Dan's Outside

I go, I see, I do, I walk, I think, I like…

Two-Heel Drive Fire Coverage Continues

Tom Mangan continues to post interesting stories about the Lick Fire. Today he links to an article about people who have property in the area, and he includes a link to a slide show featuring some very good photographic work by Patrick Tehan.

September 8, 2007 Posted by | News | Comments Off on Two-Heel Drive Fire Coverage Continues

'Turned the corner' on Lick Fire

Firefighter Blog post an update on the Lick Fire in Coe Park here in the SF Bay area:

Lick Fire Bosses Gain Ground. Lick Fire Incident Commander Bob Whallen, his command team and the 1,900 firefighters assigned to the incident have turned a corner. The weather helped as humidity and winds worked to their favor.
According to the morning report from the incident the fire is at 39,585 acres and is 45% contained. Demobilization of some of the resources begins today…. By Mike. [Firefighter Blog]

Follow the link for the full post, which includes a summary of some interesting facts about the fire: Total area projected to be close to 50,000 acres and total cost of fighting the fire to be about $10 million. Or $4.8 million if you believe SF Gate.

September 8, 2007 Posted by | News | Comments Off on 'Turned the corner' on Lick Fire

Polar Bears and Climate Change

New York Times:

Warming Is Seen as Wiping Out Most Polar Bears. Shrinking polar ice caps will cause at least two-thirds of the world’s polar bears to disappear by 2050, government scientists reported on Friday. By JOHN M. BRODER and ANDREW C. REVKIN. [NYT > Science]

Not everyone realizes that polar bears live in three environments, almost equally well: land, ice pack, and ocean. Global climate change creates problems for these animals in all three.

From the article:

The scientists concluded that, while the bears were not likely to be driven to extinction, they would be largely relegated to the Arctic archipelago of Canada and spots off the northern Greenland coast, where summer sea ice tends to persist even in warm summers like this one, a shrinking that could be enough to reduce the bear population by two-thirds.

The bears would disappear entirely from Alaska, the study said.

“As the sea ice goes, so goes the polar bear,” said Steven Amstrup, lead biologist for the survey team.

September 8, 2007 Posted by | Environment | Comments Off on Polar Bears and Climate Change