Category: People

Climate Change and Humanity

A powerful essay by Tom Engelhardt from his blogsite TomDispatch.

Regular readers of Learning from Dogs know that essays from TomDispatch often find their way onto these pages. They are republished with the generous permission of Tom and I endeavour to select those essays that shine a new light on a current issue. No less so than with today’s essay, first published over on TomDispatch on May 22nd, 2014.

Just a note before you start reading Tom’s very important essay. That there are many links to papers, articles and other references throughout the essay. (I know, they took me a couple of hours to set up!) Could I recommend strongly that you ‘click’ on each link and make a note of the references you wish to read at a later time. I shall be referring to some of them next week when I comment more generally on this fabulous essay.

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Tomgram: Engelhardt, Is Climate Change a Crime Against Humanity?

The 95% Doctrine

Climate Change as a Weapon of Mass Destruction

By Tom Engelhardt

Who could forget? At the time, in the fall of 2002, there was such a drumbeat of “information” from top figures in the Bush administration about the secret Iraqi program to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and so endanger the United States. And who — other than a few suckers — could have doubted that Saddam Hussein was eventually going to get a nuclear weapon? The only question, as our vice president suggested on “Meet the Press,” was: Would it take one year or five? And he wasn’t alone in his fears, since there was plenty of proof of what was going on. For starters, there were those “specially designed aluminum tubes” that the Iraqi autocrat had ordered as components for centrifuges to enrich uranium in his thriving nuclear weapons program. Reporters Judith Miller and Michael Gordon hit the front page of the New York Times with that story on September 8, 2002.

Then there were those “mushroom clouds” that Condoleezza Rice, our national security advisor, was so publicly worried about — the ones destined to rise over American cities if we didn’t do something to stop Saddam. As she fretted in a CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer on that same September 8th, “[W]e don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” No, indeed, and nor, it turned out, did Congress!

And just in case you weren’t anxious enough about the looming Iraqi threat, there were those unmanned aerial vehicles — Saddam’s drones! — that could be armed with chemical or biological WMD from his arsenal and flown over America’s East Coast cities with unimaginable results. President George W. Bush went on TV to talk about them and congressional votes were changed in favor of war thanks to hair-raising secret administration briefings about them on Capitol Hill.

In the end, it turned out that Saddam had no weapons program, no nuclear bomb in the offing, no centrifuges for those aluminum pipes, no biological or chemical weapons caches, and no drone aircraft to deliver his nonexistent weapons of mass destruction (nor any ships capable of putting those nonexistent robotic planes in the vicinity of the U.S. coast). But what if he had? Who wanted to take that chance? Not Vice President Dick Cheney, certainly. Inside the Bush administration he propounded something that journalist Ron Suskind later dubbed the “one percent doctrine.” Its essence was this: if there was even a 1% chance of an attack on the United States, especially involving weapons of mass destruction, it must be dealt with as if it were a 95%-100% certainty.

Here’s the curious thing: if you look back on America’s apocalyptic fears of destruction during the first 14 years of this century, they largely involved three city-busting weapons that were fantasies of Washington’s fertile imperial imagination. There was that “bomb” of Saddam’s, which provided part of the pretext for a much-desired invasion of Iraq. There was the “bomb” of the mullahs, the Iranian fundamentalist regime that we’ve just loved to hate ever since they repaid us, in 1979, for the CIA’s overthrow of an elected government in 1953 and the installation of the Shah by taking the staff of the U.S. embassy in Tehran hostage. If you believed the news from Washington and Tel Aviv, the Iranians, too, were perilously close to producing a nuclear weapon or at least repeatedly on the verge of the verge of doing so. The production of that “Iranian bomb” has, for years, been a focus of American policy in the Middle East, the “brink” beyond which war has endlessly loomed. And yet there was and is no Iranian bomb, nor evidence that the Iranians were or are on the verge of producing one.

Finally, of course, there was al-Qaeda’s bomb, the “dirty bomb” that organization might somehow assemble, transport to the U.S., and set off in an American city, or the “loose nuke,” maybe from the Pakistani arsenal, with which it might do the same. This is the third fantasy bomb that has riveted American attention in these last years, even though there is less evidence for or likelihood of its imminent existence than of the Iraqi and Iranian ones.

To sum up, the strange thing about end-of-the-world-as-we’ve-known-it scenarios from Washington, post-9/11, is this: with a single exception, they involved only non-existent weapons of mass destruction. A fourth weapon — one that existed but played a more modest role in Washington’s fantasies — was North Korea’s perfectly real bomb, which in these years the North Koreans were incapable of delivering to American shores.

The “Good News” About Climate Change

In a world in which nuclear weapons remain a crucial coin of the realm when it comes to global power, none of these examples could quite be classified as 0% dangers. Saddam had once had a nuclear program, just not in 2002-2003, and also chemical weapons, which he used against Iranian troops in his 1980s war with their country (with the help of targeting information from the U.S. military) and against his own Kurdish population. The Iranians might (or might not) have been preparing their nuclear program for a possible weapons breakout capability, and al-Qaeda certainly would not have rejected a loose nuke, if one were available (though that organization’s ability to use it would still have been questionable).

In the meantime, the giant arsenals of WMD in existence, the American, Russian, Chinese, Israeli, Pakistani, and Indian ones that might actually have left a crippled or devastated planet behind, remained largely off the American radar screen. In the case of the Indian arsenal, the Bush administration actually lent an indirect hand to its expansion. So it was twenty-first-century typical when President Obama, trying to put Russia’s recent actions in the Ukraine in perspective, said, “Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors. I continue to be much more concerned when it comes to our security with the prospect of a nuclear weapon going off in Manhattan.”

Once again, an American president was focused on a bomb that would raise a mushroom cloud over Manhattan. And which bomb, exactly, was that, Mr. President?

