Tag Archives: climate change

World Oceans Day

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World Oceans Day is coming up on Monday (June 8). This years theme is ‘healthy oceans, healthy planet’. It really is just common sense. The oceans cover over 70% of the earth. We all ultimately rely on the ocean for our own health and well being. It’s important to take care of it, if only for our own good. Monday will be a day to remember all the reasons we should respect and care for the oceans, it’s a day to celebrate and get involved too.

The oceans are a major source of food for people (and animals): fish, shellfish, seaweed, plankton, krill, etc. They also help to regulate the climate and keep some of the Northern areas warm in the winter and Southern places cooler in the summer (N hemisphere). The oceans are also extremely important for connecting people around the world. In the USA, 90% of our trade is by sea.

A lot of people make their living directly from the sea like I do. I’ve worked on the water from the time I was a kid. Fishing, recreation (cruising), and transporting cargo from one place to another (a ship is much more efficient than any other form of transport). Now, I work in the offshore oil fields, exploring for and extracting resources from the sea bottom.

If you live near the ocean, like I do, you already know how important it is for your ‘soul’, your mental health, your attitude. I can sit by the sea, listen and watch the waves roll in and it immediately calms me. I like to swim, snorkel, sail, SCUBA dive, surf (not very well), fish, and any other activity that gets me out on the water. 😉

I hope you’ll take a few minutes to think about how you benefit from it and what life would be like without a healthy ocean. Check out a few of the links. Get involved in some of the events if you can. If you can’t get out to any of the events on Monday, remember it doesn’t have to stop on Monday!

There are plenty of things you can do every day to help make things better. Even simple things like talking to people about World Oceans Day, disposing of your trash properly, using as little plastic as possible, not letting balloons fly away loose, etc. It all helps. 🙂 PS- none of the pictures in this post are mine, I got them all of the internet.

Kids Love “land shrimp”?

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In which I feed my children “land shrimp” | Grist.

I see this more and more. Media promoting bug eating as a great idea to save the planet.

Yeah, if we’ll all just substitute a few giant roaches, beetles, or crickets instead of a nice juicy rib-eye, we can reverse climate change, save more wilderness, feed the starving children and as a bonus we would even lose a few pounds!

I suppose if I had nothing else to eat, for a loooong time, I would eventually eat the bugs. It’s just the whole idea of it that makes me squirmy. And I really don’t like the insinuation that we all really ought to switch to bugs over steaks, to lower our standards of living, to help ‘save the planet’.

Why the hell can’t we seriously discuss limiting the human population for a change. Just get people to use birth control for a while! Try something that would be GOOD for everyone here already AND the planet, AND would actually help!

I’ve tried them (bugs) before. Would you do it?

What do you think about lowering your living standards so that we can just keep on having more and more people live on the earth (and nothing else)? Do you think it’s a better idea to try and get everyone here already to ‘live light’ (eating bugs, no cars, serious restrictions on ALL energy use, etc), or get the people here already to limit their childbearing so that eventually we can reduce the human population so that everyone here can have a GOOD life, and still have room for wilderness and all the other creatures that depend on it?

Me? I’m 100% for the birth control!

Facing Changing Climate, San Francisco Prepares to Share

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Facing Changing Climate, San Francisco Prepares to Share.

I can’t be sure just from reading this one article, but it is encouraging. FINALLY someone is doing something sensible! Taking care of themselves! Wow! What a novel idea!

As they say in the article, ‘it’s about knowing your neighbors, lending a hand, and sharing your knowledge’. Yes, that’s right. Why have we stopped doing that sort of thing and turning OUR responsibilities over to the government?

I disagree with their statement that we “should be able to count on government to respond”, we SHOULD already have learned that they’re NOT going to! We SHOULD have already been doing what they suggest now and helping ourselves and each other. We USED to do that years ago, til we let the government take over all that kind of thing.

In all sorts of disasters all over the world, the most successful ‘programs’ for actually getting the help where it’s needed and fixing things best, it’s been done from the bottom up. Neighbors helping neighbors. People who know what needs doing. People who just DO it. Sure, there might be some outside help, from either government or charitable organizations, but the MAIN driver for getting things done is the local people.

I get really sick and tired of hearing about New Orleans and Katrina. Nobody ever talks about any of the other communities devastated by Katrina, or Rita, or Ike, etc. It seems to me the major difference between what happened in New Orleans and all those other places was the total dependence on government to take care of everything.

Before the hurricane, everyone thought the levees (built by the Army Corps of Engineers) would protect them. But there had been reports for many years that the levees would NOT hold. People trusted the government anyway.

When Katrina was on the way, people counted on the government to take care of them instead of finding ways to get out of town like they should have. Then they depended once again on the government to take care of them in the shelters. How did that work out again???

