By Bill the Butcher:

One of the most interesting bits of news in the last few days seems to have been largely ignored by media obsessing over what some “celebrity” wore in a function or what a politician’s latest profundity on this or that might be.

Simply put, it was this: that there is, almost to a certainty, life on Mars. And this life was discovered as long ago as 1976; only nobody recognised the fact till now.

Think about that; 1976, when I was just starting school, the Vietnam War had been over only a year, a mulitlateral world order still existed, there was no such thing as a cell-phone or the internet, and the Viking rovers were digging into Martian soil. The scientists didn’t recognise it then, but the data didn’t vanish, and re-examination showed that there’s, apparently, a 99% chance that the Red Planet actually has life. In most statistical systems, a 99% chance is considered about as close to a sure thing as you can get.

In other words, there are almost certainly Martians, though they aren’t climbing into cylinders and blasting through space to land in your backyard and disgorge tripod fighting machines. Not yet, anyway.

These Martians are, if they exist, bacteria, or organisms analogous to bacteria. You know bacteria? Those tiny things somewhere between the worlds of the viruses and the earliest, smallest algae, which aren’t even eukaryotic in their cell structure? I mean those bacteria, or organisms equivalent to them.

This might not seem like a big deal. And, actually, it isn’t a big deal.

It is a humongous, a gigantic, a titanic deal.

From our viewpoint as self-appointed lords of the earth, bacteria aren’t significant. In reality, they are so significant that life as we know it would be impossible without them. Everything – but literally everything – that can be considered “life as we know it” ultimately depends on bacteria. (And a note here, referencing HG Wells’ The War Of The Worlds, in which the Martian invaders died off because Mars didn’t have bacteria and so they had no defences against them; that is simply not possible. Without bacteria, Wells’ Martians could never have existed, since all organic matter would have been locked up in corpses which could not decompose and release their nutrients to the environment. The first generation of complex life would have been the last. So there.) And there are, correspondingly, more bacteria than there are anything else. In terms of numbers, almost all life is bacteria. Such gigantic creatures as blue whales, humans or cockroaches are infinitesimal compared to them.

It’s not just that bacteria are somewhere else, either. A few days ago I’d written an article in which I pointed out, inter alia, that we humans have, on average, a hundred trillion bacteria in our bodies. When we’re looking in the mirror, we are viewing a composite organism, most of which is bacterial. We are part bacteria ourselves.

So, yes, bacteria on Mars are something of a gargantuan deal; but it’s more than just the fact that bacteria are important to life.

Mars, as you may know, isn’t exactly the canal-irrigated, hospitable world that nineteenth-century science fiction would have led us to expect. It is, in fact, a cold, extremely arid planet where there hasn’t been running water for billions of years, a planet with an atmosphere that isn’t exactly breathable by our standards – what little there is of it. Think of the moon with a thin wrapping of carbon dioxide, and you wouldn’t be all that far off.

And yet, Mars has, it seems, bacterial life. And I don’t mean possible fossils in an ancient meteor, though those are important enough; I mean actual, feeding, reproducing, bacterial life.

What does this mean? It means something extremely important, so important that we humans should stop murdering each other and think about the implications. And those implications are these:

Firstly, if Mars has life, active bacterial life, then we are not alone in this solar system, let alone the Universe. It doesn’t matter that this life is “just” bacterial life; its very existence immediately knocks humanity off its self-styled pedestal as the pinnacle of creation. All right, so it’s “only” bacteria; but, as I said, bacteria (or equivalents) are essential to the existence of any more organised life. If you don’t have bacteria, you have nothing. Ergo, if bacteria exist elsewhere, the fundamentals of life exist elsewhere. And that means…

…that, secondly, if bacteria can exist in an environment as inimical as Mars, then they can exist just about anywhere; in fact, we don’t have to depend on “goldilocks planets” to find life. If life can exist on Mars, then we can expect to find it almost anywhere, from the seas of Europa to the atmosphere of Jupiter, from the planets orbiting nearby stars to the gas clouds between the galaxies. It might well be that lifelessness is the exception.

Now think about that for a moment; not in scientific terms, but in philosophical.

Not so very long ago, the earth was a flat disc, around which the sun, moon, and entire cosmos revolved. It was the centre of all creation, the only favoured place of the gods, and, of course, the ruling species was the pinnacle of creation – so much so that the majority of religions ascribed to the gods the same physical characteristics as humanity. But time passed, and the earth – in spite of the efforts of the Catholic Church, which burned Giordano Bruno at the stake for stating that the sun was a star and other worlds could have life – shrank to a sphere orbiting the Sun, which briefly took its place as the centre of creation, before becoming an ordinary little star on a spiral arm of an ordinary galaxy in the seas of time and space; hardly a fleck in the heavens. And, simultaneously, that most favoured species of the gods became just another ape, the result of random mutations and evolutionary pressures; a creature which has existed for the blink of an eye, and might vanish tomorrow when circumstances change – as they will.

So now, when we suddenly have to consider the fact that we are definitely not the only place in the cosmos which has life, and we have to consider the possibility that the cosmos is teeming with life, what does that do to us, the former Centre of All Creation? We shrink to the position of, perhaps, a gnat, or worse. We are as nothing.

Can we – do you think human society, especially human society as regulated by absolutist Abrahamic religions, is ready to deal with that realisation? When you consider that the nation which arrogates to itself the right to rule this planet as its private domain, the nation which claims to be the fount of enlightenment and liberty, still can’t make its own citizens accept the fact that they are simply evolved apes, then what chance do you think this further realisation stands?

And this is why, I think, we aren’t going to hear much about the Martian bacteria; in fact, I’ll even say efforts to confirm their existence will be killed off by deliberate underfunding and suchlike underhanded tactics. Unless there’s a potential military or other profit-making applicability, the powers that be are scared of science. They absolutely do not wish to know. And if these bacteria are confirmed, you can bet the news will be carefully buried in other chatter.

Of course, that won’t stop the Martian bacteria from existing, just as the Creationists can’t erase evolution just by denying it. Even King Knut couldn’t turn back the tide.

But it’s a tragedy on a Cosmic scale that we allegedly rational creatures don’t take this opportunity to measure our own place in the wonder that is the Universe, and realise what a precious bubble of life we inhabit – this beautiful blue planet, where bacteria are just the foundations on which everything from elephants to earthworms, from earwigs to echidnas, have evolved. We should come together now, to preserve what we have. Unfortunately we just keep on destroying it.

Looking at it from the level of sustainability, then, the Martian bacteria may be the favoured ones.

Photography by: Nina Matthews

By: Azazel

“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

How would you react if a stranger approached you one day and told you that if you ate his flesh and drank his blood on a regular basis that you will find yourself in paradise after you die?  What about a random person telling you that he deserves to rule over you because he won a popularity contest?  Or what about some guy demanding that you obey him because he’s wearing a certain color shirt and a piece of metal that you are to respect – and that failure to comply will result in your person being locked in a cage or gunned down if you try to resist him?  I’ll bet that more than likely you would dismiss such persons as being insane.

Yet such ideas are quite common in modern society – if not central to its functionality!  If you convince people that symbolically cannibalizing some guy who allegedly was the son of a deity you have yourself a religion with about two billion followers; if you convince people that the most popular guy in a given region is the most fit to rule you have a republican-style government; if you convince people that they should obey a guy who wears a piece of metal on his chest, and that this guy can shoot you for failure to comply, you have a “law” enforcement agent.  Such behaviors by individuals are considered lunacy, but when you have a large enough group doing the same thing it becomes only sensible to accept these actions as being legitimate!

Thus, by default, society is the arbiter of sanity – as a matter of practicality, whatever it approves of is rational and that which it doesn’t is madness.  And thus society reserves the “right” to judge the individual as sane or mad.

But, as Juvenal once said, “Who watches the Watchmen?”  If society is the de facto standard of sanity, then who or what is there is judge that society itself is sane?  If society is mad, then it is not fit to be the standard of sanity – but if society is the standard of sanity, then it can’t be insane, regardless of how utterly daft it becomes!

Needless to say, the default standard is a broken one at best – when one considers that we now live in a world where protest is “terrorism” (let alone the fact that people even *believe* in this concept – seriously, talking about “terrorism” like it actually exists is like full-grown adults talking about the monster under the bed…), incorporeal entities can steal your money (oops…“tax your wages”) and use the cash to kill people over 5,000 miles away (whom you have no qualms with, or are even acquainted with for that matter…) and considers the regular Joe with a rifle to be extremely dangerous yet doesn’t consider *a standing military* with access to everything from small arms all the way to nuclear weapons to be concerning in the least (hell, they’re “heroes” in the public eye!) any rational person can see that the world conclude that the world has gone mad.

I don’t know who first said it, but there’s a truism that says “When the world goes mad, only a lunatic is sane.”  If the society we live in has gone completely bonkers (and I have every reason to believe that’s just the case), then it’s up to the lunatics – those that society dismisses as crazy – to fashion a standard to measure the mental health of society (as those judge “sane” by the standards of a world are unfit for the task – assuming they recognize the *need* for the task to be completed at all…): as one of those people the social mainstream considers crazy I offer up this article as contribution towards the establishment of such a standard that the sovereign individual can use as a reference to determine social sanity.

So, here are the cues I propose one must look at…

Rationality of values

When looking at the values of any given society this should be your first criteria – just how compatible are the espoused values with reality?  Are they clearly defined?  Are they realistic in terms of one’s ability to live up to them?  Do they serve a functional purpose?  Any society that holds a value system that is transparent, attainable and functional has the foundation for socially healthy interactions between individuals.

Beware of societies that push unrealistic virtues – as the values espoused tend to trap those who hold them in a never-ending cycle of failure in attempting to live up to them, and when they do live up to them it’s often an arbitrarily imposed burden upon the individual that serves no function other than to frustrate him: for example I will use what is perhaps the most common unrealistic value pushed by any society – the value of righteousness.  The concept is defined in only the most vague terms (i.e. “do the right thing” – with the definition of “right” being a *huge* variable depending on what philosophical perspective is adopted), it’s compatibility with reality is questionable at best (since there are many interpretations of the concept of “right”) and people who try to live up to it wind up doing little more than frustrating themselves (if they ever give any serious thought about the nature of “right” and “wrong” themselves) or else become closed extremists for *their* own interpretation of such concepts.

I consider values such as this to be false values – the only function they serve is to keep people in line with the conventional wisdom (thus making them easier to control).  Any society that highly emphasizes such “values” can be rationally judged as insane by the sovereign individual.

Balance of values

Once one has determined what values are rational or not, the second category of social health is the balance of the espoused values – each value by itself may serve a function, but certain values may be over or underemphasized and that can lead to problems: all values need to be kept in their proper context to function!

For example, most modern society’s claim to value such concepts as freedom (whether they live up to that or not is another question – but more on that later…) but also strive to hammer home the concept of loyalty to that society (often from the moment the child can talk he’s taught to recite pledges of loyalty he doesn’t have the *capacity* to understand – solely for the purpose of instilling loyalty to the establishment) – if a given society values freedom, why does it go out of its way to instill a love of itself and a distrust for rival societies?  Does it not trust “free” people to decide for themselves what kind of society they want to live in?  I’ll admit the need for loyalty *within* a given social unit, but to pledge allegiance directly to it is something of an extreme (and it’s even more extreme when it’s driven into young minds that don’t comprehend it!): assuming that this is unintentional, there is an imbalance of values here that must be corrected for sanity to be restored; if it is intentional, however we have a case of social hypocrisy (an altogether different matter – one that won’t be easily resolved because society does not *want* the imbalance corrected…).

