American Elephants

We had a little rain last night. Not exactly the needed downpour, but still significant rain, and the hill across the way is now more visible. Today there is supposed to be light rain, and it’s not till next Thursday that the online forecast suggests real rain. We’ll see. The online forecast seems to be an iffy business. On the way to an appointment yesterday, downtown Bellevue was wreathed in light gray smoke. Just enough so to be noticeable. It is raining now.

“Climate Change” is quite emphatically not the cause of wildfires in the Pacific Coast States — California, Oregon and Washington, no matter how plaintively the governors of those respective states claim that it is beyond their control. The fires are man-made and have resulted in unnecessary deaths. The cause is mismanagement of western forestlands by the elected officials who are charged with managing them efficiently for the benefit of the public who has given them those offices.

There are “environmentalists” who dream of natural green forests and don’t like the idea of human interference. I usually assume that they all live in downtown apartments, and have little contact with actual nature. I grew up on 400 acres of actual nature with a river flowing through it, bordering on National Forest and Bureau of Land Management  land. There are unfriendly animals, bear, coyotes, lynx and cougar, rattlesnakes, skunks, and porcupines. Never ran into a cougar, but I’ve heard them scream. ”

“Environmentalists” have warped ideas of the out-of-doors which they encounter only on long weekends and vacations. Their ideas of pristine nature don’t mix with solar cells and windmills. Sounds good, but they just do not produce enough energy to maintain a modern society. Nuclear energy works well, but since Chernobyl in 1986  and the Fukushima disaster in 2011, people are scared of nuclear energy, though neither accident was inevitable. We learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of others, not always, but often.

We are not interfering with nature if we clear out the deadwood and trim trees and dead brush across forestlands and wilderness. We do it in our own yards so it doesn’t become an eyesore. California Governor Gavin Newsom and Washington Governor Jay Inslee are major climate fanatics, assuming that “climate change” is to blame for anything unpleasant. There’s been widespread objection to “clear cutting” and logging in general. Joe Biden is already suggesting that he would adopt the “Green New Deal” which is more useless windmills and his back and forth about banning “fracking” which he was all for until he found out that there are a lot of “fracking” jobs in Pennsylvania.

West Coast wildfire will not end with a fight on climate change. Clear cutting and controlled burning to thin overgrown forest and removing deadwood works nicely. Native Americans have been managing their forests for years with just such efforts. Joe Biden has accused President Trump of being a “climate arsonist” for not “heeding the science” in claiming that climate change is the cause of the wildfires. The headline at Politico is “Biden labels Trump a climate arsonist, accusing him of net heeding science.” Uh huh.