Watch Out!

A suspected murderer may be on the Appalachian Trail.

Hikers were warned Wednesday that a University of Georgia professor who has been missing since Saturday's triple slaying in Athens, Ga. may head for the Appalachian Trail.Authorities nationwide have been searching for George Martin Zinkhan III, who is wanted in the fatal shooting of his wife, Marie Bruce, Clemson University economist Tom Tanner and Ben Teague.

“Mr. Zinkhan was a hiker in the past and did hike on the Appalachian Trail,” U.S. Park Ranger Eric Barron said.

Federal authorities have also explored the possibility that Zinkhan, 57, could be headed to Amsterdam, where he is an adjunct professor at a university.

A notice posted on the Appalachian Trail Conservancy's Web site warns that Zinkhan may have a gun and advises people to call 911 if he is spotted.

Picture at the link.
Update: Zinkhan has been found dead.

May The Farm Be With You!

Young Cuke Skywalker learns about the Farm in this short movie Store Wars.

North Country Trail

The New York Times has an article on the North Country Trail.

At 4,600 miles in length, the North Country National Scenic Trail bisects a large part of the continent, slicing through seven states — from glacier-scoured landscapes in Adirondack Park to prairies on the Great Plains — and snaking a distance twice as long as the Appalachian Trail.

“If you want to see a huge cross-section of the U.S.A., the North Country is it,” said Mr. Skurka, a 27-year-old who has hiked the Appalachian and Pacific Crest Trails, as well as a transcontinental trek he completed in 2005 that included the entire North Country Trail.

On course to someday become one of the longest footpaths on the planet, the North Country Trail is among eight original National Scenic Trails designated by Congress, including the Continental Divide Trail, the Ice Age Trail in Wisconsin, the Appalachian and Pacific Crest, and the Natchez Trace, among other routes. (Two new trails, the Arizona National Scenic Trail and the Pacific Northwest National Scenic Trail, received the designation this year.)

North Country Trail Association. National Park Service page.

More Melting

An ice shelf breaks up in the antarctic.

TROMSOE, Norway (Reuters) - An area of an Antarctic ice shelf almost the size of New York City has broken into icebergs this month after the collapse of an ice bridge widely blamed on global warming, a scientist said Tuesday.

"The northern ice front of the Wilkins Ice Shelf has become unstable and the first icebergs have been released," Angelika Humbert, glaciologist at the University of Muenster in Germany, said of European Space Agency satellite images of the shelf.

Humbert told Reuters about 700 sq km (270.3 sq mile) of ice -- bigger than Singapore or Bahrain and almost the size of New York City -- has broken off the Wilkins this month and shattered into a mass of icebergs.

She said 370 sq kms of ice had cracked up in recent days from the Shelf, the latest of about 10 shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula to retreat in a trend linked by the U.N. Climate Panel to global warming.

The new icebergs added to 330 sq kms of ice that broke up earlier this month with the shattering of an ice bridge apparently pinning the Wilkins in place between Charcot island and the Antarctic Peninsula.

Nine other shelves -- ice floating on the sea and linked to the coast -- have receded or collapsed around the Antarctic peninsula in the past 50 years, often abruptly like the Larsen A in 1995 or the Larsen B in 2002.

It is ging to be an interesting couple of decades.

Swiss Ban Naked Hiking!

It appears that one section od Switzerland has banned naked hiking,

Anyone found wandering the Alps wearing nothing but a sturdy pair of hiking boots will now be fined.

Appenzell is considered one of the most conservative regions of Switzerland; it gave women the vote only in 1990.

It is just childish. It is not like the people even see the hikers.

Interestingly, however, no-one actually seems to have seen a naked hiker.

"No, I've never seen one," said a local farmer. "Thank goodness, because if I had they would certainly have got a piece of my mind."

On hike naked day on the Appalachian Trail, cops sit at road crossing in the hopes of seeing naked hikers. They are just perverts. But if you are seen naked by children, you will probably be charged with a sex crime by an overly zealous prosecutor. So be careful if you want to hike nude.

What A Finish!

Amazing, that Carl Edwards gets out of the car and sprints across the finish line.

Sad To Hear

A hiker dies in South Carolina.

