Beardy Guy Musings

Jonathan over at Irregular Times wonders: George W. Bush is Big Brother, But Does America Care?

In the first 24 hours of the work week after it was revealed that George W. Bush has been engaging in yet another secret program to spy against American citizens that even the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee thinks is illegal, what were people thinking about the most?

They weren’t thinking about their liberty. They were thinking about Zinedine Zidane, a soccer player who gave a headbutt to another soccer player, Marco Materazzi. 5 out of the top 8 searches on Technorati in the last day have related to the incident at the World Cup.

It was a dramatic act of crude violence, to be sure, but in the end, how much does it matter to people’s lives? If the entire French team gave head butts to the entire Italian team, would it change the lives of any Americans in any significant way? Well, actually it would. It would give them something to talk about for a week instead of paying attention to the steady attacks on their constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms.

Was the news of the newly revealed government program to spy against Americans anywhere on Technorati’s top eight list? Nope. But Clay Aiken was there. News that a video blog site called Rocketboom had chosen a new host, and subsequently went offline, was number two on the list. Potc was right behind at number three.

Yeah, welcome to the New America. This is an America in which citizens have allowed multinational corporations to redefined them as consumers. Thinking about democracy and freedom as well as the struggle involved in maintaining those things, well that’s just too much work. Much easier to tune into the latest TV distraction or movie blockbuster.

Technorati Tags: America, Democracy, Freedom

I was starting to think maybe I was crazy. But no, my perception seems to be pretty accurate. This spring and summer I have seen almost no butterflies. Practically zero. In fact, I would say less than 20. By this time last year and the previous year and most years before, I would see that many in week depending on my location. In fact, since being back in Missouri and spending lots of time in the garden, seeing 10 - 20 a day is not uncommon with 3-5 species represented in that count. Of course it’s hard to say if one is seeing the same butterfly more than once but it’s still very possible to get an idea if you’re paying attention. Not only are we not seeing the butterflies but also zero caterpillars.

A few seconds of google turned up a whole slew of articles that verify my perception. Here’s the first, Where have all the butterflies gone?:

Wild fluctuations in California’s winter and spring weather have hurt fragile butterfly populations, causing numbers to fall to the lowest in more than three decades and increasing the concerns of scientists about long-term declines linked to climate change and habitat loss.
…

Shapiro, an entomologist and professor of evolution and ecology, monitors 10 locations from Suisun Marsh to the Sierra Nevada and maintains one of the two largest butterfly databases in the world. The other is the British Butterfly Monitoring Scheme.

At most of the study sites, he has seen half or less than half the number of species typically present at this time in an average year. Near Vacaville at Gates Canyon in April 2005, he found 21 species and 378 individual butterflies. But last month he counted 10 species and 43 individual butterflies.

Many species already appear to be suffering from a serious long-term decline because of several factors, including changes in climate and loss of habitat, he said.

“This short-term anomaly has really kicked the populations while they’re down and may have accelerated their decline,'' said Shapiro.

Technorati Tags: Climate Change, Ecology, Extinction, Global Warming, Natural, Butterflies

A bit of a climate change link dump. By way of introduction let me just say that I’m pretty sure we’re fucked as a species and of course we’ve set the course for the extinction of lots of other species. Not to say we shouldn’t do something, we should. We really fucking should, every single day. But as I’ve said before I think the turning point has come and gone. Just for the sake of putting it down here’s a simple list: stop driving, work less, spend less, consume less, walk more, bike more, turn up your thermostat in the summer, turn it way down in the winter, eat vegetarian, compost, grow your own food, turn off every electrical device you don’t need, install compact fluorescent lighting.

Yeah, that’s me being hopeful. I expect most will do nothing at all because it’s just too much work. Easier to go see Superman and enjoy a Happy Meal with the kids.

First there is this review by Ken Caldeira over at the American Scientist Online, Time Is Not on Our Side , in which he reviews a couple of recent works on climate change:

Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. Elizabeth Kolbert. x + 210 pp. Bloomsbury, 2006. $22.95.

The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth. Tim Flannery. xx + 357 pp. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005. $24.

If the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from the burning of coal, oil and gas is not reduced greatly and soon, the consequences are likely to be catastrophic. So say Tim Flannery and Elizabeth Kolbert, authors of two new books that provide ample evidence that those emissions are adversely affecting the complex web of interactions that ties Earth’s organisms to climate.

