The Excellent Adventure

Not the Coast Guard Too!

Laureen — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 13:00:43 +0000

When I was young, I had a terrible crush on a young man who ended up joining the Coast Guard. Ever since then, I’ve had a bit of a soft spot for the Coasties.

Since living on a boat, and listening to the craziness that is Channel 16 sometimes, that soft spot has only gotten bigger. And while every group has its chowderheads, even the chowderheads in the Coast Guard can pretty much be relied upon to save your butt, or your boat, should it need saving.

Which is why this article, by way of the CGBlog, was so incredibly depressing.

The budget and size of the Coast Guard is out-of-sync with the responsibilities being tasked. According to a recent tally by Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., in the past 35 years Congress has handed the agency at least 27 new responsibilities. Prior to the BP oil spill in the Gulf, the Obama administration planned to cut Coast Guard personnel by 773, decommission five large cutters, retire four HU-25 Falcon medium-range surveillance aircraft, retire five HH-65 Dolphin search-and-rescue helicopters, and dissolve five 90-person marine safety and security teams next year. Following the BP oil spill, Congress has added minor increases to personnel end-strength for offshore oil monitoring, canceled the elimination of around 1,100 billets, and decreased the number of ships and aircraft scheduled for decommissioning. These adjustments are token changes and fall well short of what is necessary to strengthen the Coast Guard.

The FY 2011 budget for the Coast Guard is $10.1 billion (PDF) – 4% less than the FY 2010 budget. The Acquisition & Construction budget in FY 2011 for the entire Coast Guard is $1.536 billion – about 70% the shipbuilding cost of a single US Navy destroyer. The material condition of the US Coast Guard is not good by any standard. The US Coast Guard operates 250 cutters 65′ or more, and the average age of those cutters is 41 years old.

“No amount of maintenance can outpace the ravages of age,” retired Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen said in a recent speech. “The condition of our fleet continues to deteriorate, putting our crews at risk and jeopardizing our ability to do the job.” Of the 12 major cutters assigned to Haiti relief operations, 10 of the cutters (87%) suffered mission-altering breakdowns. In the immediate hours following the explosion on DEEPWATER HORIZON, no less than 3 Coast Guard aircraft were unable to respond due to maintenance problems. In February of 2010, Mackenzie Eaglen of the Heritage Foundation made an applicable analogy:

The mismatched demands of the nation and the President’s budget cuts for the Coast Guard are unacceptable. One can only imagine the outcome—and outrage—if 83 percent of the fleet assigned to the Battle of Midway had to return to Pearl Harbor for emergency repairs. The Coast Guard should not be held to lower standards.The DEEPWATER HORIZON explosion is only one symptom of a larger problem related to the Coast Guard being able to meet the responsibilities they have been tasked by our national leaders, and the Gulf oil spill is only a taste of the real economic disaster that awaits any nation with insufficient capabilities in maritime security and protection.

The Coasties aren’t the only ones failing to support infrastructure, hello Deepwater Horizon. And as other people cut corners, the number of “accidents” is going to go up, not down. How many other ship captains do you think are out there, on as many drugs as John Cota was? (OK, OK, that’s not fair; I don’t think even Hunter S. Thompson was ever on as many drugs as John Cota.)

I know how much maintenance it takes to keep all the little bits and pieces working, and how critical the failure of even a few of those bits can be. I know that I am expecting the Coast Guard to be there if my EPIRB goes off, or if I have to make a mayday call on Channel 16. And looking at the article, and digging a little deeper, I’m thinking that’s an unrealistic expectation.

When the Coast Guard became part of Homeland Security, I had assumed that they would also be the recipients of increased funding and attention. I am really disappointed that that turned out to not be the case. Of all the things my taxes contribute to, I would have hoped some would have gone to them.

I am darkly amused that global climate change is also impacting things:

In September of 2008 the MV Camilla Desgagnés, owned by Desgagnés Transarctik Inc., transported cargo from Montreal to the hamlets of Cambridge Bay, Kugluktuk, Gjoa Haven and Taloyoak through the Northwest Passage. The transit marked the first time supplies were delivered to communities in western Nunavut from an Eastern port.

In 2009 two German ships, the Beluga Fraternity and the Beluga Foresight left the Russian port of Vladivostok with cargo picked up in South Korea bound for Holland. The traditional route for the ships would have been through the western Pacific towards the Strait of Malacca, across the Indian Ocean over to the Suez Canal, and out through the Strait of Gibraltar up to Holland for a total of roughly 11,000 nautical miles (12,658 miles). Using the Northeast Passage over Russia, the ships cut ~4,000 nautical miles from that trip and saved roughly $300,000 – of which $100,000 was in fuel savings alone. With permission from Russia to make the trip, the nuclear powered icebreaker 50 Years Since Victory escorted the two freighters through the Northeast Passage.

Last week the Barents Observer reported that the 100,000 ton tanker “Baltica” left Murmansk loaded with gas condensate for China escorted by 3 nuclear powered icebreakers. This is the first time a high-tonnage tanker will take the Northern Sea Route from Europe to Asia. The Northeast Passage will cut ~5,000 miles from usual route taken around Africa, as a 100,000 ton tankers are too large for the Suez canal.

As the Northwest and Northeast Passages open up new sea trade opportunities, it is important to note that regardless of which route is taken, both routes will increase the number of ships transiting in US waters – as both routes require ships to pass through the Bering Strait. Alaska has 1,060 miles of Arctic Ocean coastline of which any vessel utilizing the Northwest Passage will transit through. What the United States does not have today is any operational heavy icebreakers to escort and insure safety of navigation in those icy waters.

So there you have it. The world is changing. The ways people and goods are transiting the seas are changing. As the ice caps melt, the seas open up, and the US is either going to need to pony up, or adjust to all the unintended consequences of leaving the maritime borders as porous as the terrestrial borders are.

There is more navigable water, and there is going to be nothing but more navigable water as eustasy becomes the buzzword of the next century. And along with that increase in water is going to come an increase in climate refugees, all coming by water.

Failing to support the Coast Guard fully is yet another example of our terrible myopia and full disconnect from what’s coming.

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-09-05

Laureen — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 05:41:00 +0000

Barkissimo writes:: it's time for a war http://barkissimo.com/blogissimo/?p=631 #
Barkissimo writes:: Greetings from the Playa…sort of. http://barkissimo.com/blogissimo/?p=658 #
Barkissimo writes:: The story of stuff… http://barkissimo.com/blogissimo/?p=637 #

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Don’t Eat the Fish

Laureen — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 13:00:27 +0000

There’s a lot of noise going on about whether the seafood from the Gulf is safe to eat or not. The Obamas ate plenty on their vacation, so that must mean it’s perfectly safe, right?

My friend Scott Locker over at Barkissimo posted this:

I have seen and experienced first hand the effects of overfishing as the fishermen complained of diminishing harvests and smaller fish in their nets. I’ve also felt the impact of what our pollution does to poison our bodies through the fish we eat. The act of cleaning the bottom of my boat, which required my being in the water of Ensenada bay for two or three hours, would inevitably leave my sick for days afterward. I could only imagine the health effects on the fish living in that environment, given that I couldn’t endure three hours.

I used to work as a photojournalist, and one of my mentors was Eugene Smith, who went to Minamata, Japan, to do an essay on the effects of the industrial poisoning of the fishing grounds of Japan, and the resulting maladies and birth defects that came from eating contaminated fish therein. His photographs still come to the surface of my mind with startling frequency. If you think that “farmed” fish are as healthy as wild caught fish, think again. Anything living in filth, or filled with antibiotics and chemicals in order to survive until it is executed is not going to be healthy for us if we choose to eat it.

We need to think before we buy our seafood, as well as everything else we decide to ingest. Our lives are short and fraught with disease already, and it’s obvious that the huge corporations and powers that be are not in the least interested in the health of the planet or it’s inhabitants. They will continue to pollute, continue to try to sell us the most profitable products possible, regardless of the consequences, and continue to think of the bottom line above all else.