GREENVILLE, S.C. -- An Upstate man fell to his death Saturday while hiking near the Foothills Trail in Mountain Rest.John Erich Gistinger, 20, of Fountain Inn, Laurens County, died after falling more than 90 feet near Oconee County State Park, according to Oconee County Coroner Karl E. Addis.

My condolences to his friends and family.

Matt Kenseth Goes For A Wild Ride

Good Beer Is Good Business

Craft brewing industry has rising sales.

Craft beer sales continue to rise even as the beer industry feels the pinch from frugal consumer spending and higher costs. Today there are more than 30 craft breweries and brewpubs in Massachusetts, from industry heavyweights such as Boston Beer Company, the brewer of Samuel Adams beers, to small start-ups whose owners deliver their own kegs to local pubs.

“In the mid-’90s, people still didn’t know whether this was a fad or not,” said Dan Kenary, president of South Boston-based Harpoon Brewing Co. “There were a lot of people flocking in, trying to make a quick buck. Now there are people who have grown up with this industry their whole life.”

The Boulder, Colo.-based Brewers Association defines craft brewers as those with annual production of less than two million barrels, that have less than 25 percent ownership by a non-craft alcohol beverage company, and that avoid the use of adjunct ingredients to lighten flavor.

The industry has enjoyed steady growth over the last five years, as craft beer’s share of the $100 billion U.S. beer market rose from 2.7 percent in 2003 to 4 percent in 2008. The Brewers Association estimated craft beer sales last year at $6.3 billion in 2008, up from $5.7 billion the previous year.

Over all beer sales are down. If you make a great product, people will buy it.

Bodies Everywhere?

Hikers have found bodies or the remains of bodies in Nevada, Kentucky, and Georgia.
Nevada

RENO - Police say a body found in the hills on the northwest side of Reno is that of a 61-year-old Reno woman who had been missing for a month.

Gail Duncan's husband reported her missing on March 23 after she
failed to return from her regular morning walk.

Kentucky

An investigation is underway in two southern Kentucky counties after a hiker stumbled across a body.

The remains were found in eastern Grayson County, not far from the Hardin county line .
a

Georgia

Douglas Lee Layton first saw a tooth.

He didn’t think much of it, maybe someone above at Rock City threw it down for luck.

But as he walked down the hill, he started seeing other pieces of bone.

When he saw what looked like a ragged pair of blue jeans, he knew — this was a human body.

That’s how the 52-year-old hiker from Graysville, Tenn., found the remains of an unidentified body that police say may have decomposed for nine to 15 months.

My condolences to their friends and family. I have never found a body in all my years of hiking and hope I never do.

Sad To Hear

A hiker died in Arizona.

A man in his 40s was found dead on a mountain at Thunderbird Park near 59th Avenue and Pinnacle Peak Wednesday evening.

A hiker found the man around 5 p.m. on one of the trails, about a half of a mile into the trail. The man was not breathing and didn't have a heartbeat, said Capt. Shelly Jamison with the Phoenix Fire Department.

My condolences too is friends and family.

Go California Go!

Regulate the crap out of carbon emissions.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Democrats in Congress worked on Thursday to win over U.S. lawmakers skeptical of climate change legislation, while climate leader California took another major step with low-carbon rules on fuels that could be copied nationwide.

The two moves signaled growing political momentum behind efforts to curb greenhouse gases, which President Barack Obama, a Democrat, has made a policy priority after years of slow going by his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush.

U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern told Reuters in an interview Thursday that "what happens in our own legislative process" will determine the country's commitment to cutting emissions in a global climate deal.

In California, where climate change legislation was passed in 2006, regulators on Thursday adopted a landmark rule to slash carbon emissions in motor fuels and spur the market for cleaner gasoline alternatives.

It marks the first attempt by a government anywhere in the world to subject transportation fuels -- as opposed to the cars and trucks they power -- to limits on their potential for releasing greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

Remember it is not just California that uses California emissions it is California and 13 other states. They make up 37% of the US population. Schwarzenegger is saying 16 states in this article. It could be for half the population, and that should make California emissions standard across the country.

