looking at the Anglophone world on one side of the Atlantic.In 1620, the Pilgrims landed in what’s now Massachusetts and set up a colony in Plymouth. They dropped anchor at Plymouth Harbor on 16 December, and started building their colony on 23 December. 25 December 1620 was a Monday, and the Pilgrims spent it working, not because they needed to, but because they refused to acknowledge Christmas as a holiday. This policy largely continued for decades — in 1659, Boston outlawed the observance of Christmas, a ban that was subsequently overridden by a colonial governor in 1681.The English colonies outside New England tended to celebrate Christmas, but to a far lesser extent than contemporary American societies does now. Part of the planning for the Battle of Trenton on 26 December 1776 — the battle that came after Washington’s storied crossing of the Delaware River — relied on the Germans celebrating Christmas the day before. To quote one of Washington’s staff officers prior to the fight, “They make a great deal of Christmas in Germany, and no doubt the Hessians will drink a great deal of beer and have a dance to-night.” It is impossible to prove that the Hessians were hung over on the morning of 26 December — and there is no evidence they were — but note that the staff officer’s assessment implicitly frames the idea of treating Christmas as a big deal as alien.In short, the Puritan war on Christmas, which lasted decades, was largely successful in dampening celebrations in the Anglophone world for close to two centuries. There are still Christian sects that do not celebrate Christmas — the Jehovah’s Witnesses are among the more prominent — but they are in no way the cultural mainstream in the way that the Puritans were in the seventeenth century in England and New England. Christmas ultimately won the war, and there hasn’t been a significant challenge to it since.II. Paper CupsBefore discussing right wing talking points regarding the supposed modern “war on Christmas,” let’s run through an example of one supposed battle in this “war.”Starbucks is a massively successful corporation that sells coffee. Every year in the United States, it switches up its cups in early November to celebrate the holiday season. Frequently, these cups have Christmas trees and ornaments as decorations. They have often not had the word “Christmas” on them. I cannot find a past example with explicitly religious imagery,[6] although I grant my search wasn’t exhaustive.In 2015, Starbucks went with an extremely simple design, specifically, making the cups red, with the green-and-white Starbucks logo as the only decoration on the cup. You might think that giving people a green and red cup — a color combination usually associated with Christmas — for two months leading up to Christmas might be a sufficient acknowledgement that Christmas is a thing. You might think that starting a celebration of Christmas two months before the holiday starts is a bit much.Or you might think that this is a desecration of everything you hold holy, because these cups aren’t explicit enough about Christmas.I need to stress again: cups from previous years usually had some fairly innocuous design that, yeah, was Christmas-related, but often didn’t say “Merry Christmas” and pretty much never went with religious imagery. While Christmas trees are certainly a Christmas thing, they’re about as religiously important as a green-and-red color scheme. This wasn’t some scheme to deny Christmas, as some people accused it of being. Considering that numerous previous designs had had no text on them at all, accusing Starbucks of attempting to “take Christ and Christmas off their brand new holiday cups”[7] was a ludicrous accusation that bore no scrutiny at all.This is far from the only example of the “war on Christmas” being complete nonsense. For centuries, Christians themselves have abbreviated the word “Christ” with the Greek letter chi, which looks like a capital X. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, written by monks[8] nine hundred years ago in Old English, refers to the holiday as Xp̄es mæsse. The abbreviation “X’temass” dates back half a millennium. “Xmas” is itself several hundred years old, and has been used by numerous Christians in the hundreds of years since its coining. But listen to certain contemporary American Christians, and they’ll try to tell you that “Xmas” is simply an attempt by heathens to remove the word “Christ” from “Christmas.”Another example: there are many, many holidays in December and January, and while pretty much nobody celebrates all of them, pretty much everyone will celebrate at least one of them. Roughly one person in five in the United States has no religion at all. One in fifty is Jewish, one in a hundred is Muslim, one in forty is something else altogether. Go to most cities in the United States, and the concentration of religious minorities increases. The bottom line here is that “Merry Christmas” just isn’t applicable to a whole lot of people, but “Happy Holidays”? Yeah, that covers pretty much everyone, unless they’ve got some deep-seated issue with New Year’s Eve.You can look at all of this “evidence” and think “boy, some people sure are stupid if they believe this.” However, it would be a terrible idea. It takes less than five minutes of internet searching to find pre-2015 Starbucks cups, or the history of the spelling “Xmas.” Because it takes minimal effort to find out all of this, stupidity and ignorance don’t explain what’s going on with this belief. People don’t believe this because they don’t know better. They believe it because they want to believe it.So why do people want to believe this? And why do people want others to believe it?III. The BelieversThe big thing to remember about the “War on Christmas” is that it is described as a war. In other words, if the “War on Christmas” were real — and, again, it is in no way real — there would need to be some contingent of people attacking Christmas. There isn’t actually any such group, obviously, but the phrase “War on Christmas” implies the existence of anti-Christmas warriors.To the people who believe that anti-Christmas warriors exist, this belief is a comfort.Religiosity in the United States has always been a regional affair. In the Colonial Era, for example, you’d stereotypically find the humanists in the South and the Bible-thumpers in New England — a sharp contrast to the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. However, until the twentieth century, it was broadly assumed that America was a Protestant country, and it took until about the mid-twentieth before the idea of Judeo-Christian (including Catholicism) America gained any ground in popular consciousness.