We are not making any kind of
equivalency with the above although extraterrestrial aliens will have a
confusing view. We’ve already broadcast quite a bit of information into outer space
since the arrival of television and the internet so astronomers and sociology
eavesdroppers aboard a passing extraterrestrial space ship will have ample data on which to base a decision to stop by and
visit or move on. We can only speculate on their thought process although that
would be like the Incas speculating on what Francisco Pizarro had in mind in
1532, or how the natives of Cebu Island pondered Ferdinand Magellan’s
intentions in 1521.
Let’s see. Counting every broadcast from the networks,
Facebook and blogs, speeches by Leonardo Dicaprio, and yes, Mr. Gore’s
“Inconvenient Truth”, earth does not
present a pretty picture. The space alien commander will have to evaluate
whether the stopover is worth it.
They’ve traveled many trillion miles with several decades of
intermittent hibernation in between so a stopover is questionable if most of
Manhattan will be ravaged by surging sea water as the polar ice caps will be no
more … by the end of this century. Additionally, there are other perils. They’ve catalogued 452 Zombie movies – a good indicator of our deepest fears on top of
climate change. The space commander must think, “Mmm … Global warming, climate
change, zombie apocalypse”. Before I forget, earth’s dominant super power just
had an election and about half the electorate expressed fear that the end is
near and everyone is doomed. Immediately
demonstrations on the street call for non-recognition of the newly elected
leader by those who should either have been in school or working but chose to
be unproductive instead, disruptive and even destructive in places where other
people try to earn a living. Not a pretty picture indeed. Stephen Hawking’s
concern notwithstanding, we may not have to worry about an alien visitation
after all.
Speaking of worry, I will have to
reprint here a quote on an 8-1/2 by 11 bond paper taped to the inside of the
driver side window of the tour bus we were on just a month ago. It said, “Remember
that half of the things we worry about never happen and the other half will
happen anyway, so why worry?”
We had a Frenchman for a driver
nicknamed “Frenchy” (what else) driving a huge bus that took us on a 10-day
tour of U.S. National Parks that cover the area in and around Yellowstone
National Park. My wife and I have this bucket list to tour as many National
Parks as we can (this is our third, so far), keeping our tourist dollars here
first before spending any in foreign places. “Frenchy” told me when I asked
about the sign, in his still unmistakable French accent, “That’s to remind me
personally because I like to deal with each day one day at a time but it is
also a useful reminder for the Tour Director to frame her schedule day-to-day and
to you the paying passengers who need to just focus on enjoying the trip and
the vacation”.
Enjoyed we did although this was
late in the year to be in Yellowstone, the Grand Teton, the Mammoth Springs, Jackson
Hole, etc. There are many plus sides to that time of the year. The summer crowd
is gone, the kids are back at school and there were not too many competing
buses and tourists, ergo, we were catching less people in the background in
countless photos we took. But,
it snowed in the mountains and as evening fell, the cold stood in the way of
walking under the moonlight or star gazing. But it is also at the time
of the year when one gets to stay at the hotel right in front of Old Faithful.
A reservation that needs to be secured two years in advance, grabbed mostly by
tour operators, I’m almost certain. It was an interesting time too when hotels
were closing for the season literally in 2-3 days of our checkout dates. That was how close we picked the tour
dates. We asked our waitress at dinner
what she was going to do when the hotel closed.
She was going to Vietnam to do volunteer mission work in and around that
part of Asia; a smart young woman to pick a warmer climate to spend the winter.
I mention the U.S. National Parks
because there are no better examples to showcase America’s genuine desires to
preserve, protect and promote its natural wonders. They are probably one of the
few examples where politics and politicians succeeded to do the right thing for
the environment without over reach. For
the most part bipartisanship worked except on a couple of occasions when two Presidential acts may
have been influenced by environmentalist supporters to proclaim as National
Monuments a couple of places to preempt exploration for coal or oil and on one
occasion a marine sanctuary impacting the local fishing industry.
The other thing I learned from
the National Parks is the history of the people who had lived there long before
it was called America. We call these people Native Americans. For thousands of
years they lived, survived and flourished in the environment that kept
changing. In reality they and all others around the world for eons survived
through adaptation in the ever changing climate.
Deemed by one side as the number
one problem the world faces, even proclaimed by the current U.S. administration
as an existential threat, we inevitably keep discussing climate change to no
end. “We”, however, is a mere fraction of the general population because this
issue does not resonate much with the majority of the people here or anywhere
around the world. These discussions play
out at the rarefied air of politics and a particular social rung that is so high
up there to be discerned or understood by those at the bottom of the
sociological ladder. It is fought between the learned elites, college
professors, environmentalists from one side and business interests, pragmatists,
special interests and lobbyists on the other. The elites label those who oppose
them as ignorant climate change deniers while the latter call out the former as
engaging in callous hypocrisy. Labels
and name calling only succeed in widening the ideological chasm without
furthering each other’s arguments on merit.
