"Climate change far worse than thought before"

On Sunday morning, a headline flashed by on my Google news sidebar that caught my attention: "Climate change far worse than thought before" from The Times of India. The article lists the findings of the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):

• Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in 2008 were 40 percent higher than in 1990. The recent Copenhagen Accord said warming should be contained within two degrees, but every year of delayed action increases the chances of exceeding the two-degree warming mark. Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas (GHG) warming the atmosphere.
• To keep within the two-degree limit, global GHG emissions need to peak between 2015 and 2020 and then decline rapidly. To stabilise climate, near-zero emissions of carbon dioxide and other long-lived GHG should be reached well within this century. More specifically, the average annual per-capita emissions will have to shrink to well under one tonne carbon dioxide by 2050. This is 80-95 percent below the per-capita emissions in developed nations in 2000.
• Over the past 25 years temperatures have increased at a rate of 0.19 degree Celsius per decade. The trend has continued over the last 10 years despite a decrease in radiation from the sun.
• The studies show extreme hot temperature events have increased, extreme cold temperature events have decreased, heavy rain or snow has become heavier, while there has been increase in drought as well. They also show that the intensity of cyclones has increased in the past three decades in line with rising tropical ocean temperatures.
• Satellites show recent global average sea level rise (3.4 mm/year over the past 15 years) to be about 80 percent above IPCC predictions. This acceleration is consistent with a doubling in contribution from melting of glaciers, ice caps, and the Greenland and West-Antarctic ice sheets. New estimates of ocean heat uptake are 50 percent higher than previous calculations. Global ocean surface temperature reached the warmest ever recorded in June, July and August 2009. Ocean acidification and ocean de-oxygenation due to global warming have been identified as potentially devastating for large parts of the marine ecosystem.
• By 2100, global sea level is likely to rise at least twice as much as projected by the IPCC in 2007; if emissions are unmitigated the rise may well exceed one metre. The sea level will continue to rise for centuries after global temperatures have been stabilised, and several metres of sea level rise must be expected over the next few centuries.
• A wide array of satellite and ice measurements demonstrate that both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are melting at an increasing rate. Melting of glaciers and ice-caps in other parts of the world has also accelerated since 1990. The contribution of glaciers and ice-caps to global sea level rise has increased from 0.8 mm per year in the 1990s to 1.2 mm per year today. The adjustment of glaciers and ice caps to present climate alone is expected to raise sea level by about 18 cm. Under warming conditions they may contribute as much as around 55 cm by 2100. The net loss of ice from the Greenland ice sheet has accelerated since the mid-1990s and is now contributing 0.7 mm per year to sea level rise due to both increased melting and accelerated ice flow. Antarctica is also losing ice mass at an increasing rate, mostly from the West Antarctic ice sheet due to increased ice flow. Antarctica is currently contributing to sea level rise at a rate nearly equal to Greenland.
• Summer-time melting of Arctic sea-ice has accelerated far beyond the expectations of climate models. The area of summertime sea-ice 2007-09 was about 40 percent less than the average prediction from IPCC climate models in the 2007 report.
• The studies say avoiding tropical deforestation could prevent up to 20 percent of carbon dioxide emissions.
• New ice-core records confirm the importance of GHG for temperatures on earth, and show that carbon dioxide levels are higher now than they have been during the last 800,000 years.

I hope to live until about 2050. Based on the IPCC findings, the world will be a far less hospitable place by then. The recommended steps to prevent human-caused climate change, like reducing per capita GHG emissions by 80-95 percent of 2000 levels, are not feasible. Global population will continue to increase, developing nations will continue to build new power plants, and developed nations will continue to rely on fossil fuels.

Like many science-minded people, I'm hoping for some kind of fix or breakthrough, but I'm afraid it's a false hope. I think we're facing an inevitable decline in the quality of life for all of earth's inhabitants, at least for those who survive extinction.

Here's a lyric from World Party's song, "Private Revolution", that puts our situation into some perspective:

But the world spins on regardless,
Which is lucky for you and me,
'Cause of all the places in a year's ride from here,
This is the only place to be.

2009: The Year of Stupid

Everybody who voted for him thought that when President Obama took office in January, the country would get busy fixing all the problems left over from the Bush administration, like ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, improving the depressed economy, reforming health care, and doing something to slow global warming. We optimistically thought that Congress would want to cooperate to achieve these goals. We were wrong. Apparently, the Republicans were pretty satisfied with the status quo and willing to do everything in their power to obstruct progress. To people like me, this was the equivalent of asking your dinner mate to pass the mustard while the runaway train you're on is hurtling toward destruction. Stupid.