[9] However, in recent decades, the “Judeo-Christian” battle has largely been settled[10] and the big demographic shift isn’t the result of Catholic and Jewish immigrants from Europe, it’s people abandoning religion altogether. Somewhere between a fifth and a third of Americans claim no religious affiliation at all. This does not mean that somewhere between 20 and 33% of Americans are either atheist or agnostic. When polled, the majority of the unaffiliated are indeed theists, but they’re not part of some larger group. Religion for the unaffiliated is entirely personal, while religion for the affiliated is — by definition — at least partly communal.Some religious groups view this as a threat. This fear is justifiable: when the majority of your religious practice is communal in nature, the decline of your community compromises your ability to practice your religion. This also cuts the other way, as if too many people abandon your religion, there went your community. This is one of the reasons the Puritans banned Christmas celebration — the Puritan lifestyle was austere, which turned out to be unfulfilling for most of the community in the long run. Banning alternatives kept the community intact. Obviously, this came with significant downsides both to the non-Puritans of New England and to the Purtians themselves, but there was a genuine threat to the Puritan lifestyle — as evidenced by that lifestyle now being dead — and they responded to it.It’s worth reiterating here that, in seventeenth century Boston, there wasn’t a war to celebrate Christmas. There were people who wanted to celebrate Christmas, and there were people who wanted nobody to celebrate Christmas. One side was minding their own damn business, the other side was decidedly not. This has also largely been true of what’s happened with irreligiosity in the United States: most people who have left organized religion behind have done so quietly,[11] and the people who are “pushing back” in the culture war are doing so against an opponent who isn’t there.The people fighting against the imaginary War on Christmas are correct in identifying a demographic shift. They are correct in recognizing that irreligiosity has the potential to seriously alter the very idea of who the “default American” is. They are correct in believing that such a shift would not benefit them.[12] Where they go wrong is in assuming that there is intent in the demographic shift, but it’s not hard to understand why they assume there’s intent. It’s not because an anti-Christmas conspiracy is credible — their cited evidence for such a thing is provably false, and it takes all of five minutes to debunk it. However, if there is a conspiracy, all that they need to do is defeat the conspiracy. If, however, there’s no conspiracy, then reversing the demographic shift requires religion to change. If you thought the shift to irreligion wasn’t a good thing, which of these options would you want to be true?And to be clear, most of this isn’t conscious and active thought. You don’t run through all of this consciously and then go wrong that way. Most of this is gut reaction: noticing that things are changing, figuring that this isn’t because of you, and then assuming there’s more order than there actually is.IV. OverlapThe War on Christmas is a fiction people wish was true because they don’t want to believe that demographic changes work the way they do. When you look at the right wing, however, this phenomenon is widespread. Let’s talk about “cultural Marxism.”Although modernist art had existed prior to the First World War, it took on a life of its own in the aftermath. The Dadaists, for example, came about because of the First World War, believing that any society that could do what had been done between 1914 and 1918 was clearly not reasonable or logical in any sense of those terms, and therefore meaninglessness should be embraced in art itself. The art world was moving in radical directions. A lot of people liked this. Not everyone did.In particular, the Nazis hated modernist art. This is by no means surprising — Hitler was himself a thoroughly uninteresting pre-modernist (in sensibility, not in time period) painter, and he had absolutely no idea why anyone would not make art as purely representational. The only explanation for modernist art, per Hitler, was not that people wanted to experiment and liked the results, no, it was that the Bolsheviks — who had embraced the socialist realist style of art (and therefore, representationalism) even by the 1920’s — were pushing modernist art. Since we’re dealing with Hitler and the Nazis, the purpose of this non-existent conspiracy was to undermine traditional values and bring about communism worldwide. Hence, any work of art that the Nazis didn’t like was labelled “cultural Bolshevism” and was suppressed.You might think that the Second World War ending with Germany in flames, with many of the fires set by the Fuehrer himself, would have discredited this sort of conspiracy theory, along with pretty much any other element of Nazi thought. It didn’t. Instead, the conspiracy theory changed from the Soviet Union being the source of the scourge to college professors from interwar Germany, and the name “cultural Bolshevism” was changed to “cultural Marxism” or, to some people, “postmodern neo-Marxism.”[13] Ultimately, it’s the same basic idea: the people who want to change society don’t actually want to change society, they’ve been fooled into action by a conspiracy.Not everyone who subscribes to the “War on Christmas” nonsense subscribes to the “cultural Marxist” nonsense, but the underlying principles are quite similar. Because of this, there is significant overlap between the camps and they tend not to be mutually hostile. Either way, you’re dealing with conservative fears that the country is getting away from them in ways they do not like — and in ways that imply they haven’t exactly been considerate of the feelings of large segments of the population. After all, if we assume that “all Americans celebrate Christmas,” we’re also assuming that “if someone does not celebrate Christmas, then they are not American,” a sentiment most people don’t openly agree with.