That’s me with a cutthroat on the line in the Lamar Valley of Yellowstone Park. I can’t fish as much as I used to (about 4 days a week) because of a disability.
Health clubs are problematic. COVID is still around. I got a stationary bike to help get myself in shape (my cardiologist’s suggestion.)
I also just got OUTLIVE THE SCIENCE & ART OF LONGEVITY BY PETER ATTIA, MD
Washington Post
Warming seas are carving into massive Antarctic glacier that could trigger sea level rise
New research provides a startling and unprecedented look at how warmer oceans, driven by climate change, are gouging Thwaites Glacier. All of West Antarctica, and 10 feet of sea level rise, could ultimately be at stake.
Chris Mooney February 15, 2023 at 11:00 a.m. EST
What 10 feet ocean level looks like.
You could walk to the beach from Independence Hall:
Boston would be underwater:
Go to:
Controversy Erupts Over Proposal For PA's First National Park
"PENNSYLVANIA — Local residents are pushing back hard against a proposal to bring a National Park designation to one of Pennsylvania's greatest treasures.
The Delaware Water Gap, a mountainous region which straddles the border of Pennsylvania and New Jersey above the Stroudsbrug area and is riddled with hundreds of miles of trails, islands, waterfalls, caves, and more, is not actually a National Park. It's a National Recreation Area. And with that comes fewer protections than the coveted "NPS" designation.
But while the Sierra Club-backed proposal has earned plaudits from many in the environmental community, others are pushing back.
The group "No National Park" has put together an organized opposition to the plan. Among their concerns: a lack of clarity on the plan, the increased traffic and visitation to the area, how the boundaries of the park would change, restrictions in accessibility to the park, funding questions, and the potential loss of farmland along the river due to National Park conservation requirements.
"The loss of this farmland will disrupt the local economy and food chain," writes Susan Hull, the organizer of No National Park, on the group's website. "If eminent domain were used to acquire privately owned property, the loss of property tax revenue would directly impact the local school systems, whose Impact Aid (intended to offset this loss) must be re-applied for each year, and has been significantly decreasing every year."
The group also points to potential increases in traffic and corresponding tolls, and how that would impact commuters in the region. They say they have the support of several townships in both New Jersey and Pennsylvania, as well as certain school districts that are fearful of what the changes could mean.
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| Me tying flies along the bank of the Upper Delaware River. |
Supporters say that criticisms of the proposal are overblown."
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“Americans for Prosperity” doesn’t do eminent domain anymore. I can’t find any large group involved with supporting landowners in eminent domain issues. They all seem to have been dissolved.
The objective of the “Property Rights” people wasn’t to help landowners it was to give property or corporations the same rights as living people.
The real underlying issue in the right wing eminent domain fights is human rights for corporations. The Supreme Court has achieved 1st Amendment Rights for corporations and is on the road to fulfilling the libertarian goal of the human rights expressed in the Bill of Rights to apply to corporations as well as living humans.
MORE AT:
The huge fights over eminent domain are over.
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BACK TO:
Controversy Erupts Over Proposal For PA's First National Park
"While the Delaware Water Gap is currently overseen by the National Park Service, National Recreation Areas are not privy to quite the same level of protection. For one, more intensive land use and consumptive activities like hunting are allowed in a National Recreation Area. National Parks more aggressively enforce the protection of the natural environment from other uses. They also typically prohibit hunting, although the Sierra Club's proposal for the Delaware Water Gap is unusual in that it would still allow hunting at the same level as is currently permitted. It would create a preserve within the park and continue protections where they exist now.
There are National Historical Parks and other designations in Pennsylvania, like Valley Forge and Independence Park in Philadelphia. But nowhere in the entire state of Pennsylvania is there a National Park. Nor is there one in neighboring New Jersey or New York. The closest to Philadelphia is Shenandoah National Park, which is four hours south in Virginia.
Most Recreation Areas are located adjacent to large public reservoirs, and the area's chief management objectives are to facilitate water-based recreation activities. That's opposed to National Parks, whose management objectives begin with natural and historical resource conservation.
Changing of the designation will require approval from U.S. Congress. To get the attention of lawmakers, the Sierra Club's chapters in New Jersey and Pennsylvania are working closely with local nonprofits, businesses, and groups like the Appalachian Mountain Club to drum up support.
In addition to towering waterfalls like Raymondskill, Pennsylvania's largest, and sweeping views of two states and much of the watershed, the Water Gap is also home to one of the most spectacular stretches of the Appalachian Trail, the 2,200 mile foot path from Georgia to Maine."
FROM:
Controversy Erupts Over Proposal For PA's First National Park
Local groups are pushing back hard against a proposal to bring a National Park designation to one of Pennsylvania's greatest treasures.
Posted Mon, Aug 8, 2022 at 12:52 pm ET
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I took my brother Joe Pitcherella on a little camping trip at a campground on the bank of the Delaware River near Hancock NY on the Pennsylvania side. |
“Wait? What? You’ve never fished the Delaware River?'