And as the year wore on, it just got stupider: "birthers," "deathers," "tea baggers," Sarah Palin and her book tour. It was bad enough that the Republicans in Congress had become the party of "No!", but it was intolerable to see fellow citizens latching on to every stupid idea that came out of the mouths of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and their ilk. Former Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on political talk shows to cement his image as Darth Vader, and Karl Rove refused to shut up despite his persistent irrelevance. At least former President Bush was largely absent from the public sphere, the one thing we could have hoped for that came true.

Stupidity wasn't limited only to politics. Every day the news brought us more: the hoopla over Michael Jackson's death, Carrie Prejean's ignorant sensitivity, Jon and Kate's ugly divorce, the Balloon Boy hoax, the clueless White House party crashers, and Tiger Woods's excessive horndogging. The many celebrities who died this year were lucky they weren't around to see how stupid it could get.

There was an expression in the '70s: "The IQ of the universe is a constant. The population is increasing." Let's hope it's not true.

Happy New Year!

Christmas Letter 2009

Dear Family and Friends,

This has been another busy year for us, full of activity and travel. Nan and I have just returned from a Caribbean cruise with a group from The Nation, a progressive magazine we started subscribing to during the contentious 2008 Presidential Election. Days at sea were spent in panel discussions on health care, the economy and what to make of Sarah Palin. Guest speakers included 2004 presidential candidate Howard Dean, author E.L. Doctorow, and Katrina vanden Heuvel, the magazine’s publisher. It was encouraging to meet and talk with people who believe in the same principles we do: personal freedom, fairness, peace and social justice. Despite President Obama’s policy compromises and the loss of the public option, there was optimism on every front but global warming, which many believe is hastening human extinction.

Back in April, we were sailing again with our friend John Kretschmer on his 47-foot sailboat, this time in the Spanish Virgin Islands between St. Thomas and Puerto Rico. Joining us were author Dallas Murphy and his partner and editor Genie Leftwich. John is also an author, so we spent many hours discussing book ideas and the writing profession. All were enthusiastic about the prospects for the book I was writing about Charlie, our beloved golden retriever who died of cancer the previous April.

The manuscript of Raising Charlie: The Lessons of a Perfect Dog was completed in time for our road trip home to Wisconsin at the end of June with our new golden retriever Scout. Nan stayed in Wauwatosa long enough to wish my father a happy 76th birthday and then continued on to Manitowoc to spend time with her family. Between museum trips, Brewers games and bad golf, I worked with my sister Jane, who is a freelance editor, to put Raising Charlie into final form.

The book was published at the end of August, just before Nan, Scout and I flew to Isla Mujeres, Mexico for a month. The trip was partly a vacation and partly an experiment to see if we could live in a foreign country with our dog. I worked part time using our rented apartment’s Internet connection, and Nan volunteered at an English school run by expatriates. We both spent three days a week with a tutor to improve our Spanish. And we started on book number two, in conjunction with our friend Juan and his family: a combination island photo guide and cookbook of authentic Yucatan recipes in both English and Spanish. Except for the unseasonably hot and humid conditions, which limited mid-day activity with Scout, it all worked out better than expected.

Thanksgiving this year was the first one we have spent apart since we were married twenty years ago. Nan wanted to be with her family in Wisconsin, so I traveled to my parents’ vacation home in Savannah to be with them. As my mother pointed out, it was the first time she and my father had had me all to themselves since my brother Stuart was born a year after I was. We toured the town, ate great seafood, played golf, and visited my friends Paul and Honey Caouette down the coast in St. Marys, where they were preparing their sailboat for an island-hopping trip to Trinidad.

This year’s Christmas card features a photo from the first Raising Charlie book signing, at our local Borders bookstore, in mid-November. They allowed Scout inside the store, and we tried to get him to pose with us, but only the back of his head is visible in the lower left corner. If you’re interested in the book, an information card with details is enclosed.

During the holidays, Nan and I remind one another to be thankful for our good jobs, good health and good friends. And we pause to remember the loved ones who are no longer with us. We hope the holidays provide you with your own occasions for reflection. Wishing you and yours all the best in the coming year.

Love,

Wild Iris in St. Marys, Georgia

While I was in Savannah for Thanksgiving with my parents, we made a side trip to St. Marys, about 120 miles down the coast, to see Paul and Honey Caouette. You may recall that I spent a few days with the Caouettes in Miami this past January, helping them prepare their 1977 Valiant 40, Wild Iris, for a transatlantic crossing (Back from Miami). That trip was scuttled when Paul suffered a bad bout of sciatica that required medical attention (Update on the Wild Iris Transatlantic Passage). They have since sailed the boat up to St. Marys, where they have her hauled out as they prepare for an island-hopping trip down to Trinidad, starting next spring.