[14]V. The SaleMany people who push the War on Christmas narrative do believe it. Again, it’s a comforting fiction to a pretty large swath of the population, and some of those people are going to have platforms. The man who said his name was “Merry Christmas” to get Starbucks to write “Christmas” on a coffee cup very likely believed he had scored a goal against a conspiracy that most people would correctly recognize as not existing. However, we’re dealing with an angry mob being told what they want to hear. That anger can be harnessed by bad faith actors who know what they’re selling is snake oil, and it is.Some of this is going to boil down to simple conservative propaganda. Create the two minute hate against liberals, then get people to sign onto the conservative program of cutting taxes on the rich and slashing welfare entitlements. Neither of these ideas by themselves actually poll particularly well with the population at large, but when bundled with the culture war, they can prove to not be ballot poison. This practice isn’t specific to conservatives or any other political group, and pretty much everyone tries to do it. However, it is more effective on the right in the United States than it is for any other group, which is why Fox News runs these stories frequently towards the end of the year.From a left wing perspective, this is a bad thing, but it’s something that can be lived with. Where it gets bad for everyone is when the bad faith actors aren’t simply differing on matters of politics as usual. Because yes, these reactions are conservative positions, but they are prone to weaponization by fascists, something fascists are unfortunately well aware of.There have always been women who play computer games, and indeed, half the gaming market is female. However, the stereotype of a person who does is male. This stereotype is important, because it’s who developers have traditionally targeted for marketing and sales. As such, “gamer” culture presumes a default male, and gamer culture does not want to consider that it has either inadvertently or intentionally shunned women. This has become increasingly difficult to ignore: the increasing strength of the independent development scene has led to many games that were not targeted at a stereotypical “hardcore gamer,” and which have been both profitable and critically well-received.There were two possible ways to react to this. Self-described hardcore gamers could recognize that their identity was, at least in its origins, a marketing gimmick that had been used to sell them stuff — or they could scream there was a conspiracy to ruin videogames. In 2014, they screamed conspiracy.The exact trigger for this is generally agreed to be a blog post written by someone bitter that his ex-girlfriend, herself a games developer, cheated on him. He went on a tirade on several Steam (a videogame sales platform) message boards regarding her infidelity. His threads were deleted and he himself was banned for violating Steam’s terms of service. The bitter misogynist then edited the blog post to include some lies — something he even admits to — regarding “ethics in videogame journalism,” and boom, so was born Gamergate.Gamergate was, pretty much from the start, a fascist operation. The wretch who wrote the blog post specifically courted the absolute worst dregs of 4chan (and later 8chan), which is to say, among the most racist and misogynistic parts of the internet. These people quickly realized that “ethics in videogame journalism” was a convenient fiction that would allow a targeted harassment campaign against women to appear respectable enough to the mainstream. Plenty of people joined up for the “ethics in videogame journalism,” but they ended up spending all their time discussing how they weren’t the people doing the doxxing, swatting, and bomb threats, while the people who were doing those things disappeared into the larger crowd and also spoke to it. Gamergate is now effectively dead, but it has spawned other equally noxious movements such as Comicsgate, and it also served as a great entry point from the perspective of the far right.[15]Which is to say, if you’re curious as to how fascist movements such as the alt-right gain steam, you don’t need to look any further than manufactured controversies such as Gamergate and the War on Christmas. If you tell people that the world is exactly as they thought it was, and that the reason they’re hearing differently is the result of a conspiracy, they’ll follow you, and once they’ve bought the idea of one conspiracy, it’s not generally that hard to get them to buy another.VI. ConclusionIn general, among people who do not subscribe to the War on Christmas conspiracy theory, the response to hearing about it is incredulity. This is frequently accompanied by laughter. And yes, there is something funny about the idea that anyone is trying to make an assault on Christmas, hegemonic as it is in the American calendar[16] — one may as well attempt to tear down Mount Everest using a plastic spork. However, never forget that this conspiratorial thinking is dangerous, and it is grounded in a reactionary worldview. The idea that Protestantism is losing centrality in American identity is one that helped spawn the second incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan in the early twentieth century,[17] so while the War on Christmas seems laughable, it’s tapping into some dark and dangerous stuff.And it never ends.[1] A close reading of Luke tells us it was likely some time in September.[2] Unlike many cases of religious schism, this one is fairly easy to explain. The Roman governor of North Africa was fairly easy-going with the Christians under his rule, and while he did insist that they repudiate their faith during several official persecutions, he was satisfied when the clergy simply handed over their scriptures. Those who handed over the scriptures were called “traditors.” Donatists believed that traditors were unfit to be clergy and any sacrament administered by them was invalid.You might think that the end of the persecutions and the Edict of Milan — which promulgated religious toleration towards Christianity — in 313 would have taken the wind out of the sails of the Donatists, leading to them dying out within half a century. Turns out, no, it was actually far more resilient than that, and it was only the Islamic conquest of North Africa that really put an end to it.[3] For another example of a liturgically unimportant holiday becoming extremely popular thanks to its fun customs of celebration, look no further than the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, which is customarily celebrated with fried food, fire, giving kids money, and gambling.