European Heatwave and Buckler Beer Thoughts being shared

First off, I feel for the people in Europe facing the European Heatwave. My thoughts go out to those with health issues and respiratory complaints, but also to the folks who enjoy one pint of beer too many each day, the jogging enthusiast who needs to hold back for a moment, and the Greta Thunbergs who read the stars and see the announcement of the end of the earth—and who must now embrace her archnemesis Musk to join a mission to ‘live on Mars.’

What keeps many city dwellers awake at night is the reckoning with poor urban planning, wrong lifestyle habits, and the gloomy thoughts that always seem to haunt someone when a holiday gets rained out, and a green campsite turns into a mud fight with wet toilet paper that has to be rubbed between the buttocks… Quite something, isn’t it.

But seriously now, since you have to take in a bit less beer and purple smoke anyway—because that is more dangerous than Tata Steel when it comes to directly life-threatening situations—it is good to just lie still on your bed, let go of the models, and consider: ‘The earth is neither flat nor round, and it does not make a perfect movement relative to, among other things, the sun.’

Any good skipper knows that the angle of observation can deceive the actual course, and therefore, a slight positive change of the earth relative to the sun can cause variations in heat, with all the resulting consequences.

I am not going to explain that right now; reading in the heat leads to an overheated brainpan. It is better to acquiesce to the circumstances and remember: that rugby-ball shape of Mother Earth will ultimately make a good ‘dunk.’

A Scientific Note

The earth is not a perfect, smooth marble spinning in a tight, unalterable circle around the sun. It is a dynamic, slightly dented system (an oblate ellipsoid, to be precise) that is constantly subject to subtle cosmic wobbles.

If we pull up the models for a moment, we see that this variation in heat is largely driven by three major cosmic dance movements. We call these the Milankovitch parameters:

1. Eccentricity (The shape of the orbit)The earth’s orbit around the sun is indeed not a perfect circle, but an ellipse (the rugby shape the text hinted at). This shape is not constant; over a period of about 100,000 years, the orbit stretches out and pulls back in synchronization with the gravitational pull of other planets. The more oval the orbit, the greater the difference in solar radiation we receive between the point closest to the sun (perihelion) and the farthest point (aphelion).
2. Obliquity (The tilt of the axis)The earth stands at an angle relative to its orbit around the sun. Currently, that angle is about $23.5^\circ$. However, this angle fluctuates between $22.1^\circ$ and $24.5^\circ$ over a cycle of 41,000 years. The greater the angle, the more extreme the seasons: warmer summers and colder winters.
3. Precession (The wobbling motion)Think of a spinning top that is about to run out of steam; the earth’s axis wobbles in a circle. This movement takes about 26,000 years and changes the timing of the seasons relative to where we find ourselves in the elliptical orbit.

The Skipper’s Angle of Observation

Just as the skipper knows that the angle of observation is crucial, the angle of incidence of the sun’s rays (the declination) determines exactly how much energy a square meter of earth has to process. A minor shift in those cosmic angles has gigantic consequences for our climate in the long run—it is the engine behind the ice ages.

Mother Earth’s ‘Dunk’

We are better off acquiescing to the circumstances and trusting that this rugby shape will ultimately make a good ‘dunk.’ When we look at the astronomical timescale, the earth indeed always balances itself out again. The system recovers, transforms, and shakes off extremes.

The difference that current science (and the Gretas of this world) are worried about is the speed at which the current change is taking place compared to those slow, thousands-of-years-long cosmic cycles. But that aside; today we aren’t going to change that thermostat from our beds.

For now, accepting the heat, keeping the brainpan cool with a wet cloth (or a modest glass of water instead of that purple smoke and lukewarm beer), and putting our human insignificance into perspective is perhaps the healthiest course a skipper can sail.