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27 Jun 2007 @ 16:42, by skookum. Environment, Ecology
Not exactly the Red Road...but...
[link]
this pic is pretty close to what I saw More >
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 6 Jun 2007 @ 07:05, by redstar. Environment, Ecology
About two years ago, I had the idea of setting up a project that could help the environment by planting fruit trees in the villages that would also provide various benefits to the people of the area and improve water catchment and precipitation patterns.
Despite my efforts, actually implementing something like this on a big scale proved fruitless (possibly too far ahead of its time)and the project has evolved into voluntary tree planting and husbandry, at local orphanges, charity places like the Samaritans and any other places where we feel that they will be cared for and appreciated.
Two years ago, I met a friend from Ireland, Yamikani Alan, who was working at a local orphanage called Yamikani Orphanage, which also has a plot of land that is used as a small farm, and we decided to contribute together to plant some fruit trees on the land.
I have taken pic's of some of the trees with my new digital camera phone which I only recently was given as a gift and has become an invaluable tool for this blog. More >
 
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   30 May 2007 @ 18:45, by feecor. Environment, Ecology
Around the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD-15) in New York a side event took place to propose a SYMPOSION AND CO-LABORATORY to look back 30+ years with some movers at that time and grapple with the challenges of Humanity and Earth. More >
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18 May 2007 @ 04:46, by swanny. Environment, Ecology
May 18, 2007
Friday
Earth
Evening
EFFECTIVE CARING
Well maybe there is money or cost recovery in caring but perhaps only in "reasonable or effective caring."
Effective or reasonable caring thus takes the money and or accounting and expenses process into consideration while haphazard or "magical caring" doesn't usually and as a consequence doesn't get the caring job done or done in an effective or sustainable way. Cause there is not to much point to caring if it doesn't achieve something constructive and sustainable results or outcomes, although sometimes care is necessary just to get some through a rough patch or the day. People for instance with permanent disabilities have a hard time finding the will to live and part of caring for them requires that others give them reason and hope just to brighten there day and make their lot a little sunnier but even these people I have oft found can give the most amazing "acts of grace" in times of their caretakers rare or occasional times of their own struggles.
So I guess then theres educated, experienced, effective and sustainable caring and the other less effective sorts.
True you do not necessary care for the money or profit but you have to accept the realities of covering your own necessities, legalities, overhead, taxes and expenses, even though it could be said to take a bite out of your caring effect and effort but given the fact that the heart in this wisdom pumps back a little blood to itself while it is pumping blood to power and sustain the rest of the body suggests that this is just basic caring physics. How much well I'm not sure I suppose it depends on the total load at different times but may be say 10 or 20 % depending.
So then you have the reality that caring is not easy and it is not cheap or free either but it is still mostly the right thing to do but must be done in a way as to accommodate the realities of modern life to be done in a logical, effective and sustainable way.
So then caring starts with giving but remembering to give a portion of what is given back to ones self. This then is meant to cover the "caring costs" or the cost of caring.
So then if we say we care and we profess to care then in true fashion and in order to care effectively and sustainably we must make and consider the effort to recover the 10 or 20 % caring costs or effective caring costs. Generally such costs can be written off for business and tax purpose as expenses and or as basic personal exemptions.
Darn who would have thought caring could be so complicated but I suppose even caring has some basic standards.
Alfred G. Jonas More >
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 17 May 2007 @ 09:45, by jazzolog. Environment, Ecology
That which man acquires by contemplation he should spend in love.
---Meister Eckhardt
All know that the drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the drop.
---Kabir
Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.
---Mark Twain, August 27, 1897
Mark Twain's famous remark remained funny for about a hundred years. Then we began to wonder. With all our technology, why can't we change the weather in some places if we want to? But at the same time, gloomier forecasts were accumulating that in fact humanity, in that same hundred years of industrialization, was changing not only the weather but the very stability of the planet's current climate arrangement. We've had at least 10 years of raging argument about this, and still we have "scientists," mostly in the pay of corporations who can't find a profit motive yet, who tell us it all is too complicated for people to understand and it's better to do nothing. Most people, in the States anyway, seem to believe there's global warming or whatever we end up calling it, but feel it's too big for them to change any behavior about. I mean, what is one guy supposed to do?