[4] Parliament at the time was dominated by the Puritans, who associated the holiday with “popery,” which is to say, Catholicism. Puritan writings were generally didactic and did not much care for elucidating the differences between Catholicism, devil-worship, and paganism.[5] The abolition would survive into the Cold War, with Christmas only becoming an official holiday in Scotland in 1958.[6] The cups have had stars on them in years past, which does suggest the Star of Bethlehem, but it’s not like stars are some exclusively or even primarily Christian piece of iconography, unlike, for example, the cross.[7] Starbucks accused of "war on Christmas" with holiday cups[8] While the original author is unknown, all surviving copies were produced by monasteries, who, had they been so inclined, could have written “Christmas” (or the period-appropriate spelling equivalent thereof) instead of the abbreviation.[9] For more on this process, check out Kevin M. Schultz’ Tri-Faith America.[10] This is not to say that it is difficult to find antisemitism and anti-Catholicism in contemporary America. It is actually quite easy to find both. However, the majority of the Protestant population that describes America as a religious nation at all will make some sort of sop to Catholics and Jews, because the population at large expects the religious diversity of the country to be recognized in some regard. That said sop is usually insincere is besides the point.[11] Again, atheists are a minority of the religiously unaffiliated, let alone vocal atheists like Richard Dawkins.[12] Thanks to the “default American” being presumed Christian, I get Good Friday off from work, and have to burn vacation days for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Being in the majority, a perceived majority, or in a ruling caste comes with major advantages.[13] An incoherent label if ever there was one. Marxism is a modernist philosophy, and Marxists and postmodernists tend to get along about as well as half a ton of Plutonium-239 and a bunch of neutrons flying free. Seriously, read some of Sartre’s burns on Foucault.[14] To quote George Washington:The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.Which is to say that, if you don’t think non-Christians can be Americans, George Washington thinks you’re a dick.[15] Richard Spencer and Andrew Anglin, both white supremacist leaders, in particular have been vocal about how effective it was.[16] The retail sector would be significantly weaker were it not for Christmas. This being said, “Black Friday” is not called that because it’s the day when retailer’s ledgers go from the red to the black, but rather, because of the dramatic increase in car accidents the day after Thanksgiving.[17] The first incarnation of the Klan was essentially entirely anti-black terrorism performed in the former Confederacy and was put down by the mobilization of the army. The second incarnation was much larger, was an international affair, and in addition to racism, incorporated nativism, anti-Catholicism, and antisemitism.

•They are desperate to increase their dwindling income by any means.The NY Times has lost touch with its core readers.Bulletin:On December 16, 2016, the NY Times announced that it was vacating at least floors of staff in order to generate "rental income."NY Times publisher and president, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and CEO Mark Thompson wrote in a note to Times employees;“We’ve made the decision to consolidate our footprint across the building to create a more dynamic, modern and open workplace, one that is better suited to the moment. We’re planning significant investments in a redesign of our existing space in order to facilitate more cross-departmental collaboration. We expect a substantial financial benefit as well. All told, we will vacate at least eight floors, allowing us to generate significant rental income.”So the NY Times is in Real Estate these days.Their excuse was they said that the publisher and CEO’s offices, along with other large corner offices, will disappear as part of the redesign.“We don’t need to preserve those vestiges from a different era, so we won’t.”Sure.That's why the NY Times is now begging for sponsorship from corporations and charities.They are desperate for funds to support their liberal propaganda.They have also become booksellers for the books they review.At the beginning of every book review a pop-up "Buy" menu gives readers a choice to order from "Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Local Booksellers"A small accompanying paragraph states;“We earn an affiliate commission with each book purchase, which helps support our journalism at The New York Times."I suppose that will be enough coercion to write great reviews about any book.The NY Times claimed in November 2016 that there was a "surge" of 100,000 new subscriptions gained through artificial respiration to save the paper.What NY Times management failed to tell us is that the"surge" may have been attributed to the promotion they have been running for years offering "99¢ for four weeks."Some other examples:The price of the daily Monday through Saturday paper is $2.50.Sunday's paper is $5.00 in New York City and $6.00 for the rest of the country.Do the arithmetic for the following discount offers:Another discount offer was "50% off for one-year subscriptions.""Help us hold power to account. 50% off for one year. Ends tomorrow. "[It didn't end the next day, or the next, or the next, etc.]One annual subscription promotion at half-price allows you to add two friends for a two additional free annual subscriptions as well.Added artificial respiration comes to the NY Times with a promotion to"Sponsor a student subscription today" an appeal to the tenderness of parents, family, friends, or other liberals aiding the cause,The 2016 end-of-year"Holiday Sale" offered 12 weeks of the Times for $6.Online advertisement by The NY Times begging for subscriptions:"Your support is crucial to our mission."Arthur S. Brisbane in his final column as the NY Times public editor (ombudsman, a position solely created in the wake of the major NY Times 2003’s Jayson Blair scandal) said this,“Across the paper’s many departments, though, so many share a kind of political and cultural progressivism – for lack of a better term – that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times.”This bias tinges every word online or in print.That's why they will always get it wrong.Journalism is reporting, not vile, anti-Orthodox, anti-Semitic, propaganda.The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda."–Michael Crichton, best-selling author, in a Science Fiction talk in 2003•

