WC has been a member of Alaska Conservation Foundation for decades. WC was a board member of ACF for ten years, and is a past treasurer and board chair of ACF. WC has donated thousands of dollars to ACF and its mission. At the risk of stating the obvious, WC is a strong supporter of…
This post is dedicated to the late Dr. Vera Alexander, marine scientist, equestrian, musician, philanthropist and much more. It was WC’s privilege to serve as a marine technician on the R/V Acona in 1967 on a cruise where Dr. Alexander, a newly minted PhD, did some of the original research on the relationship between Harbor…
WC is a member of the Board of Directors of Idaho Conservation League, which has strongly held, public views on this issue. In fact, WC will quote ICL’s position later. WC wants to be very clear that the views expressed in this blog post are WC’s, not ICL’s, and that ICL bears no responsibility for…
Readers sometimes criticize WC for writing mostly about bad news. It’s a fair criticism but, on the other hand, some weeks it’s mostly bad news. But there is some encouraging news on getting the U.S. just a little greener. The good news is that it’s now less expensive to build solar and wind turbine green…
It was bad enough when Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy (R, Big Oil) would balance Alaska’s budgets using improbably high crude oil prices. Alaska’s state budget is funded, directly or indirectly, by crude oil. Using high crude oil prices makes the effort so much easier, even if doing so has exhausted the remainder of Alaska’s budget…
Okay, technically this is a matter of geomorphology, but however you style it, arctic ponds and lakes are vanishing and it’s a real concern. As anyone who has tried to walk across arctic and subarctic tundra can tell you, it a sloppy wet business. In fact, ponds and lakes constitute 20–40% of Arctic lowlands, the…
It didn’t get much publicity when it came out, but the House Oversight Committee back in early December, published its Investigation of Fossil Fuel Industry Disinformation. And it is a devastating indictment of Big Oil’s response to the climate crisis. As the Committee put it, Big Oil’s own documents demonstrate how the fossil fuel industry…
When WC was younger, you could drink from a stream in Alaska without worrying about giardia, “beaver fever.” In another lamentable change for the worse in WC’s lifetime, you really, really don’t want to do that any more. It seems to be a European disease. It was first reported in the United States in Colorado…
One of WC’s readers noted that while WC has heavily and frequently criticized Alaska’s fossil fuel-driven economy, there has been no suggestion of an alternative. WC, the reader suggests, should offer some constructive criticism for once. Okay. Here’s a 20 year plan to rebuild Alaska’s economy. It’s not going to please everybody – it likely…
Naomi Orestes is a professor at Harvard, and writes a monthly column for Scientific American. In a recent column, she noted that climatologists have consistently under-predicted the rate of climate change in the Arctic. In fact, it seems to be warming about four times as fast as most models have predicted. Some reports have it…
At times the sheer, perverse, pig-headed stupidity of Americans threatens to overwhelm WC. It’s self-destructive, appalling and likely to be fatal soon if we cannot find a way to overcome it. You think WC is exaggerating? You think this claim is hyperbolic? WC offers three examples – there could as easily be dozens – to…
In the last month, Typhoon Merton has made an unprecedented, devastating run into the Bering Sea. Hurricane Iona did severe damage to Canada’s Maritime provinces. And Hurricane Ian has battered Florida as one of the worst storms in that state’s long history with hurricanes. It’s the consensus among meteorologists that the remarkable severity of these…
Oh people, look around you The signs are everywhereYou’ve left it for somebody other than youTo be the one to careYou’re lost inside your housesThere’s no time to find you nowYour walls are burning and your towers are turningI’m going to leave you here and try to get down to the sea somehow Jackson Brown, “Rock…
All of the Southern Ocean’s South Georgia Island is spectacular, but Gold Harbor, near the southeastern end of the 106-mile long sub-Antarctic Island is a stunner. With the hanging icefall of Bertrab Glacier looming over the long arc of the gravel-shored bay, Gold Harbor teems with wildlife. Southern Fur Seals, like those in the foreground…
WC notes that the Utah County, Utah Sheriff has accused the Utah County District Attorney of being among the pedophile, child-eating Democrats. The Utah County Sheriff is an enthusiastic QAnon supporter and the QAnon nut jobs, of course, think that Democrats have a secret, nationwide ring of cannibalistic pedophiles who feast on young children. WC…
7.2 million cubic feet of natural gas. Enough to heat WC’s poorly insulated Boise home for the next 62,000 years. Enough to meet the City of Boise’s entire natural gas needs for most of a year. Never mind the horrific greenhouse gas implications of that discharge: natural gas – methane – has 43 times more…