On Tuesday, the government's NASA site called Earth Observatory put up the 2005 photo you see here with this comment:
"Perhaps the most visible sign that Earth’s climate is warming is the gradual shrinking of its glaciers. In North America, the most visited glacier is the Athabasca Glacier, one of six glaciers that spill down the Canadian Rockies from the Columbia Icefield in western Canada. Visitors who return to the glacier a few years after their first visit will notice the change wrought by warming temperatures. In the past 125 years, the Athabasca Glacier has lost half of its volume and receded more than 1.5 kilometers (0.93 miles), leaving hills of rock in its place. Its retreat is visible in this photo, where the glacier’s front edge looms several meters behind the tombstone-like marker that indicates the edge of the ice in 1992. The Athabasca Glacier is not alone in its retreat: Since 1960, glaciers around the world have lost an estimated 8,000 cubic kilometers (1,900 cubic miles) of ice. That is approximately enough ice to cover a two-kilometer-wide (1.2 mile-wide) swath of land between New York and Los Angeles with an ice sheet that is one kilometer (0.62 miles) tall.
"Melting glaciers, dwindling sea ice, rising global temperatures, and rising sea levels. Little by little the evidence is adding up to show that Earth is getting hotter, and scientists are almost certain that people are to blame. A number of activities from burning fossil fuels to farming pump heat-trapping gases—greenhouse gases—into the atmosphere. Once in the atmosphere, these gases stay there for thousands of years, absorbing the heat that comes from the Earth and re-radiating it back to the surface, enhancing Earth’s natural greenhouse effect. Between 1906 and 2006, the average surface temperature of the Earth rose 0.6 to 0.9 degrees Celsius (1.08 to 1.62 degrees Fahrenheit), while greenhouse gas concentrations reached their highest levels in at least the past 650,000 years. Most climate scientists believe that there is a connection and warn that if greenhouse gas emissions continue, temperatures are likely to go up 2 to 6 degrees Celsius (3.6 to 10.8 degrees F) by the end of the 21st century.
"While this might seem like a small change, it will probably lead to big changes in the environment. Warming temperatures will likely lead to more frequent heat waves, bigger storms, including more intense tropical cyclones (hurricanes), and more widespread drought. Since water expands as it heats, and melting glaciers and ice caps have dumped more fresh water into the world’s oceans, sea levels have already started to rise. Higher sea levels lead to more erosion and greater storm damage in coastal areas, many of which are densely populated. As much as 10 percent of the world’s population lives in vulnerable coastal regions that have an elevation less than 10 meters (32 feet) above sea level."
[link]
At that point, in a move not at all typical of this site---and I visit it everyday---the reader is referred to another page where begins a lengthy treatise on Global Warming. It is illustrated with many striking photos, maybe most of them taken from satellites circling the Earth. [link] Well, it's a dot gov site, so where's the policy? Must we wait for the dot coms to sell us stuff to solve it? How organized are all the dot orgs? Is the species finished? More >
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10 May 2007 @ 17:58, by bushman. Environment, Ecology
Right, like they didn't notice Jets laying down thick contrails that spread out and blot out the blue sky till the Sun goes down. Oh gee guys, lets just sneek this in as a normal everyday thing, the kids will never know that 20 years ago jets didn't lay down cloud cover, like we your gov, have always had to do this to protect the planet from solar radiation. But we are just going to say it's a new discovery. Your jokeing, right? Dudes, give it up and force the big corps to break out the high tech clean power. Don't you corperate super rich people think youve made enough money? Rather than clean up your production practices, you all chip in on reflecting sunlight back into space. You put the guilt of global warming onto the citizen that can only make the choice of burning fuel or walking to survive/basic comforts. When the facts show that millitarys use and burn most the fuel produced. Just one plane flight across the country uses more fuel than I could burn in 20 years in my truck plus cooking and heat and lights.
BREAK OUT THE GOOD STUFF, YOU CORPERATE PIGS! lol
"We found that the region affected by this cloud field 'twilight zone' extends to tens of kilometers beyond the identified cloud edge," said Koren. "This suggests that 30 to 60 percent of the atmosphere previously labeled as 'cloud-free' is actually affected by cloud-aerosol processes that reflect solar energy back into space."
Full Story:
[link]
And be sure to check out the related links at the bottom of the page. :} More >
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 5 May 2007 @ 10:44, by jazzolog. Environment, Ecology
Without the bitterest cold that penetrates to the very bone, how can plum blossoms send forth their fragrance to the whole world?
---Basho
Each something is a celebration of the nothing that supports it.
---John Cage
The horse's mind
Blends
So swiftly
Into the hay's mind.
