Unreal expectations

Desperate needs in wake of typhoon

As I watched this piece by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, I was struck by the utter absurdity of it.

You hear desperate pleas for help, as if help will magically appear out of nowhere. They need food, water, medicine … and probably shelters … all the necessities of life that are needed in the wake of any disaster, natural or manmade.

Unfortunately, what TV screens and computer screens cannot show you is reality.

Yes, there are great needs to be filled to bring help to the people of the Philippines stricken by the typhoon, but it will take time. Lots of time. And that is what the immediacy of the revolution in telecommunications does NOT help you understand.

We are not talking about a couple of MREs here, or a tent or two. We are talking about tons, upon tons, upon tons, of materiel that needs to be moved from point A to point B for delivery to Points C and D and beyond.

We are trapped by the tyranny of distance and time. These twins restrict our response. Bind our capabilities to respond to any crisis that involves more than than a small group of people. It is known as logistics and it bogs down any and all things.

Airplanes can move at hundreds of miles an hour but can only carry thousands of pounds of cargo and there are just so many of them. Ships can move tons upon tons of the needed material but only move at about 25 miles per hour (flat out max speed of the fastest transoceanic transports and most move at less than 15 miles per hour) and it is thousands of miles from where the supplies are to where they are needed. And again, there are only a few of them.

It plucks at a heart strings and rips at our emotions, but folks … to be realistic about things – i.e. heartless … this is life. This is what is the fate of humanity when nature rages.

Yes, we hope that supplies will get there to help most of the people. We hope that those in charge of distributing the supplies will be able to do it unmolested and without spite. But that is not reality. It will be easy to blame the authorities, or people in other countries for not sending enough, but we need to face the reality that what resources we do have always will be in the wrong place (if they were there, they probably were destroyed by Nature’s wrath) and so it will take time, agonizingly long times to move it to where it can help.

And people will make choices, bad choices from the comfort of our living rooms, that will make the situation worse.

But this is life, people. You may not like it, but to expect anything different is to be a fool.

Lesson to be learned

Typhoon highlights fragile infrastructure

Sometimes, I think, we forget just how precarious our lives are. I would hope that storms like Hurricane Sandy and Typhoon Haiyan would be reminders that would bring us back to reality.

No, I am not talking about global warming or climate change (anthropomorphological), but the simple fact that natural events on earth are far more powerful than us humans. We seem to forget that.

It is tragic (and whatever else you want to use to describe terrible, horrible, unimaginable) what happened in the Philippines when the typhoon hit. I am not saying anything to diminish that.

But I will bet that the earth has seen larger events and will so again … it is just that humans were not in a position to record or measure them in the past.

Still, that is not my point. My point is how close we are, even in the US and other developed countries, to seeing the trappings of civilization stripped away from us.

Folks, no matter where you live, you are only hours (or minutes and definitely only days) away from reverting to a world that resembles one that only the most primitive societies left on the planet can conceive.

To me it is a terrifying thought, not that I spend much time worrying about it. Still, stop and think what life in North America would be like if the power went off for more than a few days. Think of the chaos, the mayhem, the struggles that we would face as we tried to reconfigure our world.

In microcosms, the impact of Sandy, Katrina, Ike, and now Haiyan give us inklings of what we might face.

For those whose memory does not stretch back beyond 1989, that is what those of us who did live through the years 1946 to 1989 faced in the nightmares of the world we were in. Unfortunately, while that particular threat has receded, it is not gone and could return in new and different forms.

I think most people are content to ignore that reality that Nature and our own folly can overturn practically in an instant the last 500 years of progress in the world.

It is not a thought that should consume us, but it is something that we should remember … and if nothing else, be thankful for the shoulders of the people who raised us to the level that we currently living on and realize that we are teetering on such a thin veneer of civilization.

I guess, in a way, it is a way to tell people that we need to be ready to assume total responsibility for our own existences, if we haven’t already, and think about how we can preserve what we have and that which is around us. The infrastructure that we expect from government to provide for us really is so fragile … and most likely in a crisis will be inadequate.

Just a little food for thought there.

Those evil insurance companies are going to get it

Insurers prepare for Hurricane Sandy

If you are an insurance company, how do you prepare for the “Storm of Century” or whatever they are going to call what happens when Hurricane Sandy joins the cold front in the Ohio Valley?