Consistency of values

Finally, one must look and see just how the espoused values of society function in practice – this is where the proverbial rubber meets the road, as all values function only as well as they are consistently applied.

For example, Western society continues to harp on the notion of equality for all but never follows the concept through to its logical conclusion – and this inconsistency appears in both the political philosophies of those who identify as being “right” or “left.”

The inconsistency of the “right” is perhaps more obvious – particularly with the stance it adopts towards immigration (the subtext of which being that “native-born” persons are superior to the “immigrants” – the definitions of such terms being quite relative, of course…) or towards notions of reproductive freedom (that a potential person [not an actual person, but something that *might* live to become one in time] takes precedence over the lives of actual, living people), but one can see this in the “left” as well if one takes the political implications of their worldview to its logical conclusion: as this would be the de facto result of policy for those seeking to limit/ban firearms (in practice, the common man would be robbed of the means to defend himself whilst the state and its agents retain full control of their own weapons – a perfect environment for genocide to happen…) or the use of the powers of state for “humanitarian” purposes (just look at what’s happening in Libya under “humanitarian” guises – whoever controls the monopoly on force gets to define such notions for its own benefit in practice).

In other words, with regards to the value of equality, both the “left” and the “right” apply the idea inconsistently with regard to their espousal of the value – which means both paradigms are socially sick and need to be discarded (as that’s the only cure for a sickness of that level).

In conclusion, I hope that this piece provides a little insight into the nature of social sanity and reveals that the individual is as qualified to diagnose the sanity of social order as said order is as qualified to diagnose him – that the entity that passes judgment can itself be judged…

By: Grainne Rhuad

It was while I was watching Karl Pilkington on “Idiot Abroad-The Bucket List”, that I began thinking about shanty towns and their environmental impact.  Karl in his idiot savant-ish way stated what should have been the obvious to all of us.

“There’s not really much that you can change, is there?  You can come down here, build a new hut, donate some money but in the end, you haven’t changed anything have you?”

He was right.  This problem of displaced humans is bigger than a Unicef jar or a new hut or a batch of collected clothing.  It impacts people, we see that and we have known that for a long time. But it’s also impacting our environment.

Urban poverty poses a great health and environmental risk for everyone, not just those forced to live in it.  Because people are marginalized they are forced to live in areas where nobody else will live and they do not face the possibility of being forced out due to development. Poverty puts pressure on people to engage in unsustainable and ecologically damaging practices.

In most areas of the world this means less than desirable land.  A swampland or flood zone where maladies like malaria is rampant is the setting for a lot of these shanty towns. The South African ghetto of Soweto was actually built next to a sewage facility so that the poor could be close to work.

In Brazilian cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte and Recife, the topography has caused much of the urban poor to occupy the hills. Following deforestation, extreme soil compaction and the absence of retaining walls, these dwellings are subject to landslides and dangerous rock falls.

But also to be taken into account is the fact that these towns are extremely DIY.  They aren’t built with good materials and no thought is given to sewage, water cleanliness or anything further than a roof really.

A good number of favelas (Brazilian term for shanty town) are also vulnerable to flooding. In Recife, the drainage systems date to colonial times and are clogged with refuse much of the time. There is thus the problem of sewer overflow that causes flooding of entire districts during the rainy season. In Manila, the same problems, accentuated by deforestation, provoke extreme flooding each year that affects the poorest quarter of the population. Extreme flooding in 1998 left 300 000 homeless. Earthquakes were responsible for the destruction of more than 100 million homes during the twentieth century. Of these, the precariously situated shanty towns were among the most affected. One example is the 1976 Guatemala earthquake, where 1.2 million people lost their homes and virtually all of the 59 million households destroyed in the capital were situated in shanty towns.

Very often industries that are already environmentally unsound and full of  industrial pollutants like refineries, pesticide factories, electronic waste ‘recycling’, battery recycling, foundries, dry cleaners, tanneries, etc. are situated on the outsides of towns.  They uncoincidentally are staffed by people who have little choice in their work because to not work is to not get by.  So here again, the shanty towns are situated close to if not within some of the most toxic areas where environmental safeguards are often non-existent.

LANDSLIDE

Every year Landslides bring death and destruction to the inhabitants of shanty towns from Haiti to Cairo.  Undoubtedly, generational deforestation and other natural disasters such as volcanic activity have contributed to this.  But these encampments for humanities lost and unwanted also add to the problem.

According to a study from 1990, 16% of shanty town dwellers living on the sides of hills in Rio run short- and medium-term risks to their lives and their property (Taschner, 1995). In Caracas, nearly two-thirds of the urban population live on the side of unstable hills where landslides are a permanent danger, a risk intensified by seismic activity in the area (Jiménez Diaz, 1994).

The very fact that the ramshackle townships exist keeps vegetation from re-growing.  The degradation of the soil and land by continued contaminant use most likely ensures that nothing will ever grow there again.  What we are looking at with this spread of the human unfortunate is the beginnings of desert wastelands.  Places that will never again be suitable for habitation and will remain unproductive for centuries.

When this occurs, it is all very well and good to teach the parable of “teaching a man to fish”.  But you can teach someone to plant and grow and they will still be unproductive because they have neither enriched soil nor potable water available.

HEALTH ISSUES

According to health surveys of the urban homeless in Toronto:

• New and old diseases are coming back: tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, lice, scabies, bedbug infestations, Norwalk virus outbreaks, malnutrition.
• The longer a person is on the street the more their health breaks down. Early death of the homeless is very common

(Source: http://votetoronto.ca/~votetoro/en/6/7/166/Homelessness–Social-and-Environmental-Issues.htm)

There are many reasons why homeless people congregating in encampments experience poorer health even than those who visit shelters.  They live in close quarters with poor air quality, oftimes due to their heating and cooking fuels.  Because their encampments are away and on the outskirts for the most part, they are further from health facilities for the poor.  Their diets are poor as is their hygiene by necessity.  They also lack survival skills living in urban areas or are unable to employ them due to lack of resources.

The urban poor of shanty towns face both similar and different obstacles to health.  HIV/AIDS is extremely prevalent in African Ghettos like Lagos, Nigeria and Soweto, South Africa.  This is due to local taboos and practices as well as an inability for aid workers to get to ill people to serve them.  People with compromised immune systems also face myriad other disease due to open sewage and close quarters which speeds the progress of HIV.  The orphanages around these areas abound with children whose parents have been lost to this disease before their 30’s and very often the children are infected as well.

In other parts of the world, notably South American countries, the urban poor deal with malnutrition due both to unavailability of food and their bodies not being used to non-indigenous foodstuff.  This has been a particular problem in Peru.

CLIMATE CHANGE

 Climate change is becoming at this stage of the game a case of Chicken and Egg.  As noted before in reference to landslides, natural disasters attributable to changes in weather patterns such as those seen of late in Haiti, The Pacific Islands and even, one could argue in Louisiana/Mississippi; these disasters leave people homeless and helpless as to their relocation.

According to the International Organization for Migration, 20 million people were made homeless last year as a result of sudden-onset environmental disasters. But that could rise to one billion in the next 40 years as the effects of climate change take hold, testing not only public attitudes but our capacity to provide support and accommodation.

The Pacific island nations, so vocal at Copenhagen, are already experiencing the effects of climate change. Tuvalu experienced a 7 centimeter rise in sea levels in the 13 years leading up to 2005. If this doesn’t sound significant, bear in mind that the highest point of the low lying coral atolls – home to 10,000 people – is just 3.7 meters above high tide. “We live in constant fear of the adverse impacts of climate change,” Prime Minister Saufatu Sopoanga appeals. “The threat is real and serious, and is of no difference to a slow and insidious form of terrorism against us.”

However, once again the relocation is ultimately to areas unprepared for a huge human influx.  Or, it inhibits the natural re-growth that would have occurred if so many people weren’t camped out on land and tromping down new vegetation while contaminating it with substandard services.

SEWAGE

A huge problem with any urban settlement whether it is a homeless encampment or a shanty town, is human refuse.  Humans create a great deal of waste.

In homeless settlements in urban areas this means people will defecate, urinate, bleed, throw away by products of their daily use and vomit all on the asphalt of the city.  In some places some of this waste may be taken care of by sewage systems still running below ground.  This is particularly true of areas like Downtown Los Angeles which currently boast an estimate of 80,000 homeless. (Source: http://www.patbrowninstitute.org/)

In a city like this refuse is also dealt with by maintenance workers both paid and on job release from jail.  However not all of the refuse is caught up and because it is not managed well it gets into water systems and soil degrading the resources available for all life in the area.  Last year the Ventura Stream Team documented over 35 sites of human waste from homeless camping. You can view the pictures HERE.

In the case of shanty towns the problem is worse.  Almost never is a true sewage system available and as a result every by-product of human life available runs in creeks and streams through the towns.

Taking into account how long some of these human settlements have already been in place and how long they are likely to stay in place-a picture of environmental degradation begins to draw itself.

In developed areas of the world we very often have laws that prohibit us from building, digging or using land that has had improperly stored chemicals and has been contaminated.  Yet in these areas not only are huts with dirt floor erected in contaminated places, contaminants like kerosene, oil, chemical cleaners and strippers and industrial waste mix with the human waste flowing through the footpaths.

FIRE

In areas in which people build out of items they have at hand, like cardboard and tossed off paper the danger and advent of fire is very real.  Add to this the fact that there often is either no fire service or at the very least it is difficult to get emergency services into these areas.

Fires in homeless encampments are typically started by lack of survival skills and knowledge.  The most prevalent cause is an unattended or unbanked fire.  Many brush and forest fires across the U.S.  can be attributed to homeless encampments in either wooded areas or abandoned homes.

These fires however pose more than a human threat.  They spark combustible materials releasing them into the environment.

“Their mixture of inflammable dwellings, extraordinary density and dependence upon open fires for heat and cooking is a superlative recipe for spontaneous combustion” (Davis, 2006). Once started, fires, as expected, spread very quickly and firefighters, if they respond, are stopped by nonexistent streets.

In many cases they are the result of irresponsible behavior. In São Paulo, youth make a pastime out of making “Balão”, a kind of mini hot-air balloon that bursts into flames once aloft and then falls back down into the shanty towns.

On the other hand, fire can also be a good strategy for property developers seeking to “clean” shanty lands once they have risen in value.

As contrary as it may seem, seeing as how shanty towns have been deliberately set up in unwanted areas; Cities do expand due to human population  growth and developers will set their sights on this land oftimes setting up manmade disasters to clear the area to develop for higher classed citizens.

GLOBAL RESPONSIBILITY

Very often we feel like Urban homelessness is either too big to tackle or a state of being that is none of our business.  While it is true, it is very big to address, what we need to understand is that our collective resources are affected by our inattention.