Of course, there was a weapon of mass destruction that could indeed do staggering damage to or someday simply drown New York City, Washington D.C., Miami, and other East coast cities. It had its own efficient delivery systems — no nonexistent drones or Islamic fanatics needed. And unlike the Iraqi, Iranian, or al-Qaeda bombs, it was guaranteed to be delivered to our shores unless preventive action was taken soon. No one needed to hunt for its secret facilities. It was a weapons system whose production plants sat in full view right here in the United States, as well as in Europe, China, and India, as well as in Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, and other energy states.

So here’s a question I’d like any of you living in or visiting Wyoming to ask the former vice president, should you run into him in a state that’s notoriously thin on population: How would he feel about acting preventively, if instead of a 1% chance that some country with weapons of mass destruction might use them against us, there was at least a 95% — and likely as not a 100% — chance of them being set off on our soil? Let’s be conservative, since the question is being posed to a well-known neoconservative. Ask him whether he would be in favor of pursuing the 95% doctrine the way he was the 1% version.

After all, thanks to a grim report in 2013 from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we know that there is now a 95%-100% likelihood that “human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming [of the planet] since the mid-20th century.” We know as well that the warming of the planet — thanks to the fossil fuel system we live by and the greenhouse gases it deposits in the atmosphere — is already doing real damage to our world and specifically to the United States, as a recent scientific report released by the White House made clear. We also know, with grimly reasonable certainty, what kinds of damage those 95%-100% odds are likely to translate into in the decades, and even centuries, to come if nothing changes radically: a temperature rise by century’s end that could exceed 10 degrees Fahrenheit, cascading species extinctions, staggeringly severe droughts across larger parts of the planet (as in the present long-term drought in the American West and Southwest), far more severe rainfall across other areas, more intense storms causing far greater damage, devastating heat waves on a scale no one in human history has ever experienced, masses of refugees, rising global food prices, and among other catastrophes on the human agenda, rising sea levels that will drown coastal areas of the planet.

From two scientific studies just released, for example, comes the news that the West Antarctic ice sheet, one of the great ice accumulations on the planet, has now begun a process of melting and collapse that could, centuries from now, raise world sea levels by a nightmarish 10 to 13 feet. That mass of ice is, according to the lead authors of one of the studies, already in “irreversible retreat,” which means — no matter what acts are taken from now on — a future death sentence for some of the world’s great cities. (And that’s without even the melting of the Greenland ice shield, not to speak of the rest of the ice in Antarctica.)

All of this, of course, will happen mainly because we humans continue to burn fossil fuels at an unprecedented rate and so annually deposit carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at record levels. In other words, we’re talking about weapons of mass destruction of a new kind. While some of their effects are already in play, the planetary destruction that nuclear weapons could cause almost instantaneously, or at least (given “nuclear winter” scenarios) within months, will, with climate change, take decades, if not centuries, to deliver its full, devastating planetary impact.

When we speak of WMD, we usually think of weapons — nuclear, biological, or chemical — that are delivered in a measurable moment in time. Consider climate change, then, a WMD on a particularly long fuse, already lit and there for any of us to see. Unlike the feared Iranian bomb or the Pakistani arsenal, you don’t need the CIA or the NSA to ferret such “weaponry” out. From oil wells to fracking structures, deep sea drilling rigs to platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, the machinery that produces this kind of WMD and ensures that it is continuously delivered to its planetary targets is in plain sight. Powerful as it may be, destructive as it will be, those who control it have faith that, being so long developing, it can remain in the open without panicking populations or calling any kind of destruction down on them.

The companies and energy states that produce such WMD remain remarkably open about what they’re doing. Generally speaking, they don’t hesitate to make public, or even boast about, their plans for the wholesale destruction of the planet, though of course they are never described that way. Nonetheless, if an Iraqi autocrat or Iranian mullahs spoke in similar fashion about producing nuclear weapons and how they were to be used, they would be toast.

Take ExxonMobil, one of the most profitable corporations in history. In early April, it released two reports that focused on how the company, as Bill McKibben has written, “planned to deal with the fact that [it] and other oil giants have many times more carbon in their collective reserves than scientists say we can safely burn.” He went on:

The company said that government restrictions that would force it to keep its [fossil fuel] reserves in the ground were ‘highly unlikely,’ and that they would not only dig them all up and burn them, but would continue to search for more gas and oil — a search that currently consumes about $100 million of its investors’ money every single day. ‘Based on this analysis, we are confident that none of our hydrocarbon reserves are now or will become “stranded.”‘

In other words, Exxon plans to exploit whatever fossil fuel reserves it possesses to their fullest extent. Government leaders involved in supporting the production of such weapons of mass destruction and their use are often similarly open about it, even while also discussing steps to mitigate their destructive effects. Take the White House, for instance. Here was a statement President Obama proudly made in Oklahoma in March 2012 on his energy policy:

Now, under my administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years. That’s important to know. Over the last three years, I’ve directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states. We’re opening up more than 75% of our potential oil resources offshore. We’ve quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth and then some.

Similarly, on May 5th, just before the White House was to reveal that grim report on climate change in America, and with a Congress incapable of passing even the most rudimentary climate legislation aimed at making the country modestly more energy efficient, senior Obama adviser John Podesta appeared in the White House briefing room to brag about the administration’s “green” energy policy. “The United States,” he said, “is now the largest producer of natural gas in the world and the largest producer of gas and oil in the world. It’s projected that the United States will continue to be the largest producer of natural gas through 2030. For six straight months now, we’ve produced more oil here at home than we’ve imported from overseas. So that’s all a good-news story.”

Good news indeed, and from Vladmir Putin’s Russia, which just expanded its vast oil and gas holdings by a Maine-sized chunk of the Black Sea off Crimea, to Chinese “carbon bombs,” to Saudi Arabian production guarantees, similar “good-news stories” are similarly promoted. In essence, the creation of ever more greenhouse gases — of, that is, the engine of our future destruction — remains a “good news” story for ruling elites on planet Earth.