Well, you can report on the superficial things, like getting teams of adjusters ready, etc., but the real impact is going to be at the end most people never think about: Their investments.

Hurricane Sandy/Frankenstorm is predicted to cost about $3 billion in insurance claims … and that is before it even hits. While a big chunk of that probably will be paid by federal flood insurance claims, still the insurance industry, coming off a really bad 2011 (remember all the tornadoes in the US and Hurricane Irene), is about to get hammered again.

Little exercise in insurance economics: Where do insurance companies come up with all that money after a “disaster” to pay for all those claims?Yes, they get a lot of their money from those premiums (fees, really) that people pay on the off chance that they might be damaged by something that is covered under the policy/contract.

However, a bigger chunk of those funds come from investments made by those insurance companies (called capital gains). Now, since we have been in a recession, those returns are not as high as they once were but, still, insurance companies have big reserves … they have too (usually, it is part of the laws that regulate them).

What you are going to see now is one of two things: A) Insurance companies are going to borrow whole heck of a lot of money against the collateral of their investments or B) insurance companies are going to have to sell a lot of those investments in order to generate the cash to pay out all those claims. (Don’t even think they are just going to crack open a piggy bank and come up with that much ready cash because there is no piggy bank)

This means, either the stock market is going to take a dip (from all that selling) or lending rates are going to go up. I may be wrong, but that is what economics tells me.

Oh, and premiums also will go up … have to restock the piggy bank, ya know.

Batten down the hatches

Hurricane Sandy

Halloween Frankenstorm

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecaster Jim Cisco, who coined the nickname Frankenstorm, said: "We don't have many modern precedents for what the models are suggesting."

Ok, not to belittle the weather event forming up in the Atlantic, along with the cold front that sweeping through the Midwest, but … so what? We are going to have a bad storm.

Alright, my point is exactly what NOAA forcecaster Jim Cisco said: We mere 21^st century humans don’t have all that many precedents upon which to base our forecasts. Like that is a no-brainer.

Hello, we peoples down here on this little planet have been keeping fairly accurate records for maybe 100 years, and have actual satellite data (which is a step up from ground records) for maybe 30 years … on a planet that is 4 billion years old. That is not a wealth of data to choose from when you look at it.

We can infer a lot from what we can get from ice core samples from glaciers and the Polar Regions. We can estimate a lot from analyzing geological samples from years past, but real actual hard data to plug into our relatively recent inventions called digital computers is pretty doggone hard to come by.

So, before you go jumping off any cliffs because we are going to get a bad storm, don’t. The weather guys and other folks mean well, but they really are talking just possibilities and probabilities. What they want you to do is to use your common sense and take sensible precautions. In other words, don’t do something stupid and be prepared for changing circumstances.

Now is not the time to run around like a chicken with your head cut off and expecting the end of the world to happen. It ain’t … at least until Dec. 21, when we have it on good authority that all sorts of cultural catastrophes are going to happen … or then again maybe not.

The reality of the situation is that if we get a bad storm, it will be a bad storm. Lots of people will be without power and generally very inconvenienced. How we all react to that will be of more importance than what the weather does or does not do.

In most cases, unless you do something stupid or silly, you will survive and will have yet another tale to tell somebody who wasn’t there.

Of course it was the weather

Weather forecast forces move indoors

Venue change goes from seating for 74,000 to 21,000

I love politics. If you believe that Thursday night’s big night for President Obama was moved inside to the arena where the rest of the Democratic National Convention is being held, instead of the football stadium where the NFL’s Carolina Panthers play, because it might rain, well … I will leave you to your delusions.

Of course that is not the reason, and yes, of course, the reason is that the Democrats were having a hard time coming up with enough people to fill the stadium to capacity … and every empty seat was going to be pointed out by the Republicans as evidence of the president’s slipping popularity.

This is an argument as old as … I don’t know, but it seems as old as time itself. Politicians always, given the choice, are going to play to a picked and packed house if they can arrange it. It is a matter of perspective.