Also Urban homelessness, or near-homelessness-as in the case of shanty towns is something quite different from rural homelessness.  Rural vagabonds, nomads and gypsies while they have their own struggles, generally do not have such a huge and adverse impact on the land in which they dwell.  Very often they have survival skills for whatever area they live in and understand that caring for their surrounding benefits them.  At the very least their concentration is lower and their impact easier to disperse.

It’s not too late; there are several models for urban sustainability that are economic and easy to switch to.  What is needed is a larger desire on the part of people not already downtrodden to share the load in shifting the model in how we live.

Some would postulate that we are all of us “Homeless” and this is the reason for our mistreatment of the environment.

“The contemporary environmental crisis is closely connected to inherited ways of thinking that have fostered a feeling in us that we are not really at home in the universe. As long as we fail to experience how intimately we belong to the earth and the universe as our appropriate habitat, we will probably not care deeply for our natural environment.”- John F. Haught, Religious and Cosmic Homelessness: Some Environmental Implications

This being so, we can all of us begin to relate to one another under the assumption that we all need to care for one another in order to care for the environment earth and ourselves.

By: Karla Fetrow

Legislating for the Good of the People
An old saying, “you can’t fight city hall”, has been modified over the years to “you can’t fight big oil”.  So it would seem.  When President Obama first announced his campaign to change the energy section to “green”, low environmental impact development, the first rapid energy bids were for off-shore oil drilling.  A push to run a pipeline through from the oil sands of Alberta, Canada, the Keystone XL project, was met with opposition by the US Environmental Protection Agency, but continues to be on the board as a viable possibility.  The New York Times, apparently dismayed by the opposition of groups that did not want fire breathing out of their water faucets, assured its readers that gas fracking was inevitable.  It just needed a few tweaks.  It was round one for the oil companies, whose roles had changed to include the assertion that the gas they were offering was natural,  but it was still the same cast of actors.

What if, however, your elected officials were on your side?  What if they were actually drawing up proposals for renewable energy resources; resources that would alleviate the grinding, uphill spiral of energy consumption for electrical costs?  Alaska seems to be doing just that.  The State Legislature wants to see fifty percent of its energy use engineered through renewable resources by the year 2025.  Their proposal includes wind farms, geothermal conversion and hydro-electric power.  In fact, Senator Lisa Murkowski feels so passionately about it, she joined the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and is currently one of its highest ranking members.  On March 21, 2011, she introduced  bipartisan legislation to accelerate the deployment of hydroelectric power projects across the country.

Said Senator Murkowski, “It is now all too clear that America needs a consensus policy on energy that can help keep prices low, create jobs and ensure a safe supply of power,” Murkowski said. “Clean, safe and domestic hydropower can help us reach our shared clean energy goals. Our bill achieves common sense regulatory reform, spurs economic growth and takes advantage of hydropower’s position as the country’s leading source of clean, renewable energy.”

Co-sponsors for the National Hydroelectric Association include,  Mark Begich, D-Alaska, Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, Patty Murray, D-Wash., James Risch, R-Idaho, Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I. and Ron Wyden, D-Ore.

According to the Renewable Energy Project for Alaska, The Hydropower Improvement Act, NHA said, sets a dynamic hydropower agenda for the nation.

The bill will advance project deployment (from conduit and small hydro to non-powered dams to pumped storage) by requiring better interagency coordination; through funding of competitive grants for increased production; and with continued support for research and development activities.

“Hydropower has more multi-region and bipartisan support than any other clean energy technology. It is critical to our clean energy future that this legislation is passed as soon as possible,” said National Hydropower Association Executive Director Linda Church Ciocci. “Hydropower is already responsible for nearly seven percent of total U.S. electricity generation and two-thirds of our renewable electricity. This bill recognizes the vital role of hydropower as an affordable, reliable, available and sustainable domestic energy source.”

In addition to growing the domestic supply of clean energy, local job creation is a primary focus of the legislation. Already responsible for over 300,000 jobs, a recent study by Navigant Consulting, Inc. has shown that with the right policies, hydropower could create over 1.4 million cumulative direct, indirect and induced jobs by 2025.

Hydroelectric: the Original Solution to Energy
Alaska is no stranger to hydroelectric use.  Much of Southeast Alaska is powered by hydroelectric plants, including Ketchikan, Juneau, Petersburg, Wrangell and Cordova.  Hydro power was experimented and used well into the late nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies.  The shift away from renewable resources and to fossil fuels didn’t actually begin until the building of the Alaskan pipeline.

Currently, Alaska receives 53% of its electrical power from natural gas, 19% from hydroelectric plants and .2 % from other renewable resources.  Natural gas is an extremely abundant resource in Alaska.  There is an estimated 85.4 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas in the Arctic region alone.  During Sarah Palin’s tenure as governor, she pushed for a natural gas line that would tie a North Slope gas pipeline in with the TransCanada Corporation and ExxonMobil.  Even one hundred million dollars in seed money was put out to begin the initiative, but by the year 2010, no agreement had been reached, and spiraling energy rates had begun to seize the state.  The legislators went back to their drawing boards, discouraged.

What they drew up was a massive proposal to build a dam that would supply hydroelectric energy for the railbelt, an area of Alaska that begins in the Kenai Peninsula and extends into the Denali Park area and Fairbanks.  This dam would be situated within the Denali Range of the Susitna River.  The proposed Susitna River hydro project, as described by Alaska Dispatch,  would involve building the biggest dam in the United States in 50 years and change the flow of one of the most loved rivers in the state.

A hydroelectric project on the Susitna River about halfway between Anchorage and Fairbanks was first proposed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the late 1970s, although talk of generating power from the Susitna dates back to the 1950s. Work went on until 1986, when the project was shelved due to an economic downturn.

The proposed dam is bigger than anything that’s been built since the Glen Canyon Dam went up across the Colorado River in northwest Arizona in 1966 and created Lake Powell. Glen Canyon Dam is 710 feet high and is capable of producing about 1,300 megawatts.

The proposed dam has met with some serious opposition.  The landmark town of Talkeetna, resting directly on the banks of the Susitna River is worried that construction will disrupt the salmon migration as it heads towards its spawning grounds.  They are worried that the new course the river will take might destroy their own spectacular waterfront access.

Susitna River by Talkeetna @2011 Karla Fetrow

These fears are reflected in a large number of Alaskans.  The Susitna River is a popular vacation and fishing area, lined with numerous lodges and campgrounds.  The fourth largest King Salmon run swims up the tributaries to their spawning grounds.  If a river’s oxygen content, chemical composition, temperature, or flow patterns are altered, the effect on fish could be disastrous.

Opponents point out that glacial melt is what feeds the Susitna River and that projections show a fifty percent reduction in the sized of the glaciers by the year 2025, leaving a question as to the long term production of the dam.  The project is often compared to the Hoover Dam and other reservoirs in the United States that ultimately created a negative impact on the environment by changing the courses of rivers, drying up areas that had once been farm lands.  Opponents point out the costs of building the dam are not cheap.  The official estimate for building the dam has been placed at $4.5 billion, with possible overflow costs for mitigation measures that would include rectifying, reducing, or compensating for impacts on habitat, wildlife, and business interest on bonds.

These are very real concerns, but their basis has a more emotional than practical foundation.  Changing the course of a river is much like plotting a new highway.  There is more than one way to arrive from point A to point B.  A recent proposal for a hydroelectric dam was scrapped when it contained an itinerary for building an access road through a portion of the historic Iditarod Trail  It’s back to the drawing boards until they can come up with a better plan for access.  The dam project does not necessarily have to disrupt the flow of the river by Talkeetna nor damage the industry of sport fishing near the mouth of the Susitna River.  The proposal has had a great many years to mature, and along with it, significant advances in hydroelectric technology.  It can be altered and redirected to include all the concerns of the affected communities.

The Icelandic Solution

Iceland is the only country in Western Europe that still has large resources of competitively priced hydroelectric power and geothermal energy remaining to be harnessed. Although electricity consumption per capita in Iceland is second to none in the world, at about 28,200 kWh per person, only a fraction of the country’s energy potential has been tapped. Total economically viable electric power potential is now estimated at 50,000 GWh/year. About 8,490 GWh/year of this power had been harnessed in 2003, i.e. only about 17% of the total electrical energy potential.

Despite the advances in hydroelectric power, Iceland is still dependent on imported oil to operate their vehicles and thriving fishing industry.  However, with the ingenuity characteristic of Iceland’s inhabitants, they have been tackling this problem as well.  They have begun manufacturing vehicles that run off fuel cells.

Fuel cells generate electricity by converting hydrogen and oxygen into water. And fuel cell technology is clean — the only by-product is water. “It’s just like a normal car,” says Asdis Kritinsdottir, project manager for Reykjavik Energy. Except the only pollution coming out of the exhaust pipe is water vapor. It can go about 100 miles on a full tank. When it runs out of fuel the electric battery kicks in, giving the driver another 18 miles — hopefully enough time to get to a refueling station. Filling the tank is similar to today’s cars — attach a hose to the car’s fueling port, hit “start” on the pump and stand back. The process takes about five to six minutes.  Hydrogen itself, is released naturally from waterfalls, and practically, by tapping the waters released from their hydro-electric reservoirs.

Pointing out the melting glaciers is a knee jerk reaction.  The glaciers will continue to melt with or without a dam unless climate change reverses the activity.  While it’s true that much of the might of the Susitna River is fed by glacial melt, it is also fed by the run-off of winter snow.  A dam would actually slow the feed of fresh water dumping into the salty content of the oceans and recapture snow melt.

Fish estuaries are extremely delicate, but this has not stopped developers from filling them in for highways, real estate and business applications.  This has not stopped oil and large mining interests from jeopardizing salmon beds and endangering marine life.  Leach fields and oil spills are unrecoverable in terms of damage to the fragile eco-system, but as long as the water and surrounding environment  is clean, fish and wildlife are extremely adaptable.  Caribou might change their migrational pattern to better fit their agenda for suitable river crossing points, but a change in the river course will not decimate their herds.  Salmon return to the point where they were spawned.  A number of fish hatcheries already exist in the State of Alaska to insure the healthy populace of its wild salmon.  There is no reason to believe a successful hatchery could not be built on the Susitna River to insure the safe return of its salmon.

Comparing the State of Alaska’s proposal for a hydroelectric dam to reservoirs in the Continental United States is unfair.  The function of many of the dam projects has not been for the sole purpose of tapping hydroelectric energy, but to have a reservoir of fresh water for urban areas and agriculture.  Alaska has plenty of fresh water.  The purpose of the dam would not be to conserve water for its residents, who primarily own their own wells, but solely for creating hydroelectric power to the economically energy strapped railbelt.

Behind the Masquerade

Interestingly enough, the opponents of the dam, the ones who are shrieking the loudest about possible environmental damage, are the advocates of natural gas development.  Natural gas, which began as a friendly face, providing cheap energy, has become as much of an energy tyrant as oil companies have become over recent years.   The price of natural gas has quadrupled over the last ten years, making it as expensive to heat your home with natural gas as it is to go all-electric.  Despite the vast untapped natural gas resources literally lying beneath the feet of the inhabitants, the development of natural gas has stagnated, and the drive for cheap, local natural gas has shifted to one concentrated effort; creating a natural gas pipeline that will furnish energy for the Continental United States.  In fact, the very fact that natural gas lies directly below our feet has resulted in various court cases when natural gas companies tried to declare subsurface drilling rights on private property.

