This Is Cool

The pacific Barreleye. The fish has eyes inside it's head. They look out through a transparent canopy. More info from Mark at Daily Kos. His blog is here.

Also Sad

A hiker was found dead in Oregon.

Sheriff’s investigators said the body of Maureen Dolores Gamache was found at about 3:22 p.m. by a hiker who called emergency dispatchers. The woman’s body was found about three miles from the trailhead.

No cause of death has been determined. Investigators do not suspect foul play in the woman’s death. The investigation is waiting for results of the medical examiner’s findings.

My condolences to her friends and family.

Sad To Hear

A hiker was found dead after a fall in Arches National Park.

The person who fell to his death from Canyon Overlook in Zion National Park has been identified as Dave Brigham, 48, of Sussex, New Jersey.

The body was discovered at the base of the Great Arch by a National Park Service search team at 8:15 a.m. on Thursday, February 26. Brigham fell approximately 400 feet to his death from Canyon Overlook into Pine Creek Canyon.

My condolences to his friends and family.

The End of Reagan/Bush Economics

Nobel Prize winning economist is happy with Obama's budget. He has not been too happy with Obama's plans so far.

Elections have consequences. President Obama’s new budget represents a huge break, not just with the policies of the past eight years, but with policy trends over the past 30 years. If he can get anything like the plan he announced on Thursday through Congress, he will set America on a fundamentally new course.
The budget will, among other things, come as a huge relief to Democrats who were starting to feel a bit of postpartisan depression. The stimulus bill that Congress passed may have been too weak and too focused on tax cuts. The administration’s refusal to get tough on the banks may be deeply disappointing. But fears that Mr. Obama would sacrifice progressive priorities in his budget plans, and satisfy himself with fiddling around the edges of the tax system, have now been banished.

Read it all.

Last Chance

The European Union believes we need to stop global warming now or die.

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - The world faces a final opportunity to agree an adequate global response to climate change at a U.N.-led meeting in Copenhagen in December, the European Union's environment chief said on Friday.

World leaders from about 190 countries meet in Copenhagen in December to try to agree a global framework to replace the Kyoto Protocol on fighting global warming, which expires in 2012.

"It is now 12 years since Kyoto was created. This makes Copenhagen the world's last chance to stop climate change before it passes the point of no return," European Union Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas told a climate conference in Budapest on Friday.

"Having an agreement in Copenhagen is not only possible, it is imperative and we are going to have it," Dimas said.

With greenhouse gas emissions rising faster than projected, Dimas said it was essential that big polluters such as the United States and emerging economies in the Far East and South America also sign up for an agreement. "President Obama's commitment to re-engage the United States fully in combating climate change is an enormously encouraging sign that progress is possible. So are positive initiatives coming from China, India, Brazil and other emerging economies."

This is going to happen in our lifetime. Not our children's lifetime, ours.

Clean Coal Air Freshener!

New clean coal add by the Coen Brothers. For more information about how dirty coal is check out This is reality.

Googley Goodness

I love Google and all it's Googley goodness. They track the flu by flu symptoms searches. They are a week or two faster at spotting flu outbreaks than the Center for Disease Control.

Holy Crap

As the good doctor says.

Initial claims for state unemployment insurance benefits increased to a seasonally adjusted 667,000 in the week ended Feb. 21 from a revised 631,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said. It was the highest reading since October 1982, when claims reached 695,000.

The year-long U.S. recession has savaged the labor market and sent the unemployment rate soaring, with some economists fearing it will pierce 9 percent in 2009 from 7.6 percent in January and mount further next year.

Budget

If this is right, the people that want you to die(republicans), will not be able to fillibuster cap and trade.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's budget includes hundreds of billions of dollars in revenues from a greenhouse gas emissions trading system, an administration official said on Wednesday.

The revenues from the system would be spread out over many years starting in 2012, the official said.

Obama wants to help fight climate change by capping emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, or CO2, from big industries and allowing them to trade rights to pollute. Such systems are commonly called "cap and trade."

