The Headwaters

Check out this TED talk by Wade Davis about the pristine wilderness that will be in jeopardy if the tar sands industry has it’s way. There are some very beautiful images.

Sadly, if people don’t wake up soon, there won’t be a place on the planet that will go untouched. There are diseases ravishing northern forests, as those diseases migrate north with warmer temperatures. Permafrost is melting, glaciers are disappearing, and polar bears are starving. And that is before the miners and oilmen arrive to decimate the landscape.

Yet, there are people living near me, on the beach, who don’t believe the sea level is rising. I understand why people are skeptical. These changes are happening over decades, and short term cycles often mask the long term trends. Unfortunately, if we wait until we can see the tsunami coming, there will only be enough time to run for our lives. There will be no time to save our homes and our homeland.

If we do leave some natural resources in the ground, and take a more conservative approach to life, and we discover that there is no global crisis, after all, what did it hurt? Where is the harm in preserving our beautiful planet? Why must we blow the tops off of mountains, dump our waste in every river, and drill for every drop of oil? Can we never be satisfied?

Heat

Well, it looks like the heatwave that has been moving east from Colorado has arrived here. The heat is repressive. The strange thing is that my SunOven, which is heating up as I write this, won’t get as hot today as it would on a cool, clear fall day, in spite of the fact that it is nearly 100F (38C) degrees, outside. I can expect the oven to hover between 300F (149C) and 325F (163C) while my bread is baking. On a clear fall day, I would get temperatures around 350F (177C) and higher.

The good news is that I’ll have fresh, homemade bread and I won’t have to use electricity to bake it and more electricity to pump the excess heat out of my kitchen. I love homemade bread, and it’s even better when it’s baked in the SunOven. If you don’t make your own bread, you’re really missing out. Then again, you could do like my dear friends; you could just find someone else who makes bread and eat theirs.

For those who believe that all of this crazy weather is just a natural cycle in the planet’s continuously changing climate, I must ask you to look into the time span over which those natural cycles occur. I think you’ll find that natural climate cycles span thousands, or even millions of years. In a man’s lifetime, there should be no noticeable change. I can tell you, with certainty, that many things have changed in my lifetime. What’s even worse is that the changes are accelerating. Whether you agree in anthropogenic climate change, or not, it just makes sense to conserve our precious resources. One thing I am sure of is that if the sun ever stops shining, life as we know it on Earth will cease to exist. As long as the planet is habitable, there will be sun, so using solar energy as much as possible is a no-brainer, for me.