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-Alexandra Morton's Web Site (NEW)
The new web site for the work of Canada’s leading researcher in to farmed Atlantic Salmon and it’s effects.
North Olympic Peninsula Skills Center Natural Resources
To provide a program that provides hands-on, relevant natural resources research experience while meeting the needs of and building capacity within individual students and the North Olympic Peninsula region.
openchannels.org
OpenChannels is designed to become a comprehensive source for news, guidance, and community discussion on sustainable practices in ocean planning and management.
River of Kings – Video
Part 1 of 2 part series by Carl Safina on the Nisqually River Restoration.
Salish Magazine
Salish Magazine is a free online magazine that takes inquisitive readers outdoors with visually rich storytelling about features people can see firsthand in our public forests and beaches.
Victoria Sewage Project
The official city site on the project. The latest scoop on the Canadian poop!
WA State Family Forest Fish Passage Program
The Family Forest Fish Passage Program provides funding to small forest landowners to repair or remove fish passage barriers. Download the film.
News Sites
Green Acre Radio on KBCS
Green Acre Radio on KBCS — Sustainability, local food production, restoration & environmental talk radio.
NW Indian Fisheries Commission
The Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission (NWIFC) is a support service organization for 20 treaty Indian tribes in western Washington.
Brinnon Group
Local group opposing Black Point resort
Clam Gardens
Network of researchers exploring First Nation gardening of clams in history, and it’s relationship to today.
Coastal Watershed Institute
“To promote long term, ecological, community based stewardship of marine and terrestrial ecosystems thru scientific research and local partnerships.”
League of Women Voters – Clallam County
a nonpartisan political organization, encourages the informed and active participation of citizens in government, and influences public policy through education and advocacy.
League of Women Voters – Jefferson County
The League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan political organization, encourages the informed and active participation of citizens in government, and influences public policy through education and advocacy.
Local Food Access Network
North Peninsula local food org with an emphasis on developing and supporting increased and sustainable capacity for production, distribution, and consumption locally.
North Olympic Salmon Coalition
The mission of the North Olympic Salmon Coalition is to restore, enhance, and protect habitat of North Olympic Peninsula wild salmon stocks and to promote community volunteerism, understanding, cooperation and stewardship of these resources.
Northwest Watershed Institute
NWI’s mission is to provide scientific and technical support to protect and restore fish and wildlife habitats and watershed ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest.
Olympic Environmental Council
The Olympic Environmental Council works on issues related to the environment and health that affect our North Olympic Peninsula communities.
Olympic Park Associates
If you share with us a passion for Olympic National Park, a concern for the Park’s future, and a vision that Olympic National Park should always be a wild and natural place, we invite you to join Olympic Park Associates.
Washington Environmental Council
WEC has been working for a couple of decades on environmental activism. A great group of people actually getting things done.
Whale Trail
Signs along the way to take you to great whale viewing locations
Wild Fish Conservancy
Wild Fish Conservancy seeks to improve conditions for all of the Northwest’s wild fish
The Washington State Standard is reporting that not only did we finish the year with the warmest year on record but our recent rain will not do much to help the ongoing drought in central and eastern Washington. Why? Because it’s falling as rain and not as snow.
This record warm spell includes all temperature data going back to 1880. These floods, this warming, is exactly what scientists have been predicting for decades. Now we reap what we have sown in fossil fuel use. So what is the government doing? It’s shutting down research on the atmosphere.
The Trump Administration has announced the closing of the greatest atmospheric research lab in the world, at National Science Foundation’s National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the largest federal climate research lab outside Boulder in Colorado. This cynical ploy to rob of us global climate data is directly linked to the fossil fuel industry that underpins this administrations every action. Every drop of gas one buys is funding this destruction of our most valuable commodity, the scientific research to understand the processes of our planet. The announcement was made by OMB chair Russell Voight, the author of Project 2025. His statement said, “This facility is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country…” without providing any evidence except his own opinion.