Faster And Faster

CO2 emissions are rising.

LONDON (Reuters) - Increases in the amount of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere accelerated last year, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) told Reuters on Wednesday.

The new data may dampen hopes that a slowdown in industrial output and carbon emissions, which started at the end of last year, will temporarily deflect climate change.

Some analysts had hoped that recession would give the world breathing space to reverse its impact on the climate. The new NOAA data showed that levels of carbon dioxide accelerated slightly last year.

"For us to see (the impact) in the atmosphere it would take a large drop in emissions, but it hasn't happened yet and that's very clear from this data," said Thomas Conway, a NOAA climate scientist who helped compile the figures.

Even with the recession and high gas prices that led to less driving, emissions went up. It is going to be an interesting couple of decades.

Legalize It!

the California legislature is going to consider legalizing marijuana for recreational use.

Reporting from Sacramento -- Could Cannabis sativa be a salvation for California's fiscal misfortunes? Can the state get a better budget grip by taxing what some folks toke?

An assemblyman from San Francisco announced legislation Monday to do just that: make California the first state in the nation to tax and regulate recreational marijuana in the same manner as alcohol.
Buoyed by the widely held belief that cannabis is California's biggest cash crop, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano contends it is time to reap some state revenue from that harvest while putting a damper on drug use by teens, cutting police costs and even helping Mother Nature.

"I know the jokes are going to be coming, but this is not a frivolous issue," said Ammiano, a Democrat elected in November after more than a dozen years as a San Francisco supervisor. "California always takes the lead -- on gay marriage, the sanctuary movement, medical marijuana."
Ammiano's measure, AB 390, would essentially replicate the regulatory structure used for beer, wine and hard liquor, with taxed sales barred to anyone under 21.

He said it would actually boost public safety, keeping law enforcement focused on more serious crimes while keeping marijuana away from teenagers who can readily purchase black-market pot from peers.

The natural world would benefit, too, from the uprooting of environmentally destructive backcountry pot plantations that denude fragile ecosystems, Ammiano said.

But the biggest boon might be to the bottom line. By some estimates, California's pot crop is a $14-billion industry, putting it above vegetables ($5.7 billion) and grapes ($2.6 billion). If so, that could mean upward of $1 billion in tax revenue for the state each year.

14 states have a medical marijuana bill or have decriminalized small amounts of marijuana. However, California is the only state that permits the growing and sales of medical marijuana. If California starts to collect a large amount of tax, other states will be interested. Prohibition of alcohol was ended during the great depression because the nation could no longer afford to enforce those laws. Perhaps this depression will end the prohibition of alcohol.

Watermelon Labeling

Watermellon, originally uploaded by G. & A.Jimenez.

Watermelon shippers are adding labels so you can tell where your melon came from.

Other watermelon growers using HarvestMark include Coosaw Farms, Grower’s Select, Melon 1, Mouzin, Premier and Sun State. Today, nearly 150 million produce products have been enabled with HarvestMark traceability, from berries and tomatoes to watermelons and peppers and more.

More major watermelon shippers will begin offering retailers and consumers the ability to obtain item- and case- level traceability information via YottaMark, Inc.’s HarvestMark solution for its entire watermelon shipment in 2009.

Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Melon 1, Texas-based Borders Melon Co. and Georgia-based Borders Melons East have are the latest companies to join the expanding list of watermelon growers and shippers implementing HarvestMark for the 2009 harvest season.

I guess their will be an individual number you on the fruit sticker that you can put into a website so you can tell what farm it came from. I wish more companies would employ this kind of labeling. All it really takes is a couple of computers and stickers. And there are allready stickers with lots of information on most fruits now.(How to read stickers)

Via Majikthise.

Should Hikers Pay For Rescue?

People who are not injured and call for help may be charged $500 or more. My first thought was that is too much. There is a road up to the summit and people actually work up there. How much can it actually cost to get someone down. But, $500 is not the only price.