The incipient catastrophe is manifesting itself in a myriad of ways. A half-century ago, the Inupiats of the small Alaskan island of Shishmaref were able to venture 20 miles out onto the sea ice to hunt seals; now that ice turns to slush only 10 miles out. Storm surges that were once held at bay by the ice now regularly eat away at the island, a strip of land only a quarter of a mile wide; a single storm can remove as much as 125 feet. Once houses sat square and firm on the frozen ground; now they tilt and veer as the melting soil softens and gives way. The Inupiats recently voted to move their village inland, away from their ancestral home—an early loss to global warming.

This scene from Shishmaref is among those described by Kolbert in Field Notes from a Catastrophe, which is based on a series of articles that appeared last year in the New Yorker. Such is the power of the images she paints that, soon after the series appeared, a senior staffer to a Republican senator told me, “When the Eskimos start moving their villages, you know it’s time to start doing something."

Kolbert describes scientists at a research station on the Greenland ice sheet working rapidly in the early morning, trying to avoid the slush and rivers of water that will form later in the day from the melting ice. This water sinks rapidly through cracks in the ice cap to the rocky base, lubricating the flow of the ice to the sea, where icebergs will calve off, raising sea level and flooding coastal communities. When the sea freezes, as ice forms, heavy salty water is pushed out and sinks. When icebergs melt, the cold fresh water they contain spreads across the ocean surface (rather than sinking into the denser, saltier waters below), thereby interfering with the large-scale thermohaline circulation of the ocean. No one can predict with confidence how interference with such planetary-scale processes will affect climate. We are like children poking at a sleeping polar bear, without knowing what will happen when it wakes up.

Then there is this essay by John Gray at the New Statesman, Rather than face up to climate change and do what can be done, humanity may opt to let it happen:

During the present century, human beings are likely to experience a change in the planetary environment unlike any in history. Climate change is irreversible, and accelerating fast. No one, apart from a few cranks speaking on behalf of the Bush administration, doubts that global warming is a side effect of human activity. Accumulating scientific evidence suggests strongly that climate change is happening on a larger scale and more quickly than was suspected even a couple of years ago. Observable processes such as the melting of the Antarctic ice cap point to rising sea levels that will wipe out much of the world’s arable land and flood many coastal cities. The face of the planet is changing before our eyes.

Then there’s this gem from CNN reporting on a recent study and panel: Earth ‘likely’ hottest in 2,000 years:

WASHINGTON (AP) – It has been 2,000 years and possibly much longer since Earth has run such a fever.

The National Academy of Sciences, reaching that conclusion in a broad review of scientific work requested by Congress, reported Thursday that the “recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia."

A panel of top climate scientists told lawmakers that Earth is heating up and that “human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming.” Their 155-page report said average global surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere rose about 1 degree during the 20th century.

Last there’s this interview at Rolling Stone with Al Gore:

OK, say you’re the guy making that call. What do you ask us to do – trade in our cars and buy a hybrid?

Here’s the essence of our problem: Right now, the political environment in the country does not support the range of solutions that have to be introduced. The maximum you can imagine coming out of the current political environment still falls woefully short of the minimum that will really solve the crisis. But that’s just another way of saying we have to expand the limits of the possible. And that’s the main reason that I made this movie – because the path to a solution lies through changing the minds of the American people. Not just on the facts – they’re almost there on the facts – but in the sense of urgency that’s appropriate and necessary. Once that happens, then things that seem impossible now politically are going to be imperative. I believe there is a hunger in the country to be part of a larger vision that changes the way we relate to the environment and the economy. Right now we are borrowing huge amounts of money from China to buy huge amounts of oil from the most unstable region of the world, and to bring it here and burn it in ways that destroy the habitability of the planet. That is nuts! We have to change every aspect of that.

Technorati Tags: Arctic, Climate Change, Ecology, Energy, Extinction, Gardening, Global Warming, Hurricanes, Natural, Natural Resources, ocean, Al Gore, Sea level rise, Sustainable Development

Our garden is in full bloom with Purple Coneflowers, Orange Coneflowers, Grayheaded Coneflowers, Beebalm, and Butterfly Weed. I've spent the morning watching a pair of Goldfinches feed from the Purple and Orange Coneflowers. More photos at my flickr page.

I've not been around the blog lately. Lots of gardening then a problem with my knee and some poison ivy and then a bit of work and a trip out of town. So, I've been around but not really had the time to focus on the blog. Things seem to be simmering down a bit so perhaps I'll do some catching up with the blog.

