SATURDAY, JULY 24, 2021
Baker City, Oregon
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EDITORIAL
Keeping
fire at bay
During another fiery summer across the West, Baker
County is faring well.
But there is a long ways to go before we can rest.
Probably two months at least.
Unless a major change in the weather pattern arrives,
bringing widespread rain and cooler temperatures, the
fire danger in our county — and across Eastern Or-
egon — almost certainly will remain extreme until the
equinox.
The longer nights as summer wanes will reduce the
risk, but not dramatically.
And so it’s likely that for the rest of this season and
possible into the next, we’ll watch with no small trepida-
tion whenever thunderstorm clouds assemble to the
south, laden with the lightning bolts that spark most
wildfires around here.
It’s also likely that the agencies which manage public
land — primarily the U.S. Forest Service and the Bu-
reau of Land Management — will continue to enforce
bans on campfires and other restrictions. These regula-
tions, though they interfere with favorite summer activi-
ties — hunting season is nearing, too — are intended to
curb the threat for human-caused fires. These are less
common than lightning fires, but they’re also concerning
because, unlike storms, they can’t be tracked by radar.
According to the Blue Mountain Interagency Dis-
patch Center in La Grande, fire crews have responded
to eight illegal campfires around Northeastern Oregon
over the past week.
Sure, it’s disappointing to go without a crackling fire
while camping. But if one of those fires turns into a mas-
sive blaze, it’s possible that agencies would impose even
more stringent rules — the Umatilla National Forest
closed its entire 1.4 million acres to public entry on July
16 in part because large fires are burning on the forest.
Forest users have had to sacrifice during this summer
of heat and drought. But going without campfires is a
minor annoyance compared with having a favorite place
blackened by flames.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
OTHER VIEWS
Hoping for compromise in D.C.
on the infrastructure repair bill
Editorial from The Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette:
As he continues to try to weave to-
gether a bipartisan infrastructure deal
that will have the support of the Biden
White House as well as the Democrats
who want a bigger package and the
Republicans who don’t want to bargain
with them, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman
says he remains confi dent there is a
desire in Washington for political com-
promise. We have to hope he is right.
As he made the rounds of Sunday
news shows and editorial boards in
recent days, Portman also has noted
that there is a most defi nite desire
among citizens for lawmakers to come
up with a fi x for their crumbling roads,
bridges and other infrastructure. And
about that the Republican senator is
surely right.
Constituents in red states and blue
states alike are tired of worrying about
lead water pipes, tired of bridges and
dams that are dangerously deteriorat-
ing.
When President Joe Biden’s initial
$2 trillion proposal languished, Port-
man and a bipartisan team of senators
crafted the outline of a more narrowly
focused compromise plan and took it
to the White House. And for the last
month, Portman and others have been
working to fl esh out that outline into a
bipartisan bill that will work.
Some Democrats are threatening to
force the issue with a premature vote.
Some Republicans still refuse to bar-
gain at all with the White House. And
Portman is asking them all to not give
up and to keep negotiating. Democrats
and Republicans alike should listen to
him.
Working out a compromise would
deliver plenty — politically, materially
and economically. It would strike a
blow against the paralysis of polariza-
tion that has seized Congress for too
many years. It would be a victory for
the throwback process of cross-aisle
problem-solving.
That has always been Portman’s
strong suit, doing the hard work of
identifying policy solutions and then
building bipartisan support to get bills
passed. He is a natural choice to be
the lead Republican negotiator on this
deal.
Particularly now that he is leaving
his seat at the end of his term later
this year, it is fi tting and not at all
surprising that Portman is digging
in, unwilling to give up on making a
deal happen, even as it means trying
to pull together multiple factions from
both parties and multiple branches of
government.
There is still a deal to be had on
infrastructure — one that can suit
lawmakers from both parties, but
more importantly, one that can help to
rebuild the nation.
Pre-soaking T-shirts and ‘anomalous’ heat
I have of late taken to preparing
for my early evening stroll around
town by dousing my T-shirt, and
my hair, from the cold tap of the
bathroom faucet.
This sodden ritual is slightly
ridiculous.
And not a little messy, what with
the inevitable dripping.
While I’m kneading the cotton
garment in the sink, trying to
ensure it gets a thorough soaking
from the modest fl ow, I can’t help
but feel like a character in a B
movie who lives in a cruddy urban
apartment and is forced to do his
wash in the same receptacle where
he spits his toothpaste.
(I would use the wider faucet
in the tub, except the valve that
switches between the faucet and
the showerhead is stuck on the
shower, and I have enough prob-
lems without adding a plumbing
emergency to the list. Which I
surely would do if I tried to effect a
repair in my hamfi sted way, which
typically involves a hammer and
profanity.)
I’ve considered running through
the sprinkler, thus shedding a few
decades, fi guratively speaking,
while I’m taking on a temporary
but very real load of cool, refresh-
ing droplets. Except I’m complying
with the city’s 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. out-
door watering schedule — a wise
precaution in this thirsty summer
— and I usually head out a couple
hours too early.