A most recent but hardly covered
news item highlights the argument by those who rile at the hypocrisy of climate
change proponents.
From CNN on 11/14/2016: “Secretary of State John Kerry winged his
way Monday from New Zealand to the Middle East on the next leg of what may be
his longest trip yet, a journey during which America’s top diplomat will
account for roughly 16.5 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
That’s more or less the amount of CO2 – one of the key “greenhouse
gases” blamed for global warming – produced by the average American in a full
year, according to World Bank data.
Climate change features prominently on Kerry’s itinerary on his current
trip, an eight-day haul from Washington to New Zealand to Antarctica – where he
became the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit – and on to two Arab Gulf
states and then Morocco before winging to Peru and then back home.”
That might seem an unfair example
but we should keep in mind that added to that are the jet-setting habits of
celebrities and Al Gore as they traverse the globe in CO2 emitting flying
carpets entertaining and espousing the peril of climate change.
From the NY Daily News:
“A whopping 300,000 tons of carbon dioxide will be churned out during
the two-week climate change summit that began Monday in Paris.
President Obama’s flight to the City of Lights emitted roughly 189 tons
of carbon alone, burning 19,275 gallons of jet fuel, reports the Daily Caller.
His entire trip will send more carbon dioxide into the air than the
combined emissions from 31 U.S. homes over the span of a year.”
The point here is that if they
want support to wean the world from fossil fuel emission they must first begin to
remove the appearance of the profligate use of fossil fuel. That conference,
for example, could have been done with electronic media linking various
locations from all over the world as one global tele-conference - if they are
truly serious about their cause. Let us not forget the number of SUVs and
support vehicles that attended to the incoming and outgoing conferees. Many of
those vehicles were weighted down with so much bullet-proof armor plating that
their mileage were in single digits in traffic and perhaps 10-12 miles per
gallon at best. Climate change proponents must either walk the talk or it is just all
talk or perhaps they do not really believe in their argument.
Climate change is truly an oxymoron because by its very nature climate
does change. What it gets down to is
what should be believed in terms of how bad the change is, how immediate and
what is our capability to cope. First of all the so called climate change
deniers actually believe that climate does change but, as it does, we as a
species have the ability to cope through reasonable and pragmatic solutions as
opposed to knee-jerk reactions and over reach to the point of actually
disrupting people’s livelihood, the economy in general and the individual’s way
of life in particular. We are being
forced by excessive regulation and academic bullying over a perceived and immediate
future catastrophe that is belied by earth’s very, very long history.
Let us put this in perspective. Imagine the present – today - to be the tip
of the arrow of time. What we worry beyond that tip is a sliver of time in
decades, whereas, if we must look back to a very long period of earth’s history,
we see geological evidence that climate had changed countless times and in many
instances with unbelievable severity, but guess what … organisms including
humanity survived. Since the first
humans walked upright two hundred thousand years ago there had been several ice
ages and inter glacial events in between when earth was caught between severe
cold periods and extreme warming for
thousands of years at a time. Yet, here we are worrying about what will happen
in a couple of decades.
At a time of more advanced
technology, we as a species should be well equipped to deal with and adapt to
the changing climate. Our ancestors with
very little knowledge and technology made do with what they had amidst erupting
volcanoes, changing jet stream patterns, severe solar storms, reversing
magnetic poles, sea level rising and receding due to polar ice cap
variations. Speaking of erupting
volcanoes, Yellowstone National Park sits on top of a super volcano that had
erupted three times in the past every 640,000 years or so. Its last eruption was 640,000 years ago! Well
known eruptions, such as, Mt. Pinatubo and Krakatoa and Mt. St. Helens in
recent recorded history had produced so much pollution and greenhouse gases to exceed
a year’s worth of vehicular emissions around the world today. Yet their three combined explosions would be a
wimpy fire cracker to Yellowstone’s 500 pound bomb. Earth organisms had endured and survived much
more severe emissions events than what we face today where we have already-in-place
managed regulations.
The London smog during the early
years of the industrial revolution provided the first impetus towards
understanding and eventually dealing with pollution but the production setbacks
did not hinder continued economic growth because the regulations put in place
were not anywhere near the stifling limits that today’s environmentalists
propose. China is called out by much of
the world as the number one polluter but they’re learning. Today in Dalian
Peninsula in Northeastern China is the world’s largest battery capacity (in
buildings over acres of land) for storing electric energy from solar and wind
power. Smog is known to be responsible for thousands of premature deaths in
China and India but the U.S. that has a hundred-fold better pollution management
is the target by its own local activists – celebrities, unbridled bureaucrats
and politicians - (mainly because freedom of speech here allows for the loudest
voices to be heard).