Technorati Tags: Birding, Gardening, Native Plants, Natural, American Goldfinch

So, what did I see this morning looking out the window? Baby bunnies. Baby bunnies are the cutest thing in this world. So little, I could easily fit one in the palm of my hand. I mean, hey, rabbits are adorable anyway. Bunnies??

Oh, and on the subject of cute baby critters, we have baby deer again. We’ve seen at least one momma and her 2 fawn. Last year we had 2 mothers and 4 fawns, I’d guess that there are at least another 1 or 2 mothers and their babes all fairly close. Last but not least, apparently we have our first chipmunk. I’ve not seen many since being back in Missouri. Lots of squirrels but only a couple chipmunks. This one (maybe two) seems to have taken up residence under our sidewalk and seems to be pretty happy in our garden.

The garden is now going into its third summer… at least the 60% that was put in the first year. The 40% I put in last year is now going into it’s second summer. I think it’s looking pretty good. Lots of plants are starting to spread through seeding. Most noticeable would be Columbine, Butterfly Weed, and Purple Coneflower. I started with 4 Columbines and now have 30 though most of those are still very small. They’ll flower next year. I think we’ve gone from 2 Butterfly Weed plants to 25 or 30 some of which have already started blooming. The Purple Cone Flowers have produced maybe 20 new plants this spring via seed. I’m generally pretty happy with how it coming along. I’ve inter-planted herbs and a few veggies this year: basil, garlic chives, oregano, sage, thyme, tomatoes, peppers, and pumpkin as well as a few others. Got more to put out too as soon as I figure out where.

I didn’t expand the garden much this year. Just letting things fill in a bit and trying to take extra care of all the little babies mentioned above. The two years of wood mulch are doing great things for the soil. As it is, there’s lots of clay under just an inch or two of soil. Some places it seems to be just pure clay and almost no soil. When this third year of mulch degrades things will be even better.

Currently in bloom: Missouri Primrose, Foxglove Beardtongue, Columbine, Purple Poppy Mallow, Pale Purple Coneflower, Purple Coneflower, Yellow Coneflower, Butterfly Weed, New England Asters. Best bloomer of the spring, thus far, Missouri Primrose: Amazing yellow flowers that just keep coming.

One last note, I’ve been walking more these past few months… everyday at least an hour which means I’m seeing more birds. My favorite (changes all the time!) is the Indigo Bunting which I rarely see. I’ve seen at least three this year while walking.

Technorati Tags: Birding, Ecology, Gardening, Herbs, Living Simply, Missouri, Native Plants, Natural

It’s a strange thing that I’ll be sitting alone as my family celebrates a couple June birthdays, mine included. I’m finding that as time goes on my ability to relate to my fellow humans, family included, dwindles. I’d like to blame it on Al Gore and his new movie but I can’t. Since 1989 I’ve been freaking out about climate change and with each passing year I have become more alarmed. At the moment I’m just about to pull all my hair out. But you know, my words were for nothing. The words of others were for nothing. Here we are 2006 and the signs are all around us.

We. Just. Don’t. Get. It.

We go on about our business and pretend nothing is wrong. But pretending does not change reality. Back to the point of why I sit alone tonight. While I may love my family out of obligation, I do not like the way they live their lives… and that goes for most of what I have seen of Americans. Perhaps it’s not my right to judge, that’s one way to frame it. Perhaps I’m being a selfish, judgmental, arrogant bastard. So be it.

How is it that you can have children and look them in the eye? Do you tell them its going to be okay? What other lies do you tell yourself and them so that you can bear each day. And what will you do when the day comes (and yes, it will be much sooner than you think) that you have to look them in the eye and tell them you are sorry?

I look around and I see supposed adults that act nothing of the sort. Where have all the adults gone? Just a bunch of irresponsible, gotta have my fun and entertainment teenagers. It’s okay to be a teenager when you are a teenager. But when you are an adult, when you begin having children, perhaps it’s time to grow up?

I cannot bear to look you in the face today. Is that harsh? Perhaps. But it is the truth. I cannot bear to look at your children whom you supposedly love. Perhaps I just don’t understand love because I don’t have any children… I’ve been told that before. It doesn’t matter. You’ll continue to do what you want to do. You will refuse to take any responsibility for your “life style”. You’ll continue to claim that you’d do anything for your children and that what you do on a daily basis is for your children. I think that’s just a convenient cover-up and in the end your children will suffer greatly. So keep living without thought or concern beyond your next purchase or home improvement. Run those mowers, mini-vans, and SUVS. Shop till you drop. Keep telling yourself how you have no choice.

