Smoke from the Little Red Tent
Edie Howe’s Little Red Tent blog, that is. Edie lives in Yosemite Valley and often posts her photographs at her site and elsewhere. Recently she did the Four Mile Trail (from the Valley to Glacier Point) and she has posted a sequence of photographs from the hike. For everyone who wondered whether the smoke from California wild fires has gotten into the Valley, here is a partial answer.
(Another way to check on this is to look at the Yosemite Web Cam page, which hosts links to four web in and near Yosemite Valley and one at Tioga Pass. When I looked this morning the smoke was visible in the Valley but not as bad as it was a few days ago, but there is also a big smoke cloud to the west.)
The California wildfire smoke must be affecting him
How else to explain the confusing and contradictory statements by California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger about the Bush Cheney oil company McCain approach to the energy/oil/environment/global warming issues.
According to SFGate, on Friday Schwarzenegger’s position was:
Citing a list of proposals, including ending the ban on offshore oil drilling, nuclear power and biofuels – McCain supports them all – he told the audience “anyone who tells you that this will bring down our gas prices immediately or anytime soon is blowing smoke.”
And today:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and defended GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain as “the real deal on the environment.” The governor made his comments only days after he said the Arizona senator’s call for lifting the federal ban on offshore oil drilling was “blowing smoke.”
“I’m very proud of him. I’m 100 percent behind him,” he told “Meet the Presss” moderator Tom Brokaw…
Black Balloons
Australian ads that help one visualize the sources of invisible C02 emissions…
Two Cents Per Gallon. Someday. Maybe
Thanks to fellow photographer Jim M Goldstein for pointing me to a short article pointing out how worthless the Administration proposal to drill, drill, drill really is: By 2025 this might lower the median price of gasoline by… wait for it!… two cents. (And let’s see… by 2025 gasoline should sell for about $25/gallon or more, right?)
More evidence that last week’s well-timed announcements were nothing more than election year posturing, an attempt by the Republican administration – apparently coordinated with the McCain campaign – to create a political wedge issue. As usual, that is far more important to them than actually doing something to reduce our dependence on foreign oil or address the issues of global climate change.
Let the Fun Begin!
Passing on a note I saw at SF Gate:
Outdoors notes: High-country campgrounds are open. The high-country season in the Sierra Nevada officially started this weekend with Yosemite National Park opening its camps along Tioga Pass Road. Tuolumne Meadows, White Wolf, Crane Flat and Yosemite Creek campgrounds opened Friday, and Tamarack Flat will…
[SFGate: Tom Stienstra]
As is often the case – and as I have finally learned – the campgrounds are opening a bit earlier than the NPS might have indicated.
(I won’t be going up this weekend… my daughter’s wedding is tomorrow! :-)
Gear Review: Black Diamond Zenix IQ Headlamp
The Black Diamond Zenix IQ Headlamp must be overstocked or discontinued, because I see it at least once per week over at steepandcheap.com for a price in the low $20 range.
I have this headlamp and I’ve been quite impressed with it. I’ve used it on a number pack trips, for night photography jaunts, and for car camping and it has worked like a charm. It is one of the newer LED headlamps that puts out enough light to actually navigate a dark trail – unlike the earliest models which were designed more or less for around camp use.
It has two basic modes of operation. In one the more powerful central lamp comes on and in the other a pair of smaller LEDs at the edges of the light unit come on instead. The former provides brighter light but consumes battery power more quickly, while the latter is only bright enough for camp chores but is draws less power from the batteries. In both modes you can switch between several different brightness levels and a blinking mode. (The latter is useful for giving your backpacking partners a severe headache – or for a long lasting emergency signal light. A friend of mine used a lamp with a similar feature to guide me to camp once when I arrived many hours after dark.)
If this headlamp has a downside it might be the smallish and somewhat difficult to press control button. Once you figure out where it is it works fine, but it is still difficult to operate even with light gloves on. Well, it might have one other. At a time when some of the very small and dimmer backpacker LED headlamps weigh around 1 ounce, this one is a bit bulkier and heavier – but still quite a bit smaller and lighter than the headlamps we used in the pre-LED era.
But in actual operation – at least for typical backpacking use – if you are looking for a long lasting headlamp that puts out enough light for actual hiking, this could be the one for you.
Speaking of the Darn Global Warming Thing
A couple interesting articles and more of the pesky reality-based evidence stuff:
Dot Earth: Federal Report Links Warming to Climate Extremes. A new federal report sees more harmful climate extremes accompanying a warming climate. [NYT > Science]
Dot Earth: Seas Rising Faster Than Realized. A new study indicates that heat held in by a building greenhouse blanket has largely accumulated in the oceans. [NYT > Science]
On a positive note, it sounds like many citizens are “getting it” and that the car companies may not be far behind:
The Smaller the Better, Automakers Are Finding. The demand for fuel-efficient small cars and hybrids is so fierce that automakers cannot produce them fast enough. [NYT > Business]
More on Drilling
Seems to be environmental politics week at this blog. Ah, well. A few more thoughts regarding the sudden interest by Republicans in drilling our way out of this energy mess.
I heard a wonderful comment on the radio yesterday, right after hearing the President blame Democrats for not being responsive to his sudden call to open up basically every available place to drilling. The speaker pointed out that this assertion of blame seems quite ironic given the fact that for six years the Republicans had majorities in the Senate and the House and held the executive branch… and apparently didn’t think it was enough of a good idea then to do anything at all about it. And now all of a sudden it is a great idea?
And, along those lines, does anyone else smell an election year set-up here? Republicans trying to get some traction on some issue (any issue!?) against the Democrats seem to have stumbled on this as perhaps a way to fool the public into thinking that the Democrats somehow are not concerned with the plight of the “average person.”
Never mind the fact that if we opened every square inch of US territory to drilling today it would be years before we would see any oil from this. And that the oil reserves are generally rather small. And that the oil companies are already not using all of the drilling sites currently available to them.
Oh, and there is that little matter of global warming. Let’s imagine for a moment that we somehow could find enough oil in US territory to return to the “good old days” of cheap gas and SUVs… has it occurred to anyone that we’d have to reduce consumption and look for alternative energy sources anyway in order to deal with that pressing problem?
I don’t buy this sudden call for more drilling one little bit. It is short sighted, won’t solve the problem, will make other problems worse, and is probably just being raised as an election year wedge issue in any case.
More on McCain's Race for Bush's Third Term
From a New York Time article (‘Bush to Seek an End to Ban on Oil Drilling’):
President Bush, reversing a longstanding position, will call on Congress on Wednesday to end a federal ban on offshore oil drilling…
The party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, used a speech in Houston on Tuesday to say he now favors offshore drilling, an announcement that infuriated environmentalists who have long viewed him as an ally…
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Dan's Outside 
An Interesting Enounter
Cait Hutnik shares an interesting photo narrative of a wildlife encounter on a recent hike at Rancho Canada del Oro south of San Jose – thanks for the link, Cait: http://www.lightofmorn.com/html/grayfoxes.htm
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July 4, 2008 Posted by gdanmitchell | Commentary | Comments Off on An Interesting Enounter