The Governor of Colorado stated, “Climate change is real, but the work of NCAR goes far beyond climate science,” Polis said. “NCAR delivers data around severe weather events like fires and floods that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families. If these cuts move forward we will lose our competitive advantage against foreign powers and adversaries in the pursuit of scientific discovery.”
If you supported Trump and the politicians who make up his sycophant society you are helping support these disastrous decisions that continue to destroy our country and turn us into something resembling the Soviet Union or worse. Clearly our Senators and House members do not support this shut down of NCAR Colorado. Is this the kind of country you want to leave to your children and grandchildren?
This is not Making America Great Again, it’s an attempt to create a totalitarian government based on the beliefs of the fossil fuel industry. Better rethink your support of this maniac and act now to stop him before it’s too late. Send your donations to the ACLU and other organizations fighting for out rights. Contact friends in Red states to make sure they have heard this news and tell them to contact their Federal representatives to overturn this insane dictate.
You can support a green economy now by buying or leasing electric vehicles, walking and biking whenever possible, donating to the national organizations fighting the administration in court and supporting local farmers who strengthen our resilience to the effects of climate change .
Our hope is when this administration is finally out of office, that we can rebuild better the destroyed institutions that they have worked to eliminate in the name of the gas station of yours down the street. But that will take more than words on a blog. It takes every one of us doing something to change the direction of this out of control ship of state.
The Washington Standard is reporting on the conversion from coal to natural gas for the Chehalis power plant. The roots of this go back to the 2000s, when People For Puget Sound (I was a board member and lobbied for our legislative priorities) , The Sierra Club and many other environmental groups started lobbying to shut down the plant.
Finally, almost 20 years after we started the efforts we are just now seeing the conversion discussed as happening soon. There was no mention in the article about *when* the conversion would happen, only that it *is* going to happen. The company (a Canadian firm) waited until the very last month of the very last year before they would have legally been mandated to announce the conversion rather than the shut down of the plant. It has to be asked whether or not the Legislature, in their 2011 agreement couldn’t have simply pushed the deadline to 2012 and we could have seen the coal particulate gone 13 years ago? How many more cases of cancer did we see and have to pay for medical bills between then and now? We’ll never know.
Obviously, this shift to natural gas, another fossil fuel, only minimally reduces our need on those fuels or the harm to the environment. It does reduce the particulates in the smoke that causes cancer, but continues to accelerate our slide towards an unstoppable global warming scenario.
Once again, our politicians acted with no urgency, in the benefit of a foreign corporation who exploited their lack of urgency to the last minute they could. Wonder how much lobbying money went to the swing votes in that legislation? Again, who knows. Those politicians are long gone, maybe even to the company itself. It is no wonder that the voters continue to see little value in the political class who seem undermine every effort to protect the environment and take the lobbying money thrown at them by the very people they are supposed to be protecting us from being harmed by their industries.
“And so it goes.” Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
Rising temperatures are fueled, in part, by declining cloud cover — which could be a potential climate feedback loop. From Washington Post
Latest NASA data prior to Trump takeover.
“Two new studies offer a potential explanation: fewer clouds. And the decline in cloud cover, researchers say, could signal the start of a feedback loop that leads to more warming.”
“Some of them were dreamers, some of them were fools, and for some of them it was only the moment that mattered.
Some of them were angry At the way the earth was abused By the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power And they struggled to protect her from them Only to be confused By the magnitude of her fury in the final hour.”
Jackson Brown – Before The Deluge
In 2013, Canadian environmental leader David Suzuki wrote, “Environmentalism has failed”. I chastised him in a post at that time. But now, finally, I agree.
“Many of the battles that we fought 30 or 35 years ago, that we celebrated as enormous successes . . . Thirty-five years later, the same damn battles have started again. That’s where I think we failed,” Suzuki says. “We fundamentally failed to use those battles to get that awareness, to shift the paradigm. And that’s been the failure of environmentalism.”