Keep telling yourself you have no choice.

But don’t try to tell me because my ears won’t be there as often. I’d rather be alone and sane. Perhaps I’m a coward but I cannot bear to watch anymore… certainly not as often. It’s like looking at a car wreck and it hurts my brain. So if you don’t see me around, you know why. You can take it personally because it is personal.

One last thing. Someone recently told me that she feels guilty when she’s around me. I’ve heard that many times before and here’s my reply. Don’t feel guilty around me. This is not about me. Let me say that again, this is not about me. This is about you and your children or your grandchildren, you and your choices. So yes, please do feel guilty, you probably should. But it’s not about me. This is about you and your choices. Own it. Look it straight in it’s face and own it. But my guess is you won’t. You’ll shrug your shoulders and walk away. You’ll think to yourself, “Denny sure does have some problems."

But do remember, you do have choices. Every single day you have choices. Every. Single. Day.

Here’s yet another article that the vast majority of the population will ignore. This one from ScienceDaily, Feedback Loops In Global Climate Change Point To A Very Hot 21st Century:

Studies have shown that global climate change can set-off positive feedback loops in nature which amplify warming and cooling trends. Now, researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley have been able to quantify the feedback implied by past increases in natural carbon dioxide and methane gas levels. Their results point to global temperatures at the end of this century that may be significantly higher than current climate models are predicting.

Using as a source the Vostok ice core, which provides information about glacial-interglacial cycles over hundreds of thousands of years, the researchers were able to estimate the amounts of carbon dioxide and methane, two of the principal greenhouse gases, that were released into the atmosphere in response to past global warming trends. Combining their estimates with standard climate model assumptions, they calculated how much these rising concentration levels caused global temperatures to climb, further increasing carbon dioxide and methane emissions, and so on.

Technorati Tags: Antarctica, Arctic, Climate Change, Energy, Energy Crisis, Global Warming, Hurricanes, Natural Resources, Oil, Peak Oil, Sea level rise, Suburbia

Damn, I’m impressed. The folks over at the deCleyre Cooperative continue to kick some ass in the revival of the co-op. Things are looking good. For my little iddy biddy part I contributed remotely by refreshing the design of the blog Casey and I set up last year.

Technorati Tags: Community, Cooperative Living, deCleyre Co-op, Memphis

If we are to have a future, if we are to survive, this is what it will look like. Folks in Memphis and other cities around the country have started community gardens and I’d bet that the trend will continue. In fact, it will become a part of everyday life. Our future will look like our past. With each passing day I become more convinced that peak oil has arrived and with it, the very harsh reality of climate change.

Community gardens, will become a core component of a renewed community life which is to say, real and functional community institutions. We will have to learn the lesson that the government and global capital were never the solution but the problem. The solution lies with our own work in our own space. The gardens in our community, the solar panels in and around our homes, the bicycles on our streets, all are pieces of a sustainable future that will be based in our neighborhoods. I fear we may be too late but some days I’m hopeful.

Technorati Tags: Agriculture, Climate Change, Community Development, Cooperatives, Energy, Energy Crisis, Food, Gardening, Global Warming, Living Simply, Memphis, Natural Resources, Oil, Peak Oil, Self Reliance, Solar Energy, Sustainable Development

Tony Long at Wired News thinks we “desperately need a revolution”:

1968. It was the height of the Vietnam War, the year of My Lai and the Tet offensive. Student riots in Paris nearly brought down the French government. Soviet tanks put a premature end to Czechoslovakia’s Prague Spring.

In the United States, the streets were teeming with antiwar protesters and civil rights demonstrators. Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated within two months of each other. The Democratic convention in Chicago dissolved into chaos. And by the summer, America’s cities were in flames.

The world was seething, and for good reason. There was a lot to be angry about. It was a lousy year, 1968.

I was in high school then. I quit the baseball team because, frankly, sports seemed frivolous. In 1968, there were more important things to worry about than perfecting a curveball. All very high-minded and, in retrospect, more than a little pompous. But nearly 40 years down the road I don’t regret having done it. My political consciousness was awakened and I was actively engaged in the world around me.

But as bad as things were then, they seem infinitely worse now.

So why aren’t the streets clogged with angry Americans demanding to know why their president lied and deceived them so he could attack a country that had absolutely nothing to do with his so-called war on terror? To an extent, we got suckered into Vietnam. We can’t make that claim about Iraq. Iraq was the premeditated, willful invasion of a sovereign nation that was threatening nobody. “Saddam Hussein is a prick who treats the Kurds miserably” is no justification. By the principles established by the Nuremberg Tribunal and international law, our president is a war criminal.