Weapons of Planetary Destruction

We know exactly what Dick Cheney — ready to go to war on a 1% possibility that some country might mean us harm — would answer, if asked about acting on the 95% doctrine. Who can doubt that his response would be similar to those of the giant energy companies, which have funded so much climate-change denialism and false science over the years? He would claim that the science simply isn’t “certain” enough (though “uncertainty” can, in fact, cut two ways), that before we commit vast sums to taking on the phenomenon, we need to know far more, and that, in any case, climate-change science is driven by a political agenda.

For Cheney & Co., it seemed obvious that acting on a 1% possibility was a sensible way to go in America’s “defense” and it’s no less gospel for them that acting on at least a 95% possibility isn’t. For the Republican Party as a whole, climate-change denial is by now nothing less than a litmus test of loyalty, and so even a 101% doctrine wouldn’t do when it comes to fossil fuels and this planet.

No point, of course, in blaming this on fossil fuels or even the carbon dioxide they give off when burned. These are no more weapons of mass destruction than are uranium-235 and plutonium-239. In this case, the weaponry is the production system that’s been set up to find, extract, sell at staggering profits, and burn those fossil fuels, and so create a greenhouse-gas planet. With climate change, there is no “Little Boy” or “Fat Man” equivalent, no simple weapon to focus on. In this sense, fracking is the weapons system, as is deep-sea drilling, as are those pipelines, and the gas stations, and the coal-fueled power plants, and the millions of cars filling global roads, and the accountants of the most profitable corporations in history.

All of it — everything that brings endless fossil fuels to market, makes those fuels eminently burnable, and helps suppress the development of non-fossil fuel alternatives — is the WMD. The CEOs of the planet’s giant energy corporations are the dangerous mullahs, the true fundamentalists, of planet Earth, since they are promoting a faith in fossil fuels which is guaranteed to lead us to some version of End Times.

Perhaps we need a new category of weapons with a new acronym to focus us on the nature of our present 95%-100% circumstances. Call them weapons of planetary destruction (WPD) or weapons of planetary harm (WPH). Only two weapons systems would clearly fit such categories. One would be nuclear weapons which, even in a localized war between Pakistan and India, could create some version of “nuclear winter” in which the planet was cut off from the sun by so much smoke and soot that it would grow colder fast, experience a massive loss of crops, of growing seasons, and of life. In the case of a major exchange of such weapons, we would be talking about “the sixth extinction” of planetary history.

Though on a different and harder to grasp time-scale, the burning of fossil fuels could end in a similar fashion — with a series of “irreversible” disasters that could essentially burn us and much other life off the Earth. This system of destruction on a planetary scale, facilitated by most of the ruling and corporate elites on the planet, is becoming (to bring into play another category not usually used in connection with climate change) the ultimate “crime against humanity” and, in fact, against most living things. It is becoming a “terracide.”

Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The United States of Fear as well as a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture (from which some of this essay has been adapted). He runs the Nation Institute’s TomDispatch.com. His latest book, co-authored with Nick Turse, is Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050.

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There are so many strong and fundamental points raised in this essay from Tom that I am going to return to them next week. (Will give it a rest for July 4th!)

Self compassion.

A placeholder just for today.

Yesterday morning I had a lovely long chat with Jon Lavin in the UK. We chit-chatted for a long time, covering such matters as caring for ourselves, about being compassionate towards the self, and much more besides.

Then in stark contrast, around noon Jean and I went over to “Runaway Tractors” to collect our tractor that had been in for a service.

The afternoon brought along another great conversation with John Hurlburt, he of the highly-appreciated Human arrogance essay last Thursday. That brought forth a whole bundle of ideas to write about.

The talks with Jon and John inspired a wonderful set of essays in my mind – BUT!

But by the time I sat down in front of the PC to write today’s post, I had simply run out of time to write something of value. So I’m cheating, well sort of, by reposting something from a little over a year ago. Hope it’s fresh to your eyes and that you enjoy it.

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Returning to Nature

The power of serendipity!

Why the choice of this sub-heading? Well, just because a number of quite separate articles and essays have come together to offer a powerful, cohesive argument for reconsidering the role of Nature in the future of mankind.

Of course, my use of words in that preceding sentence is completely ludicrous; the suggestion that ‘Nature’ is disconnected from ‘mankind’. Yet millions of us, to a greater or lesser degree, do behave as if we are the masters of the world.

So let me dip into what has been ‘crossing my desk’ in recent times.

On May 28th, George Monbiot published in The Guardian newspaper an essay entitled A Manifesto for Rewilding the World. (The link takes you to the article on the Monbiot blogsite.) Here’s how that essay opened,

Until modern humans arrived, every continent except Antarctica possessed a megafauna. In the Americas, alongside mastodons, mammoths, four-tusked and spiral-tusked elephants, there was a beaver the size of a black bear: eight feet from nose to tail(1). There were giant bison weighing two tonnes, which carried horns seven feet across(2).

The short-faced bear stood thirteen feet in its hind socks(3). One hypothesis maintains that its astonishing size and shocking armoury of teeth and claws are the hallmarks of a specialist scavenger: it specialised in driving giant lions and sabretooth cats off their prey(4). The Argentine roc (Argentavis magnificens) had a wingspan of 26 feet(5). Sabretooth salmon nine feet long migrated up Pacific coast rivers(6).

During the previous interglacial period, Britain and Europe contained much of the megafauna we now associate with the tropics: forest elephants, rhinos, hippos, lions and hyaenas. The elephants, rhinos and hippos were driven into southern Europe by the ice, then exterminated around 40,000 years ago when modern humans arrived(7,8,9). Lions and hyaenas persisted: lions hunted reindeer across the frozen wastes of Britain until 11,000 years ago(10, 11). The distribution of these animals has little to do with temperature: only where they co-evolved with humans and learnt to fear them did they survive.