It means you are mislead to think that minute amounts of non toxic CO2 plant food added to the atmosphere from human emissions from industry of an additional 18 ppm to the natural 411 ppm or only 0.017% of the atmosphere are in control of the climate and that there is a cover or greenhouse from CO2 and water vapour causing runaway and disastrous warming.It means that you think more warming is and will be harmful to life and that a colder climate is so much better that it is worth major sacrifices in almost everything you do to reduce your output of more CO2.With this mistaken of climate science and reality being the goal of carbon neutral means you stop adding more CO2 emissions by the way you live your life.Sadly the goal of carbon neutral is a harmful delusion to all of civilization and especially to plant life that needs more CO2 for photosynthesis not less.The evidence of the value of more warming is in plain view from the history of the Medieval Warming period when it was warmer (faster also) than the stuttering so called global warming today.Humans are a tropical specie based on our earliest history. We thrive with warm weather and fail and die in the cold.Plants are much more productive with warmer weather than under the harsh conditions of colder climates.Reference articles and studiesThe tropics are a holiday magnet because of warming for every culture.FAMOUS PAINTING SHOWING THE HAPPY TIMES DURING MEDIEVAL WARMINGWashington’s soldiers suffered and died from the freezing weather during his famous march of 1777.The Sahel is greeningPhilipp MuellerPhilipp Mueller is the Assistant Dirctor of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. He holds an MA in Global Affairs from the University of Buckingham.The Sahel is greeningIntroductionGlobal warming has both positive and negative impacts. However, very often only the negative consequences are reported and the positive ones omitted. This article will show an example of a positive effect of warming. The people living in the Sahel, a semiarid area just south of the Sahara desert, spanning the entire African continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, were suffering from several devastating droughts and famines between the late 1960s and the early 1990s. The draughts were triggered by decreases inrainfall from the early 1950s to the mid-1980s.1 Global warming was supposed to increase the frequency and severity of the droughts, which would make crop-growing unviable and cause even worse famines.2 According to the United Nations, the outlook for the people in the Sahel was bleak.3Africa's Sahel desert to become lush green tropics as monsoons increase…The Sahel is greeningHowever in sharp contrast to this gloomy outlook, it seems that global warming has exactly the opposite effect on the Sahara and the Sahel. The Sahara is actually shrinking, with vegetation arising on land where there was nothing but sand and rocks before.4 The southern border of the Sahara has been retreating since the early 1980s, making farming viable again in what were some of the most arid parts of Africa. There has been a spectacular regeneration of vegetation in northern Burkina Faso, which was devastated by drought and advancing deserts 20 years ago. It is now growing so much greener that families who fled to wetter coastal regions are starting to come back. There are now more trees, more grassland for livestock and a 70% increase in yields of local cereals such sorghum and millet in recent years. Vegetation has also increased significantly in the past 15 years in southern Mauritania, north-western Niger, central Chad, much of Sudan and parts of Eritrea.5 In Burkina Faso and Mali, production of millet rose by 55 percent and 35 percent, respectively, since 1980.6 Satellite photos, taken between 1982 and 2002, revealed the extensive re-greening throughout the Sahel.7 Aerial photographs and interviews with local people have confirmed the increase in vegetation.8Causes of the greeningThe main reason for the greening of the Sahara and the Sahel has been an increase in rainfall since the mid-1980s.9 Of the 40 rainfall stations across the Sahel, most of them have been observing an increase in rainfall.10 If sustained, the increasing rainfalls could revitalize drought-ravaged regions, reclaimingthem for farming.11 The United Nations’ Africa Report of 2008 confirmed that the greening of the Sahel is now well established and that increases in rainfall are the main driver of the change in the vegetation cover. The report noted that there was a 50% increase in vegetation in parts of Mali, Mauritania and Chad during 1982-2003.12 Vegetation changes play a significant role in the rainfall variability.13 The increase in rainfall has allowed more plants to grow, which in turn increases precipitation even more. Plants transfer moisture from the soil into the air by evaporation from their leaves and hold water in the soil close to the surface, where it can also evaporate. The darker surface of plants compared with sand also absorb more solar radiation, which can create convection and turbulence in the atmosphere which might create rainfall. Vegetation effects account for around 30 percent of annual rainfall variation in the Sahel.14 The increased vegetation will fix the soil, enhance its anti-wind- erosion ability, reduce the possibility of released dust and consequently cause a decline in the numbers of sand-dust storms.15However, the greening cannot be explained solely by the increase in rainfall. There were vegetation increases in areas where rainfall was decreasing, suggesting another factor was responsible for the greening in these areas.16 This other factor might have been the rise of atmospheric CO2 levels. The aerial fertilization effect of the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 concentration increases greatly the productivity of plants. The more CO2 there is in the air, the better plants grow. Rising atmospheric CO2 levels also have an anti- transpiration effect, which enhances the water-use efficiency of plants and enables them to grow in areas that were once too dry for them.17Possible explanations for the increase in rainfallIt is not clear what has caused the increase in rainfall and there are several possible explanations for it. A study by Reindert Haarsma and his colleagues of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, which is based on a climate model, suggests