Thursday, July 16, 2026
PMT: The Sky
In much of the East and Midwest, the sky is not the right color. Wildfires in Canada and the northern US are flooding the skies and turning them orange. Here in Minnesota, which is suffering from serious fires in the far north, the air looks like soup.
The threat is very real to me, because the fires have come close to our cabin up in the Boundary Waters.
The fires were largely started by lightning when a "dry storm" (lightning but little rain) came through last week. High temperatures have fueled them, combined with a dry spell.
This in itself is no more proof of climate change than a big snowfall is disproof of it. But the fact is that these fires overall have gone from once-in-a-while to pretty much every summer. Their frequency IS a product of climate change.
And... we have given up on halting that global warming. Government policy is pretty much pro-polluter at this point and discouraging of green energy. (In my own little realm, the last batch of federal clemencies went to polluters, which is one way this change has been signaled).
Elections matter.