Most people in New Orleans are STILL waiting for the government to “take care of them” in regards to their housing situation. From the f*cked up formaldehyde laced FEMA trailers to the totally screwed situation with them being able/allowed to rebuild on their properties, almost everything would have been better dealt with if they had just forgotten about any government and just found ways to do it themselves.

 

Arctic Sea Ice Up 60 Percent in 2013

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Arctic Sea Ice Up 60 Percent in 2013.

Read it and do your own thinking.

I said a long time ago,  scientists can’t prove (yet) that we are in the midst of “man-made” global warming. They tricked me once when I was a kid when they were all in agreement that we would all be frozen into ice cubes by now.

At this point in time, I want proof that…

1. People are the cause of global warming.

2. There is something effective that people can do to stop it.

So far, I have not seen enough evidence of either one of those propositions to make me want to do anything about the issue. I’m still waiting…

Maybe if I wait long enough, they’ll decide we’ll be freezing again. I only wish the governments of the world would stop trying to use this issue to force us into their ridiculous ideas of how we need to live.

Yeah, riiiighht, like any of them really know anything about MY life. Or yours (assuming you’re not at least a millionaire). Or even how to really LIVE life. You don’t learn about that when your life’s ambition is to control other people!

Here Comes the Story of No Hurricanes

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Here Comes the Story of No Hurricanes | Mother Jones.

Here we go again with the global warming… Am I the only one who remembers back in the 70s when we were all supposed to be frozen into ice cubes by now. According to the almost unanimous scientific consensus, we should start shopping for parkas and load up on the firewood! Next it was global warming and now it’s ‘climate change’. Can’t these guys make up their minds?

I actually met one of these so-called experts a couple of years ago. I got off my tuna boat in Kiribati. They were having a meeting where I was staying. Here’s a link to an article written at the time- (http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2010/nov/09/kiribati-climate-change-conference-intro). The reporter even asked me what I thought about it for a man in the street’s opinion piece.

I asked a delegate why should I (or anyone else) believe him when the scientists were more in agreement about global freezing back in the 70s than they are about global warming now. I think I pissed him off. I mean,  disrespecting his so superior scientific knowledge and all that. REALLY??!! He had NO idea what I was talking about! OK, he was a few years younger than me so he probably doesn’t remember all the hysteria personally like I do, but he’s supposed to be an expert. Can’t we expect the experts to know more than just the ordinary guy in the street???

Back 'yard' of the best hotel on Tarawa 2010

Back ‘yard’ of the best hotel on Tarawa 2010

One Weird Trick to Fix Farms Forever

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One Weird Trick to Fix Farms Forever | Mother Jones.

One weird trick? Seems like this ‘trick’ has been around forever, it’s just our modern factory farming techniques that tend to overlook it.

I don’t really know enough about farming to say with a definite yes or no to any of this stuff. I have been learning more about it lately and I’m coming to find out that contrary to what our government schools are telling us, that no, factory farming is NOT necessary to feed all the people on this planet now.

I always thought that because of the humongous amount of people running around and needing to be fed, that factory farming was the ONLY solution. Now, I’ve been learning, it isn’t. In fact, it is causing a lot of harm. Not only to the animals, but to the water, to the soil, to the plants, to the people involved in the farming, AND to all the rest of us.

Check out the article, read it all the way through and even the comments at the end. If you want some more info, check out this book I read called “Genetic Roulette” on GMOs (they even made a movie out of it). We’re working on showing that one at our local (Campaign for Liberty) meetup groups movie night sometime soon. Or another movie called “Farmaggedon”. There are lots more but those are a couple of good ones that’ll open your eyes and get you started asking questions. I’ve been a fast food junkie my whole life and they did open my eyes to a lot of things. Even tho I’m still eating all the crap food, at least I’m learning 😉

How Robot Swarms and Cloud Umbrellas Could Help Save Coral Reefs | Innovations

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How Robot Swarms and Cloud Umbrellas Could Help Save Coral Reefs | Innovations.

I don’t know if there is really anything we can do to save the reefs (other than to limit the growth of the human population on this planet- either start using birth control or find a way to put some of us on the moon). I think its sad that we all just want to live our lives the best we can and we are justified in thinking that way, but we have no sense of how we have advanced our science so much to allow us to overcome all the limiting factors on our population. We use all the benefits of modern technology and so our population has exploded. People do not seem willing to limit their reproduction to 1-2 children (at least until their economic situation improves past a certain point). I do see it starting to happen, I just hope its not already too late with so many billions of us running around already. Personally, I would prefer it if EVERY person alive on Earth could live a decent, happy, productive life with everything they need and want available to them, rather than just keep on producing more and more people just because we’re somehow special and we deserve to live more than all the other things that share the planet with us.