“High Country News” states that, “opponents of the dam concerned about environmental impacts appear to be pushing Alaska to stay reliant on fossil fuel. Richard Leo, a member of the newly formed Coalition for Susitna Dam Alternatives, questioned whether the dam was necessary when the natural gas reserves could already fill the state’s energy needs. He fears the dam will impact caribou habitat and salmon runs, becoming “destructive on a massive scale.” Climate change may already be impacting the state, but that doesn’t mean it precious resources should be traded for their energy, he says.

“Massive dam projects have been shown internationally across the past 20 years to no longer be the most effective way to generate electricity…their potential destructiveness outweighs the amount of electricity they can create.”

Natural gas, along with oil, is becoming a has been, a washed up movie star still frantically applying botox, plastic surgery and tantrums to secure that leading role.  We have a role model for the successful use of hydroelectric and geothermal energy in Iceland.  It has successfully given its people cheap energy without disrupting its environment.  Alaska has the same geological features, but in greater abundance; volcanoes, geothermal pockets, earth pounding waterfalls, fast flowing rivers and giant lakes.  There is absolutely no reason Alaska cannot build an environmentally safe, hydroelectric dam that will provide cheap, renewable energy for its inhabitants and meet the demands of the local communities.  While building hydroelectric dams is not going to immediately resolve our economic difficulty with rising energy costs, it paves the way for a clean, renewable resource future.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/the-big-question-mark-on-fracking/2012/02/28/gIQAebfXgR_blog.html

http://alaskarenewableenergy.org/tag/hydro/

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/it-time-dam-alaskas-mighty-susitna-river

http://susitnadamalternatives.org/?page_id=12

http://www.icelandexport.is/english/industry_sectors_in_iceland/energy_in_iceland/

http://articles.cnn.com/2007-09-18/tech/driving.iceland_1_electricity-and-hot-water-fuel-cell-icelanders?_s=PM:TECH

http://www.hcn.org/hcn/blogs/goat/proposed-alaska-dam-pushes-state-to-examine-its-hydropower-options

By: Matt

Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase oxygenase; more commonly known as “Rubisco” sounds like something you might find in the cookie aisle at the grocery store. In fact you find Rubisco almost everywhere you look. It is the most common protein in green plants, and is by and large responsible for life as we know it. Many of us have seen Chuck Missler’s misguided video “Peanut Butter-the Atheist’s Nightmare”. Missler argues that if evolutionary theory is correct, then occasionally life should spontaneously occur in a jar of peanut butter. He is missing the boat on more than one issue. First evolutionary theory doesn’t address the origin of life; it states only that over time the frequency of genes in a population will change. Secondly it’s extremely unlikely that a jar of Peter Pan® is going to be exposed to an atmosphere similar to earth’s 3 billion years ago. He has set up a straw man, hoping that an uneducated public wouldn’t notice, and then tried to knock him down. In this essay I would like to argue that Rubisco is, in effect, “the creationist’s nightmare”. Rather than set up an imaginary straw argument I will ask a legitimate question and hope for an honest discussion.

Like all proteins Rubicso has a function, its job is to grab carbon from CO2 early on in photosynthesis and make place it onto a 5 carbon sugar (Ribulose biphosphate) in order to create a pair of 3 carbon sugars. There are several more steps involved before the plant has converted Ribulose Biphosphate into the much more familiar glucose, but all that is for another day. If you really want to understand how it all works Google “Calvin Cycle” Figure 1 shows where Rubisco fits in the Calvin cycle.

But here’s the rub. Rubisco is painfully ineffective. Virtually all life as we know it depends on green plants ability to fix carbon from the atmosphere, but the enzyme that does it is barely functional. Unlike most enzymes, which do their task and turn over in hundreds or thousands of times every second, Rubisco can fix only three carbon atoms/second. Worse, it isn’t very selective about what molecules it grabs. 27% of the time (more than a quarter of all reactions) our beknighted enzyme grabs Oxygen instead of Carbon. When this happens the oxygenated Ribulose Biphosphate molecule travels along the Calvin cycle to its completion, thus wasting not only Rubisco’s efforts, but those of every other enzyme along the way, and then a further set of enzymes that are required to break down this faulty molecule. The term for this miscue is “photorespiration” and if you were a plant you’d really hate it. The reason Rubisco is so common in plants is that it is so ineffective. If it was as speedy and precise as the other enzymes in the photosynthetic pathway its numbers could be reduced by a factor of at least 100.

So how did this come about? Why are plants saddled with this weak enzyme? Of course we can’t know for sure, as gene sequences from the pre-Cambrian are not preserved, but it’s a reasonable guess that the Rubisco was one of the very first enzymes created by the earliest organisms on our planet. There are over 400 varieties of Rubisco, indicating that it has had plenty of time to evolve, and identifying the variety of Rubisco in a leaf is one way (albeit kind of an unnecessary one) to identify the species. On the way to becoming photosynthetic, a necessary early step would have been simply capturing carbon atoms and using them as building blocks. It is easy to imagine at the time this happened our atmosphere didn’t have any Oxygen, so photorespiration wouldn’t have been an issue. Unfortunately for plants evolution isn’t a magic bullet, and even though we can imagine better ways to fix carbon, none have evolved. It’s not for lack of trying. Several plants have modified the system somewhat through either the C4 pathway or the Crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) pathway. Neither eliminated the need for Rubisco, but both found ways of having the enzyme do its work in a region of the leaf with either less Oxygen or more CO2.

I believe that if a thoughtful creator was involved the single most important enzyme for the pinnacle of His creation (presumably that’s us humans) would not have an error rate of 27% and a speed orders of magnitude slower than others. Without green plants we don’t exist, and without photosynthesis there are no green plants, and without Rubisco there is no photosynthesis. Clearly this doesn’t prove there is no creator. An idea that can’t be proved is equally hard to disprove, but to my way of thinking this is even more telling than the litany of other questions out there. Ones like: Why do whales have finger bones? How come the Panda’s thumb is made from a different bone than my thumb? Where did the T-Rex’s go? What is does prove is that if there is a creator, the creator was forced to work from a toolbox of available pieces and parts to put together life on our planet. And THAT flies in the face of a good many religious doctrines.

My feeling is that there was no creator involved, but it can’t be proved either way and isn’t arguable. However, “young earth creationism” is wrong on every level, and can be countered by looking at the ages of rocks, the ages of stars, the geology of the Hawaiian Islands and a host of other big ticket items. We can look at the inside of each and every leaf on the planet and see the truth that stares us in the face.

By: Jane Stillwater

http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2011/11/madam-jane-predicts-american-wars-will.html

I just had a dream that it was the end of the world. So should I still go Christmas shopping or not?  Why bother, I thought.  But just to be on the safe side, I also asked the mysterious psychic Madam Jane for some input.  “Are my dreams and the Mayan calendars and all those Rapture freaks right?  Is the end of the world actually on its way?  Are we really all gonna die soon?”

“Yes of course,” replied Madam Jane.

Oh dear.

“The amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is mounting at a catastrophic rate and will cause irreversibly-disastrous climate change in the next five years — and by far the biggest cause of this problem is the U.S. military and its allies.  Every time NATO bombs Libya and Americans bomb Pakistan and Israel bombs Gaza or a helicopter takes off in Afghanistan or a U.S. carrier fleet steams toward Syria and the Persian Gulf, we move one step closer to irreversible climate change,” stated Madam Jane, swaying back and forth with her eyes closed.

“Would it help at all if I had my car smog-checked today?” I then asked her hopefully.  Madame Jane just rolled her eyes.   “We’re doomed,” she replied.

So.  How do I want to spend my last days here on Earth?  Not a clue.  If you knew that seven billion people had approximately five years to live before climate-change-caused floods started pouring in from our rivers, and deserts started taking over our farmlands and oceans started drowning our coastal cities and a dreadful ice age started to set in, what would you do?

“I’d move to Hawaii,” replied Madam Jane.  Not me.  I’d buy hip-waders, ear muffs and really warm coats.

PS:  According to a recent AlterNet article entitled “Game Over for Planet Earth,” we’re all gonna be fried like fish in a skillet first before we even get a chance to freeze to death or drown.

AlterNet says, “[Here's a] prediction offered by Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency:  Without an effective international agreement to staunch greenhouse gases within five years, the door will close on preventing a potentially disastrous rise in the planet’s temperature.”  http://www.alternet.org/economy/153092/game_over_for_planet_earth%3A_the_month%E2%80%99s_biggest_story_you_never_read

PPS:  Madam Jane’s ominous-sounding and doom-like claim that irreversible climate change is only five years away is actually erroneous.  And AlterNet’s five-year claim is wrong too.  According to the Christian Science Monitor, irreversible climate change is already here.

“Even if all the world’s smokestacks and tailpipes were to suddenly stop spewing CO2, if all the trees everywhere were to be left standing, and if all the remaining coal, oil, and gas were to stay in the ground [and the American war-machine would suddenly stop spewing CO2 like there's no tomorrow as well], the planet would still be feeling the effects of global warming a millennium from now.” http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Bright-Green/2009/0127/report-calls-climate-change-irreversible

PPPS:  How can we keep cheering on American wars abroad — without bringing those wars back home to us too, like the recent violent shootings in Oakland and the recent pepper-spraying at U.C. Davis?

My Christmas shopping may just have to wait.

EXTRA!  EXTRA!  Madam Jane also predicts that the “American war” on Iran is about to happen too!

Remember back when, long before the war on Iraq was declared, millions of tons of war material was being amassed at various East Coast military bases here in the U.S.?  Well, Madam Jane states that they are at it again.  “Long endless lines of container trucks are currently pouring into supply depots all over the East Coast.”  Oops.

Plus America’s bottom-kissing “yellow journalism” media is already geared up to make Iran look like the ultimate bad guy — just as it did right before Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq.

And not only that but, according to Middle East specialist David Pratt, the video game Battlefield 3 has just come out with a brand new version — starring good old Iran as the penultimate evil villain.  It just doesn’t get any more “War Profiteers Gone Crazy” than that!  http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/david-pratt/demonisation-of-iran-carries-a-whiff-of-war-1.1137797?18451

And when Iran does get attacked, just THINK of all the air pollution that will be released!  Good grief.  Then Battlefield 3 will have to put out an even newer version — featuring deadly hand-to-hand combat with radioactive smog.

*****
From Sue [regarding even MORE air pollution]:  US government openly admits arming Mexican drug gangs with 30,000 firearms — but why?:  It is now a widely-reported fact that under the Obama administration, U.S. federal agents actively placed over 30,000 fully-functional weapons into the hands of Mexican drug gangs, then halted all surveillance and tracking activities of where those weapons were going. http://www.naturalnews.com/032934_ATF_illegal_firearms.html

By: Bill The Butcher

The sun had already travelled far down towards the west when Kande emerged from the doorway under the bridge, and the shadows stretched across the sluggish water. Its rays glittered off the surface, but faintly, weakened by the drifting haze in the air.

