Our World and Everything in It

Now we’re finally getting solid documentation that man is indeed having a great impact on the environment. The NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, found that humans caused nearly ½ of the bad weather we experienced last year. This is not a U.N. conspiracy like some like to call environmentalism. This is that voice on the weather band on your car audio: “This is NOAA weather and hazard” at least that’s what it sounds like. This is our national weather service that did the study spanning 1998 to 2006.

The NOAA ran 42 different tests using data of weather conditions relative to human activity and El Nino’s. The article I read on MSN went into detail how they did it, why it took awhile, and the not so surprising results. At least a growing majority of us are seeing and believing. It’s a pretty good weather page from MSN.

Look at some of the weather reports on there for just this past week:

A cyclone hit the coast of Bangladesh with winds up to 155 mph.  At least 425 people were killed, 1000 fishermen, and hundreds more are unaccounted for. The summer floods there just killed 1000 people.

Vietnam flooded last weekend. 100,000 people have no food. They lost it all, 190,000 houses are submerged. The flooding has been going on for a month with over 250 dead.

A major 7.7 earthquake in Chile “crushed cars, damaged thousands of houses, blocked roads and terrified people for hundreds of miles around Wednesday. Chilean authorities reported at least two deaths and more than 150 injuries.

The quake, which struck at 12:40 p.m., shook the Chilean capital 780 miles to the south of the epicenter, and was felt as far away as the other side of the continent — in Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1,400 miles to the east.”

The next day the northern part of Chile was hit with huge aftershocks of 6.2 and 6.8 injuring about 100 people and killing 2.

Atlanta’s out of water.

This is a wake up call. The longer we wait for policy, the more it’s not going to be pretty. On the NOAA weather site they have listed the major catastrophic weather events going back to 1990. I did the same about 2 years ago, and wouldn’t have now that I see how nicely they’ve compiled it!  I went back to 1990 and printed a list of all catastrophic events per page for each year to 2001. 1990 barely filled a quarter of a page. 2001 was 2 ½ pages printed no double spacing. I don’t think I used NOAA, but another International Weather Service that had the events by year but not in a neat little list.

Check out the NOAA website yourself and scan the climate events. There are many recently and as you scan down to 1990 it dwindles to about 2 or 3 events. That’s a scannable eye opener. Every line scanned represents a catastrophe somewhere in the world where someone died.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20481186/wid/18298287/.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/hazards/index.php.
 

 I’ve read tht Humanities courses are down compared to Business and Marketing in most colleges and think it’s a shame because things like literature can be reassuring. From literature we learn nothing is new under the sun and we get a good view of mankind’s mistakes: wars, plagues, and even abuse of the environment. Enjoy this translated letter to President Pierce by the Indian Chief, Seattle, back in 1855. It speaks for itself. 

     “We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his fathers’ graves, and his children’s birthright is forgotten. The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the red man. But perhaps it is because the red man is a savage and does not understand.
     There is no quiet place in the white man’s cities. No place to hear the leaves of spring or the rustle of insects wings. But perhaps because I am a savage and do not understand, the clatter only seems to insult the ears. The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of the pond, the smell of the wind itself cleansed by a mid-day rain, or scented with the pinon pine. The air is precious to the red man. For all things share the same breath—the beasts, the trees, the man. Like a man dying for many days, he is numb to the stench.
     What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth.
     It matters little where we pass the rest of our days; they are not many. A few more hours, a few more winters, and none of the children of the great tribes that once lived on this earth, or that roamed in small bands in the woods, will be left to mourn the graves of a people once as powerful and hopeful as yours.
     The whites, too, shall pass—perhaps sooner than other tribes. Continue to contaminate your bed, and you will one night suffocate in our own waste. When the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses all tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires, where is the thicket? Gone. Where is the eagle? Gone. And what is it to say goodbye to the swift and the hunt, the end of living and the beginning of survival? We might understand if we knew what was that the white man dreams, what he describes to his children on the long winter nights, what visions he burns into their minds, so they will wish for tomorrow. But we are savages. The white man’s dreams are hidden from us.

Big funding may be around the corner for CO2 capture technology. We’ve got plenty of coal. We’re not going to quit using it. We have coalbuners everywhere. But coal is dirty and part of the pollution problem.  So it looks like we may be going the route of capturing the CO2 emissions from coal burning plants and burying it.

There is new problem. How much CO2 can the earth hold? It seems like a volatile business to me, like a little too much compressed gas and kaboom! But there appears to be big motivation to get moving on this. John Kerry recently introduced a bill that would increase “funding to establish three to five coal-fired power plants with advanced carbon capture technology and three to five large-scale sequestration projects” according to environmental news service.  I guess these would serve as models.
The news also reported: “The legislation authorizes $2.4 billion in annual grants through 2015 for the power plants, as well as $1.6 billion annually through 2015 for the sequestration projects. It also calls on the U.S. Geological Survey, USGS, to complete an assessment of the nation’s geological storage capacity.” There was unanimous agreement between parties on the subcommittee that this is a good bill.
Maybe if we realize our feasible limits for CO2 storage we won’t run into some of the problems we have now. Was there ever a way to measure just how much CO2 our atmosphere would hold without going bust when we created coalburners and failed to offer fuel economy cars? If so, someone goofed.
I realize that we might have to do things like store CO2 in the earth, but it should not be looked at as a solution, only a temporary fix. We need to seriously start experimenting with combinations of renewable energy to relieve the overload on fossil fuels. We may have plenty of coal but strip top mining for example is wreaking too much havoc on habitat and our mountains. Miners are wreckless and the entire surrounding area is destroyed
There should be a happy medium for every living thing if we don’t end up in an all out race by waiting too long to decide whether or not a problem exists. We need to get moving in order to have a smooth transition into a future with renewable, sustainable energy.
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2007/2007-11-08-10.asp.

This should be pretty good. I watched the one on the Science Channel. It answered quite a few of the questions I’ve heard floating around and showcased some of America’s most energy efficient cities like New York. I will be blogging about that soon.

 CNN appears to be more accessible to the general public than the Science Channel but I still think that every major network should keep the environment in our faces until we realize duh, it sustains us, we should take better care of it than stripping it bare of everything and leaving a trail of pollution.

As a quarter million people flee the fires of the Santa Ana winds in southern California, Atlanta’s water supply dwindles and without relief will be gone by January, and floods and tornadoes have steadily pummeled the middle of our country. It’s a little obvious something’s up. Is it global warming and how worse can it get? A lot.

In light of all that’s happening, I searched global warming on the internet and there was a whole new cache of naysayers. Something set them off and I’m thinking it was Al Gore getting the Nobel Prize. I was a little surprised. I checked again today and the opposition has leveled off. Looks to me like the fossil fuel industry turned up the heat against going green. For a few days their bloggers put out a surge of propaganda like: Global warming is a U.N. conspiracy. Watching the news about California tonight, I don’t think so, and when are we going to start thinking about the other guys, especially other Americans?

Global warming affects the entire population of the world and everything in it. Isn’t it wiser to err on the side of caution if things aren’t certain? Besides what’s wrong with cleaning up after ourselves, the outcome of which would be:

The oil money that feeds terrorism will literally dry up.

We get away from fossil fuels for good. No more of the landscape will be destroyed with incessant stripping and drilling.

We could get agriculture involved. Instead of subsidizing them for loss, part of their land will be set aside for wind and solar farms bringing in alternative income.

A new economy gives everyone a chance at new jobs. New investments can be made in the stock market. New people will be able to offer new innovation to sustain us for years to come, creating more jobs.

Disease will dwindle. Clean up the air, earth, and water and possibly ease someone’s suffering.

Low utility bills or none at all. Trying to cut back on energy use, my last combined gas and electric bill fell even more. I paid $103.00 last month for my gas and electric. I’m home all day. The PC is going, TV is on, and an air cleaner. I haven’t taken everything off of standby yet…another TV, Roomba, printer, stereo, DVD player, etc. But by changing my light bulbs, unplugging the old fridge in the garage, adding two overhead fans in the house, regulating my window coverings, and hanging my laundry out on a line, what a difference!

Finally, if we do heat up all at once, chances are our power grids won’t hold up. So we’ll be miserable. Wouldn’t it be better to use that which is going to fry us to cool us? Solar energy could run our a/c units, keep the fridge going, and many other things like boil water.
 

Want to be a real patriot on the 4th of July? As independent citizens we celebrate our right to decide the direction of our country through elected representatives. So one of the most patriotic acts any American citizen can perform, outside of being a soldier, is to let our reps know what we think about anything and everything relative to the environment and “going green.” Take the time to e-mail them that we want to proceed with “going green” in Michigan by creating a brand new economy that is bursting-at-the-seams to happen. Our reps need a push, as there are many bills before them in our state’s congress. The number one bill HB 4667 and SB 444 to impose a moratorium on new and expanding animal factories or CAFO’s needs to pass!

I know I repeat, but for a state with the largest freshwater supply, with so many inland lakes that feed into that water, people looking to move up north in Michigan to enjoy the nature and peace, Michiganders cannot afford to let our natural resources take a back seat to pollution. The economy and moving ahead to “going green” go hand in hand. Advance one advance the other. Mother Nature counts and outside of ending the war, preventing terrorism, the environment should be at the top of our list.  A little reminder, as proof nature counts, and to coincide with this 4th of July celebration, 2007, here is  the opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, 1776:

“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

This beginning to a powerful document that is the essence of this country clearly states “the powers of the earth … the Laws of Nature … of Nature’s God.” There is no denying the respect for nature here, and as being one with God. As patriots we need to see that this respect for nature continues and direct our reps to follow our wishes. The beginning paragraph to the Declaration also addresses “the opinions of mankind” and that mankind “should declare the causes which impel them.” Pollution is a cause which should impel all of us to protect and respect nature always.
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If we can put the flags and banners up, and shoot off fireworks, fireworks, and more fireworks to celebrate what this country is all about, freedom to speak, to affect change, to have a part in the decisions of our country, than we can surely drop our reps a single e-mail. There are all types of issues both federal and state that are important to the environment that are being cut beyond reason. The war funds are coming from somewhere, and all of the loans are not from China so cuts are deep.

The League of Conservation Voters newsletter said that special interests in Washington—Big Coal, Big Auto, Big Oil—have pushed for new provisions to be included in the most recent House Energy legislation that takes back the Supreme Court’s ruling that the EPA has the authority to regulate global warming pollution. It will block 12 states or more from adopting clean car standards. It also lowers the auto mileage standards that Bush proposes. The Supreme Court ruled on this already. It was a victory for the environment.  But already the opposition has plans to repeal it. It looks to me more like the federal government seeks to take power away from the states.

In our state of Michigan there is a partisan stranglehold about policy to make up for the huge deficit. In the course of cutting back spending, “funding for natural resource protection has already been cut to the bone, which means a severe decrease in environmental law enforcement” as the Sierra Club reports. After reading the opening paragraph to our Declaration of Independence and comparing it to what is happening in our own state, makes me wonder what country we’re in?
 

Operation Spotlight is a new move by the League of Conservation Voters to expose the politicians who accept the most money from special interest groups (lobbyists). It’s a timely program, since congress has a new bill in front of them now, to limit lobbyist donations. This bill to restrict lobbyists may or may not pass in Congress. Regardless, the LCV hopes to defeat the candidates that do the bidding of rich lobby groups through Operation Spotlight. What a good name for the program. What do you think about lobbyists? Remember there are lobbyists that want good things like more research and funding for children’s diseases, humane organizations for animals. Lobbyists are not all bad. Do we want to get rid of all of them, or some of them, or put restrictions on what is allowed?

LCV plans to let senators and reps know that Operation Spotlight will be paying attention to who contributes what, to whose campaign, relative to blocking efforts to curb global warming, and allowing pollution to continue. They will publish the information. This is a good thing. The first Operation Spotlight report will be out in the coming weeks. But LCV has been keeping track all along, and I was a little surprised at the figures from 2006. The big contributors against efforts to help the environment are:

       Electric utilities, which donated $15 million;
       Oil and coal industries that padded coffers with $21 million;
       Transportation, such as car companies, that offered up almost $40 million.

Over all, since the 2000 election corporate polluters contributed $586 million dollars to candidates in congress! That’s some mighty big opposition to going green. My biggest surprise was the contribution by car companies. Aren’t they supposed to be in financial trouble ? No wonder we can’t come up with cars that get more than 35 miles per gallon. Fuel efficiency like that gets put off until 2020. Thirteen years is a pretty steep wait, considering we are supposed to get moving in the next 10 years to try to squelch some of the bad weather and rising waters that are already turning up. It was clearly stated, at least I got it, that even though we act quickly; we are still going to see some pretty bad stuff. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t wanna.

 I just read my National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) newsletter and thought I’d pass on some of the latest news. There is a new plan—again—to sell off some of our national parks. It seems the U.S. is shy of money, (the war), and this is one of the ways this administration plans on making up some of the deficit. So why not sell off some of our national heritage, and to who? … the wealthy of course. Some prime habitat in Greater Yellowstone for bears, elk, and wolves, part of the Greater Cumberland Plateau, all in all 270,000 acres of national forests over 35 states may be up for grabs.
 
     If we sell off all this forest land, continue to have the forest fires that seem to increase every year, strip mine for coal, extract oil from tar sands which also strip mines large swaths of land, and continue the urban sprawl, what do we expect will happen? There is an awful lot going on behind the scenes that everyone assumes has cleared up. Well guess again. The war in Iraq overshadows much.The arctic drilling is not a dead issue either.
 
The Bush administration is eyeballing the Beaufort Sea, a year round polar bear habitat just offshore of Alaska’s Arctic national Wildlife Refuge and Western Arctic Reserve. Does reserve mean anything anymore? I thought we were supposed to be getting past the idea of oil?  Not going to happen until we get an oilman out of office. We have a president that says we need to get away from our dependence on oil and the drills are literally poised to ruin pieces of pristine land everywhere.

Take the tar sands oil development, which is supposed to be one of the most destructive mining techniques of all. The process involves strip-mining large swaths of land and Bush is prepared to offer tens of thousands of acres of it near Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument and Glen Canyon wilderness. The terrain would be irreversibly altered forever.

To keep practice up for war games, the Navy plans on blasting thousands of square nautical miles with what is described as “ear-splitting” mid-frequency sound on sea mammals who are trying to survive in their ocean habitat that we are polluting with mercury and garbage from cruise ships to freighters. Coal mining threatens to strip the Rocky Mountain habitat of grizzly bears by taking 40 million tons of coal out of the Flathead River Valley by the Cline Mining Corporation. I’ve talked about the abuse of land from coal mining where mountaintops are literally removed. The plan will establish waste dumps and settling ponds right on top of the headwaters of the Flathead River in BC. It may be happening in Canada but the trouble is that it threatens wildlife downstream in Montana’s Glacier National Park and poisons the watershed region of the Flathead River.

And finally, the federal government threatens the revived wolf population again. I guess they think the wolves were only useful during the last election for scare tactics about terrorism and continuing the war that no one seems to want any longer. First we let wolves populate, and then brutally kill them off. To me it smells of canned hunts. There is no reason to attack wolves en masse this way. It was seen on TV that wolves are territorial. When a recording of another pack is aired via loudspeaker the experiment worked. Wolves that were predatory in that particular area stayed away. There are many humane ways to do business that this big moral society bypasses. If you really care about the wolves contact Governor “Butch” Otter of Idaho and tell him what you think of him. He wants to take the first shot at the wolves and to eliminate at least 75 percent of them. Ditto for the wolves in Yellowstone Park. Remember that big battle to allow them to come back. We did, and now those in power want to kill them off again. See what I mean about playing games with their lives. They were used for the last election, and now abused by the users.

I think we’re all feeling a little abused these days.

Eminent Domain is a well-known issue in Monroe County. Signs “No Eminent Domain” sprouted across lawns in Erie against the railroad. Michigan is one of nine states with ballot issues in the recent election that resulted in restricting eminent domain. We know the problem well. Eminent domain is a landowner’s worst nightmare next to Mother Nature. It strips a citizen of property rights in a blink much like a tornado that is seen and gone.

Frank Eathorne, a 3^rd generation rancher in Wyoming voted for Bush-Cheney and didn’t mind the big oil and gas boom that brought jobs and

royalties to the state. He figured it couldn’t be all that bad, until it hit home. Frank thought he owned 32,000 acres. Turns out he only owns the grass on top. The federal government owns most of what is beneath. Washington has no ethics where oil is concerned. Frank built a new home in a far corner of his property to get away from the noise of 40 oil wells, 80 miles of pipeline, and 3 railroad tracks.

Why should we care? Frank voted for the environmental grinches. The federal government is doing this everywhere though. In a year-end push, the Republican Congress is going to hit the floor in support of anything big energy. Our national parks and forests are up for grabs. “The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Forest Service have been selling long term leases of wild, pristine public lands to oil and gas companies determined to lock them up for development for decades,” Earthjustice Newsletter Dec. 2006. The federal government wants to poke around our public lands without review of consequences for the environment. Some examples:

• The BLM tried to lease the remaining 389,000 acres of previously protected land in Alaska. The entire Arctic coast in Alaska outside the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would belong to oil and gas developers.

• Clinton’s Roadless Area Conservation Rule was tossed. It protected 50 million acres of wild national forests and grasslands from building roads, logging, and development. It was a powerful tool against developers. A federal court judge has only recently reinstated it.
• The Bush Administration has habitually tried to permit drilling in the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming
• The BLM is trying to open 90% of New Mexico’s Chihuahua Desert to drilling. It is a biologically diverse desert ecosystem and an energy developer’s land grab.
• In 2005, the Forest Service opened up 52,075 acres to new drilling in forests.

Closer to home, the AuSable River’s South Branch area is being threatened by Savoy Energy. Michigan’s Dept. of Environmental Quality approved a permit to drill near the secluded spot. The state owned 5,300 acres of wilderness surrounds miles of the AuSable’s South Branch. It is the Mason Tract and one of the greatest trout fishing areas in the lower 48. George W. Mason, an auto industrialist donated the land to preserve the experience of the river and the wild. The state owns the top land. The federal government own the subsurface mineral rights. This area is in trouble. A road was started, destroying the old forest area of the south branch. Earthjustice has halted the progress for now.

How do the feds get around drilling in areas that are protected? It’s called slant drilling. If they can’t legitimately let big energy drill somewhere, they lease the surrounding land to set up slant drills. They drill at an angle into the ground beneath the protected land. Los Padres National Forest has 20 such drills around one end of its perimeter. Some of the drills are positioned near sensitive habitats. One is near Lake Piru already listed as impaired by the EPA. It’s not just about a couple of drills.  As Frank found, there are also deep wells and miles of pipeline. Expanded oil drilling in Los Padres will also emit 12,179 more pounds of air pollutants per day.

This is an awful lot of activity on behalf of fossil fuels by the federal government. Aren’t we  repositioning ourselves for new sources of renewable energy? It looks like we’re hearing the old “fork tongue” again.  We need to voice our concerns to congress and push for alternatives. We need incentives for companies that think green. We need to stop the demand for fossil fuels that gives the wrong people power.  Our land has been high-jacked. The song says “This land is your land, this land is my land.” And I want it back!

 
 
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     There are all types of casualties we endure on a daily basis especially during times of war. Losing someone or something precious can happen moment to moment. And although our lives are upset to the point we don’t think we’ll recover, we do. I just wonder how many people realize the biggest casualty of all is happening in small increments every day that none of us will recover from if we don’t turn it around.

Our environment is taking hit after hit, and many of us still do not know that when it’s stated we have 10 years to do something, it does not mean we have ten years before we start doing something. It means if we do not start today toward reversing global warming by controlling our pollution it will be irreversible within 10 years. It’s a good idea to control pollution to begin with. By all the water bottles I see these days, I realize that everyone does get the idea that maybe our water isn’t all that clean, and probably our air.  What I also see by those same water bottles is that we really aren’t getting it at all. Where do you think those plastic bottles go? If your community recycles that’s great. If you recycle on your own, then bless you, but unfortunately only 70% of all our garbage is recycled. Those bottles end up in landfills of which there are approximately 6000 in the U.S.  Plastic takes around 500 years to decompose. Do we love our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren? Then what are we doing?

The intent of this news blog is to be in your face about our world because we’re all in this together, and if you or my other neighbors don’t jump in and help, the experience of living won’t be what we once knew. Right now it is what it is “An Inconvenient Truth” as Al Gore aptly named it. Many of our little conveniences in life may have to be abandoned to save our earth, save ourselves. It’s a rude awakening, but the sooner we snap out of it, the sooner we turn it around. No more burying our heads in the sand or waiting for “they or them” to do something. They or them is us, all of us.

Anyone who has any questions about anything environmental feel free to blog. If you know something you don’t think the rest of us are aware of blog it. If you don’t quite believe in global warming yet let us know why. Anyone who has already adapted his or her lifestyle differently to save on anything let us know how, so we might adapt. One idea becomes a ripple that becomes a wave and the whole community benefits.

None of us are perfect angels about the environment. I still drive a gas hog, although I’m looking at all hybrids and beseeching Ford to revive the cobra body style with an electric/ethanol motor. I’m a baby boomer that wants a hybrid sports car. Any baby boomers out there want to weigh in on that? Doesn’t an environmentally friendly sports car sound good? My tip to any other gas hog drivers out there, consolidate your running around. I’m down to 2 days per week. Group up and ride to work together. Quit running your kids around and enjoy family nights. Quitting our rat race can help the environment.