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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">DaveW -</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:a3f1f228-4e49-43ad-a169-cbf81ff4f763@app.fastmail.com">
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<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>
</blockquote>
In St. Paul, don't you have a basement? Nothing like
ground-coupling to mitigate the wild swings of air temperature we
are experiencing.... like the dogs under the porch know! I've
never lived with a basement but always wonderd why a HEPA or similar
filter on a basement window and a fan drawing air up from the coolth
of below wouldn't give some whole-house relief?<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:a3f1f228-4e49-43ad-a169-cbf81ff4f763@app.fastmail.com">
<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>
</blockquote>
To your next point, were many of your neighbors when you lived
there, climate skeptics? Are they thinking "jewish space lasers"
now?<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:a3f1f228-4e49-43ad-a169-cbf81ff4f763@app.fastmail.com">
<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>
</blockquote>
<p>I was once a mild skeptic myself... mostly in the vein of what
you say later with: "any meaningful effect on forces that
accumulated over 2-10 centuries"... the climate science (not even
called that yet of the 90s was sneaking up on the problem one
metric at a time and were consistently finding "bad news" but I
had a hard time ignoring the implied "hubris" of the more vocal
climate activists (grown out of an environmental activism of the
time which I was significantly aligned with in spirit if not
detail). It wasn't particularl alarmist quite yet... if anything
the folks working on the proto-field were *under* reacting (as
seen in hindsight today).<br>
</p>
<p>I was just remembering a short note you once shared suggesting
"the one thing I feel a little guilty about is not taking Climate
Change more seriously earlier"? It might be a bad misquote and it
really doesn't matter... I think we *all* recognize that things
have probably been worse than we realized for some time? Or not.<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:a3f1f228-4e49-43ad-a169-cbf81ff4f763@app.fastmail.com">
<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>
</blockquote>
<p>I think I know that about you and respect it and to some extent
share it. I am not as *allergic* to it as I once was and find
many today. It is this hyper-immune response I'm trying to
understand at the collective level (returning to the question of
whether a mob of angry people is actually an angry mob in the same
way as the people themselves are). </p>
<p> My father's peers from the timber/ranching world were
signicantly hyper-immune to anybody telling them anything whilst
falling back on the idea that "public lands" belonged to the
public (in their case, to them personally somehow) while ignoring
that the spanish-descended settlers in the valley were there
before their grandfathers came with repeating rifles and rousted
these folks who only had hoes and shovels to defend themselves.
They of course were mostly backfill taking over the
semi-traditional hunting/foraging grounds of the Dine' (Apache)
rounded up by the US Cavalry after the Civil War, who in fact
hadn't really been there that many generations since *they*
wandered in from the PNW and forced the more sedentary, less
aggressive Mogollon (descendents) out. <br>
</p>
<p>Some of this is willfully ignorant greed and hubris... but as I
knew these folks (through their kids), they were pretty sincere
about everything they did (otherwise) and had I not seen it from
the Freddy (Federal Government Representative) side at least part
of the time I too might have armed myself to the teeth and played
Waco/Ruby-Ridge/BundyRanch as they like to ( orat least pretend to
be ready to do). And given the current gutting (to the
backbone) of many of the federal agencies under Trump for the
benefit of at least the big corporations but also, at least
superficially the folks I just referenced who voted for him 3
times and are ready to put him back in charge for another 30 years
even if they have to wheel his stuffed carcass out on stage with
an LLM-driven speaker in his face, I thnk we have an
immune-response problem. I'll grant that the insults delivered
to the body politic that elicited the immune response were a
problem, maybe even (now we know where it leads) unconsciounable,
but it is the immune response that is killing us.<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:a3f1f228-4e49-43ad-a169-cbf81ff4f763@app.fastmail.com">
<div style="font-family:Arial;">Gaia is a <b>complex</b> system
(person)</div>
</blockquote>
I'm a bit panconscious/animistic by temperament myself, whether i
want to project onto the entire earth system anything acutely
human-nature like or not. <br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:a3f1f228-4e49-43ad-a169-cbf81ff4f763@app.fastmail.com">
<div style="font-family:Arial;"> so when scientists treat her
otherwise</div>
</blockquote>
I'd blame engineers and economists and politicians and specifically
those with vested money/power/professional interests more than "real
scientists" though most of the scientists I've worked with play
engineer and vested capitalist (their grants and salary and even
bonuses and other perks may well depend on pleasing the current
powers-that-be) much of the time. The folks with a non-linear
perspective, with a complex-systems lens, and not too attached to
getting rich and famous and selling their best ideas to the highest
bidder and publishing the most papers, they don't do this so much.<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:a3f1f228-4e49-43ad-a169-cbf81ff4f763@app.fastmail.com">
<div style="font-family:Arial;">—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>