Kande squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, leaning back against the ancient stone of the bridge support. Although she’d known, of course, that it would be like this, she was still overcome by a rush of memories of the last time she’d seen all this.

It had been a mild autumn day, with golden leaves still on the trees and carpeting the banks. It had been evening, too, the sun a deep golden-red, the sky a blaze of colour from all the particles in the air. She’d known that it was all poisoned, even then, of course – but she’d never thought it would get quite as bad as now.

Kande was just over seventy years old. She was small but compact, with broad shoulders, built like a little tank, and for all her years was tough and still strong. Her mop of silver hair was crushed down under the hood of her contamination suit, which covered her from top to toe, except for the gas mask over her face. Through its pair of windows, small and thick, her grey eyes peered out at the altered world.

It was a scene of such desolation that she wished she could retreat back into the shelter that lay behind the doorway. Stretching ahead of her, up to the horizon, was a tumble of broken concrete and twisted metal, shattered stumps that was all that was left of once towering buildings, and the river, dead, grey and sluggish as liquid mud.

Kande had been born far away from here, and grown up on the south-western coast, where she’d thought to be a pilot, and had earned a flying licence even before she was eligible to learn to drive. It helped that a relative had had a light plane of his own and hadn’t minded teaching her. She’d never made the transition to a commercial licence, though.

She still remembered the moment she’d decided on the course her life would take. She’d been at the controls of the Cessna, on a flight across country, the sea a band of blue on the horizon behind her and the land below a drab brown. In the middle distance she’d noticed a smudge of black, which as she approached had resolved itself into a gigantic cloud of smoke. At first she’d thought something was on fire below, but as she’d got closer she realised that it came from a forest of factory chimneys, belching out their sooty breath into the noon air. Once she’d landed back at her home airport, she’d tried to find out what she could do about it.

Those were the days when the crisis point was evidently fast approaching, and environmental scientists had imagined that they would at last be taken seriously. Kande had enrolled herself in the University in this city, and stayed on to do postgraduate research. She’d believed, in those days, that they would make a difference, that they could still pull the ecosphere back from the brink. But she – they, all of them, the whole faculty, hell, the entire discipline – hadn’t reckoned with the tenaciousness of corporate greed and the spinelessness of political will. Big Business had proclaimed there was no crisis, the politicians had enthusiastically agreed, and Big Religion had fallen in line. By the time the damage was so great that it was no longer possible to pretend there was no crisis, the people in charge had declared that there was no point doing anything because it was too late for anything to be done. And that was that.

Overnight, the funding had been turned off like a tap, and research labs in environmental studies had been forced to shut down; first, all over the country, and then – for it was still an important country, one that decided the condition of economies across the globe – all over the world. Except for tiny and unimportant labs in tiny and unimportant nations, humanity had turned its back on the environment. And then things had got so bad, so fast, that there was no longer anything to be done.

But some people had seen the writing on the wall in time, and acted.

Far below Kande’s feet, stretching under the river and beyond, into the city, were the tunnels of the old underground railway. They’d fallen into disuse by then, since the government had decided to do away with them in favour of private vehicle ownership, which, as the economists had assured everyone, created jobs and hence wealth. The empty subway tunnels had proved a good place to turn into a secret underground system of shelters, and they had retreated into them while there had still been time, with as much food and water as they could get hold of.

They’d had hopes then, of holding out a few months to years at the most, before humanity came to its senses. But the years had turned into decades, and the world outside had become a poisoned wasteland, where even the air was no longer fit to breathe.

Underground, they’d waited until they’d run out of food and water, and then they’d tried to get hold of food and water, in foraging expeditions to the surface. But even those sources had dried up a long time ago, and in recent times there had been almost nothing to eat or drink. Not that there were many left to eat or drink it anyway.

She’d made up her mind to leave while there was still time, while she could still leave on her own terms. There had been others who had left over the years, plenty of them, but there had still been a kind of hope that things might get better, and with what equipment had been left they’d carried on the research they could. Now there was nothing left, not even hope.

Kande walked down to the mud by the edge of the water, where the debris was less of an obstacle and walking slightly easier. Thick greyish-green lumps of weed grew here on the mud, of a kind she had never seen when she’d been young. Even the pattern of life was changing.

As the sun sank and the temperature dropped, a thin mist began to accumulate over the surface of the water, and licked at Kande’s knees as she walked. It was probably harmless vapour, but seemed sticky and poisonous, so that she had a strong desire to get away from it. Clambering up an inclined slab of stone, which had probably once formed part of the collapsed roadway above, she climbed onto the embankment.

Even softened by the last of the day’s light, the devastation was amazing. Kande had known, of course, of the conflicts that had marked the final struggles of those who had remained on the surface – the battles over food, and water at first, and then over shelter and breathable air. But that knowledge hadn’t prepared her for the devastation that she saw.

It was almost as if an angry giant had stomped all over the city, crushing everything under his boots in a rage, and kicked over what was left. Here and there still upright buildings poked their heads over the desolation but they were only shells, windowless and scorched by fire.

“Don’t go,” the man who had once been the scientist in charge of the laboratory, then her lover, and was still the leader of those remaining in the tunnels had said. “You don’t know what it’s like there. Trust me. I’ve been up to the surface, you haven’t.”

Kande had looked at him. Once he’d been young and had the looks of a minor movie star, and then grown fat, bearded and rubicund until he looked vaguely like Santa Claus. Now he still had the beard, but the fat had fallen away and he looked like nothing more than a tired old man with not an original idea in his head, nor the capacity for one.

“I can’t stay here either,” she’d said, trying to sound as kind as possible. “There’s nothing left here. In another year, at the most, you’ll all have to leave too, or starve. I’d rather not wait.”

“That’s silly. In another year things might be better.”

She hadn’t even bothered to reply to that, concentrating on packing her things in her rucksack. He’d followed her around, looking as hurt as though she was leaving him for another man and as though whatever was between them hadn’t been over for fifteen years.

“What will you do out there?” he’d asked. “It’s not even as though you know where you’re going.”

She’d shrugged, checking to see that she’d taken all she wanted. It was little enough, she’d thought, not even filling the rucksack – the accumulated possessions of a life. “It’s not as though you know what you’re doing, hanging around here,” she’d said at length, not looking at him. “As I see it, at least I’m trying for some kind of control over my own destiny.”

“You’re old, damn it,” he’d said. “You don’t have much destiny left, do you?”

She’d grinned mirthlessly. “All the more reason to make use of what time I have left.”

“All right, go” he’d said, waving his arms. “Get out of here. Do whatever the hell you want. But remember, out there everything’s poisoned – even the air!”

She nodded now, imperceptibly, inside her gas mask. As the sun set, the river, below the embankment, began to glow from pollution in the water. The air, too, became almost visible, clouds of greenish and yellow phosphorescence drifting low over the shattered street, so that she had a little light to make her way along and didn’t have to use the precious torch she’d purloined from the stores when nobody was looking. Or, rather, she amended, he’d known for sure that she was taking it, but he hadn’t said a word. And she’d known he wouldn’t.

Something scuttled from between her feet, squeaking, and disappeared into the shadows, making her jump involuntarily. It was too small and quick to get a look at, and when her heartbeat got back under control she realised that it was probably only a rat. Still, it proved that animal life still existed among the ruins, and she searched until she found a stout metal rod with a twisted, jagged edge. It was heavy and unwieldy, but would serve as a weapon – she hoped.

It was too warm for comfort inside the suit, and the sweat began to trickle down her face under the gas mask. She wished she could take it off, but that would be a stupid error. After all these years, the air was still full of poisonous gases, and likely would be for years more. Somewhere, factories were still pumping smoke into the air, she was sure. If they could find raw materials, and a source of energy, people would continue polluting, and telling themselves they had nothing to lose.

Kande realised that she’d been walking, unconsciously, in the direction of the University, where she’d worked before they’d moved the laboratory underground less than a week before they’d have run out of funds to keep it going. It was not really a surprise, because the laboratory was where she’d spent so many years working, and it was the one place in the city with which she’d been familiar. She’d never cared to get to know the rest of it, the theatre district and the main drag with its towering malls, the remnants of one of which she was passing now. Obscurely, the sight of the gutted ruin pleased her. Back in the day, when the environmental scientists been pleading with everyone to do something about the coming catastrophe before it was too late, the politicians and the media had accused the likes of her of plotting to take away peoples’ simple pleasures. That would teach them!

She’d been walking for hours now, and the night was well advanced. Long ago, she’d left the river behind, and now she was passing through an area where most of the buildings were, in comparison to those by the embankment, relatively intact. Many years ago, this had been one of the great thoroughfares of the city. Even now, although it was still dotted with the rusted carcasses of vehicles, it was easier going than earlier. The glowing vapours by the riverside had dissipated, too, but she wasn’t ready to take off her mask quite yet. The entire city lay in a depression surrounded by higher land on which the industrial estates had been situated, which meant it was still flooded by the effluvium of those temples of economic progress.

She’d rested as much as she could before setting out, and had eaten what passed for a good meal, but the slow plodding pace the terrain and the uncertain light forced on her made her legs and back weary. She wanted to sit down somewhere for a while, but she had a distinct feeling that it wouldn’t be safe. She realised then that this feeling had been creeping up on her ever since she’d left the river, and been growing imperceptibly stronger. It was almost as though something was watching her, waiting for her to display some weakness, let her guard down for an instant- Kande spun round, metal bar raised awkwardly at chest level, ready to lash out, but there was nothing there. But, more than ever, she was sure someone – something – was watching her, from the shadows, circling closer and closer, preparing to charge.

It was at that precise moment that the sound started.

It began as a low moan, as of pain, and rose swiftly into a shriek of anguish that split the sky, echoing from the deserted buildings and the forgotten cars. Again it came, the echoes making it impossible to locate its origin, and then there was another, surely from behind her this time, and another, now to her right. All around her, the noise, and she did not know which way to turn.

She fumbled the rucksack off her back and pulled out the torch. After the hours of darkness the yellow beam of light was almost dazzlingly bright, and she screwed up her eyes involuntarily.

When she could see again, the first dog was already out in the open, watching her.  It stood beside the skeleton of a car, a large white animal with heavy muscular shoulders and ragged ears. It trotted forwards a few steps, stopped, raised its muzzle and howled again, to be answered by another not far away. Kande could see them now when she swung her torch around, slipping from shadow to shadow, coming steadily closer. Bending quickly, she picked up a stone and threw it at the first dog, the big white one. It moved aside a little to avoid the clumsy missile, but that was all.

Kande had never been afraid of dogs. In her younger days, before she’d left all else behind to concentrate on her research, she’d made a practice of gathering bread crumbs and scraps to feed the strays on the street corners, something which had not endeared her to the shopkeepers. She’d ignored their hectoring and kept on feeding the dogs, a thin young woman surrounded by a forest of waving tails, and finally the shopkeepers had relented and left her alone.  But those had been friendly dogs, not a feral pack on the hunt.

The first dog, the big one, began walking towards her, stiff-legged, head held low. Its broad muzzle wrinkled, exposing huge canines, and its voice was a low, almost musical rumbling in its massive chest.

