Tag Archives: Global Warming

Earth Day blues and smiles

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earthOkay, so it’s Earth Day, again, and you have done nothing to sustain our wonderful blue and green marble.

 
You’ve got the blues because oil is still the dominant energy source, along with the other fossil fuel, coal, polluting the land, the air, the water, and you see no cure in the near future. You just bought a gun because, well, because. Now you might have found a use for it: thy own cranium. You have children whom you know will not be able to enjoy the wilderness as you have, a grandson who will likely be mining coal from someplace in the Yukon for a job, or fracking in the Arctic, once the polar ice cap melts a bit more. Plenty of energy jobs. Yup. But they might not be what you thought. Ask these girls in North Dakota.
http://www.onearth.org/article/growing-pains-scenes-from-the-north-dakota-drilling-boom

Hell, I was so down I wrote a book, you might have heard–or seen if you happen to look at other parts of the website–about how we can cure global warming by getting rid of all the oil; do it in two weeks and we have to go green. It’s actually pretty funny. Think it can’t be done? Well, think again. If nothing else, my twelve years of post-high school education and thirty years as a physician have taught me a few things about research. Yeah, there is someone out there who can likely pull it off if they have a little help.

Now for the bright spots. Time to turn that frown upside down. There are enough of the non-fossil fuels that if we started right now, developed the heck out of them, we would never have to raise the global temperature another two tenths Celcius in the next five years. Don’t believe me. Watch this video. It takes a little time, but well worth it. The other thing is to buy the book, Post Carbon Reader, or check it out of your library and you will be amazed. You will be able to take that gun back, throw out the Zoloft, actually sleep for eight hours and wake up happy you are alive. The Earth can be saved.

Now, go out and replace your lawn with rocks and a few low-water plants, or start biking to work or school a few days each week, or mow your lawn with a push mower, or make sure you never, ever get plastic bags at the supermarket, or … there are so many things, pick two or three and just do them. It’s not the big things. Everyone needs to do a few little things and a lot will happen. You’ll see. Please try.
Thanks.

Milt

Who Would You Be?

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I guess we all, at one time or other, maybe every minute, want to be someone else. You don’t like your body, your mind, your job, your very being. Maybe you could be as svelte and smooth-skinned as J Lo,

as rich as Buffet (Jimmy or Warren-who cares? Well, I like Jimmy),

as witty as Jimmy Kimmel (especially with kids)

have a job that you love, and you were always happy. Or maybe you just want a pet bullfrog that tap dances on ice. Oh yeah, in the middle of winter at Vail. There are ways, you know. You just have to be persistent. So I’m told.

 

I always wanted to write stories that people loved. I wanted them to get away from this difficult, sometimes depressing world, and have fun, while at the same time learning something new. Then I had an eighth-grade English teacher who told me I could not write, and would never grasp the English language, or something to that effect. So what do I do? There was a favorite class at Annapolis called Underwater Basket Weaving. No, I didn’t take that, though it sounded tempting. I took Creative Writing. Yeah, you can guess how many guys were in that class. In a trade school for boat drivers—not many. Who wants to spend time writing a journal when you have to study for EEE exam? That’s when the stories started, though. And they are still going.

 

You can become a different person, change your brain power, your body, your job, even save the world—in fiction. There’s a lot of serious shit that goes down every day, every place, so why not escape. At least for a few hours. It’s not like you’re going to end global warming or start world war three or something. Then again . . .

Dan’s War is an award-winning techno-thriller with literary heart, about the end of world oil . . . in two weeks. Cajuns and one lone computer geek try to save us against an ecofanatic and his army. There’s love between a geek and a hottie Marine, a father trying to save a son, nanobacteria eating oil, and weird characters that will take you on an adventure to far away lands, and keep you turning pages wanting more.

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Okay, so I fish.

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Since my first memory, thanks to my dad and his love, fishing has been a part of me. And recently, finally, after years of hoping, I made it to Alaska.

Alaska from Alaska Air, mountains, glaciers, rivers. Almost to Anchorage.

Why fish? Because I love wilderness, and fishing takes me there. And over twenty years ago I decided to only fly fish. I’ve fished Scottish highlands, Colorado lakes and rivers over 11,000 feet high, Yellowstone rivers, and the Gulf of Mexico with no other boats in sight. Alaska may be the last great wilderness for me to see, right now. Where we went, you have to fly in on bush planes called Beavers.