If you live in the East and are an avid (borderline obsessed) trout angler, this is the kind of thing you will hear from peers if you admit that you’ve never wet a line in one of the East’s most famous trout rivers.
I got it again a few months ago when a friend here in Virginia introduced me to her visiting son, who lives in New York City and recently decided he wanted to join what is apparently a new millennial fascination with fly fishing.
He was hoping I could provide some tips for fishing the upper Delaware. You see, he was shocked that after dropping some serious cash on all of the required gear, he didn’t catch a single fish on his first trip over to Hancock.
I could offer little specific advice.
“I’ve never been there,” I said. “About all I can tell you is that it’s not easy.”
What I did know about it was that it is full of big, wild trout. Those fish can be finicky because when a river with incredible “blanket hatches” is just two hours from New York City and just a bit farther from Philadelphia, those fish see plenty of flies every season.
The upside of that pressure is that many of those anglers are vocal advocates, working with groups such as Trout Unlimited and Friends of the Upper Delaware River for management that is more trout-friendly, and for much-needed funding of restoration work in the Delaware basin."
MORE AT:
The Hype Is Real: A Day On The Upper Delaware - Trout Unlimited
"Putin uses revenues from oil sales to U.S. to fund war against Ukraine, other Russian human rights abuses."
MARCH 01, 2022
SENATOR MARKEY ANNOUNCES LEGISLATION TO STOP RUSSIAN OIL IMPORTS
“Record warmth and extreme drought, intensified by climate change, set the stage for the devastating blaze
The raging inferno that erupted in Boulder County, Colo., on Thursday afternoon became the most destructive wildfire in the state’s history as it burned through hundreds of homes in densely populated suburbs. The fire was fueled by an extreme set of atmospheric conditions, intensified by climate change, and fanned by a violent windstorm.
The fire came at a time of year when a blaze of such violence is unprecedented; Colorado’s fire season typically spans May though September. But exceptionally warm and dry conditions through this fall, including a historic lack of snowfall, created tinderbox conditions ripe for a fast-spreading blaze.”
MORE AT:
How extreme climate conditions fueled unprecedented Colorado fire
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"In 1982, Exxon's environmental affairs office circulated an internal report to Exxon's management which said that the consequences of climate change could be catastrophic, and that a significant reduction in fossil fuel consumption would be necessary to curtail future climate change. It also said that "there is concern among some scientific groups that once the effects are measurable, they might not be reversible."[15]”
MORE AT:
Wikipedia
ExxonMobil climate change controversy
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"If the intent is to kill off the litigation against the oil industry, it’s not working. Officials from other municipalities have called Exxon’s move “repugnant”, “a sham” and “outrageous”, and have vowed to press on with their lawsuits.
Dedina described the action as a “bullying tactic” by the oil industry to avoid accountability.
“The only conspiracy is [that] a bunch of suits and fossil-fuel companies decided to pollute the earth and make climate change worse, and then lie about it,” he said. “They make more money than our entire city has in a year.”
The city’s lawsuit claims it faces a “significant and dangerous sea-level rise” through the rest of this century that threatens its existence. Imperial Beach commissioned an analysis of its vulnerability to rising sea levels which concluded that nearly 700 homes and businesses were threatened at a cost of more than $100m. It said that flooding will hit about 40% of the city’s roads, including some that will be under water for long periods. Two elementary schools will have to be moved. The city’s beach, regarded as one of the best sites for surfing on the California coast, is being eroded by about a foot a year.
Imperial Beach sits at the southern end of San Diego bay. Under one worst-case scenario, the bay could merge with the Tijuana River estuary to the south and permanently submerge much of the city’s housing and roads."
MORE AT:
A US small-town mayor sued the oil industry. Then Exxon went after him
Chris McGreal
"Local officials pleaded with about 300 people who defied the order. “If you are still on Sumas Prairie, you need to leave,” said Henry Braun, the mayor of Abbotsford. “I know it’s hard for farmers to leave their livestock, but people’s lives are more important to me right now than livestock or chickens.”
Lana Popham, minister of agriculture for British Columbia, said the storm had battered a key part of the province’s farmland, setting off an animal welfare crisis.
“There are probably hundreds of farms that have been affected by flooding. Some are still underwater, some are on dry locations and we have thousands of animals that have perished,” she said. “We have many, many more that are in difficult situations.”
Officials were racing to carve out routes in impassable areas to get veterinarians to stranded animals, she said. “There will have to be euthanizations that happen, but there are also animals that have survived that are going to be in critical need of food in the next 24 hours.”
Popham said she had spent the past two days on video calls with farmers affected. “Some of them are in their barns, and some of their barns are flooded and you can see the animals are deceased,” she said. “It’s heartbreaking.”
She said while some farmers had towed cows out of the flood waters, the rescued animals were “not in good shape” after their ordeal. “I can also tell you that many farmers attempted to move animals and then had to walk away because the roads were disappearing beneath them.”"