Kande backed away from it, slowly, keeping the beam of the torch focused on its face. She’d seen videos of wild dogs, and she knew it was trying to intimidate her into running. The rest of the pack would be behind her, waiting for her to break and run. Then they’d come in from all sides, darting under her guard and biting at her legs and underbelly. Once she went down, that would be the end. They’d rip her to pieces. The suit would only prolong her agony by keeping her alive that little bit longer.  Whatever happened, she mustn’t break and run.

The big dog was closer now, and she swung her crude club, almost connecting and making it jump back for a moment before advancing again, more cautiously, weaving back and forth. Its growl had deepened to a snarl, and it seemed only a moment before it would duck under her club and hurl itself at her.

Something bumped her rucksack from behind, large, hard and unyielding. Cautiously, she rubbed herself against the obstruction, not taking her eyes from the dog, and realised that she had backed herself against a wall.

This meant, at least, that she was temporarily protected against attack from behind by the rest of the pack. She began sidling along the wall, making passes at the white dog with her club, but her arm was tiring fast. The dog seemed to know it too, and had started to feint, forcing her to react each time by lunging at it as best she could. It was an intelligent dog, and brave, and in other circumstances she would probably have enjoyed making its acquaintance. But for the moment she only wanted to get as far away as possible from it.

From the corners of her eyes, distorted through the thick windows of her mask, she saw some of the other dogs of the pack, approaching. Less bold than the big white pack leader, they came warily, ready to back off if necessary, but they came. If she let her guard down, they’d lose their wariness and be all over her.

The wall behind her disappeared, so suddenly that she almost fell over backwards into darkness. Stumbling in an effort to regain her balance, she realised she had inadvertently passed through a doorway and was inside the building. And there was the door, just by her right hand. Throwing down the club with a clang, she hurled herself at it.  With a snarl, the dog charged.

It came rushing forwards, leaning into the attack, massive haunches pumping. It came so fast that she had only got the door halfway closed when it struck, ripping at her thigh, managing only a bite of the contamination suit. It twisted, trying to rip the mouthful of suit away, and as its teeth slipped off the tough fabric it fell. It was up in an instant, but Kande had finally slammed the door shut, throwing her shoulder against it. She felt the thud as the dog hurled itself against the door, its fury palpable through the wood, barking frenziedly. The other dogs were shouting too, raucously, the whole pack just on the other side of the slab of wood. She leaned against the door with all her weight, and after a while the noise outside abated. The last she heard of it was harsh panting that faded gradually in the distance.

Kande decided to go no further that night. The torch’s batteries needed conserving, but she had to expend a little more power to check her surroundings. She was in the tiny hallway of what had evidently once been a block of flats, with doors opening on both sides and narrow stairs ascending opposite. The nearest of the doors, to her left, was ajar, and, pushing it cautiously open, she entered.

The room was fairly large and had probably once been luxuriously furnished. The carpet on the floor was so thickly covered with dust that at every step she took puffs of it rose into the air, but it was soft and deeply-piled, and the furniture which remained looked expensive and quite possibly – Kande was no expert in such things – antique. The curtains over the windows had flowery patterns on them, faded but still visible in the torch’s light, and a framed print of flowers hung on one wall.

It was, in other words, a room so feminine that it filled her with revulsion. But she was only going to stay for what was left of the night, so she merely snorted and moved on to check over the rest of the apartment. It consisted of a bedroom with a double bed, which was shrouded in dust, and a tiny kitchen, absurdly small compared to the size of the other rooms, and a bathroom with rust stains on the pink porcelain of the sink, and a washing machine which took up half the space.

Shaking her head at the pretension, Kande returned to the living room, slapped the dust off one of the chairs, and sat down, turning off her torch. It would have been useless in any case, because the dust she’d raised filled the air, and even though the gas mask filtered it out she felt her throat tightening reflexively. The darkness flooded in, and she leaned back, feeling the weariness in her limbs.

Idly, she wondered what he was doing now. She remembered the last she’d seen of him, his liver-spotted hand on her arm as he once again tried to dissuade her from coming. She’d looked away from his face, because the look in his eyes made her feel as though she was abandoning him instead of merely leaving while she still could.

Perhaps he would be sleeping, inside the carriage of the abandoned subway train which they’d long ago converted to living quarters. More likely, he’d be awake and going over the results of the latest air sample readings – readings which had not changed in a year or longer, perhaps because the equipment no longer worked properly – and trying to convince himself things were getting better. Maybe he was thinking of her, but she hoped not. She didn’t want to hurt him, even inadvertently. He wasn’t a bad man, never had been.

Her mind slipped to thoughts of what he’d said, and she acknowledged that from his viewpoint he’d been making sense. Where was she going, with only the food and water she had in her rucksack? How far could she get? Even if the dogs didn’t get her, what other dangers lay in wait in the ruins of the city? Even if she found food or water, how could she know if it was edible or just more poison?

Hell, she thought, I don’t even dare take off this mask to eat or drink what I’m carrying with me. I must be insane. But she wasn’t insane. What was insane was remaining inside the subway tunnels waiting for the end. What was insane was being left with no choice. At least she was exercising a choice.

Somewhere not too far away, a dog howled. The pack was still around, then – naturally, because this must be its territory. Gripping her club, Kande stared through the thick eyepieces of her gas mask into the darkness and waited for the dawn.

She woke suddenly, her heart thumping and mouth dry. She’d had no memory of sleepiness, let alone falling asleep. It was still dark outside, no trace of light leaking past the curtains on the windows, but she had the indefinable feeling that hours had passed. Something had woken her, but what? A sound?  Even as she strained her ears, listening, the sound came again.

If it had been the old days, she’d never have given it another thought. It was merely the blat-blat of an unmuffled motorcycle engine, coming steadily closer. But who would be using a motorcycle here, in these ruins, at this time of the night?

Carefully, trying not to disturb the dust, Kande stood and walked over to the nearest window, gently lifting the corner of the curtain enough to look out into the street. She could see the beam of the motorcycle’s headlight, a pale wavering glow, steadily approaching. A few moments more, and the bike came to a stop almost directly opposite the window, and the headlight blinked out as the engine was switched off. The pillion rider, a dark shadow, swung an awkward leg over and stepped off, while the person in the front seat hunched over the handlebars and seemed to be waiting for something.

Kande had almost decided that the better part of valour would be to drop the curtain and retreat back into the room when she heard the other engine. It announced itself with a discordant grinding, clearly audible through the gas mask and contamination suit hood, and another pair of headlights swept briefly over the window, making her duck reflexively.

When she looked again, the car was standing near the motorcycle, its arthritic engine still running and its headlights illuminating the scene. At least two people could be seen near the car, talking to the two who had arrived on the bike, and Kande could see another person at the wheel. Whatever the discussion was about, it wasn’t going well. She heard voices raised in argument, and suddenly there was the gleam of light on metal, a knife blade raised high.

Someone screamed, shrilly, and the shadows merged, scuffling, one going down, another suddenly breaking away and running across the street towards her. Before Kande dropped the curtain and stepped smartly back, she saw that it seemed to be the same size as the pillion rider of the motorcycle. She heard the door of the building squeak shrilly, and running footsteps on the other side of the wall. The next moment, the door of the apartment, right next to her, slammed open.

If Kande had been younger and faster, she would undoubtedly have given herself away. It was her slowed reflexes more than anything which kept her frozen where she was, in the darkness next to the window. In her black suit and mask, she was invisible.

The person who had run in fumbled to close the door, pulled across the nearest chair and pushed it under the handle, and stood panting. Apparently, the others outside hadn’t noticed precisely which door had opened and closed so abruptly, and Kande heard them rush through and up the stairs at the back.

There was a long moment of silence. Kande stood frozen in place, trying not to breathe, while the other person in the room stood in the same attitude of watchful stillness. Then, stepping softly, the shadow moved to the window, within touching range of Kande, and pulled the curtain back.

In the faint light filtering in from outside Kande saw a girl. She was dressed in a faded denim jacket, over whose padded shoulders her thin, triangular face looked even thinner. Her hair, stringy and ragged, fell over her forehead and hung limply down her back. When she leaned against the windowpane to look down the street, Kande saw that her eyes were red and inflamed, rimmed with crusted purulent matter.

The girl was dangerous. Kande was no physical coward, but she knew that the worst mistake she could make was to approach her. She looked as though she was poised on the edge of violence at all times, and, when she was scared, as she obviously was now, she would be even more aggressive. Kande couldn’t see a weapon on her, but was sure she carried one. Her sort would never be unarmed, even for a moment. Even the big white dog earlier had probably been a much lesser danger than she was.

The situation was getting rapidly impossible. The sky outside was lightening rapidly, dawn creeping onto the world. Soon she could no longer remain hidden – the girl must see her. Even if she didn’t, the others, who from the faint noises were probably searching upstairs, would finally arrive and break the door down. She wondered why the girl hadn’t realised it herself. Did she imagine she’d be safe in here? Kande wondered just what had happened outside, who she was, and who the people hunting her were.  But it was pointless speculating about all that. Time was precious now, and Kande’s first responsibility was clearly to herself.

There was only one thing to do, and much as she hated to do it, Kande acted. Waiting until the girl turned away for a moment, she stepped softly forward, raised the club she’d been carrying for so long, and brought it down in a vicious arc. As the girl collapsed, Kande stepped quickly over her to the window and looked out.

In the half-light just before dawn, the car and the motorcycle were picked out in degrees of shadow. Something dark lay beside the car’s rear wheel, knees drawn up and arms thrown open wide. There was nobody else to be seen, not even a sentry.

Pausing only to pick up her rucksack, Kande pushed the window open. It stuck partway, but left enough space for her to clamber out onto the windowsill and drop to the ground. She was about to trot down the street when she had a sudden thought. Crossing quickly, she went to the car, ignoring the corpse on the roadway, and looked inside. No luck, the key was missing, and she hadn’t the faintest idea how to go about starting the engine without it. Nor did the motorcycle have a key. But if she was right and the girl had been the pillion rider, then the driver was probably the one who’d been stabbed. And if so, the key should be –

Less than a minute later, Kande was astride the motorcycle, the engine throbbing between her legs, a faint yell in the distance fading as someone from the building caught a glimpse of her from a window. She rode as fast as she dared, the contamination suit clumsy and the mask making for restricted vision, but every revolution of the tyres pushing her towards safety. At the first opportunity, she turned into a side street, and then into another, until she was reasonably sure that if anyone found her, it would be by accident.

It had been many years since Kande had last been on a motorcycle, but one never forgot how. She had loved biking back then, ignoring the helmet law, her hair blowing in the wind as she drove for tens of kilometres out into the country and back, her only relaxation from University and the laboratories. She’d become very well known, the biker woman who drove, as they said, as well as a man. But those days were long past.

Kande had long since given up all plans of going to the University. She didn’t know what was going on in the city, but obviously the danger level was extreme. Swinging the bike onto another broader street, she drove towards the east, determined to get as far as she could out of town. After that, she’d see-

She’d almost made it out of the outskirts when the bike ran out of fuel.  She’s known, of course, that it was coming, the needle on the fuel gauge hardly flickering above zero for the last few kilometres. Still, it was with a sense of acute disappointment and near grief that she heard the splutter of the dying motor and steered the bike to the side of the road. Propping it on the kickstand, she took the precaution of taking the key with her. Nobody would be able to chase her on it, assuming they could find petrol for the tank.

