The Angry Exile: No, it can't be.

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Wednesday, 29 December 2010

No, it can't be.

In the runup to Christmas and my poor attempt to get organised in time (I demand at least a year's notice for Christmas 2011) I missed the fact that the arctic icecap is not doomed after all.

There is no 'tipping point' beyond which climate change will inevitably push the Arctic ice cap into terminal melt off, according to a study published today.

...

One of the factors in this calculation is a so-called positive feedback, in which a reduced area of floating ice helps to stoke global warming.

As ice cover recedes decade by decade, more of the Sun's radiative force is absorbed by dark-blue sea rather than bounced back into space by reflective ice and snow.

...

Up to now, many scientists worried that there was an as yet unidentified temperature threshold which, once passed, would doom the ice cap.

But... but... but that would mean that two and a half years ago when he said it was going to melt in five years Al Gore was... wrong? And so were Prince Chuckles and his mate Pen Hadow when they gave it ten.

I'll go an update the warble gloaming diary dates with a big fat line through the ice-free North Pole ones, yes?

<sarcasm>My God, and there I was believing both mutually exclusive claims.</sarcasm> Ah, not so fast, Angry. Almost inevitably when it comes to all things ecoid every silver lining has to have a big fucking cloud in the middle of it, and this news is no exception.

But the study, based on computer models, indicates that if annual emissions of greenhouse gases are substantially reduced over the next two decades, an initial phase of rapid ice loss would be followed by a period of stability and, eventually, partial recovery.

So the message really hasn't changed that much. Reduce emissions, reduce living standards, shrink economies and all will be well once more.

Except of course there's still the point that the existence of a net positive feedback is still assumed* and, since positive feedback is unusual in nature and tends to be unstable, seems unlikely. If positive feedback were a reality how did the world avoid runaway warble gloaming in the past when CO₂ levels were naturally much higher than even today with a little help from industrial activity? So before I ditch the car, the water heater, the electric and electronic appliances and everything else that comes with living in the early 21st Century rather than the 18th, is it too much to ask that someone goes out and actually confirms positive feedback empirically rather than taking it as read and shoving it and its assumed values into yet another fucking computer model?

I'd be so grateful.

* As far as I'm aware, anyway. Such a discovery would confirm a great deal which is still in doubt and disputed by sceptics, so I'd have expected it to have been headline news and very hard to miss even for me when I'm busy with other things.