I’m not going to reproduce the bulk of the article; just hoped that I have tickled your curiousity sufficient for you to read it in full here. But will just show you how it closed:

Despite the best efforts of governments, farmers and conservationists, nature is already beginning to return. One estimate suggests that two thirds of the previously-forested parts of the US have reforested, as farming and logging have retreated, especially from the eastern half of the country(23). Another proposes that by 2030 farmers on the European Continent (though not in Britain, where no major shift is expected) will vacate around 30 million hectares (75 million acres), roughly the size of Poland(24). While the mesofauna is already beginning to spread back across Europe, land areas of this size could perhaps permit the reintroduction of some of our lost megafauna. Why should Europe not have a Serengeti or two?

Above all, rewilding offers a positive environmentalism. Environmentalists have long known what they are against; now we can explain what we are for. It introduces hope where hope seemed absent. It offers us a chance to replace our silent spring with a raucous summer.

Then further research for this post brought to light an interview with David Suzuki in February. Widely reported, I picked the version published on Straight.com, from which comes:

In December, Canadian specialty TV channel Business News Network interviewed me about the climate summit in Copenhagen. My six-minute interview followed a five-minute live report from Copenhagen, about poor countries demanding more money to address climate change and rich countries pleading a lack of resources. Before and after those spots were all kinds of reports on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the price of gold and the loonie, and the implications of some new phone technology.

For me, this brought into sharp focus the inevitable failure of our negotiating efforts on climate change. BNN, like the New York-based Bloomberg channel, is a 24-hour-a-day network focused completely on business. These networks indicate that the economy is our top priority. And at Copenhagen, money dominated the discussions and the outcome.

But where is the 24-hour network dealing with the biosphere? As biological creatures, we depend on clean air, clean water, clean soil, clean energy, and biodiversity for our well-being and survival. Surely protecting those fundamental needs should be our top priority and should dominate our thinking and the way we live. After all, we are animals and our biological dependence on the biosphere for our most basic needs should be obvious.

The economy is a human construct, not a force of nature like entropy, gravity, or the speed of light or our biological makeup. It makes no sense to elevate the economy above the things that keep us alive. But that’s what our prime minister does when he claims we can’t even try to meet the Kyoto targets because that might have a detrimental effect on the economy.

This economic system is built on exploiting raw materials from the biosphere and dumping the waste back into the biosphere. And conventional economics dismisses all the “services” that nature performs to keep the planet habitable for animals like us as “externalities”. As long as economic considerations trump all other factors in our decisions, we will never work our way out of the problems we’ve created.

Concluding:

Nature is our home. Nature provides our most fundamental needs. Nature dictates limits. If we are striving for a truly sustainable future, we have to subordinate our activities to the limits that come from nature. We know how much carbon dioxide can be reabsorbed by all the green things in the oceans and on land, and we know we are exceeding those limits. That’s why carbon is building up in the atmosphere. So our goal is clear. All of humanity must find a way to keep emissions below the limits imposed by the biosphere.

The only equitable course is to determine the acceptable level of emissions on a global per capita basis. Those who fall below the line should be compensated for their small carbon footprint while those who are far above should be assessed accordingly. But the economy must be aligned with the limits imposed by the biosphere, not above them.

Quite clearly, if we continue to turn our backs on Nature, the consequences won’t be long in tapping us on the shoulder.

So, going to close it today with this, seen nearly a month ago on the PRI website:

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Plant a Tree

Trees — by Kristof Nordin May 27, 2013

Imagine the type of world we could see
If instead of saying ‘pray,’ we said, ‘plant a tree’.
With this one little change so much more could be done
To protect all living things found under the sun.

We could ‘plant a tree’ for our troops sent away into war
So when they return they’d come home to find more.
We could ‘plant a tree’ at our churches with our husband or wife
To praise the Creator through a celebration of life.

We could ‘plant a tree’ for the needy and for those with no food
We could even plant in public without seeming rude.
The government would not have to introduce rules,
And most likely we could ‘plant a tree’ at our schools.

If we took it to task to ‘plant trees’ for the poorest,
We would all soon be reaping the wealth of a forest.
We could plant freely with those of all religions and creeds,
The improvement of earth would be based on these deeds.

We could plant with our neighbours, our family, and friends,
And ‘plant a tree’ with our enemies to help make amends.
If we ‘plant a tree’ for the sick to show them we care,
We would also be healing the soil, water, and air.

We could ‘plant a tree’ to observe when two people wed,
And plant one with our kids each night before bed.
Throughout the history of the whole human race
We find respect for the ‘tree’ has always had a place.

The great Ash of the Norse was their tree of the World,
And on a tree in the Garden is where the serpent once curled.
It was in groves of Oaks that the Druid priests wandered,
And under the Bodhi where the great Buddha pondered.

In the Bible it’s clear that we have all that we need:
‘All the trees with their fruits and plants yielding seed’.
Despite all these lessons that the past has taught
Now days, it seems, we cut our trees without thought.

This is confirmed by the Koran, for in it we read:
‘Many are the marvels of earth, yet we pay them no heed’.
We all have a duty, no matter what nation
To perform our part in protecting Creation.

Just think what we’d have if we had picked up a spade
Every time each one of us bowed our heads and prayed.

Further Reading:

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See you all tomorrow.

Where water runs through rock!

A delightful coincidence to last Saturday’s post.

Last Saturday, I published a post under the title of Slotting right in! It was an introduction to ten of the most beautiful slot canyons featured on Mother Nature Network.

Then less than a day later, Rob from Transition Town Payson, sent me a link to the following essay. Regulars will recall that Jean and I lived in Payson for a while before moving to Oregon; indeed were married in Payson.

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The Place Where Water Runs Through Rock

Antelope Canyon located in Northern Arizona is well known around the world!

Antelope Canyon lies just outside of Page, Arizona.

