Saving Mineral King

 

Exploited by miners in the 19th Century, the awe-inspiring valleys of Mineral King came very close to becoming Disney-fied -- literally. Walt Disney wanted to build a ski resort up there. It was a very popular idea at the time, but the Sierra Club came out against it and won a victory in the US Supreme Court that was important not just for preserving the valley, but also for winning the right of citizens to sue the federal government to protect the common good.

"Just as important as the protection of a lovely valley was the precedent set through the lawsuit. The case confirmed the right of citizens to seek the help of the federal judiciary when any public resource -- land, air, water, wildlife -- came under threat. It established that Americans don't have to have an economic interest to have the legal right to get involved in protecting special places or stopping pollution; we all have an interest in keeping open space open, or in breathing clean air." --Tom Turner in High Country News

Which sort of explains why industry doesn't want to be regulated under the Clean Air Act for carbon dioxide emissions. Not that industry wants to be regulated at all, for anything, and who can blame them? When the miners dug out what they wanted from Mineral King, they left all their crap behind. And still, that's pretty much the way we roll. People tend to be very short-sighted. 

Some grown-ups, even now, choose to believe that the universe was created a few thousand years ago, and specifically for humans to boot. Geologists tell us that the Earth has been around so long that if you extend your arms out left and right to indicate the full span of time, the period that humans have existed is so tiny you could shave it off your fingernail with the single pass of a nail file. 

You can see why some people don't want to accept that. It would mean letting go of the fairy tale and embracing the truth, which by the way, is much more miraculous and interesting, and is based on reason rather than imagination.

The photos in this post were shot in September 2009. The photo below is from a Mineral King web cam image I snagged today (which apparently hasn't been updated since Friday).

Whether you wanted Mineral King to be a ski area or a natural area is almost beside the point if this is the kind of nightmare the future holds. I'm sure Mineral King will be beautiful again when the smoke clears, but for how long? A chart on Wikipedia shows that 17 of the 20 largest fires in California's history (and all of the Top 10) occurred just in this century.

Back around 1990 I drove across the country on my way to spend the summer on an island called Manhattan. On the way I stopped in Bozeman, Montana, and got to talking with someone who said I really shouldn't miss seeing Glacier National Park. Unfortunately, I was too impecunious to be able to make the side trip. 

There's nothing I could have done, but I do regret having to pass it up. I suspect now that whatever I could have seen back then is already considerably less amazing. Throw in the trophic cascades associated with the ecological benefits of the glaciers, and the bummer of losing them becomes even worse.

“We have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tailspin involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced.” – Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth, 2006

Extreme weather: check; 

floods: check; 

droughts: check; 

epidemics: check; and 

killer heat waves: check.

Ten years after Gore's warning, atmospheric CO2 cracked 400 ppm. Unfortunately, it kinda seems like we won’t know with absolutely certainty whether we’re just in a wobble of turbulence, or an actual tailspin, until it’s too late to pull out of it. 

Of course, for people who've already suffered losses on those five checkpoints, it already is too late. For the rest of us, we'll have a good clue that the end is near when insurance companies stop selling coverage for the five checkpoints.

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Beach Weather

 

The verdict is in, and it looks like the ocean goddess is going to show her cooler side this year. Strong equatorial winds are pushing sun-kissed surface waters west, bringing cold water up from the deeps and sending it farther north than usual. One result of the colder ocean waters will be less rain for California. 

Even though I appreciate being able to hike in shorts on a sunny December day, I'd rather be bundled up in rain gear, looking for mushrooms.

These scenes of North Beach are the last of my Ode to September in Point Reyes images.

One morning I was looking out over these dunes and saw a pair of ravens playing a game with a coyote. The ravens would swoop down, and the coyote would leap in the air as if to catch them. At first I didn't believe my eyes, but binoculars confirmed the magical sight. 

I got out of the car as quietly as I could and opened the back door to get my camera out, but the ravens busted me and the spell was over. The ravens fluttered away toward the east, and the coyote disappeared behind the dunes.

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Complementary Color

 

There's something soothing about seeing a short-wavelength sky. If I just imagine myself in these scenes I can briefly forget the nuclear-winter atmospherics that are going to reveal themselves as soon as the sun gets high enough in the sky to break through the massive gout of smoke and fog that's streaming above us this morning.

It's exactly 6:48 as I type these words, the moment of sunrise. I greet the new day like a present that I'm kind of afraid to open. 

How many times in the last year or so have we heard the phrase "This too shall pass"? Interesting times.

We lucked out today, as an area of low pressure moved in (windy.com). All that NorCal and Oregonian smoke that was streaming down the coast yesterday is now going the other way, and out to sea.