For example, during World War II, the Germans bombed London, England, and as a result of one of those air raids during the Blitz as it was called, the building that housed Britain’s House of Commons was severely damaged and had to be rebuilt. Under the directions of Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill, probably one of the most astute politicians of his day and a statesman of the first order, when the House chamber was rebuilt for some reason there wasn’t enough room on the benches for all the members of Parliament to sit.

Of course, Americans who watch coverage of its Congress on the CSPAN cable network are used to seeing a sea of empty seats in the chambers when CSPAN is showing what is going on in each house. A lot of Americans, thusly, get the impression that their representatives are being remiss at their jobs and some fail to realize that the great speeches given on the floors of our legislature usually are given to nearly empty audiences.

Churchill, being the clever politician he was, solved this problem. By making it impossible to seat all the members of Parliament at one time (in fact, leaving a vast number stuck outside) he recognized that the movie and television cameras that would be recording events in the chamber always would have the leaders playing to a packed house. Packed houses being better at convincing the viewing public that not only was their business being attended to, but that a rousing debate was being conducted. Actually it was all part of Kabuki Theater to make people believe that was happening.

So are the speeches at the Democratic National Convention on Sept. 6. They too are a form of Kabuki Theater. It is better to play to a packed house (even if it is smaller) than to play to a partially empty stadium (even if it has twice as many people there).

Isn’t politics wonderful?

Expert opinions

Organics and nutrition

Weathermen make long term prediction

I would like to discuss human hubris. Well, not really, but it sounds good. What I really want to say is that I find humor in the propensity of people in this era of modern scientific research to place so much faith in the statistical approach.

Now, I am not saying it is bad to rely on statistics, I just rarely think that statistics actually definitively prove your point. You see, often times, people are comparing apples and oranges … or tomatoes or potatoes … and not really realizing it.

For example, it seems, according to the latest scientific study of statistical studies of case histories of a host of individuals that eating organic food does not necessarily do a lot of good, at least in a nutritional sense. Hello, does that come as a surprise to anyone? It really shouldn’t.

The body needs certain nutrients, vitamins, minerals, etc. in certain quantities to be healthy. It needs to come in certain forms, however, but how those forms are grown, per se, really doesn’t matter. Of course the food has to be from a healthy plant/animal for it to be beneficial but how that plant is made healthy really doesn’t matter in determining its nutritional value.

Now, I will agree that some foods have less trace chemicals if they are grown certain ways, and those trace chemicals, if in significant enough quantities, can have a detrimental effect on human health. Unfortunately, growing things organically does not always mean that those trace elements won’t be found in food. The point being that paying significantly higher prices for food labeled “organic” may not be the wisest use of your resources.

However, having said that, I suppose a few years from now, some other scientist will come along and “prove” that eating “organic” is the next best thing to home-made sliced bread.

The same holds for the latest position paper by the American Meteorological Society (i.e.: Mainly those guys who bring you your nightly forecasts for the weather on TV). It seems that they are certain of two things:

One: the global climate is getting warmer.

Two: it is the result of anthropomorphic causes.

Oopsie. Statistically it might seem true, but then again it might be apples and oranges, with the apples being the climate is warming and the oranges being that is caused anthropomorphically.

I will not argue that the climate may be getting warmer but I would advise you to check back in two or three centuries, or even two or three millennia, to make sure. Despite what the doomsayers tell us, we really don’t have enough data to make sweeping statements about the climate and what it is doing. As best we can tell, humans have been sentient for about 15,000 years, give or take 15,000 or 30,000 years. You take that slice of time and see what portion it makes of the overall space of geological time, or even the time that life has been on the planet, and you realize that we are talking about an extraordinary teeny tiny bit of that experience.

So, first and foremost, before you say the sky is falling, make sure it isn’t a rain drop.

So, I am not sure that we are facing a deluge here, folks, and definitely the jury is still out on whether or not we can blame it all on human activities. It might be, and I am not going to say that it can’t be, but I am saying that when you look at the scope of changes over the course of the earth’s history it is entirely possible that these little tiny creatures running around, modifying their environment (as almost every species does to one extent or another), aren’t really the cause of the massive geologic climatological changes that our best and brightest are seeing.

Please, people, remember that we really have only about 30 years of good, solid, hard data on which we are making these sweeping predictions. All the rest of the data maybe good, but it is mostly based on assumptions, suppositions and interpretations of information that we really don’t know if it is valid or not.

And the models? Well, they are models. They are mathematical formulations that we hope mimic reality. But if any weatherman/meteorologist tells you that he or she really can tell you what the weather, or climate, is going to be like at any one point at any given time on the globe more than relatively few hours from now (which on the geological scale would be totally insignificant) with 100 percent accuracy, then they know they have just trashed their own credibility, because it is impossible. There just are too many variables out there, and too many of them that we mere humans don’t even begin to understand, for such predictions to be taken as gospel.

Heck, we don’t even, for the most part it seems, take the gospel as gospel any more.

Keeping records in perspective

Arctic sea ice set to hit record low

Interesting story about the annual melt of the Arctic sea ice pack, but I am not sure that the headline or the premise about it really means much.

Synopsis of the story: Taken from satellite imagery, it seems that this summer’s artic sea ice pack melt has significantly reduced it from what it was just a few years ago. It seems that global climate change could be responsible.

Of course, the implication is that the change is due to anthropomorphic causes. Oopsie. That is a leap of faith that really is not justified by the facts at hand. Now, please understand, I am not contesting that the climate might be changing. In fact, I will just about guarantee it is changing. I just don’t buy off on the argument that is all the fault of humans and because the U.S. is the richest and most consumer driven country that it is entirely  its fault. (I will back this up in a second).

Ok, to me the operative point in the above article when it talks about hitting a record low it is only dealing with a period from 1979 (when they started taking pictures from satellites orbiting the earth) until 2012. Let me get my calculator out: That is a grand total of 33 years … and the world is how old? Four billion years, you say, and just 15,000 years ago the ice pack extended all the way down to somewhere around New York City … and then some thousands, or is it millions, of years ago, there was barely any ice at all. Hmm, some record.

Actually, I was thinking about it. I have a damaged heart (about 25 percent of it doesn’t work anymore) and I thought about putting it in that sort of perspective. It is like taking my pulse, and then taking it again five seconds later, and then again a few seconds later and then trying to tell me how my heart is fairing. Good try, but bad information. Oh, yeah, an EKG only takes a minute or so, but that is only a snapshot and your cardiologist (you do have one don’t you?) will tell you that is all it is. If they really want to know what is going on they have to monitor you for a few months or so, and take lots of pictures over time and maybe go in a do a little exploring with cameras and the like. But just looking at pictures taken over a few seconds will not necessarily tell them the whole story.

So, while I have no doubt my heart is damaged, I know that it is monitored 24/7 and I report the results of that monitoring every month or so. Still, that doesn’t tell the doctor what is going on inside my heart, or its muscles or its arteries. It just gives him something to compare against. It doesn’t tell him when it is going to finally say: “Ok, I’m done. I’m going to stop working now.” No test is going to tell him, or me, that.

Interestingly enough, despite my having a host of risk factors, no doctor can tell you precisely which one triggered my heart disease. Sorry, they just know that statistically if you do x, y or c or you don’t do a, b or z, then they are more likely to find blocked arteries in your body and other health problems. Of course, statistically, you can NOT do x, y or c and do a, b or z, and you still can have heart problems. Amazing how that works. Maybe we humans ain’t all that smart after all.

Now, it seems that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are one of the biggest culprits in the anthropomorphic climate change models. What would you say if some scientists told you that the US is pumping out less CO2 now than it was 20 years ago?

US CO2 emissions at 20 year low

My goodness, maybe the US has been doing something right after all.

However, my point would be that if the US has reduced its carbon footprint so much and climate change still is happening doesn’t that call into question the current causes of climate change? I ain’t no scientist but it would seem to me that the evidence would point that way. You know, of course, that it is just possible that there are other, non-human-related, factors at play here.

I do get tired of our hubris that we think that just because we think, then the world must revolve around us. Just because we seem to be sentient, that we are in control.

As my old math teacher used to say: Apples and Oranges.

Maybe we need to stop thinking that we are in control and think more about coping with reality. I do that on a daily basis … not always fun, but it has kept me alive longer than the worst prognoses said I would live. And that makes me happy.

Of course, you can think you are in control. That is all right. You do have the right to think silly thoughts.

Amen!

Presidents, policies - foreign and domestic - and elections

 

The author of the article linked above has a really good grasp of reality when it comes to the powers of the presidency, to which I add my hearty: Amen! Definitely read the article, it really is good.

You see, contrary to a lot of people’s opinions, the American president ain’t all that powerful. That is malice by design by the people who created this republic 225 years ago.

The so-called “founding fathers” had a really strong dislike for a strong executive authority, which in that time normally was wielded by a monarch of some variety. So, the president was not given all that much authority to do anything, without the advice and consent of Congress, the Supreme Court and the states. Despite the passage of time, the president still finds himself (so far, just hims) very limited in what he actually can accomplish. I think that President Obama probably is getting around to understanding that lesson, but unfortunately, a lot of Americans and very few non-Americans get it.

No matter who wins in November, whoever is sworn in on January 20, 2013, they will find themselves in the same bind.

In addition, as the author pointed out, no matter how much the president wants to control things, he ain’t in control. No one is. That to me is the salient point of the article. People, in their hubris, think we can control events. Well, I have news for you, if you haven’t figured it out already: We don’t, we can’t and we never will.

George W. Bush opposed nation-building and that is just what trapped his administration in Afghanistan and Iraq. Barack Obama was going to step back and let other nations help carry the load, and found out that everybody still looks to the Americans to take the lead.

Whether it is trying to control the weather or stop climate change, or bring global peace to all mankind, or ensure that no one goes hungry or without medical care: It is not going to happen. That may sound like a pretty ugly assessment, but it is facing reality.

The best we all can do is to try to cope with whatever contingencies we are faced with. Rarely will they be the ones we chose and often they will be seemingly overwhelming … and sometimes they might well be. But we can’t delude ourselves into thinking that somehow, someone, somewhere will be able to bring this chaos we see around us under control. It is not going to happen.

Remember the ancient curse – “May you live in interesting times” - well, it may come as a revelation to you, but all times are interesting times.

I don’t have a crystal ball, nor am I clairvoyant, but I can tell you all: BUCKLE UP, we are in for a wild ride.

Climate change: Let’s all panic now

Rare levels of Greenland ice melt
NASA reports satellites show ice melt
Sudden massive ice melt in Greenland
Not so fast ... seems it has happened before
Oh, and by the way, there is this rift in Antarctica that is melting ice
Ok … I will admit that I am very agnostic about anthropomorphic climate change. Recently, the news was about a NASA release that “unprecedented” amounts of the ice sheet in Greenland (which really isn’t green much these days as it is almost completely covered in ice) melting due to higher than “normal” temperatures.
Oops, later they admitted that it seems to happen about every 150 years or so, and the last time was in the 1880s. Maybe this isn’t unprecedented. And maybe, just maybe, it ain’t all the humans fault.
Oh, that is the last story cited up top … it seems that this huge rift valley has been discovered in Antarctica. This rift allows warmer seawater to come in under the snow and ice pack and … melt some of it, weakening the ice shelf, which in turn makes it more susceptible to break off. Oops, another example of Mother Nature doing her own thing without having us humans to blame. You see rifts are where the crust of the earth comes up from below … you know, volcanoes, warm rock, that kind of stuff.
Ok, I admit we humans are doing a good job trashing the parts of the planet where we are and that not only does change the environment but also the ecology. But, while we could do a whole lot less trashing, the problem always has been how and who does it. Being on top of the pile, I don’t want to go down. Sorry, but if it is up to me, I ain’t going. Besides, I am probably not going to be here long enough longer to make a whole hill of beans difference.
The real problem is that nobody wants to go down, and everybody wants to come up. I wish them luck. Granted, there probably are enough resources on the planet, if used efficiently and wisely, to make that happen. But we all know how wise and efficient us humans really are.
So what do you do? My suggestion, as heartless as it may sound, is to let Mother Nature take her course. And by that I don’t mean that we humans should try to blow each other up, just because we can. Of course, that always is an alternative, but I suspect about the time we humans start really coming to blows, Mother Nature already will have stoked the pot, so to speak, with famines, plagues and other pestilence. That is her way of evening things out. She does it with “wild” animals, why should we human beings be all that different? Because we are sentient enough to realize that God exists? As thankful as I am for being here (there were several times when I wasn’t so sure and one time, I am convinced I got told it was not my time yet, but I know you all won’t probably believe that so leave me with my own delusions), I also think that we really are not in control of things either. And I don’t think we should delude ourselves into thinking that we really are. God may control things but I long ago gave up asking where God was leading us and just said my Serenity Prayer and tried to find the strength to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Still, us humans, being as cocky as we are, like to think we really are in control of events and our environment. So, we get all in a dither about ice melting, when it seems to be a rather routine occurrence when you look at the geologic history of the world.
Oh, well, we will die on December 21 (or is it 23) this year anyway.