Just outside of Page, Arizona lies Antelope Canyon. Located on the Navajo Indian Reservation. The Dine (The People as the Navajos call themselves), manage the use of the canyon as a Navajo Nation National Park. Antelope Canyon is broken into two sections, Upper Antelope is known as Tse bighanilini which means “The place where water runs through rocks” (aka The Crack), and lower Antelope Canyon is Hasdestwazi or “spiral rock arches” (aka The Corkscrew). Both of these canyons are an awesome display of natural forces at work. Carved by flash floods that are common to the area, this Navajo National Park has been accessible only by Navajo Permits since 1997. The permit system came after 11 tourists from around the world were killed by a flash flood in Lower Antelope Canyon!

For more information on these Canyons go to the following links;

http://navajonationparks.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antelope_Canyon

Navajo is a Descriptive Language

The Navajo language is very descriptive and their words often describe things that they see in the natural world. Hence the name for Upper Antelope Canyon “The Place Where Water Runs Through Rocks”. The language was one that was used by a few heroic Navajo veterans to help win World War II. For example, a Battleship was translated into the Navajo word Lo-Tso which means “Whale”, while a Cruiser was Lo-Tso-Yazzie which meant “Small Whale”.

See the following link for the dictionary they used;

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq61-4.htm

The use of Code Talkers was kept secret for many years!

The Code Talkers were kept secret for 23 years after the end of WWII. President Ronald Reagan gave them a Certificate of Recognition and made August 14, 1982, National Code Talkers Day. On December 21, 2000, President Bill Clinton awarded the surviving Code Talkers Congressional Gold Medals and Silver Medals to the approximate 329 surviving heroes.

http://www.navajocodetalkers.org/

Where Water Enters Upper Antelope Canyon.

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The Canyon is 140 feet deep at it’s deepest point!

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The Sandstone Walls are Cut into Mysterious Shapes.

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The Canyon is so Narrow in places only two people can walk side by side.

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Just a magnificent set of pictures. If you ever find yourself in Northern Arizona then don’t hesitate to visit the canyon. The address is: Antelope Canyon, 5975 Hwy 98, Page, AZ 86040.

Thanks Rob!

Slotting right in!

(Excuse the pun!)

I saw this on Mother Nature Network not too long ago and made a note to share it with you. “It” being some stunning photographs of slot canyons around the world. The article opens:

Geological wonders

Slot canyons are narrow, naturally formed canyons with towering walls and a width no wider than your arm span, if that. If they weren’t so mesmerizingly beautiful, they would make you feel claustrophobic. Found around the world, these geological formations usually occur in places with low rainfall, and many of the most well-known are in the American Southwest, including Wall Street (pictured here), which lies in a section of The Narrows in Zion National Park. Check out the beauty of the world’s most stunning slot canyons — it will make you want to pack some hiking gear and get traveling. (Text: Jaymi Heimbuch)

Wall Street Canyon Photo: kan_khampanya/Shutterstock

Now I don’t have permission to reproduce this article but hopefully the one above and this one below will entice you to look through them all starting here.

Antelope Canyon Photo: holbox/ Shutterstock

Antelope Canyon, Arizona

Perhaps the most famous of all slot canyons, Antelope Canyon is found near Page, Arizona. There are two separate sections, known as Upper Antelope Canyon and Lower Antelope Canyon, or more affectionately, The Crack and The Corkscrew. Formed by the erosion of sandstone from flash flooding and other processes, the slot canyons have curvaceous, strangely angled walls. The beautiful colors, textures, curves and spectacular lighting — particularly during the summer months — are a major draw for photographers and sightseers. They are located within the LeChee Chapter of the Navajo Nation and have become a significant source of tourism for the Navajo tribe.

Fabulous! Don’t miss out – see the full set of twelve pictures here.

Poetry in metal.

A pleasure to highlight the creative work of Ira Wiesenfeld DVM

Earlier on this week, we were fortunate in having a long-term friend of Jean and her late husband, Ben, stay with us. In distant times, Ira, him being the friend, had been a horse veterinarian but many years ago had changed course. As he explains on his web-site:

I grew up the scientist in an artistic family. I didn’t discover my right brain until midlife; my left was burned out and a crisis was upon me. First came the craft of blacksmithing, which I found therapeutic and immensely satisfying. Then a style of work developed that was biomorphic, botanical and branching. Finally a passion for sculpture evolved, made from forged, found, and fabricated metal.

Ten years ago I decided to get serious; I gave up my day job and began working full time in my smithy. Now I like to say that I forge and weld furniture, sculpture and anything in- between. I especially enjoy working in that in-between space, where aesthetics, function and narrative meet.

Ira was en-route to an exhibition in Portland which gave us the opportunity both to have him stay and for us to browse over some of the pieces he had with him.

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My impromptu picture-taking didn’t do justice to this piece. A much better version is the one below taken directly from Ira’s website Circle of Iron Forge.

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Ira discussing with Jean what could be done with an old iron pulley-wheel we found here at home.

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Have to say that I was very impressed by both Ira’s creative artistry and his metal-working skills.

Let me leave you with one more example of Ira’s work, taken from his web-site and his contact details in case any of you dear readers are motivated to be in direct touch with Ira.

Empty Nest Forged and welded steel, copper, bronze, and stainless steel. — **Empty Nest**
Forged and welded steel, copper, bronze, and stainless steel.

Ira Wiesenfeld DVM
Tucson, Arizona
Treeira@hotmail.com
520-742-5274

Human arrogance – a guest post.

A powerful and compelling post from friend and follower: John Hurlburt.

Anyone who can compose phrases such as “an enlightened interest in the quality of the harvest of our transitory lives” deserves to be listened to! Our friend, John, from our Payson, AZ, days, is a regular author of essays that arrive here in Hugo Road via the mail. It’s always a pleasure to read John’s words and frequently I feel the need to share them with you, dear reader. So it was with John’s latest.

