It's June 22, by which time we're usually getting warm weather. Indeed, usually it's really warm by this time of the year.
Instead, we're getting gigantic amounts of rain. When I checked yesterday, where I am, had 250 times the normal amount of rain for the month,
250 times.
This isn't normal.
Everyone is observing that its weird, and people are tired of it.
It is very weird.
It's getting hard to pretend that the climate isn't at least a little out of wack. This is not only not normal, it's beyond not normal. The entire spring has been very cold, and the snowfall went on forever, with an April snowstorm bringing the heaviest snow accumulation in Natrona County's history.
In spite of that, at least one of our Congressional delegation routinely berates President Biden's "radical climate agenda".
Nature, agriculture, and even simple living conditions can just stuff it, I guess.
Facts are a sticky thing. You really don't get to pretend that your economic interest determine science. Nor, as a politician, do you get to pretend that your voter's economic interest determine science.
But that's pretty much what we're doing.
When I was a geology student, we were taught that if the temperature of the Earth increased, only a small amount, it would result in a much wetter climate. Indeed, back then, the common thought about global warming, in academic circles, is that only a marginally hotter climate resulted in a dramatic increase in precipitation, which in turn would trigger an ice age. The onset of the ice age, it might be noted, was rapid, which at the same time wouldn't mean that you'd have glaciers everywhere overnight.
I'm not saying that this is what we're currently enduring, but something odd is going on, and we really need to pay attention to it.
Let's be honest. The 500,000 citizens of Wyoming don't control the major shifts in energy consumption and generation that are occurring now. That's why the State government is so excited about the Trans West Transmission Project. That's why the state is permitting solar, wind and nuclear power generation facilities. They know what is coming in terms of consumption.
That's also why the state government, which is much less beholden to the populist right than our members of Congress, really don't say much about what is occurring in this arena.
People have a moral and ethical duty to be honest. It's time to be honest to the residents of the State. We want to keep our natural environment and our agricultural base. Sure, we'd like the petroleum and coal industries to go on forever, but that doesn't mean we have a right to blind our eyes to science because we wish things weren't the way they are, or pretend that the drive away from fossil fuels, which is going on, isn't happening.
Petroleum in particular is not going away overnight. Senator Joe Manchin, from a coal producing state, is much more realistic on this, in spite of the constant criticism that he endures on the topic, that our local Congressional delegation is willing to be. When Manchin speaks of fossil fuel production, it's clear he sees it as a bridge to a new energy regime, and that makes sense. It would also make sense to invest, and those industries probably are, in ways to attempt wholesale carbon recapture.
We also have to realize, however, that most people enduring a soggy summer or blistering heat don't work in the energy sector and politicians from a minority party going on television claiming something is "radical" don't convince them to do diddly. Indeed, because that's not how that works, thinking people should realize that's solely for a certain minority audience. Being party of a minority audience is fine, but in this day and age, we're so balkanized that we weirdly believe that our own subset reflects the majority, even when it clearly does not.
This is really demonstrated, I'd note, by the Trumpist right, right now. They're totally convinced that a majority of Americans support Trump, when in reality Trump is in a minority party that's lost election after election, doesn't receive the popular vote for the Oval Office, and is declining in membership. Trump might win the nomination but that's in no small part because everyone else has left or is leaving. The GOP is now like a neighborhood party in which the oddball family from down the block showed up late, and then demanded that everyone listen to their Eight Track Tape collection of trucker songs. They can convince themselves that everyone loves them when they finally are played, but that's because everyone else went home, or more likely down the street to a competing party.
We don't get to pretend that elections were stolen that weren't, but we've been doing a fair amount of that around these parts as well.
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