“There’s a direct relationship between heat and fire, and increasing heat is inevitable for at least a few decades,” said Michael Gerrard, director of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. “If you like 2020, you’re going to love 2050.”

LINK

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Amber Alert

 

My wife was trying to use her phone camera to capture the eerie amber light around sunrise this morning, but it wouldn't work. The software refused to believe it really looked that strange. 

I woke up from a poor night's sleep, having spent too much time at around 1 a.m. thinking about how climate scientists have been sounding the alarm for decades while we twiddle our collective thumbs. The group called 350.org was named for the CO2 target of 350 ppm, a greenhouse gas concentration that we passed in 1990. We surpassed 400 ppm in 2016 and are at 412 ppm now. We are simultaneously making history and ending it.

I wish I could head out to Drake's Beach and enjoy a quiet and lovely sunrise, like this one from 2014.

The amber light on that morning was tinted by a bit of fog, but no smoke. To get a better idea of the color of the light my wife was trying to photograph out our back window this morning, check out the North Bay Fire Cam screenshots below.

Looking west from Mt. Tamalpais.

Multi-cam View

Last year marked the first time in several million years that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 passed 400 parts per million. By looking at what Earth’s climate was like in previous eras of high CO2 levels, scientists are getting a sobering picture of where we are headed.

LINK

[UPDATE: Earth Day, 4/22/2024, atmospheric CO2 at 426ppm.]

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Beach Birds

 

The weather has taken an elegant tern for the better this morning, with a cool, foggy marine layer softening the scorching city. It was dark and cool during my walk, and fog was riding a southwestern breeze. The offshore winds still haven't arrived as of early this morning. We've been taking advantage of the welcome sea breeze by opening windows to chase away living room temperatures in the 80s.

These Drake's Beach scenes are from September 2014, right in the middle of the 2011-2017 drought that killed millions of trees which became tinder for forest fires, and which caused billions of dollars in agricultural losses.

I'm reading Storms of My Grandchildren by James Hansen. I downloaded the e-book without realizing it came out in 2009, a million years ago. It's kind of an interesting memoir of Hansen's efforts to get policy makers to take action to curb global warming before irreversible effects kick into gear. Back in 2009, Hansen had revised his target estimate of when atmospheric carbon dioxide would be too hot to handle from 450 ppm to 350 ppm. I just checked, and we're now at 412 ppm.

Morning View

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Photo Shop 1984

 

This was my photo shop long before it became Photoshop. I found this picture yesterday while I was looking for something else and thought I would post it. And then I changed my mind. But then I read a good interview with Craig Newmark this morning and decided to post the picture and this really good bit from Craig, discussing his philanthropy in the realm of journalism:

In 2016, you started Craig Newmark Philanthropies. And under that you fund many, many initiatives. In particular, you’ve given millions of dollars away to support journalism and protect press freedom. Why is this such an important issue to you and what do you hope to achieve? The principles are from high school history and civics taught by Mr. Schulzki in 1970. He said, “A trustworthy press is the immune system of democracy.” And yet in 2016, we were attacked by a hostile foreign power using information warfare techniques to place an asset in high office. It’s incumbent upon patriotic Americans to fight back, to work together, and to take the battle to the enemy.

I’m working with people in journalism, cybersecurity, studying disinformation and voter suppression. I’m working to try to protect the country because we are at war. My dad had World War II where he fought in the Pacific; I figure I have what Marshall McLuhan called “World War III,” a guerrilla information war fought without distinction between civilian and military participants. That’s the only thing he said that I ever understood.

https://nobhillgazette.com/the-interview-craig-beyond-the-list/

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Warm Cockles

 

The fact that it was 81 degrees in our living room even before sunrise this morning does not warm the cockles of my heart. And if you've ever wondered where that saying comes from, it appears that a "cockle" is the chamber of a kiln. Our hearts have four chambers--four cockles--to be warmed. 

I believe this is the shell of a Nuttall's Cockle (Clinocardium nuttallii), found on the sand near the mouth of Drake's Estero. It's surprisingly more colorful up close than it appeared at first glance, and I can only wonder what gave the shell its light blue coloration.

In the book The Nature of Nature which I mentioned in a recent post, Enric Sala writes about testing the water for bacterial pollutants in a string of islands, some of which people lived on, while others were uninhabited. On the uninhabited islands, giant clams which, like cockles, are filter-feeders, lived in peace, while on the populated islands they were eaten, and their numbers were greatly reduced. The predictable result was that the water around the clammy islands was pristine, while the water around the people-y islands was filthy with bacteria.