Technorati Tags: George Bush, Iraq, Politics, Protest, US Terrorism, War, War Crimes

Glad to here my friends and former housemates in Memphis are breathing new life into deCleyre. For about a year it had been in a free fall. Thanks to some good folks stepping up to the challenge it looks like the co-op will not only survive but may be entering a time of real growth. Now more than ever I think cities need places like deCleyre so I can’t say how happy I’d be to see it continue and flourish. The Co-op was 7 years old as April 1. From the deCleyre Blog:

It is almost the end of May. The bell tolls from the church down the street and it reminds me that a judgement day is coming for Decleyre. Thus far we have cleaned out almost the entire house, save a few rooms and a closet. We have gathered enough materials for all the building projects save a few pieces of siding. We even have enough to build a tin roofed garden shed. Now the momentum picks up. We are recruiting bands and artists for the benifit extravaganza in early June, and flyers for housemates and well-wishers are finding their way onto the streets. JB has even decided on hipster buisness cards for Decleyre and this very blog, so all the cool kids know whats goin down.

Technorati Tags: Co-op Housing, Cooperative Living, deCleyre Co-op, Memphis, Sustainable Development

Over at TomPaine.com Michael Klare discusses the arrival of energy-based wars. He provides a brief but insightful description of the historical context of cheap oil and it’s impact on U.S. development. He also delves into the effects of colonial development/imperialism on the oil rich regions of the world. A thought provoking introduction to just a few aspects of oil, energy, and the politics of development. Here’s a bit:

To explain the current run-up in gasoline prices, pundits throw out many reasons, including concern over a possible war with Iran, insatiable demand from China, inadequate refinery capacity, greedy oil companies and the gradual depletion of the world’s oilfields. All of these do bear some degree of responsibility, but they are not the fundamental cause. There has been a historic shift in the center of gravity of world oil production from the global North—the older industrialized countries—to conflict-plagued areas of the global South—the developing world. Because this shift is all-encompassing and irreversible, global oil output will remain vulnerable to overseas instability and gasoline prices will remain high.

What explains this shift in production, and why does it cause perennially high gasoline prices?

Although we tend to think of Middle Eastern deserts when hearing the term “oil production,” the global oil industry arose in the United States in the middle of the 19th century. It then concentrated in other early-to-industrialize nations. Up until 1950, most of the world’s oil was produced in the global North. This meant that the sites of production were located relatively close to the sites of demand, and that any outbreaks of disorder in the oilfields (never entirely absent in the global North) could swiftly be suppressed.

The early concentration of oil production in North America, in particular, had an especially profound impact on critical developments of the 20th century. It helped make possible the early emergence of automobile culture and suburbia in the United States after World War I, and its full-blown effervescence after 1945. During World War II it gave the Allies an enormous advantage over Germany and Japan—neither of which possessed domestic sources of petroleum and had to fight for whatever meager supplies they could acquire from abroad. After the war, North American oil helped rebuild European economies under the Marshall Plan.

Technorati Tags: Empire, Energy, Energy Crisis, Gas, Natural Resources, Oil, Peak Oil, War

I think it’s safe to say that the combination of climate change and peak oil will indeed bring havoc to our global food production. I have no doubts. Stephen Leahy of the Inter Press Service reports that Global Food Supply Near the Breaking Point:

The world is now eating more food than farmers grow, pushing global grain stocks to their lowest level in 30 years.

Rising population, water shortages, climate change, and the growing costs of fossil fuel-based fertilisers point to a calamitous shortfall in the world’s grain supplies in the near future, according to Canada’s National Farmers Union (NFU).

Thirty years ago, the oceans were teeming with fish, but today more people rely on farmers to produce their food than ever before, says Stewart Wells, NFU’s president.

In five of the last six years, global population ate significantly more grains than farmers produced.

And with the world’s farmers unable to increase food production, policymakers must address the “massive challenges to the ability of humanity to continue to feed its growing numbers”, Wells said in a statement.

There isn’t much land left on the planet that can be converted into new food-producing areas, notes Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington-based non-governmental organisation. And what is left is of generally poor quality or likely to turn into dust bowls if heavily exploited, Brown told IPS.
…

“There’s not nearly enough discussion about how people will be fed 20 years from now,” he said.

Hunger is already a stark and painful reality for more than 850 million people, including 300 million children. How can the number of hungry not explode when one, two and possibly three billion more people are added to the global population?