---Fazil Husnu Daglarca
All the artwork is by Richard Ross.
Something like 60 years ago I spent some summertime at YMCA Camp Onyahsa on Lake Chautauqua. It was only several miles from Mom and Dad in Jamestown, New York, but I didn't thrive in the situation. The highlight of the whole experience were a couple nature hikes with a young man named Bob Sundell. The boys all called him "Bugs." He had an intensity about what you could see in Nature and how to look that was contagious. Even other boys who weren't into this whole camping thing that much were completely involved with this guy when he showed up. Off we'd go...and immediately there was a snake or a hawk---"It's a Cooper's hawk!" yelled Harold Smith, who later had to wear a ball and chain in the cafeteria because he kept trying to escape...but "Bugs" said, "Hey, that's great!" when he knew that hawk, and Harold was proud. Or there was a flash in the underbrush...so fast I didn't see what it was: a bright blur. "A redstart," "Bugs" whispered...but it was gone and hiding.
Redstarts became my favorite bird and I always wanted to see another one, even though I hadn't really seen the first one. Maybe it was "Bugs'" influence and the way he engaged us little boys. I don't think I ever saw Bob Sundell again although I often thought to look him up when I was back in my hometown. I think he's lived in Western New York all his life, teaching at a community college there and prominent with the Roger Tory Peterson Institute Ornothological Club (Peterson was from Jamestown too) and the local Audubon Society...especially the annual bird count.
The other day, down by the main creek of 3 that run through our woods, I saw another redstart. My second. It's been 60 years! I suppose if I had really gone out and looked in the meantime---made a project of it---I could have seen a bunch by now. But I don't seem to interact with Nature that way. I'm more an alert-and-see-what-pops-up sort of guy. It may be those 2 redstarts are bookends of my life, and I'd be content with that.
I never minded when neocons snarled "treehugger" at the way I feel about Nature. They've called me a lot of things in the past 40 years, but I think hugging trees is a wonderful experience. I much prefer it to knocking down every one I see. A couple weeks ago I threw a father and son off my land because they'd brought in their 4-wheelers. I did it with so much rage I frightened myself. I don't mind hunters---as long as they let me know---but I find those recreation vehicles obscene today. When I look at my neighbors and how they interact with Nature, I feel doomed. What should I do?
And how much time do we have? Which brings me to the dire task at hand. Before today, there's always been a sense of joy or sharing or work-to-do when I've recommended information to people I know. But now I feel more like it's duty to report this. The June issue of Mother Jones magazine carries a cover story by their environmental reporter Julia Whitty. That cover is here illustrated, and the little card next to that specimen reads "Homo sapiens: -Large brain, opposable thumbs, -Primary cause of Sixth Great Extinction". After the warming and climate change, this is next and more biologists are telling us this everyday. The entire article is online and I believe was picked up by The Independent in the UK, but it's always good to support magazines at the newsstand. I'll warn you Julia begins with a graphic description of death by dehydration...but we need to know how fast it happens and after a certain point no matter how much water they give you, it won't help. More >
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23 Apr 2007 @ 14:06, by redstar. Environment, Ecology
It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.
They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.
The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.
[link]
In a time when concerned activists and ecologists continually point to mankind's progressively selfish destruction of the planet, the thoughtless eradication of countless species, and the decadent waste of vital resources, it would now appear that mobile phone users have shifted into the spotlight of criticism where impending doom is concerned.More specifically, certain scientific quarters are suggesting that the proliferation of the mobile phone could pave the way to huge food shortages caused by failing harvests around the world, reports the Belfast Telegraph.Although April 01 has already passed, the worrying theory offered up by scientists is no prank, and it points out that the levels of radiation emitted by mobile phones could well be a defining influence in the sudden decline of crop-pollinating honeybees. Odd as it may sound, the swift disappearance of the honeybee has spread from the U.S. through to mainland Europe, and is now also said to be having an impact on the United Kingdom.Scientists, armed with compelling evidence, are now implying that the massive amounts of radiation produced by mobile phone use is actually frying the usually razor-sharp navigational skills of the honeybees and preventing them from returning back to their hives.
[link] More >
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22 Apr 2007 @ 07:00, by skookum. Environment, Ecology
At the close of the day... my thoughts creep into my mind when the house is quiet. More >
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20 Apr 2007 @ 21:19, by Unknown. Environment, Ecology
Global Warming is a classic example of a collective delusion that feeds on itself and which is getting alarmingly out of control.
More >
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