I’ll say no more except to promise you that you will be enthralled.

ooOOoo

Arrogance ‘R Us

We hear the drumbeat of steadily increasing global, national, state, regional and local problems every day. When common-sense solutions are offered for any of these problems, the solutions are immediately demonized as actions which would aggravate the problems they would logically solve. This sort of nonsensical circular argument is both a paralyzing paradox and a guaranteed death spiral for our relatively young biological species.

We imagine that we know far more than we do. The Earth doesn’t need living species in order to regenerate life. Human beings continue to need the Earth from which we are made and which sustains our consciously aware being. Some of us believe that having money is the answer to all our problems. Actually, the imaginary power of human “money” is killing life on Earth from the bottom of the food chain up.

Every government in the world competes with every other government in the world for power and control to one degree or another. The richer the nation, the greater it’s illusion of power. We’ve forgotten about responsibility, morality and faith in the power of Nature. Change is a constant. Failure to adapt to change is a death knell for living beings.

We live to learn. Why? Is death a finality or a new beginning? Both classic and quantum physics recognize Conservation of Information and the exchange of energy and matter at the level of fundamental forces. How much of the energy of our lives is absorbed by the cosmos and how much is recycled as life energy? We have no earthly idea of the answer.

Aye, there’s the rub.

We do know that everything fits together. Otherwise, we’d be random atoms. We also know that the cosmos does not exist for the pleasure of human beings. To the contrary, if the cosmos were even minimally different, life as we know it would not exist. We are an infinitesimally small part of Reality.

Statistically, we’re not alone as consciously aware life forms in our universe. When we release ourselves from the bondage of our biological limitations, we connect with the living energy of our planet in harmony with the geo-magnetic network of our planet, our living galaxy, and our living universe. We realize that other life on Earth shares conscious awareness in varying degrees.

Don’t believe it? That’s a matter of choice. Consider that denying the facts of reality is a foundation for ignorance. Letting go is a gateway to enlightenment.

Those who do not accept change profess to believe that the immensity of a universe beyond our inclusive comprehension has existed since the beginning of time solely for their personal benefit. Their corporate slogan is “Arrogance ‘R Us”.

More precisely, the statistical probability of human conscious awareness being unique in the universe is so infinitesimal that it would be laughable if it weren’t for our present species peril.

Not only have we amassed enough fire power to turn the earth into a burning sphere overnight, we are now proceeding to systematically and efficiently eliminate the natural resources we need to live.

We can’t eat computers or opinions. Clean air, clean water, clean food and clean energy are more than slogans. They’re essential for human life. Are we a swarm of predatory locusts or are we stewards of the blessings of a life we don’t fully understand?

Money has dissolved the human contract with Nature which began about 14 million years ago on a planet that’s been around in one form or another for roughly the last 14 billion years. Preservation, sustainability and natural efficiency are enemies of our present delusional global economic system. No living species on Earth is safe from the ecocide being committed by human insanity. We’re experiencing a systemic failure and treating it as a side-show.

We’re suffering from a fatally immoral addiction to what we may personally consider to be the good life. It’s time for our conscious awareness to transcend self and species. We need to combine our spiritual awareness, our natural awareness, our moral awareness, our cultural awareness, our social awareness and our common sense for the immediate purpose of preserving, sustaining and accepting the natural efficiency of our pale blue dot in a universally remote solar system.

So, where do we begin? We begin wherever we are. Today is the tomorrow we dreamed of yesterday. What is our vision of tomorrow? Is it an Earth that is unchanging in the midst of constant change? Is it an Earth that is scorched and barren? Perhaps it can become an Earth that continues to grow and nurture our existence.

The choice is made by our daily actions. Time is not currently in our favor. Freedom is not the exclusive privilege of wealth. Freedom is everyone’s responsibility. Poverty is the deadliest form of violence. Seven trillion dollars of worthless derivatives tick like a time-bomb in dank Wall Street sub-basements. Environmental bankruptcy threatens all life on Earth. It’s more than past half-time to face our shared Reality. There’s no place to hide.

We grieve our former lives. We begin with the suppressed anger we have self-generated through fear until it has become a traumatic syndrome. The antidote for fear is faith. What do we believe? What are our values? Are we moral, semi-moral, immoral or amoral? Do we believe we are the purpose of the Cosmos or a relatively young animal living on a garden planet far from the heart of an emerging universe? Is our immediate gratification more important than any long-term purpose?

Global recovery depends upon inclusive personal recovery and the ability to recognize the urgency of our common purpose. Personal and cultural recovery begin by surrendering the illusionary cocoon of “self”. Stepping stones include daily humility, hope, study, acceptance, inventory, amends, sharing and compassionate service. The result is a new lease on life.

We surrender our politics. We learn to think for ourselves. We question authority. We test our ideas and follow the evidence. Science belongs to all of us. We reserve judgment. We realize that our imagination is nothing in comparison to the majesty of the truth of our shared Reality. We become creative rather than destructive.

We build a global resource management system based on the concepts of common well-being, strategic preservation and strategic efficiency. Our objective is to maintain, grow and recycle natural resources utilizing our technology as a constructive tool rather than as a weapon.

The concept of ownership needs to be replaced by the idea of strategic access to what we need as opposed to what we may superficially believe or think we want. We stop competing and start co-operating as the result of an enlightened interest in the quality of the harvest of our transitory lives.

As we live and learn together, we realize that love is as important to life as air, food, water and shelter.

Peace beyond all understanding,

an old lamplighter

ooOOoo

Fabulous essay! Breathtakingly so! Making it clear that there is so much for us humans to learn! Yet offering a clear pathway to that learning. Starting with unconditional love and openness! Now where’s a dog to learn from!

Hazel offering such openness and love in her eyes. — **Hazel teaching us openness and love through her eyes.**

More down to earth!

Further information on the subject of being grounded.