When we showed up at the boatyard, Paul had the boat's refrigerator condenser in a cooler full of water, trying to locate a leak, and Honey was on board cleaning. It was weird to introduce my parents to the Caouettes, like two very different worlds coming into contact. My parents were intrigued enough by the boat to climb the ladder up to the cockpit and then descend into the cabin for a look around. Paul showed off some of the improvements he had made since I had last been onboard, including a new voltage regulator and a new solar panel. My father later commented that the boat seemed cramped considering that it was forty feet long. I explained that its primary design consideration was performance and that comfortable accommodations were secondary. He also commented about the considerable clutter, which has been an ongoing problem but one that Paul and Honey somehow manage to overlook.

We drove around to the St. Marys waterfront, where many boats were still moored from the Thanksgiving Day festivities the day before, including a beautiful three-masted schooner tied up to a large channel marker. The Riverside Café seemed to be the happening place, so we took a table on the porch for lunch. Paul and Honey have led interesting lives, and my parents were interested to hear all about them as we waited for our sandwiches and salads. Paul talked about learning to sail in college at Boston University, and then building a plywood sailing skiff when he and Honey were living in Bangladesh, and how it had all led up to Wild Iris and their current sailing plans. After lunch, as we were parting company, Paul and Honey invited me to join them for a leg of their upcoming island-hopping adventure. I may try to take them up on it.

Thanksgiving in Savannah

Nan made plans a few months ago to spend Thanksgiving with her family in Wisconsin, something she had not done in several years. That would leave Scout and me alone, so I made plans to spend the holiday with my parents at their vacation home in Savannah, and Scout got to go to camp for a week.

I had not been to Savannah since 1997, when my parents first bought the house, which is located in The Landings on Skidaway Island. The city looked prosperous, like all the recent tourism dollars had made a positive difference. The new Truman Parkway, which connects the north and south sides of Savannah, is the most noticeable improvement, cutting many minutes off the time it used to take to get to the downtown Historic District from Skidaway Island.

One of my objectives was to check out the local marinas, with the idea that I would like to have my future "boat quest" boat moored at one of them someday. During the first two rainy days, we checked out ten different marinas, located at Skidaway Island, the Isle of Hope, Thunderbolt and Wilmington Island. The going rate for a wet slip at each marina was in the $12-15 per foot per month range, which seemed expensive until you factored in the included amenities. The best one was the Delegal Creek Marina, located at the south end of Skidaway Island. It offers wet slip accommodations for 75 boats up to 100 feet in length. The crane in the photo shows that the marina is undergoing some redevelopment to correct a problem with the eastern end of the dock sinking into the mud. When that work is complete, the original pavilion and observation tower will also be rebuilt.

The only drawback to the Delegal Creek Marina is the shallow draft. At low tide, the channel to open water is only three feet deep, but at high tide, it's more than ten feet deep. So the timing of exits and entrances is essential. I would consider this a small inconvenience for such a serene and protected mooring.

Raising Charlie book signing at Borders

Yesterday afternoon I had my first book signing for Raising Charlie at our local Borders bookstore. It was a surprising success. The ads I had been running in the local paper must have worked because there were people waiting for me before my scheduled time. Most of them were dog lovers, or they wanted to buy the book as a gift for friends or family who are dog lovers. Many had a story to tell about a cherished dog, either living or dead, and some became tearful while telling their stories. It was heartwarming to know that other dog lovers share the same bond of love and affection with their dogs that I shared with Charlie.

The folks at Borders were nice enough to let me bring Scout into the store, and he was well behaved thanks to Nan, accepting all the attention with good grace. People asked if he was Charlie, and I needed to explain that he was the dog that Nan gave me to fill the emotional void that was left when Charlie died. You can barely see Scout in the photo. He's in the lower left corner, wearing a dog-bone bandana.

There are three more book signings scheduled between now and Christmas. On Wednesday, I will be at Aspen Valley Hospital's Annual Holiday Bazaar from 2 to 6 PM. On Saturday, I will be at the Aspen Animal Shelter from 1 to 3 PM. And on Saturday, December 5, I will be at the local Barnes & Noble for their Colorado Authors Celebration from 2 to 4 PM. Stop by and say hi!

Before I forget, I want to express my gratitude to the friends and neighbors who took the time to come out and support me. Thank you!