</blockquote>
I am more incensed by those who *take* those predictions and
tipping points and make them bold and dire and absolute to promote
*their* agenda, than those who ?innocently? gave them that
ammunition. <br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:a3f1f228-4e49-43ad-a169-cbf81ff4f763@app.fastmail.com">
<div style="font-family:Arial;">Worse, are the "solutions."</div>
</blockquote>
The geo-engineers among us are the most offensive IMO... to carry
the legacy of the folks who fouled the nest and then insisting that
their new version of "fouling for profit" will "solve everything" is
a good example. Even though I've been a vehicle-efficiency nut
since I bought my first motorcycle, rode my bicycle primarily during
college, and owned (mostly) high efficiency vehicles of various
stripes up to and including trying to electrify a couple of vehicles
(by thinking hard about it which as it turns out never gets anything
done), I am pretty sure it is the car-culture I was raised up in
(and embrace to this day) that is a big component of our
pollution/energy-consumption/personal dis-connection, thoughtless
hyperconsumption problems. Electrons vs Petrol vs Diesel and
100mpg vs 10mpg are likely just deck-chairs on the Titanic.<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:a3f1f228-4e49-43ad-a169-cbf81ff4f763@app.fastmail.com">
<div style="font-family:Arial;"> There is no way to know if
reducing carbon will, in fact, have the effect expected, let
alone, solve the problem</div>
</blockquote>
Au contraire... only a little look into the facts will make it
pretty clear that the "nutrient cycling" of sequestered carbon from
millenia ago into our atmosphere at mega-industrial rates, as
primarily CO2 and CH4 is a YUUUGE greenhouse driver. I agree that
backing off now on driving the flywheel might seem pretty hopeless,
but "put the pedal to the metal" and "drill baby drill" is not just
wrong but acutely wrong-headed unless of course apocalypse is our
goal? End times? Rapture anyone? I prefer Gibson's "Jackpot"<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:a3f1f228-4e49-43ad-a169-cbf81ff4f763@app.fastmail.com">
<div style="font-family:Arial;">. 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>
</blockquote>
If I thought the worst of our environmental/species-collapse was
triggered *more* by the deforestation of Europe that was *already* a
problem in 1492 or the REforestation of North America implied by the
Orbis Spike or the acute particulate pollution raining down on
London (and surrounds) as the Welsh/Brits learned to burn coal
(poorly) and turn it into everything from motive power to
cooking/heat source, or the replacement of horses in NYC circa 1900
with ICE motor vehicles (replacing feet thick layers of horse manure
with "invisible" engine
exhaust,...........................................................
than for example the range of coal/crude-oil/natural-gas to
CO2/CO/particulates we have dumped into the atmosphere in my
adulthood (50 years) then I would agree "it doesn't matter what we
do tomorrow".<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:a3f1f228-4e49-43ad-a169-cbf81ff4f763@app.fastmail.com">
<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>
</blockquote>
<p>Yeh, it's used a s cudgel, but I think MAGA took that away from
the lilly livered, bleeding heart liberals and while they are busy
beating them into the ground, are also taking out the baby seals,
beluga whales, silvery minnows, spotted owls, and the
(non-european) immigrants who pick our produce, pluck and butcher
our chickens, clean our toilets and keep our children from running
out into the street in front of 1 ton 'murrican made 4x4
double-cab dually diesels "rolling coal" while sporting
Trump/Confederate flags not to mention a non-trivial subset of the
folks who wear their MAGA hats too tight and are ready to vote
Trump in again for as many terms as they can prop his taxidermed
carcass up (with an LLM-driven speaker in his mouth)...
</rant><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:a3f1f228-4e49-43ad-a169-cbf81ff4f763@app.fastmail.com">
<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>
</blockquote>
<p>I'm with you on this one, though I think a mega-pandemic would be
a coup-de-grace where my cynicism/schadenfruede side wants us to
wallow in our own civil-unrest/toxic-waste/denuded biosphere bed
which we are making for a few centuries, before Gaia finally let's
us pass on to re-incarnate as-a-species (whole/group conflation
extra-ordinaire) with enough fresh humility to work our way back
up some evolutionary chain to see if we can do "sentient" better?
<br>
</p>
<p>And on the other hand Techno Utopians as Pieter (mildly)
represents might be right, we might be able to build humanoid
robots with so many legs and such good dexterity that they can
kick *all the cans* down the road faster than we (and they) can
toss new ones into our own path?<br>
</p>
<blockquote>The snail climbs mt Fuji<br>
Slowly, slowly<br>
</blockquote>
Or maybe not, maybe just pave the planet with PV panels and data
centers so yokels like me can blather on on an internet Mail List
instead of going out and nurturing the fig tree I thoughtlessly
transplanted during the hottest time of the hottest summer in this
area yet? Probably nothing to do with Carbon cycling... so far our
winters aren't getting colder, maybe I can just help warmer-climate
flora/fauna migrate north through my window.<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:a3f1f228-4e49-43ad-a169-cbf81ff4f763@app.fastmail.com">
<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>
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1/2003 thru 6/2021 <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/">http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/</a>
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