Titanic Post

Yesterday, I took a short hike south of where I live along the old fault line where the basin meets the mountain. Hiking south, parallel to the Sacramento Mountains, I crossed many washes where water had flowed out of the mountains during the ice ages. It wasn’t icy then this far south, just huge amounts of rainfall. As this is a basin where surface water neither enters nor exits, a lake formed millions of years ago. There are also many fossilized plants and creatures from before the mountains were formed.
When humans first inhabited this area about 12,000 years ago they set up villages and camps around the water. You can still see traces of their presence. “Indian wells” where plants were stomped into a pulp and then into flour for food are spread out over the alluvial fans. I saw pottery shards left where they were broken in a careless moment. Flakes of flint where the men chipped out arrow heads and knives or reshaped broken pieces. Looking out to the west, I tried to imagine how different it would have looked to those ancient people. I wondered how they got along without Washington, DC.
Further south I found remnants of Europeans or, by the look of it, Americans after New Mexico attained statehood in 1912. I first saw a primitive wall that at first looked like it had been used as a corral. As this was just south of Mule Canyon, I thought it may have been for those unique critters. There was old rusty barbed wire (four twists between short barbs) laying spread about. Many little piles of rusty barrel hoops abandoned by the rotted wood that had held them in place. Then I found a rusted (everything was rusted) piece of iron pipe about fifteen feet in length with a water bib attached to it–sign of a more permanent presence camp. There would have been water in many of the canyons around here with tall grasses for cattle grazing. Broken glass was everywhere, some with old looking violet and green colors that I had seen in museums. Strewn about in a circle of about a hundred yards were many, many old empty cans, nails and other pieces of hardware.
I remembered reading that Cabeza de Vaca had crossed this basin sometime in the sixteenth century after being shipwrecked somewhere near the present site of Galveston, Texas. Good walk, I’d say. It’s not likely that he would have crossed this far north as these mountains do not invite crossing here. Still, I was on the lookout for an old Spanish helmet or breastplate.
Further on I started seeing traces of modern activity. Recently discarded beer cans, a condom, ATV tracks. From here down to the Old El Paso road there were hundreds of empty shotgun and rifle shells. The Ancient Ones were a lot neater than the late comers and I wonder what changed people so much.

Metal Bowl

You thought you were tough!

Bird Shit ca. 4-5 days old

When I start out on a motorcycle ride, I usually have a vague idea about where I’m going and what I’m going to see and do. I do this because my friend, Bill, once took an unplanned detour with his new bride, Jean, on the pillion, in northern New Mexico on an old BMW 65 and they got lost in a very desolate area in a thunderstorm, slithering back and forth on muddy trails and were almost lost forever, or so he says. He blamed it on not making a route plan. I think it was the high strung German motorcycle at fault. Even though that story made a lasting impression on me, I rarely stick to any plan I make, nor do I see or do what I thought I would. (more…)

New US Move to Spoil Climate Accord

Mark Townsend in New York
Sunday June 19, 2005
The Observer

Extraordinary efforts by the White House to scupper* Britain’s attempts to tackle global warming have been revealed in leaked US government documents obtained by The Observer.

These papers - part of the Bush administration’s submission to the G8 action plan for Gleneagles next month - show how the United States, over the past two months, has been secretly undermining Tony Blair’s proposals to tackle climate change.

The documents obtained by The Observer represent an attempt by the Bush administration to undermine completely the science of climate change and show that the US position has hardened during the G8 negotiations. They also reveal that the White House has withdrawn from a crucial United Nations commitment to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions.

The documents show that Washington officials:

• Removed all reference to the fact that climate change is a ’serious threat to human health and to ecosystems’;
• Deleted any suggestion that global warming has already started;
• Expunged any suggestion that human activity was to blame for climate change.

Among the sentences removed was the following: ‘Unless urgent action is taken, there will be a growing risk of adverse effects on economic development, human health and the natural environment, and of irreversible long-term changes to our climate and oceans.’

Another section erased by the White House adds: ‘Our world is warming. Climate change is a serious threat that has the potential to affect every part of the globe. And we know that … mankind’s activities are contributing to this warming. This is an issue we must address urgently.’ The government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, has dismissed the leaking of draft communiques on the grounds that ‘there is everything to play for at Gleneagles.’ However, there is no doubt that many UK officials have become exasperated by the Bush administration’s refusal to accept the basic principle that climate change is happening now and is due to man’s activities.

Earlier this month, the senior science academies of the G8 nations, including the US National Academy of Science, issued a statement saying that evidence of climate change was clear enough to compel their leaders to take action. ‘There is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring,’ they said.

It is now clear that this advice has been completely ignored by Bush and his advisers. ‘Every year, it (local air pollution) causes millions of premature deaths, and suffering to millions more through respiratory disease,’ reads another statement removed by Washington.

Washington also appears to be unsympathetic towards the plight of Africa, the other priority singled out by Blair for the G8 Summit in Gleneagles.

The documents reveal how the Bush administration has pulled out of financial pledges to fund a network of regional climate centres throughout Africa which were designed to monitor the unfolding impact of global warming.

‘Africa, Asia-Pacific and the Arctic are particularly vulnerable to climate variability and are starting to experience the impacts,’ reads another excerpt rejected by the US.

Other crucial schemes ditched by the US include the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) set up to help developing states develop economically while controlling greenhouse gas emissions.

According to the documents, the American government has reneged on plans to ‘ensure that the CDM executive board is adequately funded by the end of 2005.’

*scup·per
tr.v. scup·pered, scup·per·ing, scup·pers
1. Chiefly British To overwhelm or massacre.
2. To ruin or destroy