The loss of this Presidential election and the fall of the Senate and the Supreme Court means a group of far right wing Christian Nationalist politicians are about to enact the playbook of Project 2025. It will kill any chance of reaching international goals for slowing global warming. They plan to pack the courts with right wing ideologues. They are putting anti-science people in charge of our scientific crown jewels. They are planning on defunding or dismantling our federal agencies that protect our water, air and soil. We are heading into uncharted territory with a madman as captain of the ship, icebergs ahead and a crew that is pouring it on while stuffing their pockets with their profits, as we all speed towards disaster. Some are even building spaceships on the side to take them away permanently and leave us to perish here on our own.
The people who voted for him want simple solutions to simple problems they face, the cost of food, gas, electricity and housing. Germans and Italians did too when they voted in Mussolini in the 20s and accepted the Nazi takeover of Germany in ’32. Twenty years later Mussolini was hanging upside down with his throat cut and Hitler committed suicide in the ruins of his capital with tens of millions dead. What fate awaits us and our insane leaders is about to be played out in real time. It’s no time for trying to restore a river, just so the logging industry can clearcut all the forests around it. Restoration work has been an ongoing palliative for those unwilling to continue to fight for protection. Now we will see the price we pay for not getting to the core of the issues facing us.
The hope of fighting for environmental protection is over and by the time we have another opportunity to fix it, only lifeboats will be available.
This blog has attempted to document the local efforts to protect our Peninsula from the greed that drives those who would pillage it for profit. But it’s time to admit defeat, with the national narrative now driven by Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, and the Heritage Foundation. Then there is the local narrative of the businesses this blog has called out for their greenwashing while they destroy our habitat. They filled our local environmental entities while the members sat by and did nothing. They now will be given carte blanche to plunder our shores. It’s clear we need a different set of strategies, tactics and leaders. Our west coast “Blue Wall” will not hold against a sea change in national laws and the packing of our court systems like every dictator does around the world. Make no mistake, the Republicans intend to continue to do just that. We will have nowhere to turn to sue for protection.
I don’t blame the ill informed voters who voted for Trump. The rise of AirBnB and the notion of turning our homes into investments for quick profit has left an entire generation of people unable to afford housing, from Port Townsend to Barcelona. This was allowed by both Democrats and Republicans, socialists and nationalists everywhere and we have sat back and witnessed this happening. Our schools have been gutted by not teaching democracy since the 1970s, a tactic outlined first by Justice Rehnquist when he was working for Nixon. The current fad of attacking any teacher who attempts to teach anything the right or the left find offensive has silenced many. The insanity of the mobs is always about righteousness. What we witnessed in colleges this year with the Gaza protests was more of this insanity. All of this behavior was allowed by Democrats, Republicans and school administrators with no real consequences for anyone.
Our political leaders of both parties raced to offshore industries in the 1990s to the lowest cost country possible, cheered on by the MBA schools. What happened to the people all over this country that watched their jobs vanish? This year, the Democratic leadership and their political consultants failed to convince those voters of the turnaround to the economy that they created since they took office during a pandemic fiasco made worse by Trump’s ignorance. “It is the economy, stupid”, as James Carville & Bill Clinton famously stated. And then there is the raw, unsettling fact that many Americans are racist and or misogynistic at their core.
Add to that vile mix, Biden’s inability to see his own failings after promising to be a one term President, like many elderly men in power, created a fire drill at the last moment, rather than an orderly attempt to find the candidate whom the people wanted. Maybe it would have been Kamala. Maybe not. Kamala did her best, but look towards those political consultants who told her to avoid discussions of the issues like the border and directly confronting the pocketbook issues of the lower middle classes, instead of some future “pie in the sky by and by” dream of tax breaks or home loans. As stated by numerous “man in the street” interviews this year, people are living paycheck to paycheck in most of the places that shifted from Trump to Biden and back to Trump. They are looking for help. They will abandon any politician who doesn’t give it to them.
