The Cruelty is *Almost* the Point

 

NEWSMAX: Why should other states be bailing out California for choosing the wrong people to run their state?

TUBERVILLE: We shouldn't be ... they don't deserve anything to be honest with you unless they show us they're gonna make some changes. pic.twitter.com/SUvVPRDgKm

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 13, 2025

There's some good conversation in the comments in the last post regarding MAGA attacks on sign language interpreters--it's about punching down and divisiveness. I recall during the pandemic, the Trump administration pit blue states vs red states for access to resources.  Also, some conservatives fairly openly wanted to sacrifice elderly and disabled people for the sake of the economy (even though that would have been a box of horrors--and we have alternative ways of thinking). We should by now understand the America First problem.

In TrumpWorld, there are only things that serve Trump's (MAGA) needs. If there is a crisis, people just have to figure out how to serve Trump's needs with it. Maybe that means "punishing" a blue state in the hopes the fed-up citizens will just elect Republicans next time around. If Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security have to get cut for Trump's budget to make sense--so be it. 

Who thinks they deserve their promised benefits, anyway? (They have deluded some folks into thinking it's all a Ponzi scheme.)

Climate Sunday: Amateur Meteorology for Dummies

 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has previously commented on Jewish Space Lasers and may believe in the Deep State Weather Machine, has suggested a rare and curious cure for the wildfires in California--just seed the clouds! It's an existing technology! We have the tools!

Problem is: we don't have the clouds. There is no moisture. The only moisture is what is being scooped up and thrown at the fires by brave airborne firefighters--like these Canadian and Mexican firefighters are doing:

We can't count on some god-like intervention--it's all sweat and tears from here. 

Literal Pants on Fire

 

In the midst of the devastation and tragedy in southern California, there are some political animals who adhere to the maxim to let no good crisis go to waste. They're bringing DEI into it (I promise you, the Black person's water is just as wet as the White man's). They are lying about budgets, resources, pointing the finger of blame. Launching conspiracy theories. 

That many people cope with horrific events by just pulling narratives together to make sense of the seemingly senseless is a part of human nature, I guess--but that doesn't make it right. And when people appear to be deliberately lying because of a political agenda trying to capitalize on a tragedy for point-scoring purposes, that's something a bit harsher than opportunistic--it's predatory. It's precisely at times like these when people are least likely to engage their critical thinking mode and instead opt for the torches and pitchforks. 

There Will Be No New Normal

 

At least five people have been found dead in Italy following violent storms in the north and wildfires in Sicily.

The government is considering declaring a state of emergency in the hardest-hit regionshttps://t.co/5JRVjmA9jv pic.twitter.com/sWzTqYBRHV

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) July 26, 2023

I've been to Sicily a couple of times and it is fiercely beautiful. I am heartbroken for what is happening. The temperature in Palermo a couple of days ago was 47°C, which is astonishing not only because it is a local record, but because it is a record likely to be demolished soon. 

(Giorgia Meloni has said fine things about environmentalism that she certainly doesn't believe because the fascisti attitude is ne me frego.)

Algeria is facing wildfires and temperatures of about 120° F. The heat index at the Persian Gulf airport in Iran reached 152° F. These are conditions that suggest an unlivable future. 

Scientists are saying that there is no "new normal"--the term is a lie. We won't really have time to acclimate to anything we are seeing because it will just change faster than we can get used to it. I've been staring at this idea unable to strike another mode than elegiac. Or at least poetic. I don't want to succumb to "doomerism". The problem is that I understand enough of biology to know that if ocean temps are over 100° F this is very bad for cold-blooded things. And then, warm-blooded things. It's like feeling a mass disturbance in the Force. 

But back to the presentiment of doom--I don't know how we walk back tipping points we might have already crossed. The idea that the Gulf Stream collapses during my lifetime is not something I have words for. Poetic or otherwise.

Those things are hard to fathom (though we need to figure out how to), but in the meantime, if we value eating, if we value culture, if we value any of the standard of living we associate with civilization, we need to reckon with the idea that some sacrifices must be made now to prevent the losses of things beyond price. Not for the sake of our great-grandchildren. I'm talking about the intolerable conditions we will spend what we have of our old age in. 

Nothing trivial, I hope.

 

An oil facility directly responsible for the flow of #Russian oil to Europe is on fire in #Bryansk, #Russia. Next to it, just a few km away, a Russian military base is on fire.

Glory to #Ukraine✊🏻🇺🇦.

No typo this time.

Videos below. pic.twitter.com/jVQbahezgx

— Canadian Ukrainian Volunteer 🇺🇦🇨🇦✊🏻 (@CanadianUkrain1) April 25, 2022

Lest I sound flip, obviously such fires are very bad for the envoronment. There are also forest fires in Siberia, but for some reason, the usual firefighters are not on hand to put them out. I think they should be re-deployed, but what do I know? 

 UPDATE: Moscow's ambassador to the US says that further arms supplies to Ukraine from the US are going to escalate the conflict and in other news, when I was small and wanted things I wasn't going to get, my dad would ask me "What's it like to want?" Russia is going to escalate from killing women and babies and flattening cities to what? Has escalating even done anything for them so far?

UPDATE: Lavrov wants people to know he thinks NATO is involved in a proxy war and nukes aren't off the table. I'd like to ask him who he thinks started the war and whether he's aware if anyone else has them. No one is as afraid of Russia as a conventional power as they were before they decided to engage in a short bloody little going on months-long war in which they've lost as much as other counties have (yes, like the US) in wars nearly twenty years long. It lacks a certain punch. 

The Fall of Icarus

 

I've been thinking about one of my favorite poems, lately:

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree....

 because suffering in the sense of grave and unmistakable tragedy has struck with alarming regularity. Of course, there's COVID-19, which has become the fatal backdrop, our mise en scene. But recently, a small town in Canada suffered a heat dome for several days, enduring temperatures wildly uncommon to that area, and basically spontaneously combusted. In Europe, massive flooding events have occurred, causing the loss of lives and previously unimaginable damage. In Florida, we have witnessed a residential building fall in the night, where residents went to sleep never suspecting the terrible changes to come.  (Sinkholes are so common to this area that I tend to assume either dramatic subsidence or building that didn't meet the requirements of the environment the building was sitting in.)

Our world is changing, and tragedy related to climate is becoming a norm,  And yet it stays, in some peculiar sense, a tragedy taking place as if always elsewhere and elsewhen. Faith might be part of the reason why--whether to laugh or cry about that, I can not say.  

I think the ancients knew the better part of the cause--hubris. Like the fall of  Icarus, tragedy befalls people when the protagonist (all of us) can not take the good advice of others and do sensible things, can not hear the warnings and portents of our Daedalus, but fall prey to a fatal flaw. We soar on technological wings, but can't moderate and bristle at the idea of accepting nature's limits. We are fucked and fall, hard, limbs thrashing into the drink. 

But it needn't be that way. Daedalus understood the dangers and as he flew, he did not fall. Also, I think of another case so similar--that of Phaethon driving the fiery chariot of Helios across the sky, and losing control (a metaphor for climate change if I ever heard one). His father had warned him, but this was because he was all too familiar with the rigors of the diurnal journey.

It's not that living with technology and doing it well and without further harm to environment can't be done, it's just that it has to be done skillfully and mindfully. We can survive as a species, but only if we pull our heads out of our asses. We need to grow up and be responsible and ever so careful. In the Anthropocene, we need to become the fathers and mothers, the good stewards, of the planet. 

Otherwise, we fail.

Herd Mentality

Q: It will go away without a vaccine?

TRUMP: Sure, over a period of time. You'll develop 'herd mentality."

This is crazy. pic.twitter.com/Z2bZZzsDet

— Pod Save America (@PodSaveAmerica) September 16, 2020

I guess what made me chuckle the most about this one is thinking back on all the times Trump's anti-mask followers insist that mask wearing was for "the sheeple". Trump's townhall for "undecided" voters was really a vision to behold, and you know this much is true, because Fox News is already spinning it as an ambush, because I guess he was not informed that there would be questions? Because you know, exactly the thing you want in a president is a guy who can be caught off guard by regular folks asking him questions about things that are happening right now.

Except does Trump even know he's president? I mean, he blamed Joe Biden for there not being a national mask mandate, and Joe Biden is (sorry to this woman, who also does not seem to know) not currently the president. But I'm starting to feel good it about it happening one day! Because Trump also seems to not understand that all the times he said the coronavirus was a hoax with his own mouth were anything but "up-playing" the virus.

It isn't just performances like this entire shitshow that made Scientific American break a 175 (!) year tradition and endorse Joe Biden, but it does help you understand that Trump is so exceptionally stupid that he finally scared the shit out of scientists. (This is not even the first tradition breaking non-endorsement this guy has gotten--see The Atlantic four years ago, who endorsed Clinton when they had only endorsed candidates two times before in their 150ish year history. And for a similar reason: he's an "enemy of fact-based discourse.")

Trump's grotesque mental deficits have been on rare display this week, from his discussion of exploding trees to his insistence that "science doesn't know" about climate change because it will start "getting cooler". Who knows what the latter thing is even supposed to mean with Trump--that it will be fall, and wildfires will go away with the cold like COVID-19 was supposed to go away in April when things got warmer? Scientists have of course heard of the change of seasons (see: every conversation ever had under the heading of "climate is not weather" and "Yes, it still snows, Virginia") but take note that when Trump was encouraging things to open up after Easter regardless of whether or not the virus had gone away with the warmth of spring, he was also telling Bob Woodward what a killer it was.

Trump is audaciously ignorant, and the results have been disastrous and there is no reason to believe this will improve. I do not expect such warnings to penetrate with his biggest fans, whose herd mentality is that he is a great white Christian businessman come to rescue them from the raging barbarian hordes of foreigners, libertines and book-learners, but if anyone is even a little bit undecided, let his being a whole dumbass stand out as being a great reason to not vote for him.

This is guy who talks about windmill cancer and being injected with disinfectants. I don't know how how much dumber he needs to be to scare everyone else off. I'm not even sure I want to know that.

UPDATE: It's also pertinent to note that per Worldometer, the US is at over 200,000 COVID deaths. It is projected we could see 200,000 more before the end of the year. Herd immunity would mean 2-5 million US dead over a period of the next year or so, providing we do not have an effective vaccine. Unlike Trump, I do not prefer to behave as if an effective vaccine is already on the table. Given what we don't know about the long-term health of COVID survivors (lung, neurological and cardiac health, etc.) herd immunity is a bitter pill that should never have been made a necessity. But after a certain point of loss of control of testing/tracking, becomes a default, I guess. Which is absurd and painful and reminiscent of the idea of climate "tipping points". )

Fire and Water to Start the New Year

More than half a billion animals and plants die in fires as Australian officials warn the worst is yet to come pic.twitter.com/QyuLIq6fxY

— The Independent (@Independent) January 2, 2020

It's hard to imagine the scale of these fires and the sheer area of damage, but it is necessary to try, because when people talk about "new normal", it means this is what wildfire season will mean.

At least 21 people have died in severe flooding in Indonesia's capital, Jakarta

The city is having its most intense rainfall in 24 yearshttps://t.co/e3yh1kSbb2 pic.twitter.com/GZ1bo2Lwdj

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) January 2, 2020

Jakarta has been sinking; rising seas and more intense storms are a part of climate change. Such phenomena will be devastating to coastal cities in the near-future.

I wish I'd been able to start the new year with a happier post, but I also can't help but think of people who are facing death, loss, and massive disruption from these events, and how humanity has to look at what is going on to find our way past our destructive practices in order to continue surviving. My thoughts are with those impacted, now and in the future.

Climate Monday: A Humble Media Suggestion

Trump White House issues climate change report undermining its own policy https://t.co/SZb2vFpdJg

— Vox (@voxdotcom) November 26, 2018

I don't think that the narrative that the Trump Administration is necessarily "hiding" their National Climate Assessment report is correct because I don't think news cycles really have a "Friday news dump" lacuna anymore, but I definitely agree that the actions of the administration serve to undermine it (or as they probably see it, the damned scientists are trying to undermine them). But this isn't something that's just peculiar to President Trump's anti-intellectual, conspiracy-minded, staring up at eclipses sort of nonsense. This is a problem we specifically have with US conservatives, and sadly, with how our media screws up reporting fact-based issues "for balance".

Take the Sunday shows. It's not hard for the chatty journalism format of the designated serious newsy shows to work in a "Friday news dump" item and give it a going over. Meet the Press, the ancient and venerable, bothered to mention it.

And they fucked it up. They let Senator Mike Lee get away with being stupid regarding the financial aspects of the substance of the report. The report specifically addressed the fact-based reality that real economic damage would be the fall-out of climate change, but libertarian Lee was able to burble that he saw no policy proposals that would not be economically damaging.

Let me rephrase that: is it that he sees no proposals that immediately address climate change that also permit entrepreneurs to capitalize on the deal? First off, that's short-sighted, but second, the turning a buck is their problem, not as a law-maker, his. His job would be legislation aimed at mitigating the effects for the safety and welfare of his constituents, which might not always be direct regulations (if he's so ideologically opposed), but could mean tax penalties or credits as a carrot and stick incentivization scheme to encourage better environmental practices. He doesn't seem to understand the question. He is, unquestionably, not a scientist--but you'd think he might understand the policy end a bit more, no?

Questions regarding the report were also put to regular MTP panel-member Danielle Pletka, of the AEI think tank. Her answers were also god-awful stupid.  And of course, she is not a scientist, and the AEI think tank she hails from gets a not-inconsiderable subsidy from Exxon, and maybe for all I know, other fossil fuel companies. This merits a disclaimer, I would think. But that MTP asked Pletka, and not, say, Tom Steyer, who was also on the program and actually has a committed and informed point of view on climate change, but was only asked about the 2020 horse race (really?) is, well.

Stupid.

But this isn't the worst stupidest thing. CNN actually pays my former senator, Rick Santorum of PA, for opinions about things when there is no evidence that he is actually, in any respect, a person with worthwhile and well-considered opinions. He actually fatuously repeated the dumb thing that Trump said about forest-raking, even though, once again, California does not manage all the forests, but the Federal government is in charge of most of it, and no, no one ever rakes forests because that is fucking stupid. Droughts are about less rain, and raking would actually pull more moisture out of the forest floor, and, you know, just read a book or something if you don't know why that is stupid. In the history of ever, there has never been a time when forest fires were managed by troops of people sent out into tens of thousands of acreage of trees, raking up shit.

But he also said a funny thing regarding climate change and the scientists who study it, to wit: they propound that global warming is real because of the sweet cash involved:

"I think the point that Donald Trump made is true, which is, uh… Look, if there was no climate change we’d have a lot of scientists looking for work," Santorum said. "The reality is that a lot of these scientists are driven by the money they receive, and of course they don’t receive money from corporations and Exxon and the like. Why? Because they’re not allowed to because it’s tainted, but they can receive (money) from people who support their agenda and that, I believe, is what’s really going on here."

Is he saying the people who support the thing where the established companies with all the money are going to have to make less money are somehow offering more compensation than the companies with all the money?* Because that is either really stupid or exactly what somebody who has been getting fossil fuel money and is also really stupid would say. And if Exxon and the coal companies and the natural gas guys and them could pay for Rick Santorum to say stupid stuff on tv (and also get paid by CNN, and provide no disclaimer about that whatsoever), than frankly, whatever stopped them from paying an actually very intelligent person or a hundred to put a scientifically shut-up-shutting up empirical stake in the heart of climate change science for once and for all?

Except, you know, the empirical facts?

So, my humble suggestion is this: If you have a political operative who might be swayed because of their income streams into siding with a corporate enterprise or entire industry opine on a subject pertaining to that industry, make it abundantly clear or don't have their asses on at all. And it you want balance, instead of "not a scientist" viewpoints dueling in a nebulous policy arena, maybe try to actually be informative and have a scientist weigh in! Also, maybe dedicate more of your staff to knowing this shit cold so they can respond to actually brain-damaged statements about raking forests and the glamorous pay of research scientists in real time.

I think it could be very helpful and serve the public a lot more than this farcical coverage.

*No. Tom Steyer is not paying all the other guys. It's, like 97% of scientists. He and Al Gore are not behind the whole global warming thing. The greenhouse effect was first described in 1824.

Rake-Stepping in the Deep Schitt

After posting the above Tweet (which I've screen-capped several hours after the fact, on the off-chance that someone will decide it was a mistake, eventually) which reads: 

"So funny to see little Adan Schitt (D-CA) talking about the fact that Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker was not approved by the Senate, but not mentioning the fact that Bob Mueller (who is highly conflicted) was not approved by the Senate!"

Trump received high-fives from, like, half the kids in his fifth grade class. "Schitt", being a couple of letters off from Schiff, would be unfortunate enough for him to Tweet out if it were a typo. As an actual indicator of the President's level of maturity and "decorum" (a new favorite vocabulary word of his)--it's childish and sad. But it's typical of this President to lash out and demean people he suspects of being against him, whether it is the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, or the former Navy SEAL who oversaw the mission that ended Bin Laden.

It's something of an inglorious capper to a week in which Trump perpetuated some of his voter fraud myths by somehow suggesting that anyone who buys cereal at the store has voter ID, and that Finland manages wildfires by raking the forest.  (He alleges he heard this from the President of Finland, but then again, he may believe the president of Finland is this "Tom Of" who has been recognized more and more.)

It would be pretty merciful to assume that "Schitt" is a typo, but he's deleted things that were typos before, and he definitely has referred to assorted public figures by crude nicknames before as well, so I am taking this to be an "on purpose" spelling. As to the rest of his tweet, it is not really true that Bob Mueller has not been approved by the Senate--he certainly was approved by the Senate, unanimously, when appointed by George W. Bush as FBI Director, which had been extended another couple of years under Obama. There is an Appointments Clause issue with respects to Whitaker that I'm probably not qualified to blather about, but I will say that the "highly conflicted" thing Trump wants to bring up about Mueller, as far as I know, is the dumb thing where he used to have a Trump golf membership, and then ended it.

I know, right? He just stopped paying a lot of money to play golf for some reason (like, it's a lot of money and maybe he never played that much golf?) --and to Trump, this is a highly personal thing. Worthy of Mueller now being like Ahab to Trump's big orange whale?

Maybe now that subpoena power is in the hands of House Democrats, and that Rep. Maxine Waters, who Trump has regularly delighted in calling "low IQ", has the ability to request his tax returns, it's Trump who has worries about being, not in "little", but "deep Schitt".  And maybe this fool, who threw absorbent towels at the victims of a flood, and now suggests Californians should have raked their forests (federally-controlled forests) during a national tragedy that has claimed dozens of lives and left over a thousand missing and tens of thousands homeless, should consider whether he wants to be raked over the coals yet again for his inability to appropriately respond to what is happening around him.

Because once again, he is falling for this "vehement disavowal" and denial regarding Prince Mbs and Khashoggi that he did regarding Putin and our elections at Helsinki and North Korea and their nuke program and who knows how many times he doesn't want to face things that make him feel sad. He'll even give plausible deniability to a natural disaster, if it only hurts people he doesn't care about.

It is sad but true that the loudest bullies are often the worst cowards and the most pitiful fools. This seems to be who Trump is. There is nothing better we can expect.

California is Burning

(Via ABC7.)

Perhaps because of all the hurricane activity this season, the story of 2017 as one of the worst wildfire seasons has not really received as much coverage as it really should. And as you might expect to hear from me--this is climate change at work. Despite heavy rains in California and snows in the Rockies, a brutally hot summer dried out vegetation, making these fires more likely to start and more likely to spread.

There's the toll to human life--like the 10 souls dead in the wildfire spreading through the Napa and Sonoma region. And there's substantial damage to homes, businesses, crops and livestock.  Maybe I'm just peculiarly sentimental about America's wine barrel, but there's a lot of labor, sweat and tears put into those grapes.

Thankfully, FEMA is coming through with some aid for these fire-ravaged regions. But the potential for further devastation and loss of life from the unfolding fire events as they encroach on residential/farm areas can't be underestimated. My thoughts are with Californians and other fire-affected areas.

The Impact of Hurricane Irma Needs to Be Respected

The astonishing devastation to the Virgin Islands, particularly, of Hurricane Irma, has to be visually represented to be fully appreciated. In the above graphic, you can see the difference made by a storm where the wind snapped off much of the leaf-bearing vegetation, and a storm wall inundation of salt-water did the rest at killing off the plant-life of what had been island oases of beauty and teeming with life.

It should be noted that the island of Barbuda is, for once in 300 years, without a single human, because it is unlivable. The toll to property has been epic in proportion. The number of persons displaced and bereft of anything at all to their name is astonishing.

And our fuckwit president, Donald Trump, has opinions:

TRUMP: It was such a small number that nobody would have — people thought thousands and thousands of people may have had their lives ended. And the number is a very small number, which is a great tribute to you.

Eight bodies were taken from a Florida nursing home. This is the guy who was in favor of limiting the rights of nursing home residents to sue in the cases of abuse and neglect. I don't know how I feel about that--but I do, but I don't. I have images in my mind I will remember all my life of a situation where people were powerless, and I will always be for those people.

I don't even know if this grinning fool who wants to display his swag ball-cap understands that there is still devastation from Harvey, that there are wildfires leaving residents only too happy for a storm system in the NW,  and still and all, there is ever-developing climate fuckery on the horizon.  He only has his denial.

Trump has no respect for what is happening all around him. I do not think he has the sense to learn, either. He is not fit for this environment.

Climate Sunday: Donald Trump Edition

The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012

Keeping with the traditions I make up here on the fly, I have named this week's climate change and environment round-up after Donald Trump, who alleged, as the Tweet above shows, that climate change is a hoax started by the Chinese. (There is so much more raving silliness where that came from it's almost not funny. Almost. But mockingly plow on, I must.) But really--he doesn't know the Swedes started it? I'll give a buffalo nickel to anyone with the stones to ask him for the name of one Chinese climatologist.

Trump is still nattering on about climate change with apparently no more sense than he has about things appearing in the Bible, foreign policy, and how not to look racist in public. As a benchmark, I'd have to say my favorite "kooky uncle-you-ignore-on-Facebook" moment is when he quixotically actually made a crusade of tilting at windmills. When Carly Fiorina drops nonsense about stuff like windmills killing birds, you kind of just want to laugh it off and wonder what she's fixing to do about the damn cats. When The Donald calls windmills an eyesore and claims they don't look classy, you're in meta-territory. They don't look right. Shoot. The Dutch were cool with windmills, back in the day. Maybe Trump just has a problem with strong winds in general.

Anyway, he's not much worse than the rest of the "not-a-scientist" pack at the recent primary debate. Most either ignore climate change entirely or consider it a hoax, and where they don't, they use vague economic excuses about why they don't think anything should be done about it. Sen. Marco Rubio's "America is not a planet" line sticks out for it's half-rightness. Of course, The US is just one country that happens to exist on this particular globe--but exist on it we do. So climate change actually affects us and our responsibility doesn't change because of "Well, what are the other countries doing?" And for that matter, China is often used as the scapegoat--what are they doing anyway? Well, turns out they are doing a thing or two or a bunch. They are losing many citizens to environmentally-related diseases. They can't not realize that not addressing climate change is just as much a losing proposition for them in the long run. And keep in mind that globally, it's always the poor who are most screwed over by the results of climate change. Pretending we'll do nothing because it benefits them is a disgraceful lie.

Failing to understand how climate change affects populations in vulnerable areas as a national security and foreign policy issue is part of what's driving things like the Syrian refugee crisis. People willfully closing their eyes to the reality of climate change because they think it's about dollars and cents, are completely unprepared to recognize that this is not just a humanitarian issue abroad, but at home, when you consider that the western wildfire season has become nearly year-round and is costing our economy astronomical sums. Our coastal regions (where many countries have put their big cities because of the convenience for shipping trade) will also suffer from sea level rise--which is measurably occurring.  We experience significant short-term evidence of a warming planet, but also, some of the oases of supposedly contradictory evidence, like the polar ice caps, are melting away. The so-called hiatus when things weren't heating up--doesn't seem to have actually happened.

Donald Trump is way wrong on environmental issues and basically a conspiracy theorist, just like he is regarding Ebola, vaccines, or whether President Obama was born in America. The idea that this kind of gob-stopping ignorance is thisclose to the Presidency is really scary.

Climate Tuesday--Fire and Water

Wildfires are raging in the west, with one in Alaska currently about the size of the entire city of Chicago. That isn't necessarily out of line for a wildfire in that area, but it is coming early, as conditions make it dry and warm enough to spark a conflagration sooner--and if that dry and warm pattern endures for a little longer it will make future wildfires for the season likely.   What we know is that wildfires are liable to increase under climate change, as some areas become drier and more drought-prone, but the sad kicker to that is that wildfires themselves contribute to the conditions that spur climate change. Some areas are going to be drier because they will lack the snow pack that once lent much needed-moisture to the otherwise combustible terrain. In any event, we've a situation where fires will happen--and forest management in terms of controlled burns comes with risks.