The global food system needs fixing and fast, says Darrin Qualman, NFU’s research director.

The article suggests that the old bumper sticker phrase, “Think Globally, Act Locally” is a large part of the solution. I agree. Not only will we discover that it is the solution for food production but energy production as well. Capitalism has produced agribusiness, which is an industrial process of food production based on maximizing profits. It’s never been about supplying the people of the planet with healthy, nutritious food.

If we survive on this planet long enough we will eventually learn that capitalism was a very big mistake. There are other ways, better ways, to organize our society.

Technorati Tags: Agriculture, Climate Change, Energy Crisis, Food, Global Warming, Natural, Natural Resources, Peak Oil

Truman over at Irregular Times has an excellent post regarding the use of National Security as a basis for imprisonment, torture, and the general breaking of laws by the U.S. government. Each day seems to bring news that the U.S. government and George Bush are totally out of control. Judge Rules That Justice Is Inconvenient for National Security:

This news comes to us from the Washington Post this morning:

A federal judge yesterday threw out the case of a German citizen who says he was wrongfully imprisoned by the CIA, ruling that Khaled al-Masri’s lawsuit poses a “grave risk” of damage to national security by exposing government secrets… Sources have said Masri was held by the CIA for five months in Afghanistan because of mistaken identity. Masri says he was beaten, sodomized and repeatedly questioned about alleged terrorist ties. But [Judge] Ellis said the remedy cannot be found in the courts. Masri’s “private interests must give way to the national interest in preserving state secrets,'’ the judge wrote in dismissing the lawsuit filed last year against former CIA director George J. Tenet and 10 unnamed CIA officials.

Think about this for a minute, and consider what it says about the radical impact of the right wing judiciary installed by George W. Bush. Judge Ellis ruled that the United States government has the power to break the law, imprison and abuse an innocent person without a trial or hearing of any kind, and never pay the price, so long as the government claims that national security is involved. If Judge Ellis’s ruling stands, is there anything our government could not do, using national security as an excuse?All indications are that Khaled al-Masri was never involved in terrorism. Yet, he was kidnapped and flown by American agents across international borders to a secret prison in order to be tortured. If a person cannot file suit in America for such treatment, what are our courts good for anymore? What good is American law anymore?

Technorati Tags: CIA, Detention, Empire, George Bush, National Security, Security, Torture, US Detention Camps, US Terrorism

“We are in war. And we’ve got to collect intelligence on the enemy.” - Republican Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, on Bush’s database of the phone calls of all Americans.

Technorati Tags: George Bush, NSA, Phone Records, Spying, Wiretaps

Just as I was telling myself I would slow the expansion of our garden I make the mistake of visiting the Missouri Botanical Gardens. If you are a gardener you can’t help but be inspired by such a magnificent place. We had a perfect day for the visit. Not only were we treated to many beautiful gardens but also an exhibit of blown glass… very nice. My favorite is the home gardening exhibit and the Missouri natives demonstration garden.

So now I sit looking out my window thinking yet again about the many ways I can expand our garden. In the past two springs I’ve taken what was an shady area struggling grass (more moss than grass), mulched it and added 35+ native Missouri species. On the northwest side of our house where we get a bit more sun I ripped up a 6 X 20 foot area of grass and planted a mix of 35+ native prairie/glade species. So that’s at least 70 new species and well over 100 actual plants. I’m fairly happy with the results but we’re on five acres of land here. The defined yard area is probably about an acre with the rest left to woodland. The garden area I’ve created is probably about 5% of this one acre. So there’s still plenty of room for more garden!

Technorati Tags: Missouri Botanical Garden, Natural, Gardening, Native Plants, St. Louis

This is not good… really, not good. Nor is it a surprise. We’ll start with Reuters' coverage of a new report, Global warming threatens extinctions:

OSLO (Reuters) - Global warming will become a top cause of extinction from the tropical Andes to South Africa with thousands of species of plants and animals likely to be wiped out in coming decades, a study said on Tuesday.

“Global warming ranks among the most serious threats to the planet’s biodiversity and, under some scenarios, may rival or exceed that due to deforestation,” according to the study in the journal Conservation Biology.

“This study provides even stronger scientific evidence that global warming will result in catastrophic species loss across the planet,” said Jay Malcolm, an assistant forestry professor at the University of Toronto and a lead author of the study with scientists in the United States and Australia.

