back to nature...

melodious · August 2006

many of you know how i feel about nature. here's some good news. i have been noticing that land is being consumed because single individuals deem they can rule and demolish habitat. recent heat in my neck of woods made me realize how important it is to stand up for nature....shake a hand shake a hand...

On Monday, the U.S. House of Representatives stood up for the majority of Americans who want to see our beautiful wild lands protected by voting unanimously in favor of legislation to protect California’s majestic North Coast wildlands, the stunning Boulder-White Cloud Mountains of Idaho, and Oregon’s iconic Mount Hood.

California congressman Mike Thompson exhibited great leadership on the House floor as he artfully made the case for the Northern California Coastal Wild Heritage Wilderness Act. This legislation would designate as wilderness the King Range with its spectacular “Lost Coast,” the longest stretch of undeveloped coastline in the continental U.S., along with other beautiful wild lands in Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Mendocino, and Napa Counties. The bill will now be going to the Senate for final review.

I want to give you my sincere thanks for your past action for these special places. Together, we are making a big difference!

If Congressman Mike Thompson is your representative, please thank him for his Herculean efforts for North Coast wilderness by contacting him via his website.

Also, please take a moment and share this good news with your friends and family. Passage of these measures shows that there is reason for hope, and even in times of political polarization, lawmakers can work across party lines to ensure that America’s common ground, our last and best wild places, can be passed down to those who will come after us.

For the Wild,

I am glad to see collective efforts to protect habitat.....;)

melodious · August 2006

A Dying Planet
Chris Flavin
July 24, 2006

Chris Flavin is president of the Worldwatch Institute. Next month, the Institute's World Watch magazine will publish a special issue devoted to the lessons of Hurricane Katrina.

Weather-related disasters like Hurricane Katrina—or the intense heat wave now hitting the United States—are on the rise. The toll of these catastrophes is exacerbated by growing ecological stresses, and the future health of the global economy and the stability of nations will be shaped by our ability to address the huge imbalances in natural systems that now exist. While governments and businesses around the world are beginning to take action to stem the damage, our future demands more aggressive responses.

Earlier this month, we at the Worldwatch Institute released a new report, "Vital Signs 2006-2007," examining trends that point to unprecedented levels of commerce and consumption, set against a backdrop of ecological decline in a world powered overwhelmingly by fossil fuels. In 2005, the average atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration increased 0.6 percent over the high in 2004, representing the largest annual increase ever recorded. The average global temperature reached 14.6 degrees Celsius, making 2005 the warmest year ever recorded on the Earth’s surface.

Our report shows that some 40 percent of the world’s coral reefs have been damaged or destroyed, water withdrawals from rivers and lakes have doubled since 1960, and species are becoming extinct at as much as 1,000 times the natural rate. While ecosystems can be overexploited for long periods of time with little visible effect, many ultimately reach a “tipping point” after which they begin to collapse rapidly, with far-reaching implications for all who depend on them.

Abrupt change was evident in southern Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005. For decades, the flow of the Mississippi River had been altered, the wetlands at its mouth destroyed, and massive amounts of water and oil extracted from beneath the delta. Only an unheeded minority noticed that this gradual destruction of natural systems had left New Orleans as vulnerable as a sword-wielding soldier on today’s high-tech battlefields. Thanks to a combination of human and geological causes, a city that was at sea level when the first settlers arrived in the 18th century had sunk as much as a meter below that level when the hurricane season began in 2005.

The number of people affected by weather-related catastrophes have jumped from an average of 97 million a year in the early 1980s to 260 million a year since 2001. This mounting disaster toll has several causes, including rapid growth in the human population and the even more dramatic growth in human numbers and settlements along coastlines and in other vulnerable areas.

Climate change may be contributing to the rising tide of disasters as well, according to several scientific studies published in 2005. Three of the 10 strongest hurricanes ever recorded occurred last year, and the average intensity of hurricanes is increasing, recent research concludes.

