Opinion: State of Emergency!

WEATHER EMERGENCY

 Multnomah County, followed by the City of Portland and the State of Oregon declared a State of Emergency just before Christmas, because they expected 1 to 6 inches of snow in Portland over the Christmas weekend! One local merchant said with a smile: “I’m from Minnesota.”

Yes, many living in tents in Portland probably got a bit cold as temperatures dipped into the low 20s in Portland after Christmas. And Yes, some snow fell. And Yes, someone died in a tent – of a gunshot wound. And Yes, far more die of the cold every year than from the heat. But a State of Emergency? “Come on man, give me a break,” to quote our universally-loved and very wise President Joe Biden.

Perhaps it is time for politicians to actually address homelessness, rather than constantly pandering to it?

Our Far-Left leaders love to add another State of Emergency to those we already have, from Climate to Covid.

Are we dying of the heat yet? Don’t ask silly questions!

Just SHUT UP AND OBEY!

Happy New Year!

There is a serious side to this behavior. Menacing us with an endless series of hobgoblins, most blown far out of proportion, allows our betters to rule by decree and put down all calls for rational responses and accountability.

‘We have to move quickly to avert disaster.’ “Move quickly” usually means spending money that no one would agree to otherwise. Then they quickly change the subject to avoid accountability when their latest ruse fails. The last thing our leaders want is to be held accountable for grim incompetence. Yet it is grimly incompetent to permit homelessness and closely related drug addition to continue, let alone enable it with welfare payments, legalization of hard drugs, and no enforcement of health and safety laws.

A few years ago, I was invited to a large ‘Brown Bag Lunch Meeting’ where Portland city employees heard from one of their groups preparing the city for an overheated future. When it came time for questions, I raised my hand and said that I thought it was great for the city to be prepared for future hot spells, but wondered why they were not also preparing for inevitable cold spells?

You would have thought that I blurted out something profoundly disrespectful. I was heckled by the audience and the organizer abruptly terminated the meeting. Fast forward to today, and we find Portland substantially unprepared for the worst of our winter cold, just as they were unprepared for our monumental heat in June. One does have to wonder if the city hires anyone with a significant IQ. Or are they merely patronage employees whose only real job is to keep the ruling elites in power, Chicago-style.

Can they cover up their latest failures with a dramatic ‘State of Emergency;’ or will the electorate finally figure out that a ‘State of Emergency’ is an admission of failure?

Why is Portland yet again unprepared for weather events that have occurred in the past?

And if the answer is that they fell into the trap of believing their own fantastic climate superstitions, why were they not prepared for the monumental heat we experienced just after the Summer Solstice in late June?

CLIMATE EMERGENCY

In the case of monumental heat, I warned in an Oregonian Op-Ed that such events had occurred in the past, before standardized weather records were routinely kept. I was thinking of the great sirocco that descended upon Santa Barbara, California on June 17, 1859, when a desert wind brought 133 F to the normally mild climate of that coastal city. Leftists immediately denied that it had ever occurred and denounced Walter Tompkins, the author of the history book I used as a reference. A professor at the University of California even wrote an essay claiming that the climate system of that area was not capable of such temperatures.

Thanks to a tenacious researcher, Tony Heller, we found several contemporary newspaper accounts of the fierce heat in Santa Barbara and further affirmation from the first Professor of Geography at the University of California, George Davidson. Heller also found accounts of a similar event in nearby Ojai, California on June 16, 1917, where the temperature reached 128 F. All were Summer Solstice events, occurring at maximum insolation (incoming solar radiation), when the weather pattern sets up a strong East Wind to deliver hot desert air to communities near the Pacific ocean and near sea level that normally have a mild climate.

In the case of Portland’s monumental heat, the hot air came from the dry east-side of the Cascades where temperatures this year were comparable to the heat wave in July of 1898 that produced Oregon’s official record high of 119 F at Pendleton. That was 123 years ago.

Of course, the Climate Cartel does not want to hear any explanations that say we have observed all of this before. That demolishes their nightmares of an apocalypse. It could also destroy a two TRILLION dollar per year climate industry that seeks to cover the last wild and open spaces in the USA with windmills. No one should doubt the vast environmental damage that this industry is visiting upon us in the name of saving us from a fictitious climate emergency.

COVID-19 EMERGENCY

Dr. Ben Carson, a celebrated neurosurgeon and former secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the Trump administration recently pointed out that the politics surrounding the Covid-19 State of Emergency were prolonging it and costing lives.

In an interview with the Epoch Times, Dr. Carson said that Covid-19 is being used to “manipulate and frighten people.” “Let’s throw the politics out. We could solve this problem pretty quickly.” “We should be using every tool available to us to fight the pandemic. There’s no question about that.”

“But that means, you know, therapeutics, which had been poo-pooed. And I understand why. Because in order to get an EUA—an Emergency Use Authorization—to pursue the vaccines, you can’t have anything that’s effective as an alternative. So, that’s a defect in our system, we need to get rid of that.

I think a lot of people died unnecessarily because we had that attitude,” Carson added. He explained that when he contracted the virus and was severely ill, monoclonal antibodies saved his life.

“Let’s look around the world at things that work. Let’s look at the fact that on the western coast of Africa, there’s almost no COVID. And let’s ask ourselves, why is that? And then you see, it’s because they take antimalarials, particularly hydroxychloroquine. “

“Let’s listen to these physician groups who’ve had incredible success with ivermectin. Let’s look at the results with monoclonal antibodies. Let’s look at all of these things,” Carson said.

But of course, the Biden administration wants a one-size-fits-all vaccine solution that is obviously failing with each emerging Covid variant. Covid cases are again skyrocketing, but apparently far less deadly than before. This virus is behaving like others by becoming more virulent and less consequential. These are facts that the political class do not want to hear, because they demonstrate that we will eventually shake off this pandemic even if the ignorant fail to get out of the way.

 Beware of States of Emergencies. They give the political class powers that they should never have and later help them dodge accountability for grim mismanagement.

 Gordon J. Fulks lives in Corbett and can be reached at gordonfulks@hotmail.com. He is one of the Directors of the CO2 Coalition and holds a doctorate in physics from the University of Chicago’s Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research.