We now head into a world where there will be no protection or FEMA for the vulnerable from the increasingly powerful weather patterns that have created hurricanes like we have witnessed in the Southeast US, the massive fires in the west, or the heat waves that grow stronger every year. They will be kept in ignorance of the science until it literally falls on their heads. With America’s leadership and legal system gone, and China, Russia and India plunging ahead with no guardrails towards unprecedented global warming, I just don’t see a way forward that makes sense.
An example is fossil fuels. While so many of us have called for the move to get us off of fossil fuels to save the planet, the ugly reality is that under Biden, we have continued to ramp up fossil fuel drilling and use. The right wing media said Harris would end fracking, especially in Pennsylvania. But she and Biden had accelerated it. Trump plans to open the drilling even further and transfer our public lands to the plunderers.
My job here is done. The news is bad, going to get worse and I don’t want to simply be another news outlet reporting on the vultures picking over the corpse of the planet. I think the time has come to fight for saving whatever it is we are going to save of this Democracy, if it is even possible to save it. I sincerely hope it is, but I think the next four years will be the moment of truth. If I find anything of a positive nature, I’ll post here for you, but I don’t expect to be doing much of that going forward. I’ll leave the blog up for historical purposes. Something to remind future generations, that we did really try, but failed.
The thing to remember is the planet really doesn’t care about us. It was functioning fine for billions of years before we showed up, and will continue long after we have gone and our legacy of destruction is just a vein of rock wedged between two other layers. Our job was simply to understand the environment and work with it to protect ourselves from the worst of its power. We have failed. In the meantime, gather the tools needed to survive what’s ahead, take care of your friends and loved ones, and resist the fascists who are about to take over, or leave the country. I really can’t blame one for abandoning this very unUnited States to its fate. Hopefully we will avoid ending like Rome, thrown into a dark age of religious fanaticism. But the Barbarians are at the gates and they are our own people. Unfortunately, this time, there is no place on the planet left to hide. To those who are about to undertake the final destruction of our environment to benefit “the economy”, let me remind you, “The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment. No environment, no economy.”
Lastly, as Douglas Adams so eloquently said, “Thanks for the fish.”
The Seattle Times has a good overview of the collapse of Bull Kelp, a fundamental plant to the health of Puget Sound. The article, found here, (behind the Times paywall) discusses the issues of the falling numbers of acres of Bull Kelp and its meaning to the Sound. Kelp is another indicator species, since kelp beds are nurseries for many fish and crab. We should be extremely concerned about what vanishing kelp beds mean to the entire web of life in Puget Sound. Locally, in the North Sound and Strait, the Marine Resources Committees (MRC) have been actively involved in monitoring the kelp beds. If you want to get involved, contact your county MRC.
Kelp has vanished from about 80% of the shorelines around which it once grew in Puget Sound, according to a 2023 report from Washington’s Kelp Forest Monitoring Alliance. South of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the bull kelp beds are down some 90%. Around Bainbridge Island, they’ve all but disappeared entirely.
Peter Bahls and his organization the NW Watershed Institute, have pulled off another successful land transfer that they’ve been working on for years in the waning days of public lands commissioner Hilary Franz’ administration. But the agreement may also find itself strapped for funds if the Climate Commitment Act (CCA) is reversed in the next election or a Republican takes office to replace Franz. Your vote is important to passing this . Our website is supporting King County Commissioner and former State Representative Dave Upthegrove as the next land commissioner because of issues such as this.
QUILCENE — The Dabob Bay Natural Resources Conservation Area has been expanded by 3,943 acres to include more than 11,000 acres around the bay.
Hillary Franz, the state Commissioner of Public Lands, signed an order on Sept. 23.
“Dabob Bay is a unique and special landscape, and I am incredibly happy to protect and preserve public lands there so that future generations get to enjoy its beauty and ecological importance,” Franz said. “This further expansion is a testament to years of hard work from stakeholders and staff to find a solution that protects these rare ecosystems while still supporting local services in east Jefferson County.”
Axios Seattle is reporting that Washington Tribes under The Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission have asked for a pause in the planning for the offshore wind farms along the Washington coast while the tribes concerns are addressed. The Tribes are not asking for a total ban on the farms but have environmental concerns they say have not been addressed.
Worth noting is that the farms are in the very early stages of permitting by the Federal Government.
As Axios notes:
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has received two unsolicited lease proposals for offshore wind farms along Washington’s coast.
One, from Trident Winds, would cover an area of about 315 square miles about 45 miles off the coast of Grays Harbor and Pacific counties.
The other, from Hecate Energy, seeks to lease 403 square miles in a nearby area about 17 miles off the coast.
Both these farms are planning on wind turbines with virtually no impact on the visual look of the coast, but the concerns are more about their impacts on fishing and whales.
As stated in an earlier blog post, this blog along with the stated goals of the tribes in the article is to support wind energy projects, but “not on the backs of the tribes”. The assumption is that the wind energy companies can provide reasonable scientific backing for their proposals. The east coast has implemented wind energy farms much closer in than the proposed Washington coast project, with no signficant impacts. Some of the background on those efforts are found here:
The Institute for Energy Research does have this conclusion to the New England wind farms. It appears that high interest rates, which are impacting the sales of electric cars, are also impacting the implementation of wind energy. Note the concerns in bold:
While a few offshore wind projects have gotten off the ground and have started producing electricity, others have been canceled, often with developers occurring fines. Developers have canceled several projects along the East Coast, saying they were no longer financially feasible. Offshore wind projects have struggledto surmountrising construction and material costs, as well as serious manufacturing problems. In recent months, rising materials costs, high interest rates, and supply chain delays have prompted project developers to cancel or try to renegotiate power contracts for commercial-scale offshore wind facilities in the United States with operating start dates between 2025 and 2028. Offshore wind facilities are among the most expensive utility scale power projects under construction in the United States and would not have gotten off the ground without massive support from state and federal governments and pre-approved power purchase agreements. With the cancellations that have occurred, President Biden’s goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2030 is expected to be half that amount.
In conclusion, while wind farms can have some environmental impacts, they also play a crucial role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and providing a source of renewable energy. It’s a balance between managing these impacts and transitioning to cleaner energy sources to combat climate change.”
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Yesterday — taking a necessary and historic step — Rep. Jamie Raskin (Maryland) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (Rhode Island) formally recommended that the United States Department of Justice open an investigation into Big Oil’s deceptive actions.
Here’s what David Arkush, director of Public Citizen’s Climate Program, told the national media:
“It is essential that the Department of Justice investigate the fossil fuel industry’s misconduct. Strong evidence already in the public domain suggests that Big Oil has likely violated a number of federal laws. And … there is ample reason to think the industry is hiding even worse wrongdoing.”
Holding Big Oil accountable for decades of misconduct that have brought the world to the brink of climate catastrophe is a goal of a number of environmental organizations and politicians.
Whitehouse: “What we found is that the well-known campaign of the Big Oil companies to deny climate change, to treat it as a hoax, to question the science, all of that nonsense has morphed into a new campaign in which they pretend they care about climate”
More good news on the wind energy front. The naysayers from PR firms working for global big oil always said that we’d never get enough energy out of the wind to make it valuable. Latest stats show that we’re getting over 10% of energy from the wind in the U.S. and new installed capacity nearly doubled in one year. The capacity shown on the far right is enough to supply over 22 million homes with electricity in this country. An oil free future is coming whether they like it or not. The chart provided by my favorite stat blog, Chartr.
Bad news for Orcas, salmon and humans too. Global warming is real and we are seeing it’s affects.
Hydropower generated for electricity from Oregon and Washington dams fell to historically low levels last year, and experts expect it could drop further by year’s end. Eleven Western states produce up to 60% of the country’s hydroelectricity. Washington, California and Oregon are the three largest contributors, with Oregon and Washington producing more than one-third of all U.S. hydropower. Both Oregon and Washington generated 20% less hydropower in 2023 than in 2021. Alex Baumhardt reports. (Washington State Standard)
First we had mass bird and sealife dieoffs due to warm water off the Pacific Coast in the last decade. Followed by ocean acidification. Then Starfish Wasting Disease. Now this. “You know somethings happening but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?” (Bob Dylan)
Avian influenza is killing tens of thousands of seals and sea lions in different corners of the world, disrupting ecosystems and flummoxing scientists who don’t see a clear way to slow the devastating virus. Patrick Whittle reports. (Associated Press)
While the global “leaders” flew their private Lear jets into Davos and other locations around the world (remember these jaunts are tax deductible in most countries!) they have done nothing to move the needle as we spiral out of control towards a much different planet (see Dune 2 for ideas on where we are headed). This chart was brought to you by my subscription to Chartr. They do amazing work with new ways of seeing data every week.
Global warming of our seas is now destroying one of the main commercial aquaculture crops of Alaska and Bering Sea. By 2021, more than 90% of snow crab vanished. This year the fishery was closed. Scientists now know why.
If we don’t get a handle on this our food from the oceans is in deep trouble. But of course, many politicians still refuse to even acknowledge there is a problem, since their oil industry funded campaigns demand they do and misguided climate deniers like Cliff Mass continue to wait for enough data before they change their minds. I guess someone needs to be the last one off the sinking ship. Hope they have a life raft. Unfortuately they will help take all of us down with them.
“A team of marine biologists with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Alaska Fishery Science Center has solved the mystery of why approximately 10 billion snow crabs vanished from the Bering Sea back in 2018/2019—the water there was too warm for them.”
and this: “Second snow crab season canceled as researchers pinpoint cause of decline” Anchorage Daily News October 30, 2023.
The Guardian has published a sobering look at a planet in runaway climate change. There is not a lot of time left to make the serious changes needed while our politicians take half measures at best. Could you live in 130 degree heat? It’s been happening this year in many places.
In an incredible move that drives the economic impact of climate change home, State Farm insurance has decided to end new homeowners insurance in California due to wildfires and the cost of rebuilding. This won’t be the last time this happens. But this has been a long time coming, and we all know that the insurance industry is the real driver behind climate change policy in this country. State Farm is the second large insurer to end coverage in California. AIG ended coverage last year.
Major breakthrough though the first generation is super expensive. The company is hoping to bring the cost down into the real world $30K range sometime around 2025. On solar only can go 45 miles (around town) or can charge overnight as usual and go 185 on a single charge.
The Dutch company Lightyear has just announced that its Lightyear 0 model is being manufactured. The Lightyear 0 can charge literally any time the car is in the sun, meaning while parked or on the go.
Had dinner last night with one of the members of the CO2.com team. They are a subsidiary of Time (the magazine business) and working out of Yakima. Their business is building diversified, high-impact climate action portfolios. They work to find the best climate projects out there, vet them from every angle, and curate them into portfolios.
This is a much needed solution to ‘green-washing’ businesses. Worth checking out if you are a business or government needing to make sure your “climate-neutral offsets” marketing is really what you think it is. This blog has no financial stake in this business. Just an FYI.
Climate change wreaking havoc on our native crab populations. Scientists are racing to see if there is anything that can be done.
Not too far down the coast, piles of dead Dungeness crab washed ashore on Kalaloch Beach this summer. Meanwhile, fishers have shared stories about hoisting up dead or suffocating crabs in their pots, said Jenny Waddell, research ecologist with the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary.
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