Looking For Snow Flakes

A wonderful surprise, Today on Bing is about snowflakes#65306;

https://cn.bing.com/search?q=snowfl...1221_0800%22

I have got a bingo on Bing's Homepage Quiz, haha#65292;at least the stamps are not collected for nothing! :-) The last one is a bit difficult, but I figured it out myself. Yuki Gassen, it is Japanese, hoho, a little off-topic I suppose, but interesting to know anyway!
https://cn.bing.com/search?q=bing+h...&FORM=HPQUIZ

some snowflakes from America

Hi, Alexey, thanks! The stamp reminds me of some traditional designs with flowers at the 4 corners. The author changes them into snow flakes, it is a clever idea. You know what, in Chinese, snow flakes are actually called snow flowers.

Snow flowers is a very beautiful comparison! During severe cold weather, the Frost draws many beautiful plants on the windows.

Hi, Alexey, wonderful pictures. I saw these frost plants on winter windows oftern when I was a kid. It is interesting to notice that these Phenomenons don't happen any more nowadays, I haven't seen them for many years. Maybe it's because the indoor temperature has increased? I don't know! And in Chinese, we also have a beautiful name for them: window flowers. :-)

perhaps the climate has become warmer. You may have very warm modern windows. Or it may be very dry in your room ... but in the old days it was like that!

Painting "The Waiting" by Russian artist Konstantin Vasiliev

On February 23, 1990 Norway issued this stamp (Facit #1083) to commemorate the "Winter Cities" arrangements in Tromso. The "arms", or dendrites of the snowflake are human upper torsos.

Hi, Alexey, you are right. I just saw another news , second hottest on today's news list in China, which is titled: Glacier Melting Sound White Alarm. It says China has lost more than 20 percent of its glaceiers in the last several decades due to global warming.

The painting is really nice and the title reminds me that I used to hear somebody say that waiting is also beautiful. I searched a little on the author, and it looks like he has many works on ancient fighting warriors. Actually I was thinking to start a topic on the armors, helmets and cold weapons. And as famous as he is , are there any works of his have been put onto stamps?


Snowflakes and window frosts can really make an icy garden!

Hi, bookbndrbob, thanks for this interesting addition! The design is really imaginative to combine snowflakes with men. And there is even a star in center. And an intersting coincidence is that the postmark leaves a mouth like shape on the face of the upperleft man, which makes him look like laughing. So my first impression is that these guys are cheerfully celebrating something. :-) Is that right? But I don't quite understand what it means by "Winter Cities" arrangements? Is it about city planning and development?

Some info on this Winter Cities forum in Tromsø here :
https://www.city.sapporo.jp/somu/ko.../4thconf.pdf

Hi, Idebee. I've started this topic: https://goscf.com/t/60738
To my pity there isn't any imadges of picture K. Vasilev on stamps, cover or postcard

The science of global warming is still unsettled. And while there some areas of the planet show declining snow packs and glacier reductions, other areas of the planet are seeing the opposite.
Here is a NASA article from last month that says they are seeing unexpected growth of ice and glaciers in the Antarctic over the last decade.
https://earthdata.nasa.gov/learn/se...expected-ice
Don

The article raises a local curiosity which needs explanation - the world is a complax system. But it doesn't begin to counter-balance the weight of evidence of global warming. The science might be "unsettled" but to all intents and purposes there is universal agreement that global warming is taking place.

Hi Ringo,
I would agree that there is firm evidence that there has been some warming over the last 100 years or so but beyond that it is not settled. It was only back in the 1970s that scientists were convinced that the earth was cooling and we were headed to the next ice age, I still have the text books from college which the scientists sounded just as sure of an ice age as they do about saying that sea levels will rise today.

Accurate global weather records have been kept only since 1880 yet the earth is billions of years old. So given the earth's 3-4 billion year climate history, I have issues with limiting the context of observing a trend to a tiny fraction of time. The only thing that I am 100% of is that humans are arrogant to think that they have a handle on billions of years of earth science and climate history when we have only been walking around on this rock for less than 0.02% of the time.

This is like measuring your blood pressure a few times this afternoon and observing that it is a little bit high; but we have no data from the decades and decades since you were born. What can we extrapolate about your blood pressure given that we do not have 99.8% of the data? Then add to this that we want to make the case that it may be your salt consumption that is the root cause of raised blood pressure. There is indeed settled science which shows that salt in your diet can raise your blood pressure. But does this mean that we can draw the conclusion that your salt intake has caused your elevated blood pressure? In the context of the missing data, do we just ignore the hundreds of other factors which could increase your blood pressure?

Of course we can convince you that you should watch you salt intake and it would help your blood pressure; this would be true and is generally a good idea. In the same way, I think that humans should be aware of our impact on the planet. But the fear mongering and politicization of this issue is sad and mostly serves to fill a certain agenda. If I see one more piece on the 'poor polar bears and the declining summer sea ice' my head is going to explode; this simply is not true. Polar bear populations are increasing. But more importantly the truth is that 99% of all species on earth went extinct well before humans had even made an appearance. And in the same type of fear mongering there are scientists saying 'Our Mission Is To End Extinctions'. https://www.endextinction.org/our-work Apparently they believe that every single species should never become extinct and that natural selection is neither important nor a part of earth's history. They must think that how well a species has adapted to the world around them is not important. Never mind that panda bears have evolved to eating a highly specialized diet which makes them extremely susceptible to extinction, humans think them 'cute' and we should artificially prevent them from becoming extinct. But if you step back and consider the issue in a context larger than a tiny fraction of time, it becomes clear that the only reason humans exist today because of all the extinct species that came before us.

In the same way, one meteorite or one super volcano will dwarf the amount of global warming that humans have caused. Please note that this is not to argue that we should not be good stewards of the earth, we certainly should be. But here in the US have some saying that we only have 12 years before seal levels rise and millions of people die. I am all for having a sensible conversation about human impact on the earth in the right context, but the fear mongering we see around us today is inane and is not helping.
Don