Just to set the scene, so to speak, last Saturday week I published a post on our reaction to the book called Earthing authored by Ober, Sinatra and Zucker. I said that we had been sufficiently convinced to order the half-sheet kit. Then on the 23rd., I wrote of our experiences after having spent 5 nights on the earthing sheet.

I promised to provide more information today. We have now been sleeping on the earthing sheet for eight nights. All the positive effects written about on Monday continue and, frankly, strengthen.

The website GoingBarefoot.org has much information, including real-life experiences from customers. That website suggests it is the work of Martin Zucker, one of the authors of the book. It also offers this testimonial video:

There is another website Earthing.com that offers much the same information as the GoingBarefoot site. (Indeed, I just called the Earthing company and they confirmed that there was no difference in service between the two websites.)

One of the items in the kit, as shown in the photograph, was a 74-minute, professionally-made film that was fascinating. Guess what! That film is available as a YouTube video.

The film was the product of Kroschel Films and their website is wonderful. You must go there. These two pictures came from there.

Isis, January 2013 - Photo courtesy Dr.Vic Walker — Isis, January 2013 – Photo courtesy Dr.Vic Walker

oooo

Steve Kroschel spends some quality time with Lennox the Lynx, Nov.3, 2013

Then a web search brought to light a company with the name of Mercola. Their website has a page with earthing products even including, towards the end of the webpage, instructions on making your own earthing mat. The following video comes from that website.

So I do hope this is of interest and, please, if you have any thoughts or experiences, do please offer them as comments to the post.

(Oh, I guess I should mention that I am not affiliated with any of these companies and stand to gain no advantage if you choose to purchase a product mentioned on Learning from Dogs. Please verify for yourself the potential advantages in using any earthing product.)

How to close?

This seems as good a way as any.

There is a road in the hearts of all of us, hidden and seldom traveled, which leads to an unknown, secret place.

The old people came literally to love the soil, and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. Their teepees were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth. The soul was soothing, strengthening, cleansing, and healing.

That is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly.

He can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him.

Helping a pair of young birds.

Hoping that this story of rescuing some young birds may be of help to others.

Last Saturday afternoon we were sitting outside under the shade with the ‘kitchen’ group of dogs enjoying themselves.

Jean and I noticed Casey taking a great interest in something on the ground. Casey is a keen explorer as this photograph from earlier in the year demonstrates.

Casey demonstrating a dog's focussing skills! — Casey demonstrating a dog’s focussing skills!

The something that had caught Casey’s attention was a small baby bird that had fallen from a nearby nest. We called Casey away and went across to see the tiny creature whereupon Jean picked up the baby bird.

The patch of ground where the birds were found.

Frankly, we didn’t have a clue as to what to do but called Wildlife Images, just a few miles away from where we live. As the Wildlife Images website explains:

Our guiding principles are the foundation for “why” we do what we do. These principles guide us in our work, our relationships with each other, our guests, supporters, sponsors, and vendors.

PURPOSE
Saving Wildlife

VISION
Wildlife Images Rehabilitation and Education Center is the educational leader of a healthy co-existence with our wildlife neighbors by rehabilitation sick, injured, and orphaned animals.

MISSION
Involve – people to share in our vision.
Educate – children and adults about the personal benefits of taking care of wildlife entrusted to our care.
Inspire – the public to engage in our rehabilitation and education efforts.

Jean and I had previously visited the centre and been impressed with their dedication to saving wildlife.

Over the phone we were told that the best thing to do was try and find the old nest and replace the baby bird within the nest. If all else failed then bring the bird across to Wildlife Images.

Frankly, we struggled to find the nest but at least got a ladder up against the likely tree from where the bird had fallen.

It was as we were getting the ladder in place that we discovered another tiny bird on the ground in amongst the dead leaves and ground cover. Now we had two birds and knew we were struggling to do the right thing for these vulnerable creatures.

We drove across to Wildlife Images and they advised us to build an artificial nest and hang that up in the tree. The call of the baby birds would attract the mother and, with a bit of luck, the mother would return to feeding the chicks again. We were also told to speak quietly around the baby birds so that they wouldn’t imprint on our voice. Apparently that was the greater risk of them being rejected rather than the smell of humans on their little bodies.

So back home we went and soon had a makeshift ‘nest’ in place.

Once the ‘nest box’ was in place, it was time to place the youngsters in their new home.

We left the birds in peace and went inside for a while. Our fear was that they might try leaping out.

Then curiosity got the better of us and we needed to see if they were still alright. So a couple of hours later, I took the following photograph.

The evening approached and we feared for their fate.

Then miracle of miracles we saw the mother come to them and start feeding her offspring.

We retired for the day content that we had done all we could.

Then on Sunday morning, bright and early, we went outside again. Had they survived the night? Had the mother returned to feed them this second day?

We heard nothing: saw nothing. Feared the worst.

It was no good, I had to climb the ladder and take a peek.

They were still in the land of the living!

Yet, there was still no sign of the mother.

Jean and I sat under our nearby gazebo and tried hard not to fear the worst. My camera was on my lap.

Then Jean saw a flash of feathers. It was the mother arriving to feed her young.

I was able to take the following picture.

Not the best quality picture but so what! It's proof the birds are being cared for by their mother. — Not the best quality picture but so what! It’s proof the birds are being cared for by their mother.

In the scheme of things, rescuing a couple of small birds doesn’t add up to much. But I’ll tell you! When Jean and I saw the mother feeding her young both of us were a little wet around the eyes!

Our Earthing experiences.

This is really starting to open our eyes!

On Saturday, the 14th June, I published a post Are you grounded? That post was a reaction to this book that Jean and I had recently read.

I also explained that we had ordered an earthing sheet for the bed and that I would report further upon our findings.

Today’s post is that further report.

The slim box containing the half-sheet kit was delivered on the 18th June, five days ago at the time of writing this.