MORE AT:
Canada floods leave thousands of farm animals dead and more trapped
Frantic rescue operation to save livestock from submerged farms underway, with many animals in desperate need of food
Ashifa Kassam
Just look at the license plates on their trucks. Those employed at fracking drilling sites & pipelines in Pennsylvania are mostly from Louisiana.
Same as the “man camps” of gas fracking drillers “employed” in Pennsylvania:
Maybe because nobody really wants to live in a shithole like Louisiana.
EVERY home building contractor is going to want a Ford F-150 Lightning. VIDEO BELOW.
Ford also makes a small family homeowner hybrid that competes with Toyota’s Prius, sort of. I have a Prius V that Toyota stopped making that I use like a small pickup truck. The Ford Maverick Hybrid Pickup Truck is available now.
“EVs will be soaking up electricity,” said Jason Bohrer, head of a coal trade group that has launched a statewide campaign to promote electric vehicles and charging stations along North Dakota’s vast distances. “So coal power plants, our most resilient and available power plants, can continue to be online.”
As many parts of the country attempt to shift their energy production away from fossil fuels and toward solar, wind and other renewables, what’s happening here shows how the electric car revolution might play out in parts of the country far less friendly to either clean cars or clean energy.
The automakers, which have pledged to move largely to electric vehicles over the next decade, will have to overcome cultural hurdles to convince consumers to buy them. The major social spending bill before Congress would increase the subsidy for purchases of EVs from the current $7,500 up to $12,500, if the cars are built in the United States by union labor. But in North Dakota, Wyoming, West Virginia — and in the nine other states where coal is the main fuel for electric power plants — electric cars will still rely on the combustion of ancient carbon-based deposits for their energy unless other sources of power come to the fore.
A provision in the bill to encourage the transition away from coal to solar, wind and nuclear generation was dropped at the insistence of Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.). And as a crucial climate conference proceeds in Glasgow, Scotland, coal remains by far the main fuel for power plants worldwide, and a recent surge in its price suggests that demand is not waning.
Without an intensive turn to carbon capture — a technically feasible but commercially unproven technology — electric vehicles may not be able to make that much of a difference in the effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions...
But a carbon capture experiment at the Milton R. Young Generation Station adjacent to the BNI mine, devised by a partnership of scientists and the Minnkota Power Cooperative, could make coal more attractive in the clean-energy future — if it works. The idea, known as Project Tundra, is to scrub the carbon dioxide out of the plant’s exhaust smoke, condense it and inject it into deep wells.
Jacobs isn’t sure how many electric vehicles will come to North Dakota, but if their image rubs off on his industry, that’s fine with him.
“A lot of people have a bad taste in their mouth because, you know, we’re polluting the air, ruining the landscape,” said Jacobs, 59. “It would make it more friendly.”
Carbon capture has been a popular idea within the coal, oil and gas sectors for years now. The technology is not out of reach. Plenty of pilot projects have been launched. But so far no one has been able to make it a paying proposition. A pioneering $7.5 billion carbon capture power plant in Mississippi was razed with dynamite on Oct. 9 after its owners wrote it off as an 11-year-old economic failure. North Dakota hopes to break through that last barrier, for both coal and oil.
“True wealth is created by a partnership between man and earth,” said Bohrer. If Project Tundra can show that stuffing carbon dioxide back into the earth is economically feasible, he said, “it’s opening the door for a CO2 economy. It gives the lignite industry a way to survive.”
His group has launched a promotional campaign called Drive Electric North Dakota, which sponsors promotional events, conducts public attitude surveys and lobbies for EVs in the state capital. It has been an uphill struggle so far, but the idea is that the electricity needed to charge cars and trucks can’t all come from unreliable wind or solar, and this will give coal a way to stay in the mix and help keep the grid in fine tune. “The more demand we have in North Dakota,” Bohrer said, “the easier it is to soak up our domestically produced electricity.”
MORE AT WASHINGTON POST
Where electric cars could help save coal
In states like North Dakota giving up gasoline might not mean giving up fossil fuels
Why a Tesla X?
So how does an electric vehicle hold up in North Dakota? Where do you charge it? How does it compare to “regular” cars? Through this project and the DriveElectricND brand, we have a remarkable opportunity to promote EVs and their uses throughout North Dakota. We’ll be blogging, posting, sharing insights and thoughts about driving and EV from various perspectives.
MORE AT:
EVERY home building contractor is going to want a Ford F-150 Lightning.
The base model costs about $40,000 about 1/2 of what most contractors spend on pickup trucks.
Ford also makes a small family homeowner hybrid that competes with Toyota’s Prius, sort of. I have a Prius V that Toyota stopped making that I use like a small pickup truck. The Ford Maverick Hybrid Pickup Truck available now.
“Drive The Ford Maverick Hybrid - The Least Expensive New Pickup You Can Buy!”
