Why not permanent wildfire breaks?

Areas that have experienced wildfires > 250 acres – Source: nasa.gov

While traveling through wildfire  country of Northern California and Southern Oregon, including being re-routed 80 miles because of a fire in Lassen Volcanic National Park, I had a thought. Instead of a hell-bent chaotic rush to build temporary wildfire breaks during a fire emergency, why not just construct permanent wildfire breaks to protect populated areas and other important features?

Current wildfire locations – Source: http://www.smokeybear.com/wildfire-map.asp

Considering wildfires are a natural event that are necessary for the healthy regeneration of Western forests, it seems to me that permanent wildfire breaks would allow precious resources to be used more efficiently and effectively.  Those areas outside the firebreaks would be allowed to burn as long as they do not jump the pre-constructed breaks.

Am I missing something with this suggestion? It seems being proactive would be much less costly than having to react to each outbreak of wildfires in remote areas that don’t pose a danger to populated areas.

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A severe shortage of global cooling

With yet another day in triple digits here in Michigan, one has to ask if this prolonged heat wave is linked to global warming and climate change. Personally, I believe it most certainly is.

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However, there are folks out there who sincerely believe global warming is a farce. While I totally disagree with them, perhaps there is one thing we can agree on – there definitely is a severe shortage of global cooling. The charts below shows temperature trends since the mid-19th century and past 1,000 years. Pretty scary stuff, if you ask me.

Source: plantseed.com

Source: plantseed.com

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Post climate change Summer Olympic events

• Sauna cycling
• Climate change denier decathlon (make them run till they drop)
• Heat wave high-jumping
• Swimming in sweat
• Bad ass butt-blistering badminton
• Empty pool concrete crawl
• Track and burnt to a crisp fields
• Diving into melted marshmallows
• Hop, skip, and puddle jump
• Arid aerobics
• Hot as hell hammer throw
• Molten lava shot put (can you say hot potato?)
• Blistering baseball
• Torrid tennis
• Fiery flame fencing
• Hot foot gymnastics
• Desert doom marathon
• Asphalt egg-frying
• Perspiration polo
• Dead tree trunk lifting
• Bermuda short boxing
• Water bottle relay
• Mirage javelin  and discus throw
• Greenhouse gym-gastics
• Wrestling with guilt (everyone qualifies)

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Earth Day 2012 – cherish our “Blue Boat Home”

Happy Earth Day to everyone!

Please take a moment express your gratitude to this lovely “Blue Boat Home” that we all inhabit by doing someone to enhance and care for our planet.

Peace my friends, Rick

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Change in carbon emissions since 2008

Cool graph found on timblr.com. Congratulations to those nations that have reduced their carbon emissions since 2008, including the USA, Japan, Germany, Canada, United Kingdom, Mexico, Italy, France, Spain, and the Ukraine.

Source: tumblr.com

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A simple question…

Source: Tumblr.com

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Simple steps to combat global warming

These are not meant to be a quick and easy solution, but are simple steps that each of us can take to help reduce global warming. They include:

• Ride your bike, walk, or take mass transit more often.
• Use white or light color roofs and pavements to reflect more sunlight away from the  Earth, instead of absorbing it.
• Plant more trees.
• Employ no-till farming.
• Recycle, reduce, and reuse as much as you can.
• Install drought-resistant landscaping,
• Install low-flow toilets and shower heads.
• Start planning now proactively versus reacting later at a higher cost to both public and private entities — research and identify vulnerabilities to the impacts of climate change and then install the proper safeguards.
• And above all, ask the climate question of local officials and businesses — in the age of global warming, what is your community going to look or be like?

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An introduction to generation HOT!

I had the distinct pleasure of attending the opening address by author and journalist Mark Hertsgaard yesterday at a conference focusing on planning for a sustainable future. Mr. Hertgaard captivated the audience of approximately 200 for more than an hour about how his young daughter and all of our children and grandchildren born in the past decade will be the first generation who will be coping with climate change for their entire lives. As he so eloquently said,

“Our children will have to live through this.”

Why is that? Because evidence shows the climate effects from global warming are taking place earlier than expected. Even if every nation could completely halt all factors that contribute to global warming at this very moment, it would still take at least 30 years for our past environmental sins to be processed and filter out. Only then could global warming begin to be reversed.

Early on in his speech Mr. Hertsgaard taught me something I did not know. As an environmentalist, I am ashamed to admit that I did not know that global warming and climate change are not synonymous. In actuality, global warming leads to climate change.

Other key points and quotes Mr. Hertsgaard made included:

“Taxes are part of the price we pay for a civilized and prepared society.”

“When you are not sure [referring to climate change], that’s no guarantee it’s not going to be a problem.”

“Sprawl is the enemy of good preparedness.”

“Dallas and Phoenix and similar cities will suck in the future for not planning ahead.”

and most importantly

“Communities that will be able to best prepare for climate change are those where people trust local governments and believe in working through government to implement climate change action plans.”

After his speech yesterday morning, I am looking forward to reading and writing a review about Mark Hertsgaard’s book titled Hot, Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth.

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Record snowfall doesn’t disprove global warming

I adore Rachel Maddow for her witty, logical takedowns of conservative views. One of my favorite segments of hers aired last year, when record snowfalls had people ridiculing the idea of global warming. She answered with a monologue that included bits such as “When it rains in the desert, that does not disprove the existence of the desert. It’s still a desert, even in the place where it rained.” Or in other words, “Global warming isn’t the opposite of snow.”

It may not seem logical, but global warming actually increases snowfall because there’s more moisture in the air. Physics professor Michio Kaku explains this well in “Monster snowstorms still spell global warming.”

I would love for climate change deniers to be right that there’s nothing to worry about because frankly, the worst-case scenarios are terrifying. The effects we have seen just in the past year are devastating: Record flooding in Pakistan, Australia, Brazil, California. Record snowfall in the northeast United States. Some of the highest temperatures on record. It’s difficult to say with 100 percent certainty that climate change is responsible for all of those weather fluctuations, but it’s the most likely explanation.

So the next time 20 inches of snow falls in your area, don’t blame Mother Nature. Blame all of the cars on the roads and the huge factories and super farms that dominate so much of our landscape.

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