 

Unfortunately, each place I also saw the result of climate change, all of which made me agree with Obama and disagree with Romney: more and stronger hurricanes in 2004/5–Hurricane Ivan drove us out of Pensacola; millions of acres of beetle-killed trees in the Rockies and this year over 8 million acres of forest fires, the High Park Fire visible from our back yard; and in Alaska, fewer salmon. They are moving north to rivers that used to be iced-over. They like it cold. I guess Yemen has salmon, too. I prefer the scenery in Alaska.

Most of the time I have fished by myself. There is something about being alone on a boat in the Gulf, or wading in a mountain stream. The quiet sooths and my thoughts wander wherever they want, mostly writing stories. I love it. Though I have to say, fishing with friends or family has its own draw. Especially in wild Alaska, where brown bears (Grizzlies–big ones)have never attacked three or more people. That’s what my two other friends on this trip kept telling me. Now, in Colorado, where I live, alone is fine. I can be on two rivers in a half hour, fish on. Fish on!

Alaska started out landing in a small lake and putting together the pontoon boat.

Then we floated down this river, 31 miles,

except the first day we dragged the boat a lot. It was shallow. We were tired by the end of the day.

But, way before the end of the day we started catching fish. Ken with a small grayling.

I don’t have all the pictures. The first day I tripped coming out of the tent and did a drop-and-roll . . .  right onto my camera. Toast. The disc compilation of photos from my friends cameras is coming, I’m told. Later.

At any rate, once we started catching fish, it never ended. The last day we fished, I think we caught a hundred fish, maybe apiece. I was very lucky. I caught a tiny variety: many, many, many, manymanymany grayling over 20 inches, and then equally as many, okay, more, moremoremore Dolly Varden (kinda like big brook trout), one 26 inches; and few and far between, salmon. I caught a few silver salmon, one big rainbow, a few pink salmon, and more Dolly Varden.

We caught them on . . . basically anything we threw—pegged beads, dry flies, mice, huge streamers, small streamers, nymphs, foam hoppers.

Then the rains and wind came, and I just wanted to be warm.

We crushed the barbs on the hooks, but in no way shape or form did we remove barbs from our obnoxious trash-talk to each other. If you taped it, you would think we hated each other. Not even close. The greatest thing was the other guys, and me I hope, helped out as much as we dissed each other. That is the measure of friendship. You dish it out, and you make sure there is a big bowl and a clean spoon to eat it.

Thanks, Scott and Ken. It was amazing. Now can I please have those photos?

Milt

I was sad that day

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Fern Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park

It was about four weeks ago. A beautiful day. I camped with my son at a high mountain lake, after a hike the day before that tested my knees and stamina. The morning brought glittering spider webs, round and symmetric, new as the first rays of sun that illuminated their wonder. Why did a spider make them so beautiful, their rungs so perfectly even, the concentric circles almost exact enough to have required a compass to trace them? An osprey glided over the lake, its chirping call common to most Americans, except in this mountain haven. An osprey at 9500 feet. Cool!

Golden fish with blood red lower jaws cruised the shallows, searching for breakfast—greenback cutthroat trout, nervous at any moving shadow, instinctively aware of osprey, or other predators. That would be me, a fly fisherman. I caught a few, hungry gulpers that pounced on the fly the instant it hit the water. Quick release and back they cruised, wiser to subsequent flies, but still strong, vibrant in color, an integral part of the beauty. High mountain peaks surrounded me, a few white valleys only small remnants of glaciers of old, before the world warmed. Glacier melt cascaded in rivulets down the mountain cliffs, filling the lake, gaining in strength down the valley, and finally quenching our thirst in the Front Range. 85% of the water we get comes from the mountain runoff.

At that thought, I was sad. The Cache la Poudre River was clean until the High Park Fire seared and glazed the earth so that water no longer seeped in, but flooded into the Cache la Poudre River, making it as black as soot. What caused the fires? Maybe it was too hot with too little rain for too long. Ya think?

 

Up here, miles from the High Park Fire, half the pine trees are rust-colored, dead to a beetle that is another harbinger of warming; not cold enough in winter now to kill them, so they kill the forest.

High Park Fire sunset from our back yard

Cache la Poudre River runs black with High Park fire soot after flooding rains

 

I was sad because my son who loves this wilderness as much as any, may never have his own children see these things. If the globe keeps warming, the snow will melt sooner, more fires will engulf the beetle-killed forests and the beauty, the world I’ve known, will be gone. Another fire may make all the biggest ones in the past piddling things. We could lose the fish, the moose and the coyotes.

All because humans, that would be us, must have energy to build, to drive, to heat, to seemingly survive in this twenty-first century. Yet, my son and I camped without electricity, without heat or AC, and still lived, though much more simply for a few days.

It was beautiful but I could not wait to drive my car as quickly as possible down the valley next to that glacier-fed river to get back to my comfortable bed, to be cooled by AC and enthralled by a movie on TV. That weekend I cut my lawn with a power mower. This winter I will stay comfortable, heating my home enough to roam the rooms in shirt sleeves.

Can we actually live well for more than a few days without all these things we deem necessary?

For my sons, daughters, and grandson’s sake I hope so. All those working on solar power, wind power, cars that run on natural gas or anything that leaves little carbon dioxide behind, keep trying. It’s worth it. I don’t really want a terrorist to make it happen like in Dan’s War. But if we keep it up, it could.

Milt

Are there Miracles Anymore?

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You don’t have to look far. Even the mirror will do. But, you can go to your local hospital nursery, or talk to any new parent. Human beings are born every day. If you don’t believe that’s a miracle, just think about it.

Somehow two random people in a world of seven billion find love and create a new person. If the mom is in Iran or Syria or other hot spot where wars revolve around oil ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_military_conflicts ), to have that great little miracle she must simply avoid starvation or getting shot.

She could be having fun gardening in the good old USA, in Colorado, and smoke from a drought-induced forest fire invades her back yard for days causing coughing attacks that lead her to premature labor. Maybe she lives in New Orleans and is swept away by the next hurricane, or develops typhoid fever from poor water supply.

These could all be due to energy problems, global warming. Or not. What do you think? The next link may take a long time to review, but keep it. Lots of good stuff.  http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071116112401AArGExE

Okay, so about a mile away on my farm, an oil company fracked a well. No big deal, right? Hey, I own the mineral rights on that land. In fact, if I didn’t get the money from the oil company for fracking, my pregnant wife would be eating rice and ham, and we would have to forget going to the doctor since I couldn’t afford health insurance anymore. I heard that contamination of the water supply by fracking is very rare, so why not? My wife can get that great medical care, she can eat good nutritious foods, and we’re on our way to a healthy baby boy, or so says the ultrasound. And, to top it all off, how great can it be that I’m doing the patriotic thing for my country, making us energy independent. Right?

Joe, my neighbor invited us over for spaghetti last night. That’s not what the MF wanted, though. He flicked his Bic lighter and the water flamed on from his faucet. He’s blaming me and my fracking well. Hmm. Could the water be contaminated from fracking?

Okay, so forget about babies for a minute. I am, by virtue of my middle class USA standing, in the top 1%, economically, of human beings in the world. My son graduated from high school. He’s done well. He’s used those one-hundred billion neurons in his brain to rank him in the top 10% of the top 1% of humans in the world. I wanted him to go to college, but he wanted to serve his country. Why not? He goes to Iraq. I’m a very proud parent. He goes to Afghanistan.

Then today someone knocked on my door in full dress uniform and had an envelope in their hand. Yeah.

Yes, miracles occur every day. A human is born, creates a painting, writes a song, or maybe despite being raised by his mother after his worthless African father runs off, he becomes President. And he’s got a weird name like Obama and he’s black. Or maybe a baby boy I loved my whole life goes off to war, and doesn’t come back. Don’t guess that last one was a miracle.

For some reason we ignore all those daily miracles by doing stupid things to preserve quick and easy energy for the USA. We have become a nation of quick and easy—news, money, food, energy. Has this translated to quick and easy lives of the few that we risk for the quick and easy comforts of many?

Are we willing to modify our comforts to make sure those human lives are not put at risk?

Would we be willing to give up two hours a day of lights, or instead of driving to work all by myself carpool with three other people at work?

Power is in numbers. If only a few do it, nada. If millions do it then we may no longer use so much oil every day, need so much coal for energy, and perhaps, just perhaps we could become energy independent. We would not need to frack our country to death.

Do would not need to kill thousands of human miracles every year to maintain our comforts or would we be willing to do a few simple things to keep us from having wars over oil?

Milt

Are you a closet liberal like me?

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Yeah, I’m confused. I graduated from the Naval Academy, slept in the dirt with Marines—Oorah! Higher taxes—forget it. You should work for your money, just like I must—hard—staying up nights, worrying about making ends meet, not smokin’ your disability money up in dope, or scamming the USA out of trillions of dollars to keep your corporate bank making billions of dollars, so you can cruise to Vegas in a Lear Jet. I don’t really like big government, or people from the same distant planet telling me what to do all the time. But, I’ve worked for government most of my adult life. And, I love to fly fish, hear the splashing song of the river, the hawk cry above, feel the pull on the end of the rod, and see the orange and green cutthroat jump from water as clear as a Rocky Mountain morning. I never want that to end—are you kidding? When my fly, my creation of feather and fur, is taken by a wild fish, there is something that pulls loose in my head and tugs on my heart. That is real. That is precious. We should never give that up. None of us. And if you haven’t seen the stream and the fish, and felt the pull, you must. I’ll be happy to take you and show you.

Stream in Rocky Mountain National Park

Because, I want you to get rip-roaring mad like I do at oil spills in Gulf waters, ruining eons of nature that created bayous teaming with life; clear-cut timber scars on a mountain of pines, previously as beautiful as a postcard; and natural gas rigs in the middle of a pristine prairie, obtained by fracking, which pollutes the water of hard-working farmers and ranchers—so bad you can light the water with a match. All for the sake of profit? Son of a b…! Yet all these things allow me to live in a nice neighborhood with wooden fences, in a wood-sided house, heated or air-conditioned to my comfort; or ride my twenty-seven-speed, carbon-alloy road bike over manicured bicycle trails complete with wooden bridges; not to mention pull a trailer with my SUV across two states at 9 miles per gallon to a place where wild fish live. God I’m confused: Liberal or conservative?

It seems to me others have that same question (maybe not Bill Maher: liberal in all things, or Sarah Palin: conservative forever), and are confused about which tack to take.

Until it comes close to home.

Some oil tycoon starts ruining my streams or Gulf or mountains—they’re done. I don’t own a gun, nor do I want to kill anyone (Sarah Palin shoots herself in another appendage daily. It’s so much fun watching.); however, I do think there should be three simple rules: 1) Don’t ever (yes, that is emphatic), ever spill oil in the Gulf of Mexico, or Alaska, or the Russian steppe, or any other wilderness equivalent, again. You can spill all you want inside your Cadillac, or maybe bathe the streets of your Dallas penthouse with it—those would be okay, not fantastic, but quite apropos for an oil baron. 2) You want to frack? Fine, do it under some freeway in Houston or perhaps LA. Nobody drinks the water there. If you must frack in the wilderness, try places around Three-Mile Island, or maybe Chernobyl. They won’t mind contaminated water—it probably already glows in the dark.

Finally, there is simple rule 3): If you feel like you must break rule 1) or 2), call me. I will take you fly fishing for wild cutthroats in a gin-clear mountain stream surrounded by elk and golden aspen, in a morning you must breathe in deep and hold it so it will never go away. Because if you continue to frack and spill and scar our land so you can have an island to yourself in the Caribbean, that may be the last breath of clean mountain air, or last wild trout you will see; the aquamarine Caribbean teaming with fish will be brown and dead. Please let me know, and I’ll take you into the wilderness and show you why you should stop. There are others out there, like in Dan’s War, who are not as nice as me, not nearly.

Still not sure—liberal or conservative—but more light is getting into the closet.
mm

A comment you might enjoy, and food for thought. Do oil spills actually enhance the environment? What are your thoughts?

Comment from 10/22/11

I class myself as a conservative. I find that the positions generally attributed to conservative and liberal have little to do with the principles that go with the philosophy. Example: conservatives want to cut taxes- the conservative position is fiscal responsibility which, at present, dictates raise taxes and cut spending. Many on the other side of the aisle don’t seem to get the 2nd part. I think your essay is generally what I think. I will point out that polluting drinking water is, in fact, much different than oil spills and clear cutting. Clear cuts regrow and during their cycle allow for considerable biodiversity. (Though not related, I prefer clear cut for forest cycling to what is going on around Steamboat.) Oil spills are inconvenient but the evidence shows the systems return to usual after some time- actual useful time not geologic. Gas in the aquafor is considerably different. It is a problem now and for a long time. In the end, I doubt that anything you or I do will make much difference. Our human need to reproduce (grandchildren are really neat) will overwhelm us. Agent Smith may be right. As you can see, I have developed a major case of nihilism. I have to say, however, that the nihilism has been liberating in its way. Though I make major effort to behave responsibly and with respect for others and the environment, I have given up the angst of knowing it will inevitably be of no use. It allows me to enjoy every day to its fullest and appreciate those around me. Gary

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Can Disaster Change Your Life For The Better?

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Can disaster change your life for the better?

September 16, 2004 I awoke at two a.m. to pitch black, wind howling outside, and a curious sound in the bedroom: my dog lapping water. But our wonderful blond lab, Maggie, lay at our feet, sleeping. The sound was swamp water percolating under the baseboards. Rolling off the mattress, my wife and I waded into stinky water, floating Purina Dog Chow and paper shredder confetti–welcome to the parade.

I’d had a great year: both daughters got married, I caught a 150 lb. tarpon on a fly rod, started a promising practice with great docs, and my son had orchestrated a surprise fiftieth birthday party. I was writing my first novel, a horror, techno-thriller
about fictional events after 9/11, sure to outsell Steven King.

The day before the water came, the news said it was a monster: Hurricane Ivan, Cat 5 in the Gulf. I smashed one thumb and nearly fell off the ladder boarding up the second story windows. This made the inside a tomb of darkness, the garage door the only exit. Lynn and I discussed leaving the state. We filled the bathtubs, organized canned food and peanut butter (I could live off peanut butter and honey sandwiches for weeks), then moved the computer upstairs along with the important papers, dog food, fresh batteries in flashlights, etc.

At 7 p.m., in purple-olive twilight and paltry wind and misty rain, I played fetch outside with Maggie. No big deal. The news announced Ivan would weaken to Cat 3 at landfall. We decided to stay. Yes! No waiting for a week after the storm to get back over
the bridge while looters had a field day, or water leaks went from tiny to disastrous.

We hunkered down—that’s hurricane talk—in our upstairs bedroom. The wind howled, trying to tear off the roof … right over our heads. No thank you. We trundled everything back downstairs, including a mattress, to the bedroom our son vacated last week. After all, our neighborhood had never flooded in recorded history. Who needed flood insurance? Our house had survived two other Cat 3′s with piddling damage. No prob.

Right. We’d never been in the northeast quadrant. Apparently we forgot.

For weeks afterwards we survived in a post-flood environment that reminded me of Sarajevo: feral dogs, fetid piles of rubbish, no water or AC, roving, camouflaged National Guard Humvees, and Red Cross water and food tents. I nearly lopped off a leg chain-sawing shattered trees, screwed up a knee replacing wallboard, and continued to work forty-hour weeks, sitting in rubbish-removal traffic jams for hours.

It shook our hearts and souls like a dirty rug. But we couldn’t get clean. The neighbors had the first, and last, Tiger Point trailer-trash party in their camper on their
driveway next to the POD that held all their worldly goods. Their home was unlivable.

We sang, we drank, but we all knew: Never again.

My wife and I moved to Colorado, closer to roots and family. I wrote and guided fly fishing. She became a hooker—wool art hooking, okay. We camped in Yellowstone with Maggie. Then I realized I was not Steven King; gas prices skyrocketed; the adult kids moved back; guiding fly fishing made no money.

Time to go back to what I knew best, doctoring. I went to work for the VA. Hurricanes are nothing compared to war. War had crippled our best, their bodies and minds, but not their souls. They taught me disaster can change your life for the better. My
next novel, Dan’s War, was born.

Dan’s War is an award-winning techno-thriller with heart, about the end of world oil . . . in two weeks. Cajuns and one lone computer geek try to save us against an ecofanatic and his army.

 

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