The next photograph shows more clearly what was included in the kit.

From left to right: Case histories from users, an earthing rod above, the earthing half-sheet, and below the sheet, an outlet ground checker, the earthing connection cord, the book, and a full-length DVD of a film on the subject of grounding.

It was then a case of laying the sheet on the bed as recommended in the instruction guide.

Then upon testing that we had a safe earthing connection via the ground pin on our nearby outlet, it was a case of connecting the earthing sheet to ground, as may be observed in the next photograph.

I’m writing this yesterday. We have both slept on the earthing sheet for four nights now.

So what are the results so far?

Jean

Jean has had leg muscle cramps each night for months and months. Often just enough to waken her but frequently sufficiently severe to require her getting out of bed and walking around the room. I can vouch for the latter!

Jean has had those four nights totally free from cramps!

Plus Jean has reported sleeping more soundly.

Me – Prostate

In recent months my bladder has been showing ‘old man’s bladder control’! Certainly, over the last year I have been getting up for a pee two times, frequently three times, during the night.

During the day, I could hardly take a hot drink without the need to pee within minutes. It had got to the stage where I would avoid having a drink before Jean and I went out unless I was certain that there would be public restrooms available. I was taking a natural prostate medicine, morning and evening, but still starting to think that it wouldn’t be long before I would need to see a medical specialist.

Since sleeping on the earthing sheet, I have gone down to getting up just once during the night. But it’s better than that!

I have stopped the prostate tablets. During the day, my bladder control is hugely improved. I hold my breath that this is going to continue.

Me – Memory

Like many of my age (I’m 70 in November), my short-term memory is not what it used to be. I have not noticed any improvements in this area.

But I am sleeping much more soundly, which is never a bad thing.

But get this!

Being an old Englishman with a sense of connection to the ancient customs of Stonehenge, especially observing the sun’s dawn on the morning of Mid-Summer’s Day, I had looked up the exact local time equivalent of the moment of the Solstice here in Oregon.

Stonehenge at Dawn. On the morning of Mid-Summer's Day the sun rises exactly over the heel stone. — Stonehenge at Dawn. On the morning of Mid-Summer’s Day the sun rises exactly over the heel stone.

Early in the hours of the morning of June 21st, ergo Mid-Summer’s Day, I woke unexpectedly. I lay there wondering what had awoken me. It wasn’t to jump out of bed and have a pee. How strange!

I lay there for what felt like ten minutes and then curious as to the hour reached across and pressed the illuminate button on my bedside clock. It read 3:48 am.

3:48 am!! How could that be! I could hardly believe it!

Let me explain.

The previous afternoon, I had been curious as to the exact time of the 2014 Summer Solstice. Had looked it up online. In the United Kingdom that precise moment was 10:41 am. The equivalent time of the Summer Solstice in Oregon’s local Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) was 3:41 am.

I knew that was when I had woken up.

Now that’s what I call being grounded to the Planet!

OK, that’s enough for today but there is much more information about the whole business of being grounded to the planet. I shall return to the subject in Wednesday’s post.

Neat solution!

First of all a Very Happy Summer Solstice wherever you are (in the Northern Hemisphere!)

Neighbour Larry sent me a link to a delightful story about solving the problem of a yacht, with a mainmast stretching 85 feet above the water level, passing under a bridge that had a clearance of 65 feet above that same water level.

Here’s a picture to whet your interest. (Notice I wrote ‘whet’ not ‘wet’!)

The story was reported in UK’s The Daily Mail newspaper nearly three years ago. So I shall take a chance and republish it for you.

Beats going the long way round! How sailors got their 80ft mast under 65ft bridge

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
UPDATED: 11:04 EST, 20 September 2011

It may not look like an entirely safe practice – but it sure beats going the long way round.

These sailors came up with an ingenious way to get their boat – complete with 80ft mast – under a 65ft bridge on the Intracoastal Waterway. A video posted on YouTube shows how the sailors keeled the boat over by dangling containers filled with two tons of water from the mast.

But it is not a solution for the faint hearted.

Any miscalculation with the weight has the potential to send the whole boat crashing into the water.

The sailor ‘hunterparrot’ who posted the video said he initiates the roll by fixing the containers to the mast and slowly turning to port. The severity of the roll is then controlled by letting the ropes affixed to the mast out gradually with a cockpit winch.

The intracoastal waterway is a 3000-mile network of waterways that run up the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of the U.S. It runs from New Jersey, around Florida to Texas.

Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

The photographs in that Daily Mail article may be viewed here.

Then across on the forums of the Wooden Boat Magazine was this:

Really? If the bridge clearance is 65 feet and the mast height is 80 feet, then the cosine of the heel angle would be 65 / 80. This corresponds to a heel angle of about 36 degrees; the mast is 54 degrees above the horizontal. Still, a pretty impressive maneuver.

If the bags are full of water, then his setup is self-limiting. As the bags start to immerse, the pull on the halyard is reduced. This means he would be nearly unable to capsize unless he winches the bags WAY too high. I think he has done this trick before.

I think the reason he is sitting on the high side is twofold: He can see the masthead more easily and it is more comfortable

The weight of one person really doesn’t make much difference when you are trying to heel that big a boat that far.

If someone had to do this sort of trick a lot, would it be worth putting a small video camera on the top of the mainmast? This would make it easier to judge clearance.

God bless!
Wayne

The link to that forum discussion is here.

Finally, watch the video!

You all have a wonderful Mid-Summer’s Day and …. duck your head when passing under that low bridge! 😉

Tomgram: Engelhardt, Is Climate Change a Crime Against Humanity?

The 95% Doctrine

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Returning to Nature

Trees — by Kristof Nordin May 27, 2013

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The Place Where Water Runs Through Rock

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Geological wonders

Antelope Canyon, Arizona

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Arrogance ‘R Us

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Beats going the long way round! How sailors got their 80ft mast under 65ft bridge

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