SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES

POST # 181

SMOKE, SMOKE, and more SMOKE.  Yes, that certainly seems to be the case here in Oregon, and in fact the entire west coast of the USA, as well as Canada.  The world appears to be burning up right in front of our eyes.

This situation has been going on for months now, and it only seems to have gotten worse as the time passes.  With the monster El Nino parked off the West Coast, and the High Pressure Ridge that has been there for an extended period of time helping to exacerbate the drought conditions, it looks like fires and the smoke associated with them, will continue into the Autumn season.
A couple of links that show the fire situation can be found below.
http://inciweb.nwcg.gov/

http://fires.globalincidentmap.com/home.php

Even though I am still here in Bend, Oregon, for a little while longer, I was scheduled to do a house/pet sit in Grand Forks, BC, which was meant to begin on August 22nd.  The location was right next door to the place I housesat at in early 2012, however the owners cancelled their vacation,  so my services were not required.  This appears to be fortunate for me, but not for them, as I read recently that there has been an evacuation alert issued for that area due to a wildfire burning in Northern Washington State.  See below.
http://globalnews.ca/news/2187170/wildfire-threat-prompts-evacuation-alert-near-grand-forks/

And there is still plenty of summer weather to go.  Things seem to be going from bad to worse on the fire front.
Here is a short video from the top of a hill in Bend called Pilot Butte, which normally offers a CLEAR 360˚ view of the surrounding area, including mountains to the west of town.  As you can see, it was anything but clear when I took this video five days ago, and these smokey conditions have persisted day after day after day.  Even the little kid "whining" in the video doesn't like all the smoke.

Perhaps, The Platters said it best all those years ago, even though they weren't singing about forest fires.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2di83WAOhU

Happy Trails,
Paul
The Thoughtful Wanderer

PS.  I will be in transit to my next house sit on September 7th, so I may or may not get an opportunity to write on that day.  However if that is the case, I will write my next entry on the following day.

Latest update.  I have decided to cancel my September 7th blog entry due to time constraints. I will write again on September 14th.

SHORTEST HOUSE SIT TO DATE- JUST OVER 24 HOURS

POST # 180

This may be one for the record books, at least as far as house sitting goes.  And unexpected as well.
My friend Mary has friends south of here that called her up the other day to see if she/we would be available for a short term house sit.  Soon after, we were out the door and on our way.  It was anticipated that we would be there for two or perhaps three days, however from start to finish it lasted just over 24 hours.
Here are some photos and videos of where we were during that time.  Enjoy.

THE MAIN HOUSE

PART OF THE INTERIOR IN THE EVENING

SOME UNIQUE FURNITURE

THE HIRED HELP ON THE PROPERTY, TAKING A BREAK FROM THE HOT SUN
(in case there's any confusion, this is just a mannequin)

MAZEY- THE RESIDENT "BONEHEAD"

TWO PHOTOS OF RASCAL-THE RESIDENT "FURBALL"

And last but not least, a couple of videos to round out the picture for today.

The owners arrived home yesterday afternoon, so we were on our merry way shortly thereafter.
I doubt if I will ever have a shorter housesit than this one.

Happy Trails,
Paul
The Thoughtful Wanderer

DEAD WHALES AND MORE CLIMATE ENGINEERING

POST # 179

Four more whales died off the British Columbia coast this past week, and the experts seemed to be perplexed as to the cause.  This always seems to be the case.  They will suggest a variety of potential causes, but rarely is the connection made to the fact that humans have heated up the planet to such an extent, that this excess heat is having a very negative impact on life on earth.
http://bc.ctvnews.ca/four-dead-humpback-whales-found-off-b-c-coast-in-one-week-1.2514429

The last time the planet was this hot was 252 million years ago, and at that time ancient carbon was being released into the atmosphere at the rate of 1-2 billion tons per year.  Today, due to industrial civilization and the massive burning of fossil fuels (more ancient carbon), we are releasing 11 billion tons each year.  That fact alone should be enough for the marine biologists to at least ponder the idea that all this extra heat generated from the burning of fossil fuels will have a very negative impact on marine life.  But if that were to be admitted, then of course industrial civilization would have to be put into question.  So instead, the "experts" continue to look for other causes, like perhaps a rare virus that may have caused the whales to die and be washed up on the shore.

Speaking about tons of carbon being released each year into the atmosphere, I came across an article in The Province newspaper, http://www.theprovince.com/technology/environment/Squamish+site+will+debut+device+that+pulls+carbon/11285512/story.html
which talks about a Calgary based firm which is about to open a plant in Squamish that will pull carbon out of the air.   So let's see, it expects to pull 500 tons/year out of the atmosphere, and industrial civilization dumps 11 billion tons/year into the atmosphere.  That's 0.0000045% of the carbon emitted.  The firm "hopes" to build an industrial scale plant in the future that will pull 1 million tons/year out of the atmosphere.  That would put the percentage at a whopping 0.0091%.

The company was founded by "climate and engineering expert" David Keith.  This is the same David Keith who thinks that we can just spray particles in the air to slow the rate of global warming.  More pie in the sky engineering solutions to a predicament that can't be solved.  We're way past the point of no return on this topic.  But the new company gets the headlines and the tax deductions and the "green washing" continues.  Of course the article doesn't mention a word about how much fossil fuel energy went into building the plant in the first place, plus how much additional fossil fuel energy is required annually just to keep it running.

Even if this plant and others like it (which don't exist at this point) could theoretically capture all of the carbon emitted annually, it still wouldn't matter at this late stage in the game, because the methane "monster" has now been released and there's no putting this genie back in the bottle.

The problem with this kind of news article in a mainstream newspaper, is that it gives the impression that "we're serious about climate change and we can tackle the problem".  In other words, someone else is out there taking care of things, and you dear reader, can just go about your business as usual.  I think it won't be too long before the general population realizes that business as usual just won't be viable any longer.

Happy trails,

Paul
The Thoughtful Wanderer

A PHOTO OF THE RECENT BLUE MOON TAKEN ON ORCAS ISLAND
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A late update from the Arctic News Blog.  Could the sea ice be gone this September??
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/

FROM ORCAS TO BEND VIA BELLINGHAM AND SEATTLE

POST # 178

CLUNK!!!!! Now that wasn't normal.  I was sitting on board a 737 at Bellingham airport just a couple of days ago.  We had just pushed back from the gate in preparation for our short twenty three minute flight to Seattle, when the clunk sound happened which sent a shudder through the aircraft.  We sat there, not moving, and I for one was wondering just what was going to happen next?  I was relieved when the captain announced over the intercom what had caused this sound.  Apparently, the tug that pushes the aircraft back from the gate, had detached itself from the front nose gear in a rather abrupt manner, and that's what caused the  "clunk" that we all heard.  We would now have to go back to the gate, so they could assess any damage to the landing gear.  It wouldn't be a good thing to land at Seattle and have the front wheel collapse.

Unfortunately, there was no mechanic available so we had to wait for a while until they could find someone to check out the landing gear.  Now, because of this delay, we  missed out on the arrival slot that had been designated for us in Seattle.  Eventually a mechanic did arrive, and it appeared that the gear was ok, however now, there was going to be another hour delay (getting slotted back in at Seattle) before we could take off.  When it looked like we were about ready to go, another message from the captain told us that there was a complete shut down of all flights arriving or departing Seattle.  No reason was given for this, and in all the years of flying, I have never had this experience.  So our delay continued.  Finally at 10:30pm we departed Bellingham, a mere three hours and fifteen minutes behind schedule.  Unfortunately for me, and many other passengers, we would be arriving too late, to make our connecting flights, so I would spend the night in a hotel room courtesy of Alaska Airlines, and continue my journey the next day. See below.

This is a major upgrade from my normal accommodation at Sea Tac airport.  See below.

I had a few hours to hang around Seattle airport waiting for my next flight, and while there, I would be subjected to the regular boarding announcements as time went on.
For each flight there would be the pre boarding announcement, which included people with babies  and military personnel and, included in the announcement after mentioning military personnel, were the words, "we thank you for your service."  For some reason this began to bother me, because I don't think the person making the announcement even gave the words a second thought.  It was just part of the script.  Perhaps a more appropriate set of words might go something like this:
"We thank you for being brainwashed enough to join the military in the first place, in order to go kill innocent people in a foreign land all under the guise of freedom and democracy", or something to that effect.  Perhaps words like that might cause a few people in the crowd to begin to question why on earth the US needs to have any military going anywhere overseas.  But this is a question that rarely gets asked.

Eventually it was time for my flight, and I was happy to be on board and away from Seattle en route to my final destination of Bend, Oregon.
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In other news, I see that the Arctic sea ice continues to decline, and each day we get closer to September we get closer to a time when there will be no ice in the Arctic.  When that happens, it won't be long afterwards that the methane escape which has been going on for quite some time now,  really ramps up and the potential 50 gigaton "burp" of methane takes place.

http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2015/08/arctic-sea-ice-collapse-threatens-update-3.html

Things on the climate front are already chaotic, and this is only just the beginning.  Once that ice is gone, I can't imagine that we as a species are too far behind.  At some future point in time, even the military machine will be irrelevant.  At least that, would be a positive outcome.

Happy Trails,
Paul
The Thoughtful Wanderer

PS: Another tree goes extinct on Orcas Island. :-(