Clouds have got the irritating habit of moving along, under, over, stretching, cumulating, accumulating and finally moving on to other pastures. Sometimes they burst, mainly where they are the least needed. Cloudy sky is depressing unless it holds a promise of rain. In Southern Spain the chance would be welcome. But, alas, most of our clouds are teasing atmospheric current affairs with no relief to the dry earth begging below. The few drops of rain that fell on us the other night came carried by a sirocco wind from the Sahara desert and left all the terraces, outside furniture, cars and any objects or humans standing outside looking like if Al Capone had risen from the dead and painted the town red.
We are used to the African red clouds. They have been rolling over Spain since the beginning of times. Eventually once sighs and once again we wipe the mess, pour a couple of glasses of wine, sit on chairs still faintly bloody from those drops and lean on the table that is not quite dry. People who have never been in the Sahara desert claim that the ‘desert is so romantic..’. I have been there, froze my butt at night, even inside a sheepskin sleeping bag, nearly died of thirst and caught whatever diseases you can dream of.
Romantic? As romantic as a cold fried egg.
But now we have another cloud to worry about. Contrary to the belief of the eco-greens who would have us walking instead of using our cars, world scientists have been bold enough to suggest that it is not the surplus of CO2 that is the culprit factor to the melting of the poles and the rising of the seas. It is rather an absence of technology in some ‘developing countries’, mainly Asia.
In those countries the tradition is to burn animal dung for fuel. It is there. It is free. It is infinitely renewable. It is lethal. It is a primitive form of biofuel that some politicians would like us to embrace. Let’s face it: President Lula Da Silva of Brasil (a country using sugar cane as biofuel) is on a tour of Honduras, Nicaragua, Jamaica and Panama to persuade those countries to produce biofuel from biomass. The latter being anything that is made, recently, of anything living. It won’t be a matter of ‘putting a tiger in your tank’. It will be ‘One lump or two?” instead. You could also save your dog or cat’s offerings. Another party piece might be: ‘My car got the cat by the tail’…
Asia Brown
This haze of pollution, produced by you guess what, burnt in inefficient furnaces all around Asia creates a “brown cloud” that is sometimes as much as two kilometres thick and covers an area the size of the US. Experiments conducted by Veerabhadran Ramanathan, professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California show that the emissions of soot and other matters from this endless burning of the proverbial garbage boosted the solar heating power by 50%.The Professor arrived at his conclusion after flying eighteen missions at various altitudes with three unmanned drones. Our Prof is not an amateur. And the brown cloud moves around. Like Chernobyl everybody gets a share. It would be more environmentally efficient to provide those so-called ‘developing’ countries with oil, natural gas and even coal. All releasing CO2 but in far less quantities than the New Zealand cows in my article of a few months ago. Not that I want to obliterate New Zealand cattle from the landscape. They are there to stay like the blot on the landscape over Southern Spain that appears every year around Xmas. Another three months from writing this and in our part of Andalucía you have to hold your kerchief on your nose and close all doors and windows. I got used to the stench over the years. But the smoke and steam from those ‘almazaras’ (olive presses) stagnate over each of the processing plant and eventually meet with the same cloud from the plant next door and so on and so on.
You can drive for three hours around Granada/Jaen/Cordoba/Antequera with the cloud of pollution over your head. To see the magnificent snow covered Sierra Nevada is a miracle from down below. In February the cloud has moved on to fresher pastures, polluting another province down the road.
In the old days each farm had an olive press.
The olives were poured into a wooden funnel and the huge stone cones crushed the olives, driven round and round by donkeys.
It was the genuine first and only virgin cold press. The pulp was used as fodder.
Cheap Oil
Nowadays we all want cheap olive oil. Like cheap flights. What we get on the cheap we pay on the roundabout. Once the genuine virgin cold press is over (and you have to take a second mortgage to afford a gallon of it) the pulp is heated up to extremely high temperatures to produce an inferior oil. The process is repeated as much as four times in plants that use a lot of energy and belch their smoke into the whole of Andalucía. What is left of the pulp is used in pet food under the attractive name of ‘delicious cod and hake’ or perhaps ‘tender morsels of turkey and prime chicken’. Ask my cats about that.
Last year, due to prevailing winds that ignored their ancient routes, the province of Cadiz, way out West facing the Atlantic, complained about the stinking cloud. It had drifted that far. Now, Cadiz is a quiet province in the marshes of the mighty Guadalquivir. Wine and Sherries are its main resources and those do not require a second or third pressing. What is left from the first press is sent to the wine lake to be mixed with all the other rejects from European vineries. It ends up in Tetra cartons with a pretty picture on the front.
The stinking cloud was on top of it nevertheless. You want globalisation? This is it in a kernel: not riches for everyone but rather everyone’s shit spread around equally. Cadiz, apart from the wretched annual cloud, has enough to cope with as it stands. There is a vile plan to build a gigantic wind farm on its coast together with a complex of five hotels, numerous golf courses and luxury housing developments on the Cabo de Trafalgar. The latter, at least, might bring some history into some Brits’ brains. There is a petition from Spanish historians and authorities to have a monument erected on the Cape of Trafalgar to commemorate the famous naval battle. El País, the Spanish daily paper, conducted a light-hearted survey amongst the British tourists around Spain. Question: “Where do you think the battle of Trafalgar took place?” Answer: “In London innit, in the square!”
Nelson must be spinning in his grave. He did not need the wind farms. He took advantage of the famous ‘poniente’, the notorious west wind, and caught that French admiral, Villeneuve, in that treacherous coast line towards Gibraltar where he finished the poorly equipped and badly manned Franco/Spanish effort. His sailors also rescued many of the French and Spanish unskilled deck hands about to drown in the sea. How is that for a globalisation effort?
Pity his victory was also his demise. But fancy being brought back to your country in a barrel of rum!! What a way to go, or come back for that matter..
In the meantime, back to our sorry century, we have to cope with issues that have nothing to do with rum.
Ignorance is the flavour of the month and politicians are playing on it. The majority of the young generation has got an IQ equal to plankton and will listen to imbecile talks from politicians who have no idea what a water tap is for.
The clouds are gathering again. The green issue is very hazy and the politicians, who are deaf to world scientists, are driving their wagons on one wheel.
As Dave, my old American friend points out: those guys are suffering from ‘hoof in mouth disease’.
And like clouds, it is spreading.
P.S. Mister Bear and Mister Gecko stories are available on www.veoveo.com Have some peace and quiet and read them to your children or grandchildren.