Drying Up

The global climate crisis is causing some rivers to dry up.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Rivers in some of the world's most populated regions are losing water, many because of climate change, researchers reported on Tuesday.

Affected rivers include the Yellow River in northern China, the Ganges in India, the Niger in West Africa, and the Colorado in the southwestern United States.

When added to the effects from damming, irrigation and other water use, these changes could add up to a threat to future supplies of food and water, the researchers reported in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate.

"Reduced runoff is increasing the pressure on freshwater resources in much of the world, especially with more demand for water as population increases," Aiguo Dai of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, who led the study, said in a statement.

"Freshwater being a vital resource, the downward trends are a great concern."

You can live without oil. You will die without water. It is going to be an interesting couple of decades.

Where Is The Beer?

Via La Vida Locavore we find an interactive map of Americas breweries. North Dakota only has one. Portland no surprise has the most breweries per capita.

The Devil Is In The Details

White House chief of staff thinks there will be a energy bill this year.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers will pass major energy legislation, possibly including measures to address climate change, by the end of this year, a top White House official said on Sunday.

"I do know this, at the end of this first year of Congress there will be an energy bill on the president's desk," White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."

When asked whether the bill would include a controversial cap-and-trade system aimed at curbing emissions of carbon dioxide, Emanuel said "our goal is to get that done. We will see."

Democrats in the House Energy and Commerce Committee will begin hearings this week on proposed legislation that would limit greenhouse gas emissions and require companies to acquire permits to release carbon into the atmosphere.

Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman has said he wants the bill, which includes measures to boost energy efficiency and develop clean energy technology, to pass the committee in late May and the House of Representatives later in 2009.

My bold. I would have said necessary cap and trade with 100% auction of carbon credits. The media will always give the advantage to the conservatives.

No Longer Permanent

The arctic ice is going.

OTTAWA (Reuters) - The head of a British team walking to the North Pole on a mission to gauge how fast Arctic ice sheets are melting said on Friday he was surprised by how little permanent ice he had found so far.

Pen Hadow and two other adventurers set off in early March on a 1,000-km (620-mile) trek from Canada's Arctic to the North Pole. The team was set down in an area where scientists had been sure there would be permanent multiyear ice.

But so far, the average depth of the ice has been just under 1.8 meters (6 feet), suggesting they are finding predominantly new first-year ice that is likely to melt in summer months.

"My surprise is guided by the scientific community's expectations of what the ice should be here," Hadow told Reuters via satellite phone from about 620 km from the North Pole.

"In the opening section of the (journey), most would have anticipated multiyear ice, ice certainly more than 2 meters and really more than 3.5 meters thick."

The team said in a statement that the findings pointed to an ever-smaller summer ice covering around the Pole this year.

It is going to be an intersting couple of decades.

Sad To Hear

A hiker falls t her death in Utah.

Mount Olympus » A 49-year-old woman died and two 14-year-old boys were injured after falling Saturday during a hiking trip on Mount Olympus, police said.

Karin Vandenberg, of Olympus Cove, died after sliding at least a thousand feet down the mountain.

Her friend, Christine Holding, was stuck about two miles up the mountain for much of the day with a dog, said Salt Lake County Sheriff's spokesman Don Hutson, and was rescued by helicopter about 5 p.m.

My condolences to her friends and family.

Should They Be Prosecuted?

Still A Bunch Of Traitors

The conservatives in the south are still a bunch of treasonous racists. They like to say the stars and bars is about heritage not hate. The heritage they are talking about is both racist and treasonous. These are not fringe people. It is the governor of Texas talking about secession. Their hatred of America knows no end.

Uh Oh!

This is not good.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The world's forests are at risk of becoming a source of planet-warming emissions instead of soaking them up like a sponge unless greenhouse gases are controlled, scientists said.

Deforestation emits 20 percent of the world's carbon dioxide when people cut and burn trees, but standing forests soak up 25 percent of the emissions.

If the Earth heats up 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees F) or more, evaporation from the additional heat would lead to severe droughts and heat waves that could kill wide swaths of trees in the tropics of Africa, southern Asia and South America. And emissions from the rotting trees would make forests a source of global warming.

It is going to be an intersting couple of decades.