The $500 fee reflects the cost for employees who have already gone home to come back and drive the 19 miles up the mountain, fighting fierce night-time winds and sometimes snow. If they have to plow or call in more people, the fee could be higher.

Under a fee schedule the council will vote on Tuesday, hikers who call for a ride before workers have gone home would pay $100 each, and hikers who ask for transport from one location to another, such as from the summit to Glen Cove, during regular hours will be charged $20 each.

Glavan said highway rangers and employees aren't trying to become taxis, but they need a fee schedule to get reimbursed from the increasing number of hikers who apparently get summit fever and find themselves high and dry, which happened to five people last year.

Those do not seem like unreasonable fees to me.

Some thoughts on fees for rescue. Too many people are going into the back country with there cell phones, gps, and other high tech gizmo's thinking that stuff will save them. Instead of relying on what used to be common sense. I do not hike with a cell phone as a crutch. Nor do I carry a phone at all. Rangers are compaining about this phenomonon all the time. I like too call it the "I'm too little, I'm to tired phenomonon."

Most municipalities have search and rescue teams and budget for this. If you really need a rescue and are not doing something dangerous or stupid you should not be charged for the rescue. However, that does not give you a get out of fees card. If you require hospitalization or an ambulance ride, you should pay for those services. Also, if a municipality has a problem with the I'm Too little, I'm too tired crowd, they should be allowed to charge. They should also, make it known at trail heads and at outdoor stores in the area. And now a story.

This is a question that I have discussed in many a shelter on the Appalachian Trail over the years. I remember one guy arguing that if the park service charges $5,000 to rescue someone, they might not call and die. Heck, if you do not think your life is worth $5,000, I do not want you in the gene pool. Another hiker proclaimed, I won the Darwin award for that comment.(That was before these Darwin Awards)

Beer Sales Down

Nate Silver at Five Thirty Eight. com has a nifty chart showing how beer sales have fallen drastically, in his article Beer is No Longer Recession Proof.

But something was very, very different in the fourth quarter of 2008. Sales of alcohol for off-premises consumption were down by 9.3 percent from the previous quarter, according to the Commerce Department. This is absolutely unprecedented: the largest previous drop had been just 3.7 percent, between the third and fourth quarters of 1991.

Beer accounts for almost all of the decrease, with revenues off by almost 14 percent. Wine and spirits were much more stable, with sales volumes declining by 1.6 percent and 0.9 percent respectively.

Nate wonders if we have substituted cheap foreign(Bud, Coors, Miller are all foreign owned) beers for good wholesome American beer. It turns out real American beer drinkers are still drinking microbrews.

Americans may be cutting back their expenses to weather the turbulent economy, but they’re still drinking their craft beer.

As most other business segments contend with negative growth, craft beer makers - small, independent and traditional brewers that produce less than 2 million barrels per year - are enjoying slowed but still-strong sales increases and outperforming the beer industry as a whole.

While craft brewers have seen slowdowns in the volume of their beer consumed at restaurants and bars, business has picked up at the packies as more people spend their free time at home to save money.

Massachusetts-based brewers such as Boston Beer Co., Harpoon Brewery and Cisco Brewers say they’re also benefiting from consumers trading down to their brews from more expensive wines and liquor.

“In boom times, we might be envying our friends in financial services, but they’re now envying us,” said Dan Kenary, cofounder and president of Harpoon Brewery in Boston. “Beer is a staple. You might not be able to go out and spend $75 on dinner, but you can go out and spend $8 or $9 on a six-pack.”

Craft brewers saw a 5 percent volume increase in barrel shipments to 9.5 million in 2008, following two years of 12 percent jumps, according to industry publication Beer Marketers Insights. Imported beer, meanwhile was down about 2.5 percent last year, and the overall domestic industry was up 1.1 percent.

Boston Beer the largest American brewery expects sales to increase this year too. Founder Jim Koch, “I expect the economy will (stink), and people will continue drinking good beer.”

Woo Hoo!

