News Reporter: Climate Coach: My hike in the Emigrant Wilderness

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Down-to-earth advice for life on our changing planet.

By Michael J. Coren

Welcome. This week, sriracha shortages and EV charging wars. But first, art in Yosemite.

The way Ansel Adams put it, a photographic negative is the musical score, and developing the print is the performance.

Few had a better ear than Adams.

The San Francisco native, who began snapping photos as a 14-year-old with a Kodak Brownie, dedicated his symphonies to nature. As one of the 20th century's greatest photographers and conservationists, he was comparable to the monuments he photographed, President Jimmy Carter once said.

Instead of merely recording a scene, Adams would later say, he sought to channel its emotional charge, transforming a documentary medium into a spiritual one. "I want a picture to reflect not only the forms but what I had seen and felt at the moment of exposure," he said.

At the Ansel Adams exhibition in the halls of the San Francisco's M. H. de Young Museum this month, the frames crackled with this electricity.

Take "Rain, Yosemite Valley, California," snapped circa 1940. In a single frame, Adams captures the vast valley floor rising up to embrace the vertical monolith of El Capitan and the white ribbon of Bridalveil Fall. In the foreground, the bud of a lone pine tree guards the granite landscape.

Ansel Adams (American, 1902–1984). Rain, Yosemite Valley, California, about 1940. Photograph, gelatin silver print. The Lane Collection © The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust. Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

I've seen Yosemite many times. But I've never viewed it like this. That, I think, is the point. Adams captures within two dimensions, shaded in silver and gray, what our vision often misses. When we are blind to the need for wilderness, Adams reminds us.

Last week, many of you wrote back with a passionate defense for the existence of the wild (see The Second Degree below). Wilderness, you argued, is where ecosystems run their natural course, free from human dominance, if not our presence.

Over the decades, Adams fought for nothing less. He earned accolades for his efforts to protect national parks, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980. "I try to do something every day — a letter, a phone call, an interview — something to promote the environmental cause," he said, one year before his death at the age of 82 in Monterey, Calif.

But one of his greatest gifts, I suspect, is reminding us that wilderness is a sacred heritage we all carry within us. "Wilderness is not only a condition of nature," Adams wrote, "but a state of mind and mood and heart."

Can art protect the environment? Tell me what you think at climatecoach@washpost.com

Field Sample

The Washington Post is tracking the potential for dangerous heat this summer using the heat index, which accounts for the combined impact of temperature and humidity.

See how high the heat index is expected to go where you live in the next seven days using our lookup tool.

The higher the humidity, the more difficult it is for the body to cool itself off through sweating.

Learning Curve

Official government models are underestimating risky precipitation.

As the atmosphere warms, it holds more water. That's supercharging weather-related disasters, particularly more intense rainstorms.

Here are places in the United States most at risk for extreme rainfall:

John Muyskens

Dangerous rainfall events are increasingly common: About 20 percent of the country can now expect a 1-in-100-year storm every 25 years.

The Second Degree

After my June 20 column, many of you had one question: Do solar panels cool roofs? Yes, says Chuck Booten, a senior engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, but not much.

Traditional photovoltaic panels, usually mounted an inch or two over a roof, can help cool things off about 3 to 17 percent, according to one study. Mounting them farther away might cool a roof more.

Solar shingles with integrated photovoltaics help, but they still transfer 80 to 85 percent of the sun's heat to the roof. So If you want solar energy, get the panels. Just don't expect much passive cooling.

I'll write more about wilderness in a future column. In the meantime, Chris Barns, a retired Bureau of Land Management employee, pointed to a subtle but essential point.

When we speak of "untrammeled" wilderness — at least as defined in the Wilderness Act of 1964 — this refers to a place free of "intentional manipulation of the earth and its community of life."

Thanks to our National Wilderness Preservation System, we have more than 111.7 million acres — an area larger than California — of such places protected under the law.

"As for wilderness being a 'myth,' " Barns continued, "I quote the late Dave Foreman: 'If you think wilderness is just a human construct, you haven't spent enough time in one.' "

On the Climate Front

From The Post:

Concrete is the cake and cement is the flour. They're responsible for triple the emissions of the aviation industry. Here's why there's no easy fix.

If you're a homeowner in California, Florida or another disaster-prone state, here are three possible ways to make it easier — and cheaper — to get insurance. (And sign up for The Climate 202 newsletter while you're there.)

Vietnam is getting billions of dollars for clean energy development — while jailing environmentalists. "If they come for me," one activist said, "the movement will be gone."

Here are four better ways to use your air conditioner. It can really make a difference this summer.

From elsewhere:

Sweltering nighttime temperatures are a new, more dangerous kind of heat wave, CNN reports

Can't find Sriracha? the Los Angeles Times asks hot sauce lovers. A drought in Mexico and our harsh climate reality are to blame.

Tesla may have won the charging wars after striking deals with Ford and General Motors, reports the New York Times, placing critical infrastructure in the hands of Elon Musk.

In 2016, I spent several nights backpacking in a government-designated wilderness area, the 113,000-acre Emigrant Wilderness in California.

Any time of year, nighttime temperatures can drop below freezing. During the day, silence keeps you company. And it's a day or two to the nearest road.

I couldn't imagine a better place to spend a week. Send photos of the wild places you've visited.