I was chatting with one of the deck hands on our marina fishing fleet the other day, and made an offhand comment about the kids practicing fishing off the boat. His eyes got huge, and he said “I hope you don’t let them eat anything from anywhere in this Bay!!!” He was genuinely freaked out. I assured him I didn’t, and he went on to tell me about a friend of his, also a fisherman, who fed his family from the catch. He watched both of the man’s children end up with mercury poisoning, although he didn’t call it that. He just said “they went from being bright, talking little kids, to sitting in the corner smacking their heads into the wall.”

So I wondered what the government had to say about the relative safety of the seafood in the Bay, considering what this fisherman was telling me.

The OEHHA tells us that the fish here after the Cosco Busan were safe to eat.

Although the tests found no increased risk from eating crabs or fish from the spill area because of oil contamination, it is possible that some fish or crabs may have come into contact with pockets of oil. Sport fishers should avoid eating any fish or shellfish that have an oily smell or taste. Commercial fishers and crabbers should take appropriate steps to ensure that their catches do not contact any remaining floating oil and are free of signs of contamination. Finally, it is important to note that there are other sport fish consumption advisories in the San Francisco Bay as a result of mercury and other contaminants (see http://www.oehha.ca.gov/fish/general/sfbaydelta.html).

So there you have it. Safe! Oh wait… other contaminants? What’s that about?

Because of elevated levels of mercury, PCBs, and other chemicals, the following interim advisory has been issued. A final advisory will be issued when the data have been completely evaluated. [NOTE: there's no date on this statement. Looking at the page source tells me it's from 1999.]

Women beyond childbearing age and men should eat no more than two meals per month of San Francisco Bay sport fish, including sturgeon and striped bass caught in the delta. (One meal for an adult is about eight ounces).

Women beyond childbearing age and men should not eat any striped bass over 35 inches.

Women of childbearing age, pregnant, nursing mothers, and children should not eat more than one meal of fish per month. In addition, they should not eat any striped bass over 27 inches or any shark.

This advisory does not apply to salmon, anchovies, herring, and smelt caught in the bay; other sport fish caught in the delta or ocean; or commercial fish.

Richmond Harbor Channel area: In addition to the above advice, no one should eat any croakers, surfperches, bullheads, gobies or shellfish taken within the Richmond Harbor Channel area because of high levels of chemicals detected there.

Health Advisory: OEHHA recommends that sport harvesters not take or eat mussels from the bayside shoreline on the west and south sides of Ballena Boulevard and that recommends that anglers should include mussels and other shellfish as they follow the existing San Francisco Bay and Delta region fish consumption advisory

Ah! So mussels from one side of a terrestrial street are substantially different from mussels on the other side of a street. Got it. And this is just from our everyday pollution, this has nothing to do with our paltry spill. The spill meant nothing. Even though, you know, the things that live here that eat the stuff from the Bay died en masse.

But meanwhile, back in the Gulf. This from Mother Jones:

But how safe is it really? A study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that there may be good reason to be concerned about the long-term impacts, even if the seafood is safe for most people to eat right now. The biggest issue, the authors write, is with shrimp, oysters, crabs and other invertebrates that have a harder time clearing out polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are carcenogenic chemical compounds found in oil and other fossil fuels, from their systems. “Although vertebrate marine life can clear PAHs from their system, these chemicals accumulate for years in invertebrates,” they write.

There are also longer-term worries for larger fish like tuna, swordfish and mackerel, which over time may accumulate dangerous levels of heavy metals found in crude oil, like cadmium, mercury, and lead, “potentially increasing future health hazards from consumption,” the report concludes. It was authored by Gina Solomon, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council and a medical doctor who teaches in the Department of Medicine at University of California-San Francisco, and Sarah Janssen, also an MD and public health expert with NRDC.

Solomon says the standards for evaluating the safