Climate change threatens food, water, and shelter

The year was 1967, and humankind had ventured into space. As a species, we are perpetual tourists. Photo keepsakes were a must-have once we left our earthbound domain, so in 1967 the first color photos encompassing the whole Earth arrived home courtesy of the Department of Defense Gravitational Experiment (DODGE) satellite. Digital photography was not what it is today, and the color photo was really a composite of three photos taken with red, green, and blue filters. Five years later, the Apollo 17 crew took the iconic “Blue Marble” photograph. For the first time in Earth’s history, the planet could be examined in a single view. …

A visit to the deep

Resting 5,900 feet (1,800 meters) below the ocean’s surface, submerged in a seemingly lifeless and stagnate grave, lies one of the ghost ships of the Black Sea. This wooden ship has rested, undisturbed, for 2,400 years, frozen in time. After being viewed by a Remotely Operated Vehicle’s (ROV) cameras, a small piece of the ship was raised and radiocarbon dated to the fifth century BC. Immune to the ravages of time, this bit of history is like a fossil in suspended animation, preserved in a watery time capsule by the absence of oxygen.

The Black Sea’s unique geography and hydrologic characteristics prevent the exchange of water from the surface to the deep. The Sea is stratified, and below a depth of 600 feet, the waters are anoxic. Natural oxygen exchange between the atmosphere and ocean keeps the upper layer of water in the Black Sea refreshed with oxygen. But the 90 percent of the Black Sea below the 600-foot mark is cut off from its only source of oxygen, making it a dead zone. …

A Thaddeus Barcelona Story — Segment 4

(Previous Segment: Delusional Humanism)

Spring was well underway in North River, and Thaddeus spent extra time each day at the Botanical Gardens, working on establishing beehives at several locations around the grounds. He focused on strategically placing the hives in areas where the bees would assist with pollinating a variety of the garden’s flowering plants and ornamental fruit trees. Still, the hives also had to be positioned so as not to endanger the public.

Grant, because of his beekeeping knowledge, was an unpaid consultant on this work. This particular morning, they are near the Northeast corner of the North River Botanical Gardens, marking out the location for a second hive. Grant reminisces a bit over the unforgettable, recent wedding on the grounds, while Thaddeus uses some white chalk and stakes with orange tops to mark the hive location. …

Transportation and the Urban Environmentalist

Electric cars have been on the rise for over a decade now, and it was inevitable the trend would engulf other modes of transportation. Imagine a double-decker catamaran carting tourist on daily excursions up a river gorge — batteries recharged with one hundred percent clean hydroelectric generated power. Now stop imagining and get yourself to Niagara Gorge, where you can book a ticket on the Maid of the Mist.

About 3,500 miles away, on the other side of America, Washington State is working on a project electrifying its ferry fleet. The age of energy-efficient boating is on the way. But let’s be clear, this only makes sense when the electricity you need for recharging is clean. …

A business of the future

Louis Pelton could be a farmer of the future. Not the type of farmer who awakens each morning to till the land, milk the cows, or feed the livestock. But instead, the kind of farmer who rises early and takes his boat into the open oceans. He prefers for fish to roam free and not spend their lives in small fetid enclosures, and he has no interest in catching them. Ironically Louis’ business provides his onshore farming brethren with needed food and supplements for their traditional enterprises. …

Are we victims of our own malaise?

A friend of mine recently took a cross country drive along the southern edges of the United States. He ate up the miles, taking crooked roads into patches of vast, remote wilderness simply to ‘have a look.’ But from mid-Texas eastward, he kept to the straight and narrow, blowing down Interstate 10. This path took him through Houston, Beaumont, Lake Charles, Lafayette, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Biloxi, and Mobile. He summed it up succinctly saying, “The 2020 hurricanes kicked the living shit out of them. They can’t even find a place to run and hide anymore.”

We knew the initial hurricane outlook in 2020 indicated a busy storm season, but we didn’t understand how busy it would be. NOAA’s August 6th update predicted twice the usual number of named storms moving through Hurricane Alley by November 30th (the end of hurricane season). Hurricane Alley is a belt of warm ocean water stretching from North Africa to Central America. An average hurricane season produces 12 named storms in Hurricane Alley, six of which become hurricanes. Typically, half of those hurricanes rise to Category 3 or above. The August prediction was for up to 25 named storms with 11 hurricanes, six becoming Category 3 or above. …

The MAGA Nation takes a psychotic break

Much has been and will be written about the 2020 elections. Events unfolding in the autumn of 2020 proved to be both perplexing and unnerving. Despite the political intrigue, bizarre psychological manifestations gripping the MAGA public have proven to be as interesting as any political aberrations. In a fictional piece I recently published called “Delusional Humanism,” I explored the subject of Hypnotic Mass Hysteria and the psychological underpinnings causing large groups of people to break with reality. I thought I would extend this thinking from fiction to reality.

The first term, ‘hypnotic,’ refers to circumstances in which an individual becomes subconsciously receptive to ideas from another individual. Mass refers, of course, to a large number of affected people, and hysteria characterizes an uncontrolled outburst of irrational behavior. …

A Thaddeus Barcelona Story — Segment 3

Previous segment: Eighteen

The message from Cranstone was clear; he wanted to meet before the end of the week. Thaddeus was familiar with Cranstone’s life equation and didn’t ask any questions. He simply set up a 5:18 rendezvous at the Pearl Bridge Bar for Thursday. Now Thursday afternoon had arrived, and Thaddeus was hurrying across the North River Botanical Garden grounds, headed towards the property’s NW corner. From there, he could slip through the gate and make his way along the riverbank to the bar.

He checked his watch as he scurried past the Pearl and along the walkway beneath the bridge. He had purposefully arranged an extra thirty minutes to do a quick check on the New Amsterdam greenhouse. He recently entered into a business arrangement with the owner, Grant, to act as a consultant. Additionally, he was licensing his patented Gaia Gold marijuana strain to New Amsterdam INC. for the product’s first commercial test. Grant had set out a quarter of the available greenhouse space for this crop, and Thaddeus was determined to make it a success. …