Last month, a UN study said humans were responsible for the worst spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs and urged unprecedented extra efforts to reach a UN target of slowing the rate of losses by 2010.

The Times of London 3C hotter. Earth’s danger point. Now scientists say it is going to happen:

The world will warm by 3C (5.4F) even under emissions projections for 2050 that leading scientists consider optimistic, the United Nations group that studies global warming has said.

The increase, which would cause drought and famine for 400 million people and devastate wildlife, is predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its most confident assessment yet of how greenhouse gases are affecting global temperatures.

A draft of part of the panel’s fourth report, which the US Government has released on the internet, shows that it has, for the first time, placed a likely figure on the progress of global warming, indicating a level of scientific certainty that it has avoided in the past.

Global warming fastest for 20,000 years - and it is mankind’s fault

Global warming is made worse by man-made pollution and the scale of the problem is unprecedented in at least 20,000 years, according to a draft report by the world’s leading climate scientists.

The leaked assessment by the group of international experts says there is now overwhelming evidence to show that the Earth’s climate is undergoing dramatic transformation because of human activity.

A draft copy of the report by a working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases are at the highest for at least 650,000 years.

Technorati Tags: Climate Change, Ecology, Global Warming, Extinction

I’m having a hard time keeping up these days. Oil now above $70 for an extended period and not likely to dip much below it. Global production is flat with various geo-political situations and a new hurricane season looming. Speaking of hurricane season did you know that the surface water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico are currently 4-7 degrees above this time last year and are essentially equal to (slightly above) the normal temps of early June, the official start of the season? If this keeps up for another few years (and I think it will) seems logical that we’ll see an official lengthening of the season. We’ll soon realize that peak oil and peak climate have arrived at the same time. Interesting times indeed.

But on to the subject of oil, there are going to be many disappointed Americans this time next year when prices have continued to climb and they begin to realize that this was not mere “gouging”. The American way of life, based on cheap gas, is over. Let’s start with an excerpt from an Interview with Matthew Simmons, “Tough Times Ahead for Energy”:

JIM: Describe the origins of this crisis. How did we get into this predicament?

MATT: Well, if you wanted basically to go back and say when the seeds were really started: they were started when I was a kid in the ’50s, and the world began believing that the Middle East had unlimited amounts of oil that we had barely just started to find, and its costs were so inexpensive that our biggest problem was basically how do we keep the world from being flooded with too much of it. So we have some sort of diversity of supply. At the same time, we’re finalizing atomic energy. There was a debate going on – and this was long before I can remember about it, I’ve just gone and read about it out of curiosity – atomic energy was going to be so free that it didn’t actually warrant creating meters, the meters were way too expensive. Just give it to people for free.

So we kind of laid a foundation of an illusion that we could basically rely on effectively very expensive energy forever, and that the cornucopia of all cornucopias was in the Middle East. What amazes me is that it would appear to me now from a lot of feedback I’ve had that until I stumbled into the curiosity of finding these technical papers, and spent 2 ½ years working on what came out last June, and my book Twilight in the Desert, nobody had actually ever questioned the whole card. We just basically assumed. And so many people assumed it. It was one of those things. There’s no reason to ask how do you know that, because everybody knows it.

And then we made another egregious assumption or mistake – we created satellite TV, and out of that we let the whole world peek on how we lived. As a result China and India and Pakistan and Bolivia said, “I’d really love to live like those people in Canada and the United States do – and Europe. That really looks neat.” So we set the seeds [where] demand is going to grow forever and obviously we’ll be able to supply it because technology is making supply easier and easier to do, and we’ve always got the Middle East. And the problem is that demand was too young and supply was too old and we were giving the energy away for free.

It’s been awhile since I’ve linked into Jim Kunstler over at Clusterfuck Nation. His latest, Peak Behavior, is excellent.

I try to avoid the term “peak oil” because it has cultish overtones, and this is a serious socioeconomic issue, not a belief system. But it seems to me that what we are seeing now in financial and commodity markets, and in the greater economic system itself, is exactly what we ought to expect of peak oil conditions: peak activity.

After all, peak is the point where the world is producing the most oil it will ever produce, even while it is also the inflection point where big trouble is apt to begin. And this massive quantity of oil induces a massive amount of work, land development, industrial activity, commercial production, and motor transport. So we shouldn’t be surprised that there is a lot happening, that houses and highways are still being built, that TVs are pouring out of the Chinese factories, commuters are still whizzing around the DC Beltway, that obese children still have plenty of microwavable melted cheese pockets to zap for their exhausting sessions with Grand Theft Auto.

But in the peak oil situation the world is like a banquet just before the tablecloth is pulled out from under it. There is plenty on the table, but it is about to be overturned, spilled, lost, and broken. There’s more oil available then ever before, but also so many people at the banquet table clamoring for it that there is barely enough to go around, and the people may knock some things over trying to get it.

A correspondent in Texas writes: “On a four week running average basis, total US petroleum imports (crude + products) have been falling since 2/24/06, until last week, when we finally showed an increase of 1.3 percent, after bidding the price of oil up by about 20 percent. IMO, we bid the price up enough to (temporarily) increase our imports. We will see what subsequent weeks show, but I think that we are in the early stages of a bidding war for remaining net export capacity. The interesting question is what countries may not be importing because they can’t afford the oil."

Stuart Staniford has a great post over at The Oil Drum outlining the continued plateau of global oil production: OPEC Declines and the World Plateau:

Average daily oil production, by month, for OPEC countries (stacked). Click to enlarge. Runs from Jan 2002 to Feb 2006. Believed to be all liquids. Source: EIA.

The EIA came out with the latest International Petroleum Monthly yesterday, which allows us to update the plateau graph, and triggered me into a little investigation of what’s going on with OPEC production.

Finally, there’s this story from USA Today: Across USA, wave of anger building over gas prices which details how people are dealing with higher gas prices. Some are even resorting to to that great evil: car pooling. Oh, no, the horror of it.

FRONT ROYAL, Va. — The sunrise turns the night sky pink Tuesday as four travelers meet at the Park ‘N Ride lot off Interstate 66 on the eastern edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

A nightmare has brought them together: the price of gasoline, which lists at $2.84 for regular, $2.94 for medium and $3.04 for supreme at the Shell and Exxon stations down the street. Their blue Kia van is bound for Washington, 60 miles away. Today, the one-way trip will cost $10.

Technorati Tags: Climate Change, Energy, Energy Crisis, Gas, Global Warming, Hurricanes, Natural Resources, Oil, Peak Oil

The folks over at The Oil Drum have an excellent post regarding the current state of discussion regarding high prices at the pump. As anyone who has studied peak oil knows, the discussion going on in the political realm and U.S. society in general is far off base. In fact, the discussion is not even close to the target. If this were a game of hot and cold we’d be in the ice of the northern glaciers… of course those are warming up and melting aren’t they? But that is another discussion. Back to The Oil Drum and peak oil, I strongly recommend that you read The Politics of Oil: The Discourse Must Change:

Leaders of both political parties are expressing concern about the high price of gasoline. President George Bush announced yesterday that he was suspending deliveries to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in order to make more oil available to consumers as well as putting on hold the traditional regulations requiring additives to make fuel burn cleaner during the summer driving season.

…

We strongly feel that the leaders of both political parties are not only headed in the wrong direction with respect to gas prices, but we also worry that they fundamentally misunderstand the factors behind the current situation at gasoline stations around the US. Public statements by political figures over the past several days would seem to suggest that oil companies and their record profits are the sole factor determining the price of gasoline. Not only is this untrue, but it is dangerous to give the American people the impression that only oil companies are to blame. The American people need to understand that the phenomenon of high gas prices cannot be attributed to a single source. They also need to understand that no one political party will be able to fix our current woes.

It’s a must read and is, as expected, followed by a fantastic discussion thread.

Technorati Tags: Energy, Energy Crisis, Gas, Oil, Peak Oil

“Look, I’m sorry but the earth does not have a creamy nougat filling of oil in the center.” - Jim Kunstler

That is all.

Technorati Tags: Energy, Energy Crisis, Gas, Oil, Peak Oil

<a href=“http://www.flickr.com/photos/geekinthegarden/128956720"The snakes have woken from there winter naps! Every spring we have two or three Garter snakes that have made it a habit of visiting our little garden pond for their first frog meals. I left alot more leaves in this year and thus far I don’t think any frogs have been eaten.

Yeah, I know, I know. The snake has to eat too and as much as I appreciate the snakes and their need to eat, I still have a hard time watching or listening as a frog is eaten… and yes, they make quite a racket as they are going down.

Also worth noting, we have lots of Leopard Frog eggs in the pond so we should be seeing some tadpoles soon. Within the next couple weeks the Gray Tree Frogs will also start breeding… that usually happens once night time temperatures average mid 60s. I’m guessing the first or second week of May.

Technorati Tags: Garder Snake, Natural, Garter Snake