This is not surprising, considering the main “fuel” driving hurricanes is warm water. Temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico were at record-high levels in the summer of 2005, turning Hurricane Katrina in just over 48 hours from a low-level Category 1 hurricane to the strongest Atlantic storm ever recorded. (In September 2005, Hurricanes Wilma and Rita each broke Katrina’s record as the strongest storm ever in that region.)

Yet all of this is merely a foreshadowing of what is to come. The concentration of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas that is driving climate change, has reached its highest level in 600,000 years, and the annual rate of increase in carbon dioxide levels is accelerating, according to atmospheric measurements taken in 2005.

Scientists are beginning to shed their usual reserve in the face of ever-more alarming evidence. In early 2006 James Hansen, the lead climate researcher at NASA, and five other top climate scientists warned that “additional global warming of more than 1 degree C above the level of 2000 will constitute ‘dangerous’ climate change as judged from likely effects on sea level and extermination of species.”

If either the Greenland or the West Antarctic ice sheet were to melt, hundreds of millions of coastal residents would be displaced—effects a thousand times the scale of the New Orleans evacuations. In the Shanghai metropolitan area alone, 40 million people could lose their homes. Large sections of Florida’s peninsula would simply disappear.

If melting ice and catastrophic storms are not enough to bring on an energy transition, the oil market is offering a helping hand. Oil prices in 2005 and early 2006 gyrated wildly, flirting several times with over $70 a barrel, the highest prices in real terms in more than 20 years. The cause is simple: geologists are no longer finding enough oil to replace the 83 million barrels being extracted each day.

However, the reality of a new energy era has begun to sink in. In the United States, sales of large sport utility vehicles have plummeted, while those of hybrid-electric cars have doubled in little more than a year. And in China, government leaders have responded to rising fuel prices by increasing the tax on large vehicles and mandating higher levels of efficiency.

None of this has yet been sufficient to bring energy markets into balance. But signs are now growing that the world is on the verge of an energy revolution. The already-rapid growth of renewable energy industries has accelerated in the past year, with ethanol production increasing 19 percent, wind power capacity 24 percent, and solar cell production 45 percent.

The energy technology growth surge is propelled by scores of new government policies and by surging private investment. And it is attracting major commitments by multinational companies such as General Electric, Siemens, and Sharp, while also becoming one of the hottest fields for venture capitalists, who are financing scores of small start-up firms. Even oil companies are getting into the act: BP and Shell are both investing in solar energy and wind power.

These developments are impressive and are likely to provoke far-reaching changes in world energy markets within the next five years. But the change is still not fast enough to bring on the broader changes in the global economy that could stave off imminent ecological and economic crises. Government leaders and private citizens will have to mobilize in an unprecedented way if we are to have any chance of passing a healthy and secure world on to the next generation.

generated in an email, so i cannot post a link. thank you

know1 · August 2006

When people stand up and start offering to turn their own houses back to nature, then the movement will have more credibility.

melodious · August 2006

eactly a great point, k1, maybe ppl should start trying to maintain original habiatat of terrain in which they live..create our own mini-hanbitats..i don't just mean plant food to eat, but sustain weeds becasue those weeds were probably once used for medicine or nourishment. in my county, i have seen 7 wild-land fires over the p ast month. what will happen to scorched land? another way to save $$$$$ for vintners to plant more grapes and reduce food...sources...more liquor the less nutition and the more that people can be controlled by smoke screen of choice....rather than have a beautiful manicured garden, i have been trying to get plant species that were natural to locale, so that atleast on my little piece of the earth, i can get back to nature....there are so many plants that have value; that we have listended to commericialism and have forgotten how humans survived before the local 7-11 store.....

who cares about programs? who cares about group think? each of us must restructure how we look at our lives nourishment, and what we have and how it was attained.....and i am just sick of reading about horrifics in world...it's a change of pace for me....reading and discussing destruccion feeds its sails....

tybird · August 2006

melodious wrote:

in my county, i have seen 7 wild-land fires over the p ast month. what will happen to scorched land?

