Mud, muck set off climate alarm at stormy Burning Man in Nevada

By Brian Greenspun (contact)

Sunday, Sept. 10, 2023 | 2 a.m.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

How many times have you heard that one? There is a reason we hear it from generation to generation and from person to person as a way of explaining the obvious.

Because it used to be true!

Now, I don’t know if this is one of those immutable, never-changing, set-in-stone kind of sayings that has constantly defined the human condition because if it is, it doesn’t feel that way anymore.

By way of explanation, let’s start with the change in climate. No one, other than a few people stuck in reverse on the Fox News Channel, believes that our climate isn’t changing. Just how much is caused by human activity may be up for debate around the edges, but the fact that man has contributed mightily to what may be our own sped-up demise at the hands of Mother Nature is not in dispute.

To prove my point, we don’t have to look at the science of climate, which has just recorded the three hottest months in the history of the world with the certainty of many more months and years to come.

And I quote from most reputable sources: “Global sea surface temperatures are at unprecedented highs for the third consecutive month.” And, “The global annual average atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration ... was 50% greater than the pre-industrial level ... the highest measured amount in the modern observational records as well as in paleoclimatic records dating back as far as 800,000 years.”

No, we don’t have to pay attention to what all the scientists are telling us. Even though that is what we have always done. That’s the part about things staying the same through periods of great change. Instead, we seem to be ignoring science as a matter of right — far right — as in Florida, where ocean water temperatures are higher and the resulting hurricanes are stronger, and the damage more devastating than ever.

But we are not in Florida or anywhere — thankfully — where destruction from climate change continues on its increasingly deadly path.

Wait, check that last statement.

We are in Nevada, where the worst that happens on a yearly basis is a 40-foot man getting burned to the ground in an artistic ritual witnessed by tens of thousands of people from all over the world who have nothing better to do than tune-in and drop-out for a few days.

And they do this in the middle of the Nevada desert hundreds of miles from nowhere, where nothing happens and nothing has happened for the past million years or so. Talk about things never changing and staying the same!

That is until last week. Did you hear the one about the Burning Man who was knee deep in mud and unable to move?

Yep, somehow the winds and rains of change managed to find some 70,000 people holed up in the desert in some really fancy campers — very few of which could drive through the mud — and ruined what was otherwise supposed to be the annual communing with the very nature of man.

In rains that poured months’ worth of water onto the desert floor in a matter of hours, man witnessed firsthand the “science” of climate change and the potential for harm to our species that such change portends.

The question is: Will things continue to remain the same — as in we do nothing but talk with no significant action — or will man, woman and anyone else who denies our part in this slow-rolling destruction of our planet finally change their ways and demand action?

In the end, the people climbed out of the mud and the muck and burned that 40-foot man down.

It was just as they have done for decades.

On a land which time seems to have forgotten except for once a year, what happened this year will probably never be forgotten. Was that “things staying the same” in the face of great change?

I hope not. We should all hope not because out here in Nevada, we should be smart enough to learn our lesson the first time it buries us in mud.

Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun