Dan's Outside

Sounds Like It May Become the Iditarod Bike Race?

Sierra Club Compass:

Mush. The famed Iditarod Trail dog sled race is just around the corner and organizers have been forced to move the route in order to find sufficient snow. This year, the starting line will be in Willow, AK, thirty miles farther north than usual. Unseasonably warm weather has also led to cancellation of the Fur Rendezvous Open World Championship sled dog race in Anchorage, Alaska for the third time in seven years. [Sierra Club Compass]

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March 3, 2006 Posted by gdanmitchell | Environment | Comments Off on Sounds Like It May Become the Iditarod Bike Race?

Political Sleight of Hand

From Sierra Club Compass:

Mixed Signals. The day after President Bush delivered a State of the Union address in which he owned up to America’s “addiction to oil” and called for more research on alternative fuels and energy sources, the federal lab charged with heading up such research announced that a $28 million budget cut had required the dismissal of 32 researchers involved in ethanol and wind power studies — tow of the programs the president supposedly championed. [Sierra Club Compass]

Follow the title link for the full story.
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February 23, 2006 Posted by gdanmitchell | Environment | Comments Off on Political Sleight of Hand

Supressing the Facts

From The Daily Scoop:

The journal, Environmental Science and Technology …

The journal,
Environmental Science and Technology
(EST), reports that the White House has
actively repressed
a congressionally mandated study that examines the potential impacts of climate change on the U.S., noting that federal researchers are
explicitly forbidden from referring to the study
.

Begun in 1998 and completed in 2001, the
U.S. National Assessment
is the only study to broadly examine how global warming might affect communities in the U.S. Because of the subject matter, however, the assessment has been
mired in political controversy
since its release, and officials in the Bush Administration have sought to remove any reference to the report from publications coming out of their Climate Change Science Program (CCSP).

The report also says that
outreach efforts
intended to educate the public about climate change has been quashed by the White House.

– pat joseph [Daily Scoop]

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October 13, 2005 Posted by gdanmitchell | Environment | Comments Off on Supressing the Facts

Two From the Daily Scoop

Sierra Club Daily Scoop:

The New York Times reports that the Arctic ice cap… The New York Times reports that the Arctic ice cap shrank sharply this year, reaching a size “20 percent below the average minimum ice extent measured from 2000 back to 1978, when precise satellite mapping of the ice began.” The difference translates to 500,000 square miles — roughly double the area of Texas. Scientists fear that the melting trend is now self-sustaining, with exposed ocean providing a dark surface that absorbs solar energy instead of reflecting it as ice would. The resulting feedback mechanism means we could expect the Arctic to be ice-free in future summers. – django [Daily Scoop]

New energy legislation is being crafted in the wak…

New energy legislation
is being crafted in the wake of recent hurricanes. Led by Texas Republican Joe Barton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, GOP leaders appear determined to push forward a ”
slew of pro-industry measures
that Congress rejected earlier this year when it passed a broad energy bill that was supposed to address the country’s long-term energy problems.”

– django [Daily Scoop]

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September 28, 2005 Posted by gdanmitchell | Environment | Comments Off on Two From the Daily Scoop

Just When You Think They Might Be Starting To Get It…

Two stories about the Administration and its bizarre and short-sighted policies on energy and the environment:

White House Offers Advice on Saving Gasoline. President Bush on Tuesday came up with some specific advice for his White House staff: take the bus. And that was just the beginning. By ELISABETH BUMILLER. [NYT > Science]

and…

Interior Secretary Says U.S. Will Push Search for Energy. Gale A. Norton said the Bush administration will intensify its push to expand energy development on public lands, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. By FELICITY BARRINGER. [NYT > Science]

The optimist hopes that the current hurricane-caused energy problems will make the Administration re-think its short-sighted approach to energy policy, environmental policy, and climate issues. The pessimist thinks that they may just use this as an excuse to do more damage.

September 28, 2005 Posted by gdanmitchell | Environment | 2 Comments

Restore Hetch Hetchy

From the Restore Hetch Hetchy web site:

Imagine the opportunity we have to allow Nature to re-create another Yosemite Valley. Imagine the opportunity we have to allow Nature to restore Yosemite National Park’s Hetch Hetchy Valley, the place John Muir called “a grand landscape garden, one of Nature’s rarest and most precious mountain temples.” There is no other opportunity like this anywhere on Earth.

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August 29, 2005 Posted by gdanmitchell | Environment | Comments Off on Restore Hetch Hetchy

Two From the Daily Scoop

Sierra Club Daily Scoop:

• Temperatures in the interior of Alaska reached int…
  Temperatures in the interior of
  Alaska
  reached into the 90s last week as more than 100
  forest fires burned across the state
  , clouding nearly the entire central valley in thick smoke. Meteorologists say the smoke actually kept temperatures cooler in a state that is getting increasingly
  used to the heat
  . As the
  London Independent
  reports, “Between 1949 and 2003, the average annual air temperature in Alaska increased by 3.3 degrees Fahrenheit, with some areas in the state registering increases of almost twice that much, especially in the spring and the autumn.” Glaciers in the state are fast retreating and scientists worry that, if it continues to get warmer, the
  permafrost
  , ”
  a constant of Alaskan geology since the end of the last ice age, will thaw
  .”

  – django [Daily Scoop]

• It didn’t get much notice elsewhere in the media, … It didn’t get much notice elsewhere in the media, but BushGreenwatch.org, a watchdog website that keeps tabs on the Bush administration’s environmental record, reports that 24 Republican lawmakers signed a letter last week expressing strong opposition to the inclusion of language in the budget reconciliation bill that would allow for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The letter, which argues that the budget bill is the wrong place to include such a provision, was addressed to House Resources Committee chairman Richard Pombo (R-CA) and also sent to Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and Budget Committee chairman Jim Nussle (R-IA). – django [Daily Scoop]

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August 17, 2005 Posted by gdanmitchell | Environment | Comments Off on Two From the Daily Scoop

Restoring Hetch Hetchy

Loyd at Yosemite Blog has been pointing to a number of articles on the subject of draining and restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley – the “other Yosemite” that was dammed (or damned?) by San Francisco early in the 1900s.

Today he points to two articles. A Time article points out that several hundred dams (though none this large) have been eliminated in recent years, and it generally suggests that contemplating a restoration of Hetch Hetchy is a reasonable thing.

The second, from SFGate suggests that draining the valley would just leave “mosquitos and swamps,” which I thought was kind of humorous (besides being just plain wrong.) Mosquitos and swamps are a natural part of the valley bottom environment at that elevation in the Sierra, at least on a seasonal basis.

Anyone who visited Yosemite Valley this June understands that seasonal flooding (with attendant swampy areas and, yes, mosquitos) is part of what makes such an area so beautiful.

(Technorati: Yosemite, Environment, Sierra Nevada)
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July 12, 2005 Posted by gdanmitchell | Environment | Comments Off on Restoring Hetch Hetchy

The Race to Alaska Before It Melts

New York Times: The Race to Alaska Before It Melts

A product of the late ice age, the glacier looked old and tired on this hot day. There was a sense of loss, some people said, at watching this giant recoil. There were oohs and aahs but also more hushed tones, expressions of fear that the big land was somehow diminished, a little less wild. Just a few years ago, the spot where these tourists stood, on dry ground marked by Park Service signs, had been under ice.

Alaska is changing by the hour. From the far north, where higher seas are swamping native villages, to the tundra around Fairbanks, where melting permafrost is forcing some roads and structures to buckle in what looks like a cartoon version of a hangover, to the rivers of ice receding from inlets, warmer temperatures are remaking the Last Frontier State.

Photo: Sunset, Lynn Canal near Juneau, Alaska. Copyright Dan Mitchell
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June 25, 2005 Posted by gdanmitchell | Environment | Comments Off on The Race to Alaska Before It Melts