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Show THE ZEPHYR/OC TOBER-NOVEMBER Fort Duchesne, fae only two changes of clothes, making due with what you could, and other Depression era bits of wisdom that today are looked upon with derision and contempt, even by many in Rural Utah who have become addicted to the Super Wal-Mart id friend. I ce great sadness for all involved, our eae _ co his family. Tempest Williams Castle Valley, UT reality. However, there may come a time when reality-based “conservative values” will be more than a 700 Club talking point, and more akin to survival skills. What is past is prologue It fascinates me on an objective level, watching this vast miasma of technologically enabled growth, exponentially increasing, rapidly reducing the Earth’s natural capacity to support life. It’s as if the closer we get to the edge, the faster we're running to jump off the cliff, yet we're blithely indifferent to the dangers mounting around us. Fascinating as hell! Friends and relatives can’t understand why | always want to stay up to date and informed about the current state of the ecological meltdown. I think it comes from being an ardent student of history. You see, ] am enraptured (pun intended) by our predicament, in a “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” sort of way. Anyone who has read Gibbons’ masterpiece can’t ignore the parallels between that era and our own. Yet unlike the empires of the past, our current one is based on technologically enabled greed, and its ability to allow mankind an increasingly absolute control and manipulation of the natural world. The Romans of the western empire had to adapt to -_ a brutal, pre-feudal agrarian existence after their “Fall.” Could a technologically dependent American civilization adapt? We're front row to the most important historical era in human memory. We are in a race, a race to sustain our untenable and conservation averse lifestyle before the door closes, slamming shut, like one of those typical chase/escape scenes in an action thriller where the hero/villain rushes to a closing gate, either to be crushed or escape by the skin of his teeth. Now, one more thought, as I get more and more longwinded. your recent issue of The Zephyr about Climate Change/Global Warming came out right before the “federal case” created by Fox and the Washington Times regarding the software flaw of Dr. James Hansen, et al. As you know, Dr. Hansen heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and has been a lightning rod of attention from the Climate Change apologists, especially after the software flaw was found and corrected. Here is a link to an excellent rebuttal that Dr. James Hansen wrote in response to the jesters at Fox and the Washington Times. http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/realdeal.16aug20074.pdf Some choice cuts from his rebuttal: “The flaw affected temperatures only in the United States (by about 0.15°@C) and only in 2000 and later.” CONSERVING Dear Jim, | FOR THE FUTURE??? I recently had a chance to visit Monticello, Utah. While having a coffee at Tree Juice Café, I picked up the Zephyr. Upon reading your thoughts on water tion I thought you would like to hear about a similar situation we have here in As you may know, Michigan is surrounded by water, the Great Lakes. So water The Peace conservaMichigan. is not our EMAIL YOUR FEEDBACK TO THE ZEPHYR Send your comments to The Zephyr cezephyr@frontiernet.net or write to us P.O. Box 327, Moab, UT 84532 problem. What we were all told is that we were running out of landfill space. We were all told that we would have to start going through our garbage and separate our plastics from our cans and our newspapers from our organics. Yard waste would have to be put in separate cans. And of course because space was precious, prices went up. We all put an effort into complying. Well, a few years back, a contract was signed with Toronto, Canada to accept their refuse because there was no room in all of Canada to dump theirs. Today on average, 350 tri-axles ship into Michigan a portion of Toronto’’s trash. Now a tri-axle can haul up to 80,000 pounds. A normal Trailer Tractor can haul around 45,000 pounds. To be conservative in our estimates let’s multiply 350 times 50,000lbs. I figure that equals around 17,000,000lbs of trash coming into our landfills everyday. For the right price I guess you can find a spot for that much trash. I won’t get into what is allowed to come into this country from Toronto as that is not the reason for this analogy. I do live in Tucson, Az. most of the year. It is blatant the way we are to conserve water so that new developments can be built. It all seems like a catch 22 to me. I'd like to save water, but if I do, all the water I save allows more water to developers to build more houses that use more water etc...... A New Subscriber, Vincent Carlo Tucson, AZ “In.1998 and 2006 the world as a whole has become warmer, 1998 being aided by a very strong El Nino, but 2006 by only a very weak El Nino. In 1921 and 1934 the United States happened to be a relatively hot spot compared to the world as a whole. The next time that the U.S. temperature happens to be unusually high relative to the globe, it may be quite a barn burner.” As much as it’s blindingly obvious to anyone with a shred of deductive reasoning that OBJECTS TO SILVER BULLETS In his August-September column (Silver Bullets) Scott Silver accuses “high-level career bureaucrats” in the U.S. Forest Service of cutting essential funding for certain USFS programs (“NOT”, he adds, “the Bush Administration”). His description of career public servants is offensive (using the phrasing befitting Rush Limbaugh) and his lack of historical insight (not to mention his Google skills) are weak. As Ronald Reagan showed us’ long ago the way to decimate an agency was not to fight over Congressional funding but rather appoint industry lobbyists or incompetents to ride roughshod over the “high-level career bureaucrats”. our climate is changing, I feel the key to the whole Climate Change debate is to shift the debate away from.future possibilities and use current, concrete data about the dangers of continued fossil fuel usage. We know for a fact that ground level Ozone pollution (caused. by automobile exhaust) can harm lung function and irritate the respiratory system, and increase Asthma in chil- Rey). “What we have here is a case of dogged contrarians who present results in ways intended to deceive the public into beliéving that the changes have greater significance than reality. Thus, under Reagan, the Interior Department got James Watt and the USFS (under Bush) got Mark Rey. Blaming career professionals for the SOBs inthe Bush Administration is like blaming U.S. Attorneys for Alberto Gonzales. For more on Mark Rey, readers (and Scott Silver) can go to SourceWatch (http://www index.php ?title=Mark_ dren. We know for a fact that emissions from coal-fired power plants represent one of the two largest sources of carbon dioxide emissions. However, it’s the mercury that is released and ends up in lakes and streams that is the immediate threat. Elevated levels of Sincerely, Lewis Grove Lake Tahoe Mercury have been found in fish in lakes and streams hundreds of miles away from Coal burning power plants. Utah State agencies have advised the public of elevated mercury in largemouth bass from Gunlock Reservoir in Washington County and brown trout from Mill Creek in Grand County near Moab. How can the public accept this? These problems and many more that are the result of fossil fuel burning have current and concrete affects that are empirically proven to be detrimental to human health. When FROM FOOTPRINTS we shift the discussion to what is obvious and provable, there are no theories, no arguments, and no debates that can sway our “well informed” public. 121 EAST 100 SOUTH #108 MOAB, UT 84532 800.635.5280 Ron Weales Vernal, UT COMMENT Editor’s Note: pleaded guilty to board members. I publication: BY TTIW RE: FINGERHUT After former SUWA and Grand canyon Trust board member Bert Fingerhut conpsiracy to commit security fraud, I asked for public comment from SUWA only heard only from Terry Tempest Williams who offered these comments for TOP 10 STRANGEST SIGHTINGS IN GRAND COUNTY Dear Jim: 10. County council member with no personal business agenda 9. Actual construction progress on a new hospital 8. SUWA members and Jeepers drinking pitchers together 7. Adequately funded Grand County schodke - Year 'round employment opportunitywith benefits 5. Privately owned open space with no pending development 4. Fresh, new hitel asphalt without chip-seal — 3. Affordable huge. without axles 2. Tourist ioe Arches more. than 50 feet way from their car A. Full, on-time flight arriving at Canyonlands airport This news has saddened the entire conservation community. These actions came as a cold shock. Bert Fingerhut has been one of the a defenders of America’s redrock wilderness. His passion and leadership on behalf of Utah’s wildlands stands on its own. Bert is a As a field instructor with Second Nature, you become a teacher and a healthy role model; you will backpack with students and supervise the administration of program curriculum; you'll keep them physically and emo- tionally safe — enabling all to discuss sensitive and personal issues. Field Instructors start around $20,800/year and can obtain as much as $45,000/year. 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