<!DOCTYPE html><html><head><title></title></head><body><div style="font-family:Arial;">Hi Steve,</div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">I am living in beautiful Saint Paul MN: 90 degrees and 90% humidity. No air conditioning in our house. Dogs retreated to under porch digging nests in the cooler soil - I just swelter. Oh, the air is polluted with tons of smoke—"very dangerous level"—from the half of Canada that is being consumed with fire.</div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">My brother still lives in southern Utah, about midway between Bryce and Zion. There was a huge fire just to the east of him (about 20 miles) burning east and north, then the two Grand Canyon fires. Has had smoke issues a couple of days but nothing more.</div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">I have never been a climate change skeptic, nor unwilling to acknowledge the role played by humans.</div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">I have been a critic of the monolithic orthodoxy surrounding the political and "scientific" posturing. But that is just my general antipathy to simplistic science.</div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">Gaia is a <b>complex</b> system (person), so when scientists treat her otherwise—as if she was a deterministic system—and make bold, and dire, predictions, set absolute tipping points, etc., I just want to scream liar liar. It is more complicated than that—as our former colleague at FRIAM used to say.</div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">Worse, are the "solutions." There is no way to know if reducing carbon will, in fact, have the effect expected, let alone, solve the problem. And why does anyone think that human actions over a span of one or two decades will have any meaningful effect on forces that accumulated over 2-10 centuries?</div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">"Human Caused Climate Change" has ceased to be a scientific issue and become nothing more than a cudgel used by various groups to increase their political and economic power at the expense of the others. (No cynicism here.)</div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">Mostly, i am betting on Gaia to solve the problem in her own way. Probably indirectly with a mega-pandemic or some such.</div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">davew</div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">On Tue, Jul 15, 2025, at 5:03 PM, Steve Smith wrote:</div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> DaveW -</div><div style="font-family:Arial;">></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> I know you have moved from SoUtah to the Great Lakes (MI?) but must </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> still have family friends living back in Utah, not that far really from </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> both the North Rim fire which just burned the Grand Lodge (and much </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> more) there, and the LaSal FIreNado that was so spectacular and took out </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> a small off-grid community there.</div><div style="font-family:Arial;">></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> I think you have reflected on feeling some regret over not taking </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Climate Change more seriously earlier (we all have our processes and </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> paths around these types of things). I grew up around fire and </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> fire-fighting, mostly in rural pinon/ponderosa forests with my father as </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> a USFS disctrict ranger who used to also spend one or several multi-week </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> stints leading fire-crews in the Pacific NW or California. There was </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> no conception of there being a global scale warming/drying, but I do </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> remember him being acutely aware that "a good Spring" meant "a bad </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Summer" in those Pacific forests, yielding a great deal more </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> undergrowth, etc to carry fire on the ground even before/outside the </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> bigger-hotter fires that would travel crown-crown.</div><div style="font-family:Arial;">></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> What I'm circling in on is the question of the general denial we have </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> all perhaps been engaged in, each in our own way, about the sweeping </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> (nominally global if not Global) changes which human activity has </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> triggered. I once (a decade ago?) invoked the idea that homo sapiens, </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> at the end of the pleistocene, were the cause (as much indirectly as </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> directly) of the plunge in Megafauna in both the New World and northern </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Eurasia. Glen schooled me on the counter-arguments against that theory </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> and I don't need to re-litigate that range of possibilities so much as </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> to simply point out that "homo sapiens" is an acutely *potent* species, </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> especially come neolithics, agriculture, written language, urbanization, </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> modern technological development (from archimedes to daVinci to the </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> folks doing the work in Musk's (and others) name).</div><div style="font-family:Arial;">></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> All this background to open the question of whether the otherwise </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> well-grounded, fundamentally intelligent, situationally clever folks </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> which I grew up around and DaveW (and others here I am sure) feel an </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> affinity with or closeness to (Permaculturists before Bill Mollison?) </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> have shifted "forward" to recognizing that the rate of change of our </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> (humans + domesticates + tech + self-modifying tech) is yielding </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> "unexpected consequences" in a short enough time frame to see the </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> consequences of our actions (albeit years or decades later, but not </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> generations?). If my belief that homo-sapiens managed to disrupt the </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> megafauna (by spearing/driving-them-off-cliffs, or just disrupting all </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> aspects of the ecologies they depended on) holds any water, no </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> individual likely woke up one day and asked "where did all the Mastadons </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> go?" or even " where did those huge hairy, tusky creatures my great </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> grandfather used to speak of go?", but we are a smear of generations </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> (born 30's through 90s?) who likely recognize that truisms we grew up </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> with about the natural world as well as the political and economic </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> system are no longer what we either were taught to believe they were or </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> came to believe through our direct experience they were?</div><div style="font-family:Arial;">></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> My father struggled with the locals who lived on cattle ranching and </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> lumber milling, not accepting that those resources they depended on were </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> not infiinite... they saw the limits of "timber sales" and "grazing </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> allotments" a huge inconvenience (at best) to an acute insult to them </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> and their ability to "just make a living". The local bar in the town I </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> went to grade school in sports a taxidermed owl with the sign "eat an </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> owl, save a logger" (for example). Some of the locals who worked as </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> seasonal fire-fighters occasionally would get busted for lighting off </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> forest fires to create work for themselves. My father was very pleased </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> with the roughly 50% of the ranchers he worked with who actually had </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> studied (formally or informally) range management and were as eager as </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> he was to make sure that 5-10 years later the grasslands their cattle </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> were grazing on were at least as healthy as the were today and often </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> they were interested in returning a formerly overgrazed section into </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> something yet-more-productive. Then were the other 50% who were just mad </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> because *they* didn't get to take *their half out of the middle*.</div><div style="font-family:Arial;">></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Mary's milieu was primarily W. Nebraska farmers who are still voting </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Trump back in every chance they get, even though somewhere along the </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> line, most understand that the wells they sunk into the Oglala in the </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> 60s are now dry and have to be deepened and that the dead seeds Monsanto </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> (and their ilk) and Fertilizers and Insecticides their fathers poured </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> over the landscape with gusto might well be the source of their cancers </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> and other maladies.</div><div style="font-family:Arial;">></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Our own founder's main business in this domain (visualizing and modeling </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Wildfire and many other topographic/topological registered phenomena) </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> naturally engage with folks who are acute stakeholders in the areas </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> which are burning/flooding/toxic-pluming/eroding/etc. I understand </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> that Guerin has his own (equally good) reasons as Glen not to mix work </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> and FriAM.</div><div style="font-family:Arial;">></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> And yet we are watching something as overwhelming as the Dustbowl of the </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> 30s sweeping the whole earth, and yet we are arguing over whether EVs </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> cost more to operate because they are heavier and wear brakes and tires </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> faster? Or whether the area of strip coal mine rendered useless for </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> other purposes is better or worse than the same area covered in PV panels?</div><div style="font-family:Arial;">></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Ok... just a rant... triggered by my childhood memories of watching </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> fires crown across the road near our home while watching firenados </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> destroy places I'v evisited and my favorite national Park Lodge burn down.</div><div style="font-family:Arial;">></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-..</div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv</div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <a href="https://bit.ly/virtualfriam">https://bit.ly/virtualfriam</a></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> to (un)subscribe <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> archives: 5/2017 thru present </div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <a href="https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/">https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/</a></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 <a href="http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/">http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/</a></div></body></html>