There will be no repeat of the
London smog of the 1800s but China and India must do their share to reduce
their emissions. However, countries like the U.S. and much of Western Europe,
Japan and a few others who have so far been diligent in coming up with
reasonable measures such as cleaner gasoline, clean-burning diesel engines,
cleaner processes for burning coal, exploration and production of natural gas, robust
recycling practices, protecting their forests and water resources, etc. must be
allowed to maintain their economies and way of life free of punishing and
extreme regulations that go beyond what is reasonable and pragmatic. What
initiatives these countries have come up with need to be recognized and perhaps
in some cases embraced. Oppressive and politically motivated actions do not
contribute much to the general public welfare other than to provide livelihood
and so much power to bureaucrats and regulators that are not without financial
costs to the taxpayer.
Much of the efforts and costs
proposed by climate change proponents should be focused on spending for
infrastructures in countries (mostly poor) that are unable to provide the
necessary expenditure. These countries are in need of cleaner water, better
conservation and preservation of their natural resources, but not least of all
is the proper education on taking care of and expanding their forested
lands. Let us note that plants and trees are the single most important
consumers of carbon and other related air-borne chemicals. Tropical and
sub-tropical countries in Asia and South America suffer the most from severe deforestation. Millions of acres of forested areas are now
bare. Devastating flood and other side
effects follow but what escapes most of the attention is the fact that for every tree, every acre of
plant habitat lost results in the loss of the best recycler of carbon in the
atmosphere. We share a good part of
our DNA with plants and they were here first whether you consult geological
records or refer to the Biblical chronology.
Plants were created first. We share 50% of our DNA even with the most
widely consumed plant staple – the banana.
I am of the opinion that plants
around the world may yet be our greatest ally in combating climate change. Ecology begins and ends with them, yet they
have no voice in the debate. Think carefully – lush jungles, rain forests and
green acres of land and undersea forests of kelp, algae around the globe are
hosts to countless organisms from plankton to mammals, prey and predators,
etc. Money spent on conserving and promoting plant life is the better
investment over arguments, debates, expenditures, over regulation and stalemated
fights over climate change.
Kevin Kostner commissioned these bronze sculptures depicting a bison jump. It's been a technique that began 12,000 years ago until the mid 1500. Apparently before horses and bow and arrow the young and the brave of the tribes would cause some of the bison off the cliff or ravine killing a number of them but they were careful to kill just enough for the tribe to live off through the winter. The Native Americans, we learned,
used every bit of the bison (from tail to snout; from hooves to their horns).
The American Bison numbered in the millions (20 to 30 million in one estimate).
Their numbers by the late 19th century were whittled down to a mere 1,091 - regrettably not in the hands of the Native Americans but by hunters and settlers from the New World. Conservation has brought the numbers up to 500,000 in the latest survey. The country eventually realized the grave mistake and responded in the nick of time to stop what could
have been a horrific extinction of a species in modern times. Since then the U.S. began an active conservation and preservation efforts unmatched anywhere else.
A view from the bus of an early October snow at the National Park.
Bison is now a common sight throughout the Park.
I am not a naturalist but I must say this elk displays a classic adaptive response. It and many of its kind would come down to the populated areas as the cold weather begins because places such as around our hotel were a safe haven away from predators and hunters and there was plenty of vegetation. There were over three dozens like this one all over the area totally oblivious to people and vehicles.
The yellow tint along the mountainsides are how the name Yellowstone came about. It is from sulfur brought up by several massive upheavals throughout history from a super volcano beneath.
The Grand Teton mountain range.
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| River rafting on the Snake River |
While Old Faithful is the famous geyser there are many more around the Park, including numerous ones at Mammoth Springs.
"Frenchy" the tour bus French driver who provided the quote mentioned earlier posed with my wife next to the huge tour bus he drove for 10 days.
Walking the Talk:
Climate change, whether man-caused or otherwise will take a very long time to manifest and could linger for a very long time as geological evidence had proven. So, like countless folks who recognize the whole idea, I and many like me and many of my friends are planting and propagating tropical plants in our back yards. Tropical papaya and guava trees are doing very well, granted Texas is not exactly Idaho or North Dakota. However, keep in mind that when dinosaurs roamed North America the whole region was not only Tropical but perhaps even sub Tropical. We just harvested papaya in November from these trees that survived last year's winter.
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| We just harvested papaya in November from these trees that survived last year's winter. |
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| Preparing these from seeds planted earlier for next year's possible "fruiting" |
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| Two guava trees this year had abundant fruit; sadly squirrels got to them before they ripened. |
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| Barely three feet off the ground this lemon tree's bend from the fruit. |
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| Planted last year this two foot navel orange is doing very well |
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| These two orange trees were planted from seeds seven years ago. This is the second year of fruiting. |
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| Philippine citrus is not only thriving but adapting so very well that they bloom year round like they typically do in the Tropics |
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| Fig tree barely four feet tall. Our neighbor's tree is 15 feet tall |
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| Grapes are not sweet at all (at least not yet - I'm told it will improve over time) but they do their part gobbling up carbon. |