I started this pre-walk baptis-
mal when the heat slunk in town
and, in the manner of an boorish
and uninvited houseguest, settled
JAYSON
JACOBY
itself for a long stay.
And although the hot weather
doesn’t subject me to paranoid
monologues about chemtrails
and 5G, or to drink the last beer
in the refrigerator, the extended
span of 90-degree-plus days has
annoyed me at least as much as a
loudmouth sprawled on my sofa
would.
Soaking my shirt — and giving
my shorts a pretty fair spattering
in the process — helps temper the
heat.
The effect, alas, is temporary.
Very temporary.
With the temperature above
90 and the humidity in the teens
— a combination more suited to
seasoning lumber than to a pleas-
ant summer walk — my shirt is
mostly dry before I’m halfway
through my walk, which typically
spans about 50 minutes.
There is of course nothing ab-
normal about temperatures rising
into the 90s during July — even
for a week or more straight.
But it’s also clear that, due
in part to the heat-trapping
properties of the modern world’s
emissions, I ought to anticipate
donning a soggy shirt more often
in summers to come.
(An experience that makes
me shudder every time, in those
few seconds when the icy fabric
latches onto my skin in its inimi-
table clammy embrace.)
But though I am convinced of
climate change in a general sense
— disappearing glaciers, among
other tangible evidence, is aw-
fully compelling — my instinctive
curiosity refuses to be lulled into
the comfortable complacency of the
orthodox.
The recent unprecedented heat
wave that affl icted much of the
West, for instance, prompted pre-
dictable reactions.
Before health offi cials had even
fi nished tallying the death toll in
Oregon, scientists were rolling
out studies attributing the record-
setting temperatures to climate
change for which humans are the
culprits.
The Associated Press, in report-
ing about one study, described it
as a “quick scientifi c analysis.” I’m
not a scientist, but it seems to me
that “quick” is not an adjective
suggestive of strict adherence to
the scientifi c method. The AP story
also noted that this analysis, from
World Weather Attribution (which,
so far as I can determine, does not
involve wrestling), has not been
peer reviewed.
Nonetheless, the study’s authors,
after letting their computer models
chew on the data, concluded that
climate change was responsible for
3.6 degrees during the heat wave.
The AP reporter quoted the
study’s senior author, Friederike
Otto, a climate scientist at the Uni-
versity of Oxford: “Without climate
change this event would not have
happened.”
This is about as unequivocal as a
statement can be.
And so I fi nd it passing strange
that the reporter either didn’t ask
what seems to me an obvious ques-
tion, or didn’t include the response
in the story.
Portland and Salem, to cite just
two of the many cities that set all-
time high temperature records in
late June, didn’t just barely beat the
previous standards.
Portland reached 116 degrees —
nine degrees above the old record
of 107.
Salem’s margin was the same
— 117 degrees compared with the
previous apex of 108.
Deduct the 3.6 degrees that
the study puts to climate change
— better still, round it up to four
degrees to simplify the math —
and both Portland and Salem still
break their all-time records by fi ve
degrees.
Yet Otto, the climate scientist,
contends this “would not have hap-
pened” but for climate change.
I’m quite certain that had Port-
land topped out at 112 degrees, and
Salem at 113, this heat wave would
have received just as much public-
ity — and likely have been equally
deadly.
But if climate change was truly
responsible for less than half of the
nine degrees between the old record
and the new, then what factor, or
more likely factors, contributed to
the larger share of the difference?
I read, in the several days prior to
the arrival of the heat, the “forecast
discussions” that National Weather
Service meteorologists post on the
agency’s website. These discussions
offer an insider’s look at how the
forecasters derive their predictions.
Meteorologists at the Weather
Service offi ce in Portland frequently
referred to an “anomalous” dome of
high pressure that they expected
to descend on the Northwest and
potentially lead to a record-setting
heat wave.
They were, we know, correct.
As that adjective — anomalous
— implies, high pressure itself is not
uncommon in the West; indeed, it’s
the predominant weather pattern
for much of the summer.
But that pattern was unusu-
ally intense during the heat wave.
What’s not clear to me, from
reading the AP story about the
“quick” analysis, is whether climate
change, which some people blame
for all manner of meteorological
phenomena, has been linked, in any
defi nitive way, to anomalous high
pressure domes.
In this recent study, at least, the
answer would seem to be no —
otherwise, the models ought to have
attributed more than 3.6 degrees to
climate change.
The climate scientists are hard
at it, to be sure, and I’m sure we’ll
learn more as they do.
In the meantime, I’ll keep ventur-
ing out into the heat, still potent
even at supper time, soggy cotton
clinging to my skin, contributing
artifi cial sweat before my own pores
kick in.
Which takes all of a block.
Jayson Jacoby is editor
of the Baker City Herald.