Our World and Everything in It

I went car shopping today. I’m not going to give a report on all the makes and models because I was looking for kinda sporty cars and sedans that get 30 mpg or more. I’m not and never have been an aficionado of SUV’s. If I wanted a truck, I’d buy a truck. I have a problem with the idea of exiting from an SUV all dressed up in heels. Not going to happen, even if that sucker cost over $50,000. Besides that, I hate getting behind them where I’m at the mercy of their brake lights only. And the women that drive them…Omagawd. They’ve come right over in my lane more than once because they just can’t see, and are always, always on that cell phone. And I don’t have a small car. I have a tank of a Cadillac STS.

I shopped in Monroe just to see and drive the cars. It’s a great place to look since just about all the dealerships are either on Monroe St. or Telegraph Rd. But it still took me 4 hours to browse through 4 dealerships. I went to the Toyota, Mazda, and VW dealership on the south end of town first. Check out the Eos VW. It looks like a little hardtop but with the flick of a switch, it’s a convertible. You have to watch this magic. It reminds me of a Lady Bug flicking its wings to take off when it transforms itself.  Ah the Germans are ingenious. As a hardtop it also sports a moon roof. When I drove this car, I swear I was in my old BMW. It hugs curves, zips around, is almost silent, and with the top down there isn’t a really big draft so you can actually hear the radio, and talk to one another. I made the comment that my old Beemer was manual, and guess what, with the flick of a switch on the automatic gearshift, it becomes a clutch free manual drive. One button puts the top up and down into the trunk, and one button makes all the windows go up and down at once if you like. What a great little car, RED of course.

Next stop was the Chrysler, Jeep, and Dodge dealership. I’ve been seeing an awful lot of Avengers and Chargers around that look downright sporty. They look so much alike that I went with the Avenger since it gets a little better gas mileage. It was black with the sports package. What a comfortable ride. The seats were the best on my back anyway. It had good pickup, and what I couldn’t cram in that huge trunk, especially when both back seats pull forward. It would be good for trips to Lowe’s or packing up for camping, fishing, sporting trips. And what a deal. You can pretty much get one of these with little to nothing down, and for only $200/mo. for a 3-year lease. No wonder I’m seeing so many of these. I think I’d take the red one.

Groulx GMC, Pontiac, and Olds has more than a few choices also. The G8 has the look of a luxury sedan and sports car. There are two black ones sitting out front that I was immediately drawn to. What I ended up taking for a ride was another convertible, a white G6 Pontiac. It does pretty much what that little VW Eos did. With the flick of a switch the metamorphosis takes place from a hard top to a convertible. This car rode like my Cadillac and was fast. I took every car out on the expressway, and this one just floated. I’d have to say this was definitely a luxury convertible. Oh, and the one I test drove was discounted—a lot, as it was previously owned with only 1500 miles on it. If you’ve been holding back to get a convertible like this, better get down there for a great deal on this car.

I continued on to Victory Honda where I planned on looking at an Accord Coupe but could not get past the 4-door sedan. They’ve redone these cars to look like they belong in the Mercedes class of cars. What a mighty fine looking luxury sedan in the mid-$20,000 range. The leather seats and appointments are beautiful, and the back seat could fit two 6 ft. tall people no problem.

I had my 85-year-old mother in tow for this shopping spree. She was with me for the last 3 cars I bought sans my husband. Mind you this car only has 4 cylinders, (memories of my Beemer), but is really quick on the E-way. This car isn’t my Cadillac but it’s mighty close. The sales girl was showing me all the gizmos and a car has to go a long way to match what my 9 year-old STS has but this was close for half of what I paid for that Cad back in 99. And the safety features are phenomenal. There is a covering under the hood held in place by plastic tabs. If for some reason the engine starts on fire, the tabs melt, the covering comes down on the engine and smothers the fire. There is a breakaway engine mount so that if the car is hit head-on the engine drops and doesn’t end up in your lap. The front panels by the lights are super reinforced, and there are more airbags than I’ve ever seen on a car. Even the bumpers are 5 mph proof. If someone taps you, the bumpers crunch in but pop back out. Needless to say as we were driving along my mom looked over and said: “This is the car.”

And this probably will be the car, but that is me. There are fine Chevy cars too, especially the new Malibu, which I looked at before. I’ve also perused the Ford stock of cars like Ford’s Fusion, and Ford’s Escape that gets absolutely great mileage for a great price on a fine looking SUV if that is your preference. I have two friends that bought the Ford Focus that absolutely love their cars too.