Linking to files without read-only restrictions

Here's another interesting programming trick I discovered at work recently that I was unable to find a solution to anywhere on the Internet:

Everyone knows that what makes the Internet the Internet is that everything is interconnected through links. Typically, these links connect to webpages with Internet-friendly file extensions, like ".htm" or ".html". One of these links would look like this: http://www.raisingcharlie.com/index.htm. But it is also possible to link to files that are not typically found on the Internet, like Microsoft Word (.doc) and Microsoft Excel (.xls) documents. This is done in the same way: http://www.raisingcharlie.com/docs/press_release.doc. The difference is that this link will bring up a dialog box asking if the user wants to Open or Save the document. Choosing to open the document will open a read-only version of the document. Choosing to save the document will open a Save As dialog, with the usual options for filename and location.

But what if the document in question is a collaborative one that the programmer wishes users to be able to update directly? How does he get around the read-only restriction of a standard link? The answer is to use a Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path instead of a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) path in the link. In HTML, a link of this type would look something like this:


Note the backslashes and the use of the entire path to the file, starting with the server name or IP address. The only other trick to making this link work is that the "docs" directory must be set up with public "write" rights, so the programmer would want to be careful about what files were shared in this way.

If you share my line of work, give this a try and see for yourself how well it works. Good luck!

Pinback in Denver

Nan and I were in Denver for the Pinback concert at the Ogden Theatre on Friday night. If you're not familiar, Pinback is a San Diego based band fronted by Rob Crow and Zach Smith. Their music is unlike anything else I've heard, a catchy multi-layered mix of guitar, bass and keyboard melodies that are constantly trading leads. The tempo is usually extremely fast, driven by Zach's amazing bass playing, which reminds me of Peter Hook from New Order. Zach and guitarist Rob both sing, sometimes exchanging leads and sometimes harmonizing.

Pinback is another band that was introduced to me by my friend, Dave Beckwith. He included "Boo", a track off their 2001 album, "Blue Screen Life", in a mix CD he gave me in 2004. The song was so compelling, to use Dave's expression, that I soon bought the CD and then every other CD I could find by the band. If you're looking for a new sound, try "Blue Screen Life". You'll be glad you did.

Back to our concert evening. Nan and I took a taxi from our downtown hotel to the City Grille on Colfax for dinner. They have great cheap food and they're only a few blocks from both the Ogden and the Fillmore. We ate there a couple of years ago before the Snow Patrol concert at the Fillmore and were eager to go back. All the booths were taken, so we ate at the bar while being entertained by Suzy, one of the sassiest bartenders we've ever met. At one point, a big guy walked past us with long hair, a huge beard and a black t-shirt showing the human skeleton from neck to pelvis on the front and back. I thought he looked like the version of Rob Crow I had seen in Pinback's video of "From Nothing to Nowhere", off their new album, "Autumn of the Seraphs". But I didn't say anything to Nan until we got to the Ogden and the same guy came out before the show and invited audience members up on stage to sing karaoke with him. So it was indeed Rob Crow. Now I wish I had said something to him at the restaurant.

After the karaoke ended, the opening act, Joe Jack Talcum, took the stage. It was just Joe and his acoustic guitar singing folksy songs with off-the-wall lyrics, like a raunchier version of Loudon Wainwright. Two young girls had done a karaoke version of the Dead Milkmen song, "Punk Rock Girl", so Joe apologized for the repeat before he launched into his own energetic rendition. As he was winding down his set, the theatre started filling up, and we were happy to see that we were not the only Pinback fans in Colorado. By the time the band came on stage, it was wall to wall.

One of the things about Pinback's sound is that it all tends to blend together, so I couldn't tell you for sure what the first song was, but I think it was "Loro", off their 1999 self-titled first album. There wasn't much of a light show, but each of their songs was accompanied by images on a large screen. I smiled to see clips from the 1974 John Carpenter film, "Dark Star", featuring a character named Sgt. Pinback, from whom the band took its name. Other images featured snippets of lyrics, like the ones in the photo: "Don't want to see you floating upside down", from the song, "Penelope", which as near as I can guess is a song about a goldfish named Penelope. But that's one of the intriguing things about Pinback: the lyrics are difficult to understand if you think about them too hard. It's more enjoyable to relax and let the songs wash over you, creating more of a mood than a mental image. My only regret is that they didn't play "Concrete Seconds", off "Blue Screen Life". That song has been a favorite of mine for years. Maybe next time.

Happy Halloween?

With Halloween falling on a Saturday this year and both of us being in town, Nan and I decided to see what Grand Junction had to offer adult revelers.