The sun of late morning was hot, beating the sweat out of her skin as she trudged along, miserably uncomfortable inside the suit and the mask, and tired, hungry and intensely thirsty. However, she dared not stop to rest, and after seeing the pus-encrusted eyes of the girl she’d hit, she was even charier of removing the gas mask.

As the houses fell away and the brown desolation of the country opened around her, Kande once again began to feel that she was being followed. After last night’s encounter with the dog pack, she had even more reason to trust her instincts – but, even though she turned round again and again to check behind her, she couldn’t see anyone, not even the hulking white dog with the wrinkled muzzle and tattered ears. Surely if it were the people in the car, they’d have attacked her by now, not merely hung back watching?

Her thoughts were growing confused as hunger and thirst joined hands with her physical weariness, and she became conscious of her seventy years as she hadn’t been in a long time. If there had been trees on the roadside, she might well have sunk to the foot of one and rested, hidden follower or not; but except for thick patches of scrub bushes, no vegetation survived by the roadside. The few remaining trees were leafless skeletons.

She was beginning to stumble and weave when she saw the airport. It lay to the left of the road, a tiny control tower perched like an afterthought on the roof of the blocky red terminal building. The runway stretched on either side, flat and empty, but for a hangar in the distance, its metal doors and walls promising shelter.

Desperate energy flooding back into her limbs, she shambled off the road and across the runway towards the hangar. It loomed above her as she approached, far larger than she’d thought it from the road, and the steel doors were almost shut, wide open enough only to squeeze through.

Squeezing through the crack, she stopped with the shock of surprise.  There on the concrete floor stood a Piper Cub.

It had been decades since she’d last seen one, but there it was, still in its bright yellow paint, looking as fresh and bright as though it had only just rolled off the factory line. Reverently, almost unbelieving, she walked up to it and touched the propeller. The blade turned at the pressure of her hand, slowly but steadily, and with mounting excitement she realised that it might still even be usable.

“But where could one fly with it?” she asked aloud, her voice a murmur inside the gas mask.

“As far away as possible,” someone said right behind her. “To someplace where the pollution hasn’t killed everything yet.”

Slowly, heart thudding, she turned. “You.”

“Of course.’ He raised his contamination-suit clad arms, an embarrassed grin on his bearded face. His gas mask dangled from one gloved hand. “Who else could it be?”

“It was you. You followed me.”

“I really couldn’t let you go wandering off to the middle of nowhere alone, could I now?” He stepped closer, but warily, as though she was a dangerous animal. “I’d thought you might make for the old airport, you being a former pilot and all. I saw you in the distance a while ago, and, well…”

“Yeah?”

“I didn’t want you to think I was keeping an eye on you. I saw you come in here, and wanted to take a look to see if you were all right. I swear that was all.”

Kande stared at him. “How’s the air?” she asked at last.

“The air?” He sounded surprised. “Breathable.”

“Whoo.” She pulled off her gas mask and sighed deeply. “Air! I needed that.” She looked at him, and then back at the plane. “Come on,” she said briskly. “Since you’re here, you might as well make yourself useful. Help me get this going.”

“You’re sure?” he asked doubtfully. “You’re sure you want to do this?”

“What the hell else can we do? This place is more lethal than you think, I can assure you. Now let me see if we have some fuel. Let’s have a look at those cans over there.”

Much later, when they’d managed to push open the doors of the hangar, and wheeled the little plane onto the runway, she paused to wipe the sweat off her face. “What if we crash somewhere?” She looked at him. “Not that I’m saying we will, it’s just something to consider. What if we crash and burn?”

He shrugged. “Got to take a chance sometime. Besides, I trust your piloting skills.”

“Thanks for nothing,” she snorted, sliding into the front seat and frowning over the primitive instrument panel. “Let’s see if I can at least get it into the air.”

“Told you,” he said a few minutes later, as the little yellow plane lifted somewhat unsteadily off the runway. “I trust your ability.”

“You’re a good man,” she said quietly. “Not the best, don’t get a swollen head – but there are worse. Much worse.”

He grinned from the rear seat. “That’s why you’re taking me along?”

“Well, you are an old coot, but so am I.” She glanced back at him over her shoulder. “This plane’s an old coot too, but there’s a world outside, and some of it’s probably still fresh and new. All we have to do is find it.”

The plane flew on towards the gathering dusk.

]]> http://subversify.com/2011/11/24/away-from-it-all/feed/ 1 http://subversify.com/2011/11/11/storm-horizon-the-adaptation-of-a-globally-warmed-state/ http://subversify.com/2011/11/11/storm-horizon-the-adaptation-of-a-globally-warmed-state/#comments Fri, 11 Nov 2011 18:18:04 +0000 karlsie http://subversify.com/?p=15130

By Karla Fetrow

Twenty Years of Change

November, and winter has moved in, solidly creaming over the landscape with a thick layer of snow.  The earth and sky meet in a single blurred testimony, leaving only the trees and the houses to mark the boundaries of earthly and celestial visions.  The termination dust gathered late; much later than childhood muses remembered.  A friend who hasn’t visited Alaska since he left over thirty years ago wrote telling me he remembered how, in the midst of fishing, hunting and harvesting during the summer, the first light sprinkling would gather on the mountains, announcing the approach of winter.

Funny how quickly memories can fade when you are a part of the continuity of changing seasons.  Thirty years ago autumn began around the same time as school started, in early September.  The leaves turned rosy or bright yellow in their preparations for winter.  The mornings were frosty and the evenings, crisp and clear.  They were rewarding times; a time between seasons.  A time to take the load of your back awhile.  Soon enough, the vegetables canned or frozen would be brought out to compliment the dinner table.  Soon enough the smells of baking would fill the house as frozen rhubarb and berries were made into pies or served on pancakes.  Soon enough the pile of split wood in the shed would be used and in the blue dusk of morning the axes would ring as they snarled into the piled rounds.  For a few short weeks, the work was finished.

When the winter came, there would be other challenges.  Keeping the driveway plowed, the automobile running, rescuing friends from a ditch.  People often remark how Alaskans all seem to have broad shoulders.  This is because from the time they were seven or eight years old and had at least sixty pounds to lean with, they were initiated into the arts of successful car pushing.  These aspects haven’t changed much over the years.  Outside the City of Anchorage, life styles are still highly subsistence based.  With the first heralds of spring, seeds are nurtured in window sills, the snow is dusted away from garden patches, the long routine of filling the potholes in private driveways, of clearing the yard of winter’s debris, of preparing the groundwork for new construction begins.  The mechanics are tinkering under their cars.  The back hoes, the tractors, the bob cats, the loaders are brought out, their engines cleaned, their tires patched.  Fishing poles, dip nets, fly rods are unloaded from the closets and the tackle boxes refurnished.

Yard work in a rural home is a summer long activity.  Alaska has some of the fastest growing and most aggressive plants in the world.  Within a week after the last of the snow is gone, the weeds come up.  Alder, willow bushes, devils club can be cut to the root and still grow back to four feet tall within a month.  Fireweed grows over six feet tall.  A freshly paved road will show weeds pushing through the cracks before summer’s end.

What has changed is the climate; so delicately that the changes have seemed almost imperceptible.  In 1990, I returned to my home in Alaska after a ten year hiatus in Mexico.  It was early July.  The family said we were having a spectacular summer, with warm sunny days temperatures in the seventies.  But on the near mountains, there were still patches of snow, rivets and gullies we had always considered a permanent factor.  The breezes blew gently down from the mountains.  I could feel their snow melt, their icy promise of winter.  I shivered.

Winters’ first snow fall came in early October.  The years spent away made me feel like it had come too soon, yet my memories chided me.  By Halloween, it almost seemed pointless to put on costumes as the snow was usually knee deep and the temperature sitting around zero.  The costumes were stuffed inside snow clothing and boots, with only our make up or masks proving we had put out the effort to wear a disguise.  Time had preserved the image of the environment, but had erased the memories of the cold.

It didn’t take long to get those memories back.  My first year home, I lived at the end of a three mile off-road that received very little traffic and no state maintenance.  My cabin was heated with a wood stove.  As the days grew colder, I stayed up later at night, feeding the fire, and waking earlier in the morning to stoke it back up.

Each snowfall presented new challenges to my driving skills.  A wet snow meant a thick, icy glaze over the road, full of slush that clumped and knocked inside the tire wells.  A pile of light, fluffy snow meant very little traction, sleet meant it was better to simply put on ice skates.  There wasn’t really any such thing as holing up until the bad weather was over because blizzards, snow flurries and white outs were part of everyday winter life.

I spent about as much time getting myself out of a ditch as I did going up and down that three mile road.  I learned a new trick with my tire jack.  It wasn’t just handy for changing tires.  When a wheel dropped over the edge of the road, burying one end of the car up to the axle, I’d bring out my jack, crank up the offending end, lean against it and push it over.  Sometimes I’d have to repeat this exercise two or three times, but eventually my car would be back on solid pavement.  My childhood pushing muscles were becoming rather well developed.

Normal Alaskan Summer @ 2006 Karla Fetrow

By the second winter, I had traded my heavy bodied mid-eighties Malibu in for a much lighter Ford Tiempo.  My brother, the mechanic, sneered about it, calling it a tampon, but there was one advantage to this otherwise nondescript machine.  I didn’t need my car jack.  If it plowed into a bank, and it did so with greater aplomb than the heftier sedan, preferring to bury itself up to the windshield than sink a wheel rigidly into a ditch, all I had to do was put it in neutral, jump on the bumper a few times, and I could usually loosen it up enough to drive out.  If I had an adult passenger or two with me, we could just about lift it out.

Entering the Decades of Bizarre Weather

There was some talk about global warming back then, but it was basically idle speculation.  There wasn’t any real evidence other than some rapidly shrinking glaciers.  The winters came promptly, in early October and reluctantly shrank away by mid May.  But, beginning with that first summer when I returned, described as spectacular, a new pattern began to emerge.  The normally overcast days became less frequent.  The sunny days would roll over, one into another, in stretches of a week or two at a time, with each clear day nudging the temperature a little higher.  It was almost as if the sun streaming down in rustling waves was trying to show just how spectacular it could be.

My second year home, the returning sun of spring was so enthusiastic, it was sixty-four degrees by mid-April.  This was extraordinary for a climate that rarely saw more than fifty degrees throughout the entire month of April, which was often included in the winter months, as it could turn treacherously cold or snow at any time, but that year it didn’t.  What was even more extraordinary was that we had accumulated nearly nine feet of snow that winter.  The snow had only just begun to melt when the sun decided to do its warm up dance.  It cast a brilliant, uniform sheen over the covered landscape, a sheen that looked liked like a smoothly rolling ocean of diamonds.

It was an invitation to play my six year daughter could not resist.  She dashed off the main trail and into the undisturbed snow field; immediately sinking up to her neck.  The rapid change from winter to spring’s first kiss had melted the snow pack just under the glistening blanket.  She was literally swimming in snow.  Regina had been learning English ever since we’d first arrived, but in her surprise and panic, she reverted to her native language.  Her cries of “ayudame!  Ayudame,”  caught my immediate attention.  The slush and water rose up around my waist as I waded in to assist her.  I had to break into a bit of a swim myself in order to grasp her hand and pull her into safety.  Yes, Virginia.  In Alaska, you can drown in mud puddles.

That summer heralded a stint of week long eighty degrees weather.  The locals were enthralled.  Eighty degrees was an occasional luxury that happened when nature was being especially nice; a day or two to notch away in the mind as to what paradise really feels like, but a week long was just something we entertained in our dreams.

The most peculiar aspect about that year fading so quickly from memory as even more peculiar years took their place, was that when the more typically cooler days of overcast skies and rain took its place, the change was announced by thunder and lightening.  Thunder is relatively common on the Cook Inlet, but not lightening.  Lightening appearing in the sky was about as likely as, well; being struck by it.  The odds just weren’t in its favor.

But that year, and during subsequent ones, we began witnessing lightening storms.  As the dramatic cymbals of nature announced the weather change, huge black clouds rolled in, slamming against the mountains.  We didn’t receive the usual sprinkles and drizzles that announce the beginning of our rain season.  It poured.  It rattled on the roofs for hours before settling down to the normal patter of our summer rain.  It became normal, after a few years, and speculation died down as to whether or not we were experiencing global warming.  After all, our winters were still cold.  Never mind that a few summers later, we had record breaking hundred degree temperatures in areas that rarely had a high of over sixty-eight degrees.  The thermometer  still dropped below zero by November.

That was before we had a series of winters so bizarre, we had names for them.  There was the undecided winter.  The first frosts came at their normal times, midway through September, with a respectable blanket of snow by late October.  Then, just when it began to drop down to zero, a warm snow storm came in, mixed with sleet and rain.  Another cold spell hit, followed quickly by another rise in temperatures.  The rapid rise and slide on the thermometer became the pattern of the entire winter, sometimes dropping or climbing to extremes of forty degrees in a matter of hours.

Then there was the pie avalanche year.  The snow was particularly enthusiastic that year, burying barely frozen ground with a few good feet before the serious cold set in.  The cold spell was long, creating a thick crust of hard pack over the soft layer underneath.  When it broke, it brought freezing rain before delivering another foot or so of snow.  Another cold spell came, freezing the new upper crust, followed by another snow storm.  The layers of snow and icy hard park built up.  By February, the thick accumulation of termination dust teetered precariously on the mountain tops.  With the first warm touch of sunlight, the snow resting on its slippery ice slope began tumbling down.  As each layer was warmed by the strengthening sun, it tumbled like the filling of a pie turned sideways.  Nearly every snow covered mountain top in Alaska avalanched.

Early October and No Snow @ 2011 Karla Fetrow

In first place, was the winter that never came.  Even the youngest Alaskan who was more than a toddler at the time, remembers it.  Sometimes the frost came, but it melted away in a rain storm.  By November, new grass was springing up from the exposed ground.  It wasn’t until Christmas that we received our first snow, but it was mixed with sleet and rain.  January, our coldest month, basked in thirty degree weather.  March came to remind us it’s still a month of unpredictable, wintry weather, but by then, spring was firmly on its way.  A winter that lasts only a few weeks is not a winter at all in Alaska.

The victory cries of global warming were very short lived.  The next few years seemed to see a return to normalcy for Alaskan weather.  The typical overcast skies returned in the summer, with spells of sub-zero temperatures in the winter, and the term “global warming” was carefully crafted into “climate change”.

When You Know There Will  be no Reversal

Memory, so fickle, so willing to be altered, however, didn’t pick up on the subtle changes.  Eighty degree weather had become so common, the locals complained if there weren’t at least a few remarkably hot days.  Autumn moved in later and later.  The pumpkins that were typically carved and placed out on the porches in early October, waited until the week before Halloween as more and more often the pumpkins rotted before the holiday instead of remaining frozen in place.  One of the more notable differences was in the use of the yearly permanent funds.  Usually distributed in the first week October, the most common uses for the bonus was to take a vacation, pay winter’s high energy bills or save it for Christmas shopping.  But, with winter coming in so late so often, people began hedging and crossing their fingers that the ground would still be warm enough for just a little more construction.  Often, it was, and then there would be an extra flurry of work activity as sheds were built, porches finished, the new well settled in.  More and more, the dividend was used for land improvement instead of vacations and shopping.

Elementary science teaches you that white reflects back light and black absorbs it.  This basic principle applies to the science of permanent snow coverage.  The more the glaciers, fjords and snow caps melt, the more dark earth is exposed to absorb the heat from the sun.  Last year, an astonishing thing happened.  The summer, that had been so typical, was accompanied by warm rains that extended well into September.  At the end of the rain season, a strong wind blew in, straight off the Inlet, much warmer than our usual north-westerly gales that herald in the winter.  When it was spent, every bit of snow that had in the past, always decorated our high mountain tops; was gone.  It had been dwindling steadily for years, greenery spreading up bare rocks that had once been covered with snow, but now there were no ribbons of white, no tidy blankets at all.

The changes have been slow, so slow they blur and what had once been considered unusual now feels normal.  While other parts of the world alternately suffered between drought and flood, Alaska enjoyed a beautiful summer.  It came in gently.  The ground had not frozen completely before the first snow so as the snow melted, it sank, drying the mud puddles more quickly than usual.  By mid-May, the leaves were furling open and the grass was over-taking the bare earth.  The rains came evenly in between long spells of sunny weather.  The long rain season, which usually lasts at least a month and generally comes in July, held off until late August.  When the sky cleared near the end of September, it was as warm as an August day.  There had been no frosts, no freak snow flurries, no sudden drops in temperature.

Construction crews that had worked frantically all summer to meet a cold weather deadline, idly filled in ditches, brushed off bike paths and added touches of black top to the roads.  Yard work was carried through until there was absolutely no remaining interest, and tired bodies began to yearn for those vacation days of cozy fires and hot coffee, with nothing better to do than stay warm.  Bicycles, usually put away by now, pressed for one more day of recreation, than another and yet another, the cyclists basking in the amazingly long autumn.  Each day, the locals looked at the mountains, waiting for that telling coat of termination dust that would announce winter was creeping down and would arrive in the lowlands within two weeks.  Yet September rolled into October and the mountains stayed bare.

Snow Creeps Down from the Mountains in Mid-October @2011 Karla Fetrow

Winter finally came to us on Halloween.  The sky clouded over.  The temperature dropped.  By evening, we had our first layer of snow.  It seemed our weird weather had settled back to normal, but this wasn’t so.  A massive storm front of hurricane proportions moved up the northwest coast toward the Chukchi Sea on November sixth, causing a statewide emergency alert.  It wasn’t the size of the storm front that worried the residents, although it was one of the most massive on record, or even the winds.  At this time of year, the Chukchi Sea is usually covered with ice, but this year the storm hit open water.  It was the storm surge that kept people sitting on the edges of their seats.  According to the news broadcasts, at least thirty-seven communities experienced some fallout from the storm, ranging from minor flooding, to power outages, to residents taking refuge in school shelters.

The big scare turned into only a minor boom by Alaskan standards.  As Alaskans shook their heads, laughing at the storm that drove them to buy extra supplies and prepare to knuckle down, they stated the one cardinal rule that all seasoned veterans go by; never, ever try to predict Alaskan weather.  What we can predict is the climate will continue changing.  Many of the villages slammed by the storm had already been suffering erosion over the last few years, with plans, but very few funds, for moving further back from the coastline.  The Big Storm could simply be the prelude to other storms which, finding a new playground in open water, will alter the coastline, change the jet stream and create new bizarre patterns that will eventually be considered normal.

We adapt.  One of the harshest climates in the world is gentling its hand, but in the process, will set the precedent for climate change everywhere.  The question of the new era will not be how to reverse the effects already set in motion, but how to live with them.  It will not be how to avoid natural disasters; drought, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes and hurricanes, but how to survive them.  Nature is oblivious to status, gated communities, well protected homes.  It doesn’t care about your religious denomination, if you’re a friend of pets, or harbor guns in your basement.  It has only one question for you.  When you meet it face to face in its full wrath, will you be prepared?  The answer is, only if you are able to adapt.

By: Gordon Smith

http://www.internetproviders.net/blog/2011/10-ways-satellites-have-been-used-to-spy-on-you/

http://www.internetproviders.net/

In these post-9/11 days of the Patriot Act, there has come a sharp transformation of America’s collective psyche with regard to the interrelationship between public security and personal liberty. Whereas in times past we had been a people who placed freedom above all else, today we seem more willing to compromise that freedom in the name of national defense. So then it comes as no surprise that Uncle Sam has been keeping a watchful eye on more than just his usual suspects: terrorists, communists, and militant environmentalists. Given the fact that satellites provide a global link between other technologies, their use in intelligence gathering is extensive indeed. Here’s a list of ten ways that satellites have been used to spy on you too:

1. Intercepting E-mails – According to this report in the New York Times, the National Security Agency has used spy satellites for the interception of private emails. In an apparent case of “over-collection” of data, American citizens who were not identified as security threats were inadvertently targeted.
2. Intercepting Phone Calls – The same report indicates that phone calls of private citizens were also monitored via U.S. government-owned spy satellites.
3. GPS Monitoring – Spying is not just a government pastime either. Employers are increasingly making use of GPS technology to keep tabs on drivers. With it, they can track your movements, driving speeds, and how long you’ve spent parked under that tree on your lunch break.
4. Google Earth – It may not be real-time tracking per se, but Google’s satellite imagery can get awfully up close and personal. I could see the lawn furniture in my mother’s backyard. Just saying. Let’s hope her neighbors have a building permit for that room addition they’re working on.
5. Cell Phones – With mobile devices having been equipped with GPS capabilities, your cell phone is now essentially a tracking device attached to your hip. The overt purpose of this is to provide a local response locate for callers in emergency situations, but it still means that Big Brother can find you if he wants to.
6. Television Programming – We already know that spyware tracks our movements on the world wide web, but it seldom occurs to us that the same thing is being done via that box sitting on top of our entertainment centers. For starters, let’s just say it could at least be a source of embarrassment for some, when their cable TV provider starts offering suggested viewing based on previously viewed programming.
7. Mobile Web Tracking – For that matter, just as with TV providers and with terrestrial internet connections, satellites make it possible to track internet activity on mobile devices.
8. Private Purchasers – The Cold War having long since passed into history, satellite surveillance has become accessible to the private sector. Individual and corporate entities can buy satellite access for myriad legitimate uses such as mapping. Privatization of satellite surveillance, however, can lead to some questions about accountability.
9. Photos For Sale – One such area of concern with regard to accountability is in the sale of satellite imagery. Some privately owned satellites are taking high-resolution photos that are available for purchase for as little as $750. Even with a federally mandated restriction on their resolution, such photos can still identify Mom’s lawn chairs.
10. OnStar – This satellite-based feature featured in General Motors vehicles has recently been in the news because of a policy change regarding their service. GM apparently has decided that it would be in your(?) best interest to continue tracking your movements even after you’ve unsubscribed from the service. Additionally, they have made provision for the sale of customers’ private information.