If you’re tired of paying high gas prices, get out there and look around. The pickings are really, really great, and the deals are galore. The more cars I drove, the harder it was to make a choice. They all offered something I was looking for, and pretty much came with great stereo systems, MP3 and Bluetooth capabilities, nice interior appointments, sport’s packages with great looking wheels and trim, etc. The wheels and color can really make a car in my opinion. What a day. I’m bushed. 

Good news for the world’s second largest rainforest as the Democratic Republic of the Congo announced its intention to designate over 50,000 sq. miles of it as protected area. That’s quite a big improvement over the approximate 8500 sq. miles that is currently protected or conserved.

The Congo Basin in Central Africa is 700,000 sq. miles of tropical forest that extends across six countries. Area wise, the Democratic Republic of the Congo or DRC is the third largest country in Africa and contains the largest part of the Congo Basin forest. The DRC is not only establishing new protected areas but also insuring sustainable use by the inhabitants. This is the amazing part. Some of the indigenous inhabitants are Pygmies. And even though many of the Pygmies cannot read, GPS units designed for non-literate people allow them to participate in mapping the forest. In their travels they locate resources, like edible and medicinal plants, and other significant areas. The Pygmies select an icon to mark an area, and the GPS records the data for resource maps.

The rainforests in the DRC contain all types of species of plants to animals including chimpanzees, white rhinos, and the famous mountain gorillas. It will take a concentrated effort by many nations to accomplish the task of keeping this vast area protected. As it is now, many of the rangers and people concerned about the forest have disappeared, either killed or driven off from the Second Congo (civil) War from 1998 to 2003. It’s the second deadliest war since WWII. I did not know that.

The announcement was made in Bonn, Germany, which is host for the Convention on Biological Diversity or CBD. The CBD believes:

Protected areas are the foundation for safeguarding ecosystems, species and genes in all their

abundance and diversity. Protected areas are the backbone for the stability and functioning of

ecosystemic processes and the provision of ecosystem services such as natural carbon storage,

water cycles, pollination, control of diseases and flood control. Properly designed and

managed protected areas support livelihoods of local communities and strengthen local and

national economies. Protected area networks are our “Safety-Nets for Life on Earth”. Thus the

establishment and long-term maintenance of protected areas is in the interest of humanity and

requires a common effort of the global community. The CBD Programme of Work on

Protected Areas is a global framework for the establishment of comprehensive, representative

and effectively managed national and regional protected area systems. Parties agreed to close

the gaps in the existing systems, enhance management effectiveness and secure adequate

financing.

 

The “Life Web Initiative” aims at supporting the implementation of the CBD Programme of

Work on Protected Areas through enhancing partnerships at a global level. The purpose of the

initiative is to match voluntary commitments for the designation of new protected areas and

the improved management of existing areas with commitments for dedicated (co-)financing of these areas.

 

The German minister thinks these new protected areas of rainforest in the Congo should become part of “Life Web.” Germany is presently providing the Congo Basin region with over 53 million euro for protection. The concept of Live Web is a good read and may be the wave of the future where industry and nature will exist well together.

Read more about the Congo rainforest and Live Web Initiative @

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2008/2008-05-27-02.asp

http://www.cbd.int/doc/meetings/cop/hls-cop-09/other/hls-cop-09-lifeweb-de-en.pdf

I ran across an interesting article on Environmental News Service about our changing forests and desert areas. One of my first blogs was about the influx of people to the Southwest where four states depend entirely on the Colorado River, which is supplied with water in the summer months from glacier melt. But the glaciers are slowly disappearing.

The article says that the changes will continue. In that case there will be a big exodus from those states in the future back to places like Michigan. We must keep our Great Lakes clean. Some day those lakes may mean survival for many.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2008/2008-05-28-091.asp

We’re hearing a lot lately about drilling for oil. There are people so naive to think that by drilling in the Arctic or anywhere else we will see an instantaneous reduction in prices at the pump. Anyone with any street smarts should know that an instant price reduction like that means that the whole scenario about oil and availability is a fabrication. Some people evidently think that drilling for oil is like sticking a straw in a glass of chocolate milk when in reality the process of extraction is getting tougher and more expensive as the world’s oil supplies get more elusive.

A quote from a National Geographic article from 4 years ago states:

Others think that by curbing our oil use and developing sustainable alternatives now, we can delay the peak and wean ourselves more easily when the inevitable happens. There are many things you can do to ease the transition, says Alfred Cavallo, an energy consultant in Princeton, New Jersey. And you can have a very nice life on a sustainable system. Of course, not everyone is going to be driving SUVs.