Matt Kenseth wins two in a row!

Faster And Faster

Scientists are changing their computer models because Arctic ice is melting faster than their predictions.

New research has revealed that melt-water pooling on the Arctic sea ice is causing it to melt at a faster rate than computer models had previously predicted.

Scientists have been struggling to understand why the northern sea ice has been retreating at a faster rate than estimated by the most recent assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in 2007.

The IPCC's computer models had simulated an average loss of 2.5% in sea ice extent per decade from 1953 to 2006. But in reality the Arctic sea ice had declined at a rate of about 7.8% per decade.

Arctic sea ice has retreated so much that in September 2007 it covered an all-time low area of 4.14m km sq, surpassing by 23% the previous all-time record set in September 2005.

And during the summer of 2008, the north-west and north-east passages - the sea routes running along the Arctic coastlines of northern America and northern Russia, normally perilously clogged with thick ice – were ice-free for the first time since records began in 1972.

Part of the reasons for the discrepancy has to do with melt ponds, which are pools of melted ice and snow that form on the sea ice when it is warmed in spring and summer. As they are darker than ice and snow, they absorb solar radiation rather than reflect it, which accelerates the melting process.

The climate crisis is happening now. In 2006, scientists were predicting ice free Arctic summers by 2050. In 2008, the prediction was for ice free Arctic summers by 2030. The crisis is moving exponentially. It is going to be an interesting couple of decades.

Windmills On The Mountains

We need to stop mountain top removal it is just wrong on so many levels. Betsy at Mock,Paper,Scissors posted this John Denver parody of Country Roads.

For more information see the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition. It reminded me of this John Prine tune.

Cool!

Jaguar, originally uploaded by raysalaff103.

A jaguar was caught and released in Arizona.

PHOENIX (Reuters) - An extremely rare jaguar has been captured and fitted with a satellite tracking collar by researchers in Arizona, who hope to shed light on the habits of one of the United States' most elusive predators.

Arizona Game and Fish Department officials caught the male cat Wednesday in a rugged area southwest of Tucson during a study to better understand bear and mountain lion habitat.

Jaguars roam over a vast area ranging from northern Argentina in the south to the rugged borderland wildernesses of Arizona and New Mexico, where they were thought to have vanished until two confirmed sightings in 1996.

Only a handful have ever been sighted in the United States since then, and very little is known about their habits.

I think it is realyy cool that the large cats are still around. We have been working very hard to destroy wildlife habitate.

The Climate Crisis Is Now

Drought caused by global warming has the federal government rationing water.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California's main source of irrigation water is expected to go dry this year for most of its growers due to drought, idling at least 60,000 workers and up to 1 million acres of farmland, federal officials and experts said on Friday.

The zero allocation for most of the farmers who buy water from the federally managed Central Valley Project was declared as California water officials repeated their plans to cut amounts supplied from a separate state-run water system to 15 percent of normal.

The drought-forced cutbacks are a huge blow to thousands of farmers in the Central Valley, which produces over half of the fruit, vegetables and nuts grown in the United States. Higher prices are likely for a wide range of crops as a result.

It is unclear where the food supply can be replaced.

"It doesn't get any worse than zero," California Farm Bureau Federation President Doug Mosebar said in a statement. "Our water reliability has hit rock bottom."

It is going to be an interesting couple of decades.

Got Depression?

Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman.

Now we’re in the midst of a crisis that bears an eerie, troubling resemblance to the onset of the Depression; interest rates are already near zero, and still the economy plunges. How and when will it all end?

To be sure, the Obama administration is taking action to help the economy, but it’s trying to mitigate the slump, not end it. The stimulus bill, on the administration’s own estimates, will limit the rise in unemployment but fall far short of restoring full employment. The housing plan announced this week looks good in the sense that it will help many homeowners, but it won’t spur a new housing boom.

Republicans are cheering on a depression as they see it as a way to get back in power. Their leader Rush Limbaugh has said emphatically that he wants Obama and America to fail.