And if you thought, as I did, that cockles just sit there waiting to be eaten, check out this short video of a cockle escaping predation by a sunstar.

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Habitats for Humanity

 

Woodland, marsh, and dune. I've always liked the variety of habitats at Pt. Reyes. Each hosts its own specialized bird life, but some generalists cross the boundaries like shoppers moving down the different aisles in a grocery store.

We had a lot of smoke in my neighborhood last night. It came in around 11 p.m. and we had to close all the windows. The Purple Air numbers were over 200 all around us in Golden Gate Heights, and over 300 around Twin Peaks.

This morning our neighborhood is showing numbers among the lowest in the city. There is no breeze, so maybe the smoke settled near the bottom of the hill, as it did yesterday. It was interesting to check the North Bay Fire Cams this morning and play the timelapse of the Pt. Reyes fires from Barnabe Peak. I started the timelapse before the sun came up, which gave a more clear idea of where the actual flames are. 

I found this coyote (?) skull while I was poking around the marshy area above.

I brought it home and cleaned it up, then put it in my back yard as a decoration. It didn't even last one night before a raccoon chewed it to pieces.

* * *

Spiders of September

 

Click on Image to View Larger

As I was sitting out back just now I noticed this orb-weaver spider in her web spanning part of the width of a basement door that rarely gets opened. I went upstairs to get my camera and brought along a water mister to spray on her web, but the mist didn't really stick. Maybe the strands of the web are just too thin to hold decent sized droplets.

I also remembered to look up the reason why it seems like I see more spider webs in the garden in the late summer and early fall, and the answer was that the females that hatched in spring have finally gotten big enough to notice. The smaller males are roaming the earth in search of females, who will lay their eggs before winter sets in.

And since I already had my camera out, I decided to clean the sensor since I've been putting it off for some time. I put it off because no one has invented a tiny vacuum cleaner or some other easy and effective method of doing the job. It always takes several iterations of snapping a picture of the sky with my 50mm lens stopped down to f/16, then importing the image into Lightroom so I can see where the spots are. Sometimes I'll do the cleaning, only to check the sensor and find it even more spotty than before I cleaned it, which never makes me happy. What does make me happy is when I somehow finally get the thing in good shape.

* * *

The Nature of Nature

 

Sometimes you go to Drake's Beach at Pt. Reyes and it's just you and a couple of gulls, with maybe a semipalmated plover or two on the reef and a wandering whimbrel probing for sand crabs. I was amazed on this gray September morning a couple of years ago to find the shoreline teeming with young Heermann's gulls and brown pelicans. 

Unfortunately, the whole Seashore is closed due to the Woodward Fire. I'd take a gray day on Drake's Beach over another day of self-imposed house arrest due to Covid-19 and wildfire smoke any day.

One of the things that gets me through the urban exile is a good book, like the one I just finished called The Nature of Nature, by Enric Sala. The writing is engaging and hopeful, and even includes some photography, as you might expect from a book published by National Geographic.

I didn't start underlining passages until nearly midway into the book, when I could no longer help myself: "A recent study suggests that a global shift to regenerative agriculture--practices designed to produce and restore the life of the soil--would have the ability to sequester most of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere."

After that I was underlining sections about how trees share carbon through underground mycelial networks: "During the summer months..., adult birch trees in the sun help fir trees in the shade. But in the fall, when the birch loses its leaves but the fir still has green needles, it is the fir that sends nutrients to the birch."

The book is full of these kinds of tidbits, but they are just parts of the intricate ecology of the story Sala tells, such as how an increase in whaling leads to the depletion of sea otters, or how PCBs that were banned 40 years ago continue to wreak havoc on killer whales which are now "among the most contaminated animals on our planet...."

The main thing I got out of this book is how global heating (Sala calls "climate change" a euphemism) and other impending ecological calamities are not inevitable, even at this late date. As the book jacket says, "In this impassioned and inspiring book, world-renowned marine ecologist Enric Sala illuminates the many reasons why preserving Earth's biodiversity makes logical, emotional, and economic sense."

Unfortunately, those are not the kinds of things that move your average chucklehead influencing public policy. While they're busy fretting about class war, race war, and civil war, a real monster is coming to eat their grandchildren. Someone needs to write a book about how to shift the trajectory of selfish, short-term greed and mean-spirited contrariness toward intelligent action to make a better world. 

As Sala shows, that better world is still within humanity's grasp. It's something to think about as we experience a record heat wave this weekend and choke on a record string of Spare the Air Days. How sad would it be if 20 or 30 years from now, we're thinking about this as being the good old days.

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