 

This was the idea in 2004, yet in 2008, people in the U.S., some of the biggest fossil fuel hogs in the world are still arguing about global warming, and just curtailing the movement to replace fossil fuels with clean alternative energy sources once and for all.  In 2002, George Bush even admitted that global warming is man made and exacerbated by the fossil fuel industry. Yet the argument against environmentalism continues. Think how far ahead we could have been by now, and how many people could have had new employment with progressive companies in green business.

The Bush/Cheney administration has loosed so many environmental laws and/or ignored them that many citizens in many states are experiencing the result of companies like Halliburton devastating the terrain in search of natural gas and/or oil. Think of humans as giant mosquitoes. We’ve bit the earth in search of oil like blood over 500,000 times. The U.S. alone has approx. 500,000 abandoned/operating mines also. We’re abusing the earth plain and simple. Now we want to keep using coal fired plants and forcing the resulting CO2 emissions from them deep into the earth. Forcing gas into the earth has a bad sound to it, and is not an exact science yet. We don’t know what will happen.

When we think of environment we immediately think of air and water, but the earth is taking an awful hit too. Before we even think to drill more, more, more, we need to gage how much fossil fuel we really need, not what we currently, hungrily devour. And in order to do that we need to establish a baseline, which can’t be done until we restrict all extraneous usage and lower speed limits, car pool, change light bulbs, use a clothesline, shut off our techie equipment–you know, the easy stuff. It’s the least we can do.

Until we’ve done our part, we shouldn’t expect poor Mother Earth to keep doing hers to the extreme. Our world is sick and could use some TLC. Conserve first, drill later if at all.

.http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/does_the_us_lack_sufficient_oil_refining.html

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0406/feature5/fulltext.html

Earlier this month while working outside, I noticed a prevalence of little reddish ants. I’m not saying fire ants necessarily because they are not supposedly indigenous to Michigan, but little reddish ants seem to be everywhere and they bite. I got bit on my left leg. A trail of horribly itchy red bites took about a week or more to get rid of. I put my usual sting cure on them, a wet aspirin. Aspirin is just salicylic acid, so meat tenderizer, and anything else including special shampoos that have salicylic acid usually work to take the sting away. Not so for those bumps.

I live in the country and have been bitten by chiggers, mosquitoes, spiders, fleas, and am really allergic to apple maggot fly bites that many people call black flies. They are those triangular shaped flies with spotted wings. I guess they don’t bite as much as deposit eggs under the skin. Lovely. But, I know when I’ve been bitten by one of those. I feel the pinch, the skin gets hot, and aspirin  works great. Not so with the trail on my left leg. I put all the over the counter stuff on the bites, and the household stuff like ammonia, alcohol, baking soda, vinegar, you name it. I even took tweezers and pulled at what looked like the spot of entry, then applied Neosporin.

Nothing worked. The dots remained and eventually ran their course. After beating up my skin so bad, I started to worry about scars. I can tell where the bites were but they left little trace considering what I did to them and my skin.  I was soooo happy when they were gone.

Last week it was cool outside and I didn’t do much work out there at all so there was little chance for me to get bit right? I thought nothing of pulling on a pair of jeans and sweatshirt I threw off to the side of my nightstand just the day before. I left the house to run errands on Thursday before Memorial weekend. I thought the itch behind my right leg was persistent as I stood at my pharmacy to pick up my renewed prescription for Allegra. I remember scratching there more than once while I was running around. Something in my jeans felt picky.

When I got home and removed my jeans I had a trail on my inner thigh around the back of my knee and down the outside of my lower leg. I was so disgusted knowing what those bites were and how they would itch, be ugly, and not go away all weekend. If that wasn’t bad enough, when I woke up Friday morning and thought I had hives on my back and neck, I found it was yet another trail of ant bites.

I didn’t try any weird treatments this time. I learned my lesson the bites are much like poison ivy, oak, and sumac, all of which I’ve had my fair share. I had poison ivy four times one summer thanks to my cat. They are miserable but I won’t die. My husband made sure I was planning to wear long pants when we went out to eat so as not to look like I had some sort of plague.

So memorial weekend did create quite a memory for me. Now I know what not to do while working in my yard in Michigan. I have biting ants that I didn’t have before. Call them what you will, but I say they are indeed fire ants, and Michigan is getting more and more of them because of climate change. I watched a little black ant bite me and nothing happened. I saw the color of the ants in question. They are reddish and seem to be everywhere. Like a nightmare they are not centrally located around a large mound like ant experts describe. 

