Category Archives: Almost Seven Wonders

The Almost Seven Wonders files

White House Pretends that Probable Cause of California Wildfires Simply Doesn’t Exist

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[Added Saturday, Oct. 27th: looking back in advance of a CNN gig tomorrow, the word "cause" in that headline was poorly chosen. I meant "a" probable cause, not "the" probable cause, as you can see from the concluding sentence, but the phrase "contributing factor" would have been much more accurate. My bad. Still, the point about climate change being an obvious factor in California’s future as a growing tinderbox, and the Bush administration’s resistance to climate change discussions, is plenty obvious.]

This was the view on the day I came back from the West Indies last spring:

Sample Image

Fire on the left, downtown on the right. Great to be home.

Now it’s fall, and there are fires in all directions, with things particularly bad down in San Diego County. I’m nowhere near the fire this time, but the air everywhere is smoky and brown and when the sun is near the horizon the whole sky looks bizarrely red. Kinda hard not to think about today.

Also, it’s 97 degrees outside in late October. According to the Weather Channel, this is 23 degrees above the seasonal average. Gee, global warming much? Actually, yes. Anecdotal evidence in isolation is meaningless, but add up everything that has been happening for years, and according to today’s Science Daily:

The catastrophic fires that are sweeping Southern California are consistent with what climate change models have been predicting for years, experts say, and they may be just a prelude to many more such events in the future — as vegetation grows heavier than usual and then ignites during prolonged drought periods.

"This is exactly what we’ve been projecting to happen, both in short-term fire forecasts for this year and the longer term patterns that can be linked to global climate change," said Ronald Neilson, a professor at Oregon State University and bioclimatologist with the USDA Forest Service.

[snip]

"In the future, catastrophic fires such as those going on now in California may simply be a normal part of the landscape," said Neilson.

However, yesterday, the director of the Centers for Disease Control testified before Congress on the impact of climate change on human health. And today we learn that the White House deleted much of the prepared testimony in advance, removing large swaths of scientific information on major health risks posed by global warming.

The deletions directed by the White House included details on how many people might be adversely affected because of increased warming, according to one official who has seen the original version. Also deleted were the scientific basis for some of the CDC’s analysis on what kinds of diseases might be spread in a warmer climate and rising sea level, the official added.

More than two-thirds of the CDC’s testimony on global warming seems to have been deleted by the Bush administration.

I have friends in San Diego who are sheltering neighbors whose homes may not be there anymore. Unseasonable heat and changing weather patterns have turned southern California into a tinderbox, precisely the way forecast by people warning us about global warming for years:

In studies released five years ago, Neilson and other OSU researchers predicted that the American West could become both warmer and wetter in the coming century, conditions that would lead to repeated, catastrophic fires larger than any in recent history.

And the White House is still actively trying to pretend that a main underlying cause [edit: contributing factor] to these disasters simply doesn’t exist.

Zogby: Hillary Less Electable Than Ever

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Two bits of information which combine as unpleasant news for Democrats:

(1) Hillary’s way ahead in the polls, with 43 percent of Democrats leaning her way, more than Obama and Edwards have combined.

(2) But while Democrats seem to have convinced themselves that Hillary is electable — and who knows, at this point, given the stumbling herd of flip-flopping GOP torture advocates now lining up to debate — a new Zogby poll shows that fully half of the electorate now firmly say they would "never" vote for Clinton under any circumstances.

Hillary’s "never" number is higher than that of any other candidate, major or minor, in either party.  Worse, that number is rising as the campaign goes on, up four points (and thus outside the margin of error) from the 46% who reported similar feelings in March.

(All of this is consistent with stuff that seemed pretty obvious here on the day she declared, although of course I could be wrong.)

But rather than bothering further about the horserace here, shouldn’t we all be stepping back to marvel at just how  dysfunctional our electoral system so obviously is?  Bad enough our campaign finance structure and winner-takes-all system limit the spectrum of "mainstream" political opinion from conventional suck to full-blown delusional.  But we’re still more than a year away from the actual election, and our most likely leaders for the next four years have already been winnowed down mostly to people we already can’t bloody stand.

Genius.

UK, Mexico, maybe Tanzania… but not here enough

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Juggling way too many things, so slow blogging for a bit.  And I’ll get WhoHatesWhom.com fleshed out when I get to it.  Still trying to make that soon.  I’m about a month behind there so far.  Yeesh.  My bad.

Not that I’m so deluded to think anyone loses sleep over my posting frequency.  But there are about a thousand of you who seem to check in regularly.  I like to make it worth your while.

To the exciting, it looks like I’ll be part of the USA contingent in the European Quizzing Championships next month in England, I may be working on something fun in Tanzania early next year, and starting in November, I should be in Mexico City fairly often for the next few months.  Y ahora necesito aprender español más rapido que nunca.  Obviously, I’ll post pictures etc. from every stop.

Si este blog tiene alguna visitantes desde México con ideos para algunas cosas a ver, estaré encantado a oír de usted. ¡Gracias!