Short memories

Suggested reading:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/16/us/us-drought/index.html?hpt=hp_bn1

http://weather.blogs.foxnews.com/2012/07/16/2012-drought-one-of-the-worst-in-history/

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/48202640/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/16/us-drought-2012-widest-since-1956_n_1676936.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/16/midwest-drought-2012-us-worse_n_1676967.html?ref=topbar

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/ag-sec-vilsack-wishes-rain-prayer-combat-painful-191255266.html

Ok, every one, the sky IS falling. Run out, run around, jump and shout. The world obviously is coming to an end and it is all the fault of the stupid Americans and their dumb gas-guzzling car lifestyle. I mean if it wasn’t for anthropomorphic-caused climate change, the breadbasket of the America (and as well as for much of the world) wouldn’t be baking in the heat this summer.

Granted, much of the US is suffering under the worst drought in 25 years and probably in the last 56 years (but not in the last 75 years and before that, who the heck really knows).

But droughts are nothing unheard of. If one chooses, one can look back through several millennia of recorded human existence and droughts seem to be a rather routine occurrence. Some have been worse, others not so worse, but they keep on happening with astonishing frequency regardless of what us humans do or do not do. What do us people want? Do we think we can control the weather? I mean I know we can do a lot of things, but I don’t think we have mastered the climate just yet, nor do we really have all that much influence on it.

The problem, it seems, that – at least in America – we constantly living under what I call “a condition of historical amnesia.” If it didn’t happen yesterday, or if I haven’t seen it on television via CNN/FOX/NBC/ABC./CBS, then it never happened and what is happening today is unlike anything that has gone before.

What a bunch of equine fecal material. I find it sad that history seems to be such a neglected subject in American schools today; because without knowing, and having some understanding, of history, then you have no context with which to evaluate and understand anything that is happening today. You won’t know what terms really mean when people start bandying them around, oftentimes misusing or misrepresenting these terms to the point you almost have to believe the sky IS falling.

Now, I am not trying to be Pollyannaish (probably an obscure reference to anyone under the age of 40), but the sky is NOT falling. The skies, the weather, the climate, the world, people, all are doing what they have done for millennia: They are changing.

The world is not static. It is dynamic and things are always happening AND changing. Often, these things seem to run in cycles and because of the cyclical nature of our planet and its orbit around the sun, there probably is some validity to that.

This does mean that if we know what has gone before, and hopefully gain some understanding of that, then we can do something different than before with hopefully a better outcome.

Panic is not an option. It is a waste of time, energy and usually resources like money, which we have scarce enough as it is.

However, we have to realize that certain things happen when things like droughts happen.

First: the price of food WILL go up. This is so simple it hardly bears mentioning, but you will see a lot of panic stories coming on the rising price of food. Drought=Poorer Crops=Less Food in the Supply Chain. When supply goes down, price goes up – basic law of economics.

Second: The price of other things depending on those crops will go up for the same reason.

Third: Water will be valuable and be in short supply. Its price may also go up.

Fourth: Energy, especially those blended fuels with biomaterial, will be more expensive. It also will be in more demand, so what supplies we have will have to be stretched.

So, if we know a) droughts happen (and will happen, over and over again) and b) that there really isn’t anything we REALLY can do to alter the weather, then anybody proposing drastic solutions to protect the climate really is blowing smoke.

We also know that times are going to be tough and money tight. Plan for it. History tells you it is going to happen, now and again, and again, and again. It is kinda silly not to learn from the past, isn’t it.

Forest fires and the environment

Reference Story/backrounder

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/48087842/#48087842

The hue and cry is going up that climate change (a pseudonym for human-caused global warming) is to blame for the wildfires that have been scorching western states this year and for the loss of very expensive homes in the fire zones around certain cities.

With all due respect, what a bunch of hokum.

First, I grew up in California and I have a long legend with wildfires … even had to fight one … so I think I know enough to make relatively intelligent comment.

Second, I will never, ever deny that the climate might be changing … or that it might be getting hotter. So, what? The climate changes every year. Climate is not some static thing that never changes, but is always changing. Sometimes hotter, sometimes colder.

Now, you have to realize that we only have semi-accurate records for much of the world that go back, maybe, 125 years. Oh, yeah, we can estimate what temperatures and the climate was before then, through tree rings and ice cores, but that is all they are … estimates … educated guesses. We really don’t have accurate data from everywhere to make the claim that we “know” exactly what the weather was like on the planet more than about 50 years ago … when we started putting satellites up to orbit the earth and take measurements. Before that, the records are spotty and in some places, totally absent.

So, to blame humans for all the climate changes is yet another example of human hubris that thinks that the world is us, rather than something bigger than we humans are. Do the things we do contribute to climate change … undoubtedly, but it is not the cause. On a planet that is 4 BILLION years old, scientists will tell you that the surface of the earth has warmed to much hotter than it is now, as well as cooled to much colder than it is now.

How does this apply to the wild fires? Well, by implication, if we humans weren’t screwing the environment up with our cars and power plants and housing developments, all those pretty forests (and all those expensive houses with the great mountain views) wouldn’t be burning. What a bunch of fecal material.

For more than 20 years various forest/wild fire experts have been arguing over the “let it burn” strategy. The strategy basically says that wild fires are a natural event and it is better to just let them burn out than to run yourself crazy trying to stomp out all the embers. The other school of thought, that started about 40 years earlier, was to stomp out forest fires wherever they were found. Thank you Smokey The Bear for all those years that you put that message out that “only YOU can prevent forest fires”.

Then in the great Yellowstone fire of 1988, foresters thought they learned a lot … that maybe fire wasn’t a bad thing after all, but actually was part of the natural cycle of the forest. Hello, even I knew that as a kid. There are some things that happen in the wild that absolutely require high temperatures (and we are not talking about 100 degrees or so) for the forest to regenerate naturally. Forests, like people, are born, mature, die and are reborn again, just like the rest of the life cycle that we humans are familiar with.

So, the elements … nature … Gaia … whatever … have conspired for the western US to undergo a very dry and fiery season; not that it hasn’t happened before. The 1930s were like that, only most of us were not around to experience that. Some are noticing that conditions are much like they were during the days of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. I hate to say it, but our environmental footprint, with less than half the population and far less of the technology than we have today, was much smaller than it is now. Was man at fault then?

Well, some will tell you that man was, but I think history would show that the earth and its ecology hiccups now and again, at long and short intervals and nothing man has done, can do or will do, really will have all that much an impact. We just don’t have enough data to say that we can - or can't - do anything. We basically are trying to extrapolate what will happen from an snapshot and a bunch of guesses, old stories and assumptions. That is not a good way to make very accurate prognoses. But in our hubris, we think we can tell the world how much it is caused by X, Y or Z.

So, my take is: Wildfires happen. They will continue to happen. Some years they will be worse than others, some years better. But like volcanoes and earthquakes, rain and snow, wind and running water, it all is part of the natural cycle of Planet Earth. Now, you can go with the flow and try to adapt to the changes, or you can futilely try to make changes that will stop or slow the pace of change. IF you choose the latter, you will either drive yourself crazy or you could cause the death of a large portion of the human species.

Of course, a large portion of the human species will die off anyway, because that too is part of the natural cycle of things. Humans have no real predator (we ARE the top of the food chain on Earth) and so there are none of those to put any checks on our population. So, instead, we have famine and wars to do that job, along with natural disasters like storms, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanos and an occasional asteroid impact. But it is not time to run out screaming that the sky is falling or the end of the earth is near if we don’t stop changing the environment, because that is not the problem.

Also, if you are really concerned about fire burning down your pretty house in the forest with the great mountain view … then accept the fact that Mother Nature has a vote on where you live and if you don’t like that, move somewhere else … but remember, no matter where you move … Mother Nature still has a voice.