When I started to plant my vegetable garden in a pair of shorts and spotted little reddish ants in the dirt, I quickly went inside and returned with long pants, and knee high socks over the pant legs. I also had on a long sleeved shirt that I tucked in. Real cute.  My mom said to put rubber bands around the sleeves of my shirt also. Yard work will not be fun when temperatures soar above 80 degrees and I have to wear this kind of get up. 

One good thought: I know these ants are in Michigan now. And one good cure for the itch is an ice pack.  But my one bad thought outweighs the good. What else is in store for us insect wise in Michigan? What plague of things we didn’t have to worry about before will global climate change bring? The ants are bad enough. I don’t even want to think about the mosquito populations. 

It’s the Friday night of Memorial weekend, and I thought this bit of info was appropriate.

Waste beer will be fueling the flex-fuel vehicles at this summer’s Democratic National Convention compliments of the Molson Coors Brewing Company. 

Molson Coors has been converting wasted beer into alcohol auto fuel since 1996.

Read more about wasted beer turned bio fuel at: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2008/2008-05-23-093.asp.

If you’ve never heard of or viewed the panorama of Utah’s Red Rock Canyon area, do it. It is absolutely beautiful. I saw a travel channel segment on Zion National Park and want to visit there. It looks like a place of God. Our national parks are a real treasure, but the Bush administration doesn’t have much time left, and is trying for land grabs right out of OUR national parks to drill for oil.

If Bush has his way, oil drills will destroy eleven million acres of national park in Utah’s Red Rock Canyon. I’m hearing about these attempted land grabs happening all over the place. What I want to know is what is the sense? We know we’re short of refineries in the U.S. It’s a well known fact every time the U.S. has an oil crisis, large or small, that right away we want to invade new areas and drill for more oil. But it’s of no use unless it’s refined, and we don’t have enough refineries.

And it’s not likely we’ll be seeing brand new refineries in the future because of global warming. And yes even the Bush/Cheney administration admitted quite a while ago in 2002 that humans do indeed cause global warming. The U.S. EPA submitted a 268-page report to the UN back then admitting to and agreeing with scientists that oil refining, fossil fuel power plants, and car emissions are significant causes of global warming.

It’s 2008. What aren’t they getting? I know what the Bush administration is getting–more neglectful of our rights when they simply try to take over public lands for nothing more than filling the pockets of the rich from oil production. Trashing these beautiful areas of our country will not sit well with a court system that has been standing for the environment in a number of cases so far.

According to an Earthjustice report, just recently another federal court judge ruled that: “After years of court battles, Kane County must halt its illegal efforts to create roadways through Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and other wilderness areas,” which is in another area of Utah’s Red Rock Canyon. A U.S. District Judge “ordered the county to take down its signs inviting vehicles into areas closed to protect sensitive streams, wildlife habitat, archeological treasures, and wilderness values.”

This is good news but Dirk Kempthorne, Secy. of Interior, needs to hear from us again, even though he and the Bush administration know that attempts to drill in Utah’s Red Rock Canyon is going to meet with some mighty big resistance since this judge’s ruling.

http://action.wilderness.org/campaign/utahm00/xwnke5k44xx5mjj?

http://www.earthjustice.org/news/press/2008/utah-county-must-stop-illegal-seizure-of-rights-of-way.html

Bush admits humans cause global warming: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2023835.stm

http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/does_the_us_lack_sufficient_oil_refining.html

 I just got a letter from Earthjustice today about the polar bears. It seems that AGAIN the Bush/Cheney administration pulled a fast one with Dirk Kempthorne doing their bidding. They put the polar bears on the endangered list but didn’t provide any real protection for them or their habitat. How convenient for all the oil leaseholders.

There are holes in the judgment for the bears, so that big oil can still feasibly drill in polar bear habitat. You know, like most criminals, if this administration would just take the time to put as much effort in doing something good for our world and everything in it as they do to connive, cheat, steal, and mislead the public to do the exactly the opposite, they would go down in history as one of the better administrations in a time of great global need instead of hitting an all time low.

So according to Earthjustice, (who always catches up with their maneuverings), Representatives Jay Inslee and Maurice Hinchey introduced THE POLAR BEAR SEAS PROTECTION ACT last week to protect polar bear habitats until “essential environmental impact questions are answered and the Dept. of the Interior, [that would be Dirk] clearly designates critical, protected habitats.”