After volunteering all day with my neighbors to build some badly needed retaining walls between two of the units, I limped home, drank a quart of Gatorade to loosen up my cramping muscles, and then carved a couple of jack-o-lanterns from some last-minute grocery store pumpkins. As I was cleaning up, the doorbell rang. We had some actual trick-or-treaters, a first for us in five years here. Good thing Nan picked up some M&Ms when she bought the pumpkins.

We donned our costumes, Nan as a little old man and me as Dr. Frankenstein, and headed downtown for dinner at Bistro Italiano. Some of the staff were in costume but we were the only customers who dressed up. We took off our rubber masks so we could enjoy our meals and not have to drink our wine through straws. As we were finishing, our neighbors Rich and Diane came in dressed in their mountain man rendez-vous gear and looking very authentic. We had agreed to meet across the street at the Rockslide Brew Pub, but we were running late. We went back with them to the brew pub, and it was full of people in costumes having a good time. We ordered drinks at the bar, but there was nowhere to sit so we soon left to see what else was happening on Main Street.

We wandered up the nearly deserted street to Quincy's, where a bouncer was standing out front. He wanted us to take off our masks, show him IDs and pay a cover charge. I looked through the open door and didn't see any live music or anything else that would warrant a cover, so I told him to forget it. We crossed the street to see what was happening at the Mesa Theater. There was live music blasting through the doors and it looked pretty lively inside, but we didn't want to pay the ten-dollar cover charge so we moved on to Boomer's. They also had live music and a cover charge so we didn't go in, opting instead to stand out front and watch a funeral re-enactment by people dressed in Victorian clothing and looking like they had just stepped out of an old black-and-white photograph. Then it was back to the Rockslide for a nightcap. Rich, Diane and I were fading from the day's heavy labor, so we decided to head home. It was only 10:30.

Maybe I'm getting old, but I remember Halloween being more fun than this one was. When I was a student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in the late 1970s, Halloweens were full-blown riots, with thousands of costumed crazies on State Street, lighting bonfires and climbing streetlights. It felt dangerous to be there. By comparison, Halloween on Main Street in Grand Junction felt like we were just going through the motions, looking for some fun that didn't feel like a rip-off.

Scout gets his sea legs

On one of our last afternoons on Isla Mujeres, Mexico, we did a boat trip with our friend Ariel and his wife Rosa. I had done one with them and their son Edric earlier in our stay, but this time I was taking Nan, our friend Juan's son Manolo, and our dog Scout. The main reason for the trip was so that I could get some more photos for the cookbook I am working on with Juan and his wife Paula. It was also an opportunity for Nan to see the island from a different vantage point, for Manolo to get out on the water in a boat other than a ferry, which he had never done before, and for us to see how Scout would handle being on a boat.

I'm happy to report that Scout did very well. Ariel beached the boat so that I could hoist Scout aboard without getting him wet, and he settled down right away in a shady spot next to the helm, where he could look over the gunwale at pelicans and passing boats. Scout had been swimming every day, so he must have wondered how it was possible to be out in the water without swimming or getting wet. More likely, he was probably thinking, "What's up with this weird car?" The motion didn't seem to bother him but the heat sure did. He was fine as we motored south down the west coast of the island into the cool prevailing wind. But when we turned around at Punta Sur and headed back north, we lost our breeze, and he started panting, seeking shade, and drinking cold water out of a plastic cup.

If our lives go as planned, we hope to travel extensively in the future, most likely in a sailboat, and we want to take Scout with us whenever possible. So taking Scout with us to Mexico was something of an experiment. We wanted to see how he would do with travel, including flying, being in a different climate, swimming in saltwater, riding in a golf cart, eating foreign-made dog food, being around semi-feral dogs, and riding in a boat. We chose Isla Mujeres because it is a place Nan and I have been to six times in the last eleven years, so getting there and living there are very familiar to us.

We did our homework on transporting animals internationally and thought we had it all worked out, but in addition to the five vaccinations on his official US health certificate, the Mexican authorities wanted proof of preventive treatment for internal and external parasites. Fortunately, we had a receipt from the veterinarian for Frontline (for fleas and ticks) and Heartgard (for heartworms), or we would have needed to pay a vet to come to the airport and examine Scout before he could enter the country. We also made the mistake of taking a small quantity of Mexican-made dry dog food back into the US with us to tide Scout over until we reached home. The customs officer let us through with it but told us it was normally prohibited. Next time, we'll leave a small bag of dog food in the car for the trip home.

In my opinion, the experiment was a success. We did not encounter any obstacles, either in our travel to and from Mexico or in the four weeks we spent there, that had us thinking that we were recklessly endangering Scout's safety or that it had not been worth it to bring him along. That's not to say that Scout wasn't completely thrilled to be home again, because he most definitely was.