(no subject)
Studying the inner workings of my dead, departing Toyota Tercel makes me think of the innards of a human body. Each individual system and the relative simplicity of them gives way to such little details that can go wrong. Everything in there seems frail but does fine, almost always, going down rocky road #451 in the back of the present day frontier. Where it boggles my mind is the rubber band of ecology: A collection of living beings are set in balance in a region and can sustain themselves while there. Things go a little screwy due to an irregular influence and bounce back with a couple decades, save the more extreme wildfire. The band breaks under too much pressure, as is becoming the case with global climate change.
After the worst wildfire season in Alaskan history, a record-breaking hurricane year, 40% depletion of the thickness of the arctic ice cap, the flooding of hundreds of tropical beach villages, and irrefutable evidence of every scientific tenet of climate change being met, we still have carbon emissions unparalleled, by hundreds of multiples, in any pre-industrial revolution times. The arctic temperatures of the 2004 summer were not predicted until the year 2060. Most importantly, climate change means more than warmer temperatures. Increased droughts, hurricanes, and floods are part of the question as the natural chemistry of Earth gets knocked further off kilter and another unignorably fulfilled part of the equation. Recent climate events are but a fraction of what can happen within my lifetime. However, how much can we curb the emissions created by creation of energy when India and China, along with small countries on all sides of teh planet, have emerging middle classes, have growing populations of yuppies, and want to have 'stuff'. One day there may be a comparable vehicle per capita rate in India, with four times the population of the United States. When you hear the chairman of Shell Oil say, on BBC television, that carbon emissions are the planet's biggest worries, are you one to argue? Where can the spin come from in that situation?
On the Navajo Nation there is a place named Black Mesa, a beautiful plateau of long horizons and juniper-covered craggy canyons. Other than the Glen Canyon dam, this is the site of the most hated environmental catastrophe in the Southwest, a region known for outliving the boundaries set by its own resources. Black Mesa Coal Mine has operated for decades, strip mining a huge area of the fragile Painted Desert, taking water from the Navajo aquifer (a pristine and otherwise untapped reserve of water in an otherwise completely arid zone), creating slurry with the mined coal, and throwing it into a pipeline that travels 350 miles to the Mojave Generating Station near Las Vegas. It was announced last week that both operations are being permanently shut down. Just a couple months ago it was also announced that 15 miles east of Flagstaff will be the site of Arizona's first wind farm. It will be many years before the project is completed and the thousands of acres used create a small amount of power that is little of a replacement for the coal, oil, and gas powered generating stations of today. Even if we have the resources to switch all energy production of today to renewable solutions, we can't do it fast enough to avoid irreversible climate change. The only way to produce the energy everyone desires without the emissions of current means of energy production is through nuclear plants.
100,000 people died due to the meltdown at Chernobyl. Nuclear catastrophes may never be fully avoidable, but the promise nuclear energy holds may be but worthy sacrifices, tiny little car crashes, in comparison to the risks we face now. The chief scientist of the UK has stated that "It is my belief that global warming is the biggest problem that is facing us. Bigger even than the threat of global terrorism."
I need to go back to school. I just spent hours debating with a staunch Flagstaff native about:
1. Activism: Always bad no matter what? What if its a good cause? No, like something you support personally.
2. Should women not be considered equal just because most feminists bother someone personally?
3. Global warming has no factual basis because of a certain liberal media?
4. Coffee vs tea- This is the one that became heated, ironically
Shout-outs:
Bryan: Alaska is the fastest warming place on the planet... and Black Mesa you may remember from our trip down 100 miles of gravel roads after getting buffalo wings in Tuba City (You saw the pipeline and slurrying station, a huge slide coming off a mesa to a large silo-type building). There were signs warning of trespassing dangers and clearance required down every road to the side as we left the pavement while it was still light out.
Barb: Tips on educating others about nuclear energy? Anything I'm mistaken on? Its possible we're having a lecture event soon at the tea house on this manner by an NAU professor... I'm very intrigued
After the worst wildfire season in Alaskan history, a record-breaking hurricane year, 40% depletion of the thickness of the arctic ice cap, the flooding of hundreds of tropical beach villages, and irrefutable evidence of every scientific tenet of climate change being met, we still have carbon emissions unparalleled, by hundreds of multiples, in any pre-industrial revolution times. The arctic temperatures of the 2004 summer were not predicted until the year 2060. Most importantly, climate change means more than warmer temperatures. Increased droughts, hurricanes, and floods are part of the question as the natural chemistry of Earth gets knocked further off kilter and another unignorably fulfilled part of the equation. Recent climate events are but a fraction of what can happen within my lifetime. However, how much can we curb the emissions created by creation of energy when India and China, along with small countries on all sides of teh planet, have emerging middle classes, have growing populations of yuppies, and want to have 'stuff'. One day there may be a comparable vehicle per capita rate in India, with four times the population of the United States. When you hear the chairman of Shell Oil say, on BBC television, that carbon emissions are the planet's biggest worries, are you one to argue? Where can the spin come from in that situation?
On the Navajo Nation there is a place named Black Mesa, a beautiful plateau of long horizons and juniper-covered craggy canyons. Other than the Glen Canyon dam, this is the site of the most hated environmental catastrophe in the Southwest, a region known for outliving the boundaries set by its own resources. Black Mesa Coal Mine has operated for decades, strip mining a huge area of the fragile Painted Desert, taking water from the Navajo aquifer (a pristine and otherwise untapped reserve of water in an otherwise completely arid zone), creating slurry with the mined coal, and throwing it into a pipeline that travels 350 miles to the Mojave Generating Station near Las Vegas. It was announced last week that both operations are being permanently shut down. Just a couple months ago it was also announced that 15 miles east of Flagstaff will be the site of Arizona's first wind farm. It will be many years before the project is completed and the thousands of acres used create a small amount of power that is little of a replacement for the coal, oil, and gas powered generating stations of today. Even if we have the resources to switch all energy production of today to renewable solutions, we can't do it fast enough to avoid irreversible climate change. The only way to produce the energy everyone desires without the emissions of current means of energy production is through nuclear plants.
100,000 people died due to the meltdown at Chernobyl. Nuclear catastrophes may never be fully avoidable, but the promise nuclear energy holds may be but worthy sacrifices, tiny little car crashes, in comparison to the risks we face now. The chief scientist of the UK has stated that "It is my belief that global warming is the biggest problem that is facing us. Bigger even than the threat of global terrorism."
I need to go back to school. I just spent hours debating with a staunch Flagstaff native about:
1. Activism: Always bad no matter what? What if its a good cause? No, like something you support personally.
2. Should women not be considered equal just because most feminists bother someone personally?
3. Global warming has no factual basis because of a certain liberal media?
4. Coffee vs tea- This is the one that became heated, ironically
Shout-outs:
Bryan: Alaska is the fastest warming place on the planet... and Black Mesa you may remember from our trip down 100 miles of gravel roads after getting buffalo wings in Tuba City (You saw the pipeline and slurrying station, a huge slide coming off a mesa to a large silo-type building). There were signs warning of trespassing dangers and clearance required down every road to the side as we left the pavement while it was still light out.
Barb: Tips on educating others about nuclear energy? Anything I'm mistaken on? Its possible we're having a lecture event soon at the tea house on this manner by an NAU professor... I'm very intrigued