The Trans-Alaska Pipeline is presently moving about half a million barrels of oil a day from Alaska’s North Slope to the Port of Valdez. Call it 175 million barrels of oil a year. That’s 350 million tons of CO2. About 4-5% of total U.S. CO2 emissions. The impact of all those greenhouse gases falls hardest…
DEIJ, for anyone show has been living under a rock, is “diversity, equity, inclusion and justice,” and it is a powerful and developing theme in many national and international current events. In the context of conservation, DEIJ raises issues of environmental justice, acknowledgement of historic treatment and mistreatment of races and people of color, recognition…
Before we get to today’s blog post, here’s a reminder to vote for the Wickersham’s Conscience 2021 Hypocrite of the Year. In 1969, Dr. Ray Sheldon, in the course of circumnavigating North and South America, sampled the water columns across a vast stretch of the Earth’s oceans. What he discovered was that across all of…
It’s been too long since WC has offered a really radical suggestions here at Wickersham’s Conscience. That’s about to change. We don’t need any more gold mines. The chief problem with gold mining is that all the rich deposits of gold have been exhausted. During the early days of the California Gold Rush, miners picked…
When dragons belch and hippos fleeMy thoughts, Ankh-Morpork, are of theeLet others boast of martial dashFor we have boldly fought with cashWe own all your helmets, we own all your shoesWe own all your generals – touch us and you’ll lose. Morporkia! Morporkia!Morporkia owns the day!We can rule you wholesaleTouch us and you’ll pay. –…
WC offers a cheerier note today. It’s slow, but there is actual progress in reducing total carbon emissions. The chart uses a ridiculous number of acronyms. Here’s a translation: The over all category is electric-drive vehicles (EDV) in the U.S market. The graph shows a subset: plug-in vehicles (PEV). PEVs include both plug-in hybrid electric…
The Washington Post ran a long article Sunday, October 17, on the Pretty Rocks land slump and its impact on Denali National Park and the tourism segment of Alaska’s economy. The road, where it climbs up to Polychrome Pass, was unknowingly built on a rock glacier. The 7.7° F of warming in Denali National Park…
It seems increasingly likely that humanity’s inaction in the face of the existential threat of anthropogenic climate change means we are going to have more than than the 2° Celsius of global temperature increase that climatologists regarded as manageable. So, without in any way diminishing the urgency that humanity’s CO2 emissions be reduced, it’s time…
When a politician blames the courts for an unfavorable outcome it usually means that the politician is attempting to divert public attention from his or her own mistakes, bad policies or misconduct. It’s a technique as old as democracy and demagogues. WC suggests that is exactly what Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy is doing in his…
Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge is big, at 8.6 million acres, the third-biggest national wildlife refuge in Alaska. It’s pretty much in the middle of the state, bounded on the north by the Porcupine Plateau and on the south by the White Mountains and Crazy Mountains. Across its 300-mile path through the Flats, the Yukon…
Greek philosopher Sextus Empiricus wrote: “The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind small.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow translated Friedrich Von Logau’s 17th century poem, ‘Retribution,’ Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small;Though with patience he stands waiting, with exactness grinds he all. Somewhere along the line, “God” got…
Matthew Rexford has an opinion piece in the Anchorage Daily News, where he criticizes federal oversight of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and praises the Alaska Legislature’s recent resolution criticizing the Biden Administration’s freeze on oil and gas lease development on federal land. Rexford characterizes the issue as a human rights question, describing the native…
So much is unknown about the Narwhal. Even the name is a puzzle. From the Oxford English Dictionary (paywalled), WC’s go-to reference for word etymologies: The etymology is uncertain, but likely comes from variants of Danish narhval (cognate with Norwegian narkval , Swedish narval and further cognate with Old Icelandic náhvalr. The first element “nahl” or “narl” is of uncertain origin,…
Alaska’s Governor Mike Dunleavy took himself to Texas recently. Strangely, only Dermot Cole has reported on Mikey’s expedition. While he was there, Mikey participated in something called the Texas Public Policy Foundation. The Texas Public Policy Foundation, or TPPF, is what is laughably called a “think tank,” a right wing think tank. “Laughably,” because there’s…
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