Can Spring Be Far Behind a Groundhog's Behind?

By Alan Caruba

When Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow on February 2nd, you can be sure that spring will arrive on March 20 this year. Truth is, even if he doesn’t see it, it will still occur on March 20. On some years, it occurs on March 21.

Groundhog Day is a holiday celebrated in both the U.S. and Canada, thus ensuring the eternal bonds between our two, great nations. It well may be celebrated elsewhere, depending on whether a groundhog population exists along with the vicissitudes of winter. It is an import that began as a Pennsylvania German custom in the 18th century.

A nation in which generations have grown old without once stepping foot on a farm or gone hunting in the woods can be forgiven for wondering what the heck Groundhog Day is all about, let alone what a groundhog is.

It has to do with Candlemas, a holiday to celebrate the ritual purification of Mary, forty days after the birth of Jesus. It is one of the four “cross-quarters” of the year, occurring halfway between the first day of winter and the first day of spring.

The tradition was that, if Candlemas was sunny, the remaining six weeks of winter would be stormy. Thus, if the groundhog emerges from hibernation on February 2nd and looks behind himself to see his shadow, it must be sunny.

I have some serious doubts whether a member of the family Sciuridae, that of ground squirrels, can in fact actually look behind himself. My bet is that Marmota monax has to turn his fat little self around entirely for that.

In earlier times, the job of looking behind himself belonged to the badger, but was reassigned to groundhogs which, by the way, are also known as woodchucks.

At this point you’re saying, Alan, you are telling me far more about groundhogs than I ever even wanted to know. Hey, don’t blame me. Blame those Pennsylvania Germans of yesteryear who were, by the way, also called Pennsylvania Dutch.

Someone in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania clearly had an idea to put the little village on the map. A thriving trade in groundhog paraphernalia can be purchased there as well as via the Internet because Groundhog Day has its own website. Of course!

In a nation that is totally snowed and iced-in on Groundhog Day, any indication that winter will come to an end is a welcome one, so we shall all breathlessly wait to see if Phil sees his shadow. Or not.

The cliché is that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. My bet is that winter will linger beyond March 20th this year. Meteorologically speaking, we are all in for longer, harsher winters while Old Man Sun sleeps through the Maunder Minimum, a solar cycle in which there is far less solar radiation.

All the groundhogs in America and Canada will be sleeping in for a while.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The Groundhog Named Gore

By Alan Caruba

Like the proverbial groundhog that shows up on February 2 to announce that there will be six more weeks of winter, Albert Gore shows up in Congress to announce that the world is coming to an end and that we’re all doomed because of global warming.

He did this most recently on January 28 in front of a Senate Foreign Relations Committee chaired by John Kerry. As usual, he did so in the midst of a winter storm that dumped inches of snow on Washington, D.C. and coated the streets with ice. This has actually become known as “the Gore effect.”

Gore reminds me of a character created by the Li’l Abner cartoonist, Al Capp. “Joe Btfsplk” was a walking jinx. He walked around with a perpetual dark rain cloud over his head and every time he showed up anywhere, bad luck would happen to anyone in the vicinity.

The ability to hold two totally opposite thoughts in one’s head, a winter storm and imminent destruction by sizzling hot weather, is a kind of schizophrenia or just plain stupidity. In Gore’s case, it has a lot more with lining his pockets with millions of dollars in the sale of “carbon credits” purchased to continue emitting carbon dioxide, the gas that Gore insists will destroy the world.

Carbon dioxide is the gas on which all plant life on Earth depends for growth. Without CO2 every single piece of vegetation dies and we die with it because a lot of critters we eat are herbivores. Happily, humans exhale about two pounds of CO2 every day. Burning anything, including calories, produces CO2. Even if there is more CO2, it has little to do with climate change.

Which begs the question why President Obama and the U.S. Congress wants to pass laws requiring cars to emit less CO2 and other laws to impose a cap-and-trade or carbon tax on anything that produces CO2. This is nothing less than pure thievery.

The other question, of course, is what global warming or climate change has to do with foreign relations? Since we cannot do a thing about the climate which, by the way, has been cooling since 1998, why is a Senate committee not only listening to Al Gore bloviating about it, but falling all over themselves to lavish praise upon this bulbous charlatan?

This is particularly true in light of the way Americans now rank the environment dead last on a list of priorities to which the government should attend. That’s not going to happen because President Obama is a Green zealot and, as more Americans gain awareness of this, there is likely to be a backlash.

This is the first Groundhog day President Obama is in office. He has at least three more to go and, who knows, after that he may be unemployed again like a lot of Americans recovering from Obamamania.

Gore, like the Energizer Bunny, however, will just keep going and going and going.