Let Congress know that you want this Act supported, and you want polar bears, their habitat, babies, grandbears, and great grandbears protected. I don’t know about anyone else but I am so sick and tired of chasing down this administration. It is like an evil child, like Damian of “The Omen” that pays little if any attention to ethics, and is manipulative and conniving to the point they just can’t be trusted. When they announce something good for the environment anymore, it looks like I’m not the only one looking around for the real angle.

This act covers some of the holes they’ve purposefully constructed. We’ve got polar bear allies in Congress that just need to hear from us—AGAIN.

Go to Earthjustice to send your message:

 http://action.earthjustice.org/campaign/polarbears_0508

Senator Richardville had this to say about the Great Lakes Compact:

I don’t know what’s more important to Michigan in regard to its natural resources, but also when you’re talking about the identification of Michigan in the Great Lakes region, than its water. And so what we did today was help protect the Great Lakes water in a way unprecedented in the state of Michigan or really in any of the other Midwestern states we are taking a lead because we are saying loud and clear don’t mess with Michigan’s water.

 

Great rhetoric except our own senate is messing with our water. Influenced by a big farm lobby, they are still planning to allow each industry (bottling, manufacturing, and farming) to be able to siphon off up to 2 million gallons per day without any permits as opposed to the Democratic House that wants limits set at 1 million gallons per day. The idea that water used on farms somehow ends up where it started is a misconception. Plenty of the water is taken up by crops that are shipped elsewhere. Most of our entire daily water intake comes right from the food we eat. Even meat has a really high percentage of water, over 50%. On top of this, and depending on how the water is applied, the evaporation rate can be high. That’s why we’re told it’s just a waste of water to use little oscillating water sprinklers on hot summer days.

The senate justifies losing this much water by following the logic of farm lobbyists that think we have no claim to groundwater. What? We have a claim to the Great Lakes that surround us and hit our shores, but not to the water that actually lands on our soil? Groundwater is a major contributor to streams, inland lakes and wetlands, and coastal wetlands. It affects aquatic habitats for plants and animals. Michigan’s fishing industry depends on groundwater flow to streams and lakes.

Our smaller streams and rivers are in trouble if this bill passes. The bill will take 25% of the water from these rivers and streams at the height of the summer season when it’s hot and dry, and when these smaller tributaries are already down to a trickle. There will be bone-dry stream and riverbeds if Senate Bill 860 passes.

The idea that there won’t be any restrictions up to 2 million gallons per day is bad enough, but this bill allows absolutely no recourse from the public if citizens in a particular area object to their water disappearing down the road. According to a Michigan fisherman blogsite, Mackie’s Bait, “All current users will be grandfathered, including the control structures that maintain lake level stream flows in the rivers Muskegon, the Platte, the Huron, the Clinton, and many more.”You will hear talk about Groundwater Assessment Tools, which are in no way a complete science yet in Michigan. Their are thousands of stream segments types in Michigan and according to the same blogsite, only “230 stream flow gages are in operation across the state.” So how is the senate making an actual quantitative assessment for their decision? 

http://mackiesbait.com/blog/files/category-great-lakes.php.

By signing this Great Lakes Compact, eight states and Canadian provinces unite to try to keep our water here, and our Senate fritters it away, caving to Farm Bureau demands. It won’t come back, and we certainly can’t depend on weather to help us any longer. We had better speak up and fast to our senators that we support the House version of a 1 million gallon per day limit because with Senate bill 860 we’re stuck with the results for good, no argument after the fact. Individuals lose to big industry again. 

There was interesting news on BBC World this morning about a study done by scientists in India. The scientists seem to think there is a link between cancer and pesticides. The study centered on farmers in Punjab. The farmers didn’t necessarily suffer a higher rate of cancer as much as a change in DNA that leads to cancer.

Of course a spokesperson for the crop industry trade said that just couldn’t be. They don’t use pesticides enough, and the pesticides in use simply do not cause cancer. The author of the article found that the farmers were indeed spraying all the time, not occasionally.

The scientists were careful to rule out age, alcohol, and smoking as a factor, and still ‘found significant change in the DNA, so the cancer risk is greatly increased when the extent of DNA damage is very high.’

The farmer that claimed he was spraying night and day had cancer already. Yields of new crops have gone down, while population rises. The farmers are doing everything they can to maintain crops until harvest, but it doesn’t look promising for the crops, or the health of an India that is slowly emerging from a third world status, and getting cancer now.

Is it me or does it seem that if the country is poor, it suffers deaths and problems from simple diseases we don’t have? But when a poor country begins moving up in status, using modern methods, bingo, cancer makes an appearance relative to DNA damage.  Hmmmm?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7407707.stm