that the increase in rainfall was triggered by an increase in surface temperatures in the Sahara. Haarsma et al argue that the Sahara heats up faster than the Atlantic Ocean, which creates lower atmospheric pressure above the desert. This leads to air with more moisture moving in from the Atlantic and more rainfall over the Sahel. According to Haarsma’s climate model, higher temperatures over the Sahara would cause 1-2 millimetres of extra daily rainfall in the Sahel during the months of July to September by 2080, which would be 25 to 50 percent more rainfall that fell in the drought- ridden region in 1980.18There are other possible explanations. Recent climate modelling suggestsa strong link between sea surface temperature anomalies and rainfall inthe Sahel. Using a global circulation model and a number of sea surface temperature scenarios, Giannini et al were able to reproduce much of the observed rainfall variation in the Sahel between 1930 and 2000. Their study might explain 25-30 percent of inter-annual rainfall variations.19 James HurrellThe Sahel is greening5of the U.S. National Centre for Atmospheric Research and Martin Hoerlingof the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration claim thatthe increase in rainfall is linked to temperature changes in the AtlanticOcean and is partially caused by greenhouse gas emissions. They drew this conclusion after analysing 60 computer models that imitate the climate. According to Hurrell and Hoerling, for much of the period 1950-2000, the southern Atlantic Ocean was warmer than the northern Atlantic Ocean. This drew rain-bearing monsoon winds away from the Sahel, contributing to the very dry conditions there. From the 1990s, however, the situation changed and the northern Atlantic Ocean became warmer than the southern Atlantic, partly because of higher levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. As a result, say Hurrell and Hoerling, there has been more rainfall in the Sahel.20Other scientists argue that the Sahara’s climate is strongly influencedby high altitude winds that disperse monsoon rains on the desert below. Unpredictable shifts in the wind pattern can lead to prolonged droughts or, as apparently happening now, life-sustaining rainfall.21 As these various attempts of explaining the increasing precipitation – stressing the roles of Sahara surface temperatures, sea surface temperature and winds respectively- show, climate scientists have not yet fully understood the complex interactions between surface and ocean temperatures, evaporation and wind patterns that determine the climate of the Sahara and the Sahel.When the Sahara was a savannahThe greening of the Sahara and the Sahel is not unprecedented. During the Holocene Climate Optimum (9000-4000 BC), whose early and middle parts were possibly 2-5 degrees Celsius warmer than now, the northern half ofAfrica received more abundant and more stable rainfall. Whatis now the Sahara desert wasa green savannah then. Rock paintings in south-eastern Algeria from this period show savannah animals such as elephants and zebus (cattle). Bones of crocodiles and hippos were found in the Sahara together with sedimentsshowing that big lakes and rivers existed there until 6,000 years ago. Expertsin paleoclimate think that the Sahara’s climate is twisted between two extremes: it is either wet enough to create and sustain a green savannah or it does not support vegetation. They claim that there is threshold to be crossed to get from one extreme to the other. Scientists have shown that, when the greening first starts due to some more rainfall, vegetation itself influencesthe climate, producing even more rainfall. In the Holocene, says Professor Peter deMenocal of Columbia University, first the greening and then the desertification of the Sahara might have been a matter of a century, maybe6even only decades. This indicates that the increasing precipitation could quickly green the Sahara.22There were earlier examples of a “green Sahara”. North African climate reconstructions have revealed three periods during which the Sahara was almost completely covered with extensive grasslands, lakes and rivers over the course of the last 120,000 years. Dr Rik Tjallingii, Professor Martin Claussen and their colleagues from the Center for Marine Environmental Research and the Alfred-Wegener-Institute in Germany studied a marine sediment coreoff the coast of Northwest Africa to find out how the vegetation and the hydrological cycle of the Sahara and Sahel changed over this period. They tried to reconstruct the vegetation cover of the last 120,000 years by studying changes in the ratio of wind-transported and river-transported particles found in the core. They claim that the three “green” periods were caused by an increase in precipitation that resulted in a much larger vegetation cover, which in turn caused less wind dust, even more rainfall and stronger river activity. According to the scientists, the “green Sahara” periods corresponded with changes in the direction of the earth’s rotational axis which determine the level of solar energy that reaches the tropical Atlantic Ocean. The higher solar energy is believed to have increased evaporation over the ocean and to have pushed the African monsoon further north, increasing rainfall over the Sahara.23The future climate of the Sahara and the SahelClimate scientists do not agree how the future climate of the Sahara andthe Sahel will look like. Some climate models simulate a decrease in rainfall; others – for example Haarsma et al mentioned above – predict an increase in rainfall. According to Professor Claussen, North Africa is the area of greatest disagreement among climate scientists. Claussen explains that forecasting how global warming will affect the Sahel is complicated by the region’s vast size and the unpredictable influence of high-altitude winds that disperse monsoon rains.24 Claussen has considered the likelihood of a greeningof the Sahara due to global warming and concluded that an expansionof vegetation into today’s Sahara is possible as a consequence of CO2 emissions. His climate models suggest that the rate of greening could be fast, up to 10 percent of the Sahara per decade.25 There is uncertainty regarding the future climate of the Sahel and the Sahara and it is obvious that nobody really knows if the future climate will be wetter or drier. The only certaintiesare the observed increases in vegetation and rainfall during the last three decades.ConclusionIn spite of the gloomy predictions of even more frequent and severe droughts and famines caused by global warming, vegetation in the Sahel has significantly increased in the last three decades. This has been a very welcome and very beneficial development for the people living in the Sahel. The increase in rainfall, which was probably caused by rising temperatures, and rising CO2 concentrations might even - if sustained for a few more decades - green the Sahara. This would be a truly tremendous prospect.Warming the desert in Africa means the greening allows return of old settlements.The Real Climate Crisis Is Not Global Warming, It Is Cooling, And It May Have Already StartedGuest Blogger / October 27, 2019By Allan MacRae and Joseph D’Aleo, October 2019Introduction – Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming – A Failed HypothesisThe Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (“CAGW”, aka “Global Warming”, “Climate Change”, “Climate Crisis”, “Climate Emergency”) scare is a failed hypothesis and the greatest scientific fraud in history. Global warming alarmism has been promoted by political extremists and believed in by their gullible acolytes for decades, even though there is no credible evidence that catastrophic global warming exists in reality, and ample evidence that the CAGW hypothesis has been falsified.The failed CAGW hypothesis assumes that increasing atmospheric CO2 from fossil fuel combustion drives dangerous runaway global warming. The alleged evidence for this fraud is climate computer models that greatly over-predict current observed warming, typically by 300 to 500%. These climate models deliberately employ excessively high assumed values of climate sensitivity to CO2, and are designed to create false alarm…Temperatures were much higher during the Medieval Warm Period circa 900-1300 AD, and then humanity experienced the Little Ice Age circa 1300-1850 which caused enormous suffering and the deaths of millions.The USA has some of the best surface temperature data in the world. The hottest USA surface temperature records occurred in the 1930’s, before fossil fuel combustion accelerated circa 1940.Fossil fuel combustion accelerated strongly at the start of World War II, and global temperatures COOLED significantly from 1940 to 1977. That one observation is sufficient to disprove the CAGW hypothesis – global temperatures do NOT rise catastrophically due to increasing atmospheric CO2.[NOTE "The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible."IPCC TAR WG1, Working Group I: The Scientific Basis]Cold weather kills about 20 times as many people as warm and hot weather. Excess Winter Deaths in the USA average about 100,000 per year – equivalent to two 9-11’s per week for 17 weeks EVERY YEAR.Excess Winter Deaths are calculated as the difference between deaths in the four winter months (December to March in the Northern Hemisphere) less half the deaths in the eight non-winter months.Excess Winter Deaths occur worldwide, even in warm countries like Thailand and Brazil. An approximate-low estimate of Excess Winter Deaths is 2 million souls per year worldwide.More than 50,000 Excess Winter Deaths occurred in England and Wales during the winter of 2017-18 – an Excess Winter Death rate about THREE TIMES the per-capita average in the USA and Canada. Proportionally, that is about 35,000 more deaths in the UK than the average rates of the USA and Canada. Excessively high energy costs in the UK due to false global warming/anti-fracking hysteria are a major part of the cause of these Excess Winter Deaths – driven by global warming alarmists and their corrupted minions in governments and institutions.Predictions of Imminent Global Cooling, Starting Anytime SoonThe growing season in North America has been especially challenging.Crop Challenges 2019· Greatly delayed or aborted planting° 19 million acres did not get planted.° Late cold, snow, rain and flooded fields.· Shallow roots caused by excess rain· Soil Compaction· Mid to late summer dryness and heat to the South and East.· North-central growing areas saw excessive rainfall AND not enough sun or Growing Degree Days· Early snows in Northwest growing areas· Half the corn and soybean crop was not mature enough to harvest until mid-October· The soybeans and corn still in the field are delaying the planting of winter wheatSummary and ConclusionsIt is notable that crop planting has occurred one month later-than-usual in the North-central growing areas of North America in both 2018 and 2019. While warm summer weather saved the 2018 crop, in 2019 the Northern corn and soybean harvests were devastated by a cold summer and early cold weather. In 2019, there were many more record U.S. all-time daily low temperatures than record highs. These events may just be weather, not climate, or they could be the early indicators of global cooling.Appendix – Other Predictions of Global Cooling, In Chronological Order Since 2003:In 2003, Dr. Theodor Landscheidt wrote a paper predicting serious global cooling:“Analysis of the sun’s varying activity in the last two millennia indicates that contrary to the IPCC’s speculation about man-made global warming as high as 5.8° C within the next hundred years, a long period of cool climate with its coldest phase around 2030 is to be expected.”In 2005, Piers Corbyn predicted cooling by 2040.On the 2nd February 2005, he gave this presentation to the Institute of Physics Energy Management Group. It contained the following statement:“In the next 5 or 10 years warming is likely to be maintained as a transpolar shift occurs. This will be followed by the magnetic pole moving away from the geographic pole, a decrease in solar activity, a Southward shift in the Gulf Stream and considerable world cooling by 2040 AD.”In 2006, NASA predicted that “Solar Cycle 25, peaking around the year 2022, could be one of the weakest in centuries”.Khabibullo Abdusamatov and colleagues at the Russian Academy of Science stated in 2006:“Global cooling could develop on Earth in 50 years and have serious consequences before it is replaced by a period of warming in the early 22nd century…On the basis of our [solar emission] research, we developed a scenario of a global cooling of the Earth’s climate by the middle of this century and the beginning of a regular 200-year-long cycle of the climate’s global warming at the start of the 22nd century.”Khabibullo Abdusamatov said he and his colleagues concluded that a period of global cooling similar to one seen in the late 17th century – when canals froze in the Netherlands and people had to leave their dwellings in Greenland – could start in 2012-2015 and reach its peak in 2055-2060.He said he believed the future climate change would have very serious consequences and that authorities should start preparing for them today because “climate cooling is connected with changing temperatures, especially for Northern countries.Nigel Weiss, University of Cambridge, stated in 2006:“If you look back into the sun’s past, you find that we live in a period of abnormally high solar activity. Periods of high solar activity do not last long, perhaps 50 to 100 years, then you get a crash. It’s a boom-bust system, and I would expect a crash soon.”Leif Svalgaard, Stanford University, stated in 2006:“Sunspot numbers are well on the way down in the next decade. Sunspot numbers will be extremely small, and when the sun crashes, it crashes hard. The upcoming sunspot crash could cause the Earth to cool.”In 2007, Lin Zhen-Shan and Sun Xian wrote in “Multi-scale analysis of global temperature changes and trend of a drop in temperature in the next 20 years”:“… Signs also show a drop in temperature in China on century scale in the next 20 years. (4) The dominant contribution of CO2 concentration to global temperature variation is the trend. However, its influence weight on global temperature variation accounts for no more than 40.19%, smaller than those of the natural climate changes on the rest four timescales. Despite the increasing trend in atmospheric CO2 concentration, the patterns of 20-year and 60-year oscillation of global temperature are all in falling. Therefore, if CO2 concentration remains constant at present, the CO2 greenhouse effect will be deficient in counterchecking the natural cooling of global climate in the following 20 years. Even though the CO2 greenhouse effect on global climate change is unsuspicious, it could have been excessively exaggerated. It is high time to re-consider the trend of global climate changes.”The Real Climate Crisis Is Not Global Warming, It Is Cooling, And It May Have Already StartedThe sun determines whether the climate is warm or cold and playing around with carbon net zero is useless waste of your resources. There is no climate virtue and lots of harm in taking action on the net zero meme.When the sun goes to sleep we can see there a few if any sunspots and history records during these times temperatures fall and the climate cools around the world.The peak of past civilizations occurred during times of warmth, and their quick-collapse coincided with the subsequent and relatively “instant” temperature drop-off.https://electroverse.net/record-breaking-february-snowfall-buries-montana-and-south-dakota/***THE SNOW THEY TOLD YOU WOULD “DISAPPEAR” KEEPS ON FALLINGCONTRARY to dire ‘expert’ prognostications and climate models to the contrary, global snowfall continues to fall in abundance, aided by ‘record-breaking cold temperatures’.SNOWFALL Will Signal The Death Of The Global Warming MovementPosted: November 18, 2019 | Author: Jamie Spry |BREAKING : ‘A Very Rare And Exciting Event’ To The Rescue | ClimatismSNOWFALL will become “A very rare and exciting event…Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”Dr David Viner – Senior scientist, climatic research unit (CRU)“Winters with strong frosts and lots of snowlike we had 20 years ago will no longer exist at our latitudes.”– Professor Mojib Latif (2000)“Good bye winter. Never again snow?” – Spiegel (2000)“Milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms” – IPCC (2001)“End of Snow?” – NYTimes (2014)***WE all associate snowstorms with cold weather. But, the effects of snow on our climate and weather last long after the storm has passed. Due to snows reflective properties, its presence or absence influences patterns of heating and cooling over Earth’s surface more than any other single land surface feature.CLIMATE models from the 1970s have consistently predicted that CO2-induced global warming climate change should be causing a significant decline in total snow cover. However, Global snow cover has actually increased since at least the start of the record (Connolly et al, 2019), leading to some scepticism within the scientific community about the validity of the climate models.*Up to 30 FEET deep snow banks in Iceland - 'We've never before had snow on this scale'Iceland MonitorWed, 18 Dec 2019 15:10 UTCICELAND’S EMIGRATION CENTER DISAPPEARS UNDER SNOW: “WE’VE NEVER BEFORE HAD SNOW ON THIS SCALE”DECEMBER 20, 2019 CAP ALLON“We’ve never before had snow on this scale,” exclaimed Valgeir Þorvaldsson, director of the Icelandic Emigration Center in Hofsós, North Iceland [as reported by icelandmonitor].Located in a two-story house, the Emigration Center practically disappeared under a monster dumping of snow delivered by last week’s record-breaking storm.“When building these houses, it never occurred to us we’d have to shovel [snow] off these roofs. There are, I believe, 9 meters (30 ft) up to the gable of the biggest house, and the roofs are very steep, too,” continued Þorvaldsson.“Maybe this is why people emigrated to America,” he jokingly pondered.BEFOREAFTERHofsós, Iceland, Dec 16Fearing the structure could collapse, Þorvaldsson said first it was “essential to make sure no one is inside.”People worked hard shoveling snow off the roofs on Monday, Dec 16, in addition to clearing second story windows so they could access the offices.Valgeir states that a great deal of work remains to get things up and running again following the snowstorm and resulting power outages — not least for the regions farmers.The violent snowstorm is also responsible for the deaths of up to 80 horses, according to Sigridur Bjornsdottir, a veterinarian for MAST, the Icelandic Food and Veterinary Authority.“There is a tradition in Iceland for horses to stay outside year-round, and that has been the case since the country was settled,” said Bjornsdottir. “Farmers do not have stables for these horses, which require considerable space. It is, therefore, hard to imagine what more could have been done.”The Icelandic Met Office has warned of further disruptive snow, and has issued a yellow weather warning.The lower latitudes are refreezing in line with historically low solar activity.NASA has recently revealed this upcoming solar cycle (25) will be “the weakest of the past 200 years,” and they’ve correlated previous solar shutdowns to prolonged periods of global cooling here.Our future is one of ever-descending cold.Prepare accordingly — grow your own.https://electroverse.net/icelands-emigration-center-disappears-under-snow/