Some eco-systems require periodic scorching by fire to sustain themselves....Southern Long Leaf Pines actually require it for the seeds to eventually germinate and to give young plants time to out-grow the competing underbrush. It finally dawnd on modern forestry that periodic burning of forest was nature's way of keeping the Southern Pine Beetle in check. Because of these discoveries, the fed have even scaled back the Smokey the Bear campaign a bit. (In national forests containing long leaf pine, the forestry services iniates controlled burns to maintain the habitat for long leaf and the many other species that depend solely on that tree)

I am also glad to see a movement toward landscaping with native flora. The epidemic of non-native plants is a major problem. The maintenance (or lack thereof) of weedy areas is also a helping hand to the environment. Many birds feed, nest and breed only in such environments.

polaris · August 2006

tybird wrote:

Some eco-systems require periodic scorching by fire to sustain themselves....Southern Long Leaf Pines actually require it for the seeds to eventually germinate and to give young plants time to out-grow the competing underbrush. It finally dawnd on modern forestry that periodic burning of forest was nature's way of keeping the Southern Pine Beetle in check. Because of these discoveries, the fed have even scaled back the Smokey the Bear campaign a bit. (In national forests containing long leaf pine, the forestry services iniates controlled burns to maintain the habitat for long leaf and the many other species that depend solely on that tree)

I am also glad to see a movement toward landscaping with native flora. The epidemic of non-native plants is a major problem. The maintenance (or lack thereof) of weedy areas is also a helping hand to the environment. Many birds feed, nest and breed only in such environments.

true ... but with modern day fire suppression - the fuel is building way above normal - so, what would be a relatively small disturbance turns a lot bigger ...

anyways - the only thing affecting the "credibility" of this movement is the continued ignorance of the people at large ...

tybird · August 2006

polaris wrote:

true ... but with modern day fire suppression - the fuel is building way above normal - so, what would be a relatively small disturbance turns a lot bigger ...

anyways - the only thing affecting the "credibility" of this movement is the continued ignorance of the people at large ...

I can't speak for other places, but here in Alabama the timber is so critical to the economy that the forests are seeing improved maintenance. The forest service does a good job maintaining several of the national forests spread out over the state, especially the previously mentioned long leaf pine areas. I have been to two of the larger long leaf areas in the past year, and imo they are doing a good job there. Both areas are critical habitat for the rare Red-cockaded Woodpecker. A bird that only nests in long leaf pine trees that have been infected with heart disease. I guess you would call that "habitat specific."

polaris · August 2006

tybird wrote:

I can't speak for other places, but here in Alabama the timber is so critical to the economy that the forests are seeing improved maintenance. The forest service does a good job maintaining several of the national forests spread out over the state, especially the previously mentioned long leaf pine areas. I have been to two of the larger long leaf areas in the past year, and imo they are doing a good job there. Both areas are critical habitat for the rare Red-cockaded Woodpecker. A bird that only nests in long leaf pine trees that have been infected with heart disease. I guess you would call that "habitat specific."

ahhh ... the red-cockaded woodpecker ... not so rare among the teenage boy population ...

anyhoo - do they do prescribed burns there?? ..

tybird · August 2006

polaris wrote:

ahhh ... the red-cockaded woodpecker ... not so rare among the teenage boy population ...

anyhoo - do they do prescribed burns there?? ..

I know they do in the long leaf pine areas..............I remember hearing that the feds were discussing some prescribed burns in the outer areas of the Great Smokie Mtns National Park due to Southern Pine Beetle outbreaks there in recent years.

polaris · August 2006

tybird wrote:

I know they do in the long leaf pine areas..............I remember hearing that the feds were discussing some prescribed burns in the outer areas of the Great Smokie Mtns National Park due to Southern Pine Beetle outbreaks there in recent years.

well ... it's always gonna be a work in progress cuz they are trying to simulate natural disturbances but there is not a "natural" pattern to these disturbances ...

they have screwed these things up before - like in the Grand Canyone a few years ago ...

tybird · August 2006

polaris wrote:

well ... it's always gonna be a work in progress cuz they are trying to simulate natural disturbances but there is not a "natural" pattern to these disturbances ...

they have screwed these things up before - like in the Grand Canyone a few years ago ...

true.....at least they are trying to correct past mis-management. We will never manage a forest as well as nature does.

melodious · August 2006

polaris, t-bird, and know1,

you make my heart sing and its not because you or I am a wild thing......!!! eyes are hurting and mind is tired...too tired to make any sense....smoke in area where was once boasted cleanest aire, is affecting surroundings. it looks like we live in l.a. or something....smokey, and humidity in air makes for some really congested breathing.....

but it is true, it is a digger pine or fire pine as it is known locally, I believe that grows at elevations between 500 and 2000 ft...other plants must go through another animals digestive system for seeds to germinate...for instance, when i was taking ecology at local community college, we had to disect owl pellets...wow!!! there was all kinds of goodies in them...at first it the pellets, although sterilized, looked like my beloved kiefd, but as we started digging in with tweezers, we found bones of voles and seeds, etc......so when people say we don't need all this life and we can exist with out life, i beg to question becasue eco systems are well balanced according to life that is being sustained...

*/edit
you can always tell when a fire has passed through these elvevations becasue you will see these scrawnty pine trees similar in size, sprinkled throughout landscape.(pine cones are wrapped tight as opposed to large cones that are spiny) .i guess this year is gonna be fruitful for the fire-pine......it wouldn't bother me if i knew nature had set these fires, but a couple have been ignited by faulty mufflers on cars, and others have been ignited by cigarettes thrown oot of vehicles...this is not creation's will, it is man's inconsideration at display, once again.....

melodious · August 2006

http://article.wn.com/view/2006/08/03/Environment_also_victim_in_war/

and another interesting one that states how china is responsible for pollution on west coast, via jet stream, i suppose.

http://china.org.cn/english/2006/Aug/176887.htm

Hoon · August 2006

On the subject of back to nature and our situation. This has got to be one of the best videos Ive seen!

cannabis man

Go to here: http://blog.myspace.com/raistlinschlichting

Then click on: Great 30 min. Movie to Watch tomorrow night

sourdough · August 2006

Polaris is right. Fire is a natural phenemenon and therefore forests in fire prone areas have evolved to not only withstand fire, but in many cases require it to function properly. Fire suppression has been a horrible policy and has been evident here in BC with massive out of control fires at the expense of many homes and complete forests destroyed in what would have naturally been a low intensity ground fire which would have opened up pine seeds and replenished the nutrients of the soil. We've not really learned from that though and there are no prescribed burns despite the pleas of ecologists.

melodious · August 2006

polaris wrote:

well ... it's always gonna be a work in progress cuz they are trying to simulate natural disturbances but there is not a "natural" pattern to these disturbances ...

they have screwed these things up before - like in the Grand Canyone a few years ago ...

can you elaborate on grand canyon topic? i know not about this....and to reply to sourdough..that's why god created lightning to pass where it does...it's too bad, we don't rise and fall like the tide...i always love to see mother nature in action...if we followed by rules of nature, then there wouldn't bee a need for rules and regulation..we would just be.......of course there would be a bit of violence and killing, but only to sustain natural selection.....

newagehippie · August 2006

I am personally very thankful with the way certain sectors of our government have stepped up and put some companies (although not nearly enough ) in there place about how they can or can't effect the streams of the United States. Some folks may not agree with me, but working as a stream restoration engineer, I have seen things getting better and better....you can't solve all the problems over night, it is a journey.

melodious · August 2006

polaris wrote:

true ... but with modern day fire suppression - the fuel is building way above normal - so, what would be a relatively small disturbance turns a lot bigger ...

anyways - the only thing affecting the "credibility" of this movement is the continued ignorance of the people at large ...

yes, becasue, homes would be abodes as opposed to giant palaces with all the perks...you should see how sad it is here...a land that has sustained life for over 14000 years, is turning into vineyards...and then in the distance, you will always see their main house lit up like it was the northern california power service in action itself...homes are good thing..i describe a home as a place where a person has used natural resources to seek shelter...when we utilize more than we need, then it is a .....'s house...sort of like the house that used to be called mustang ranch....

melodious · August 2006

newagehippie wrote:

I am personally very thankful with the way certain sectors of our government have stepped up and put some companies (although not nearly enough ) in there place about how they can or can't effect the streams of the United States. Some folks may not agree with me, but working as a stream restoration engineer, I have seen things getting better and better....you can't solve all the problems over night, it is a journey.

yep.it is a journey...let us begin....

can you describe some of changes you have seen?????

and do you think that using surrounding hills around a lake basin for vineyards has effect on fish....? we have had an exponential increase of dead fish in clear lake since vineyards have come into landscape...ofcours local officiales will never correlate this occurances with their newly generating power. or could extreme water temps be part of problem as well?//

melodious · August 2006

Hoon wrote:

On the subject of back to nature and our situation. This has got to be one of the best videos Ive seen!

cannabis man

Go to here: http://blog.myspace.com/raistlinschlichting

Then click on: Great 30 min. Movie to Watch tomorrow night

hek of powrful, hoon...it seems like do gooder, goodie two shoes, always got to step in forefront...thanks 4 your work....

newagehippie · August 2006

melodious wrote:

yep.it is a journey...let us begin....

can you describe some of changes you have seen?????

and do you think that using surrounding hills around a lake basin for vineyards has effect on fish....? we have had an exponential increase of dead fish in clear lake since vineyards have come into landscape...ofcours local officiales will never correlate this occurances with their newly generating power. or could extreme water temps be part of problem as well?//

It's tough to say about the vineyards without some kind of sampling analysis. What exactly do they use the vineyards for. If there has been an extreme change in temp of hte water, it would definitly be a good source for the problem.

Some changes I have seen are with the mitigation of stream impacts around the nation. There is a growing awareness, that any and everything you do in a watershed affects the stream in some respect. Each type of affect has different outcomes, and the mitigation is pretty harsh and more efficient than in past years. The USACE has made it very difficult as part of the Clean Water Act to get any 404 permit approved unless it is clear that the changes you make to the stream will make it not only as good as it was, but better. Education is the key, the more people that are educated on how stream physics work, how that relates to the aquatic habitat, and how that is affected by the riparian zone (the area adjacent to the stream that should not be grazed, mowed, or sprayed) and how all these things affect water quality, the better off it will continue to get.

melodious · August 2006

i would love to get more educated, nah, do you have any informational links...ithanks for info....education is allways the answer....ignorannce is not bliss in the long run...damn, i wish i could go back to my secured space in "la la" land.....

my sincerest thanks...

vineyards are for winegrapes, what other reason??? many are not terraced properly, done very cheaply....i have to excuse my self for a while, gotta get some chores done......sitting on internet doens't always get needs taken care of......peace...

your knowledge about water and riparian rites is extremeley valuable........

newagehippie · August 2006

melodious wrote:

i would love to get more educated, nah, do you have any informational links...ithanks for info....education is allways the answer....ignorannce is not bliss in the long run...damn, i wish i could go back to my secured space in "la la" land.....

my sincerest thanks...

vineyards are for winegrapes, what other reason??? many are not terraced properly, done very cheaply....i have to excuse my self for a while, gotta get some chores done......sitting on internet doens't always get needs taken care of......peace...

your knowledge about water and riparian rites is extremeley valuable........

I guess the better question would have been, how is the vineyards managed? Does the run off from strom events travel through the vineyard and drain into the lake? Does the vineyard use large amounts of pesticides? Fertilizer? Did the vineyards replace large sections of wooded areas, or any vegetation that would have help filter the runoff (riparian strip), or remove shade from the lake? How big is the lake? How big is the vineyard? What kind of fish are dying? Is their any other effluent that goes into the lake?? All these things must be studied and noted before any sort of evidence can be made about the vineyard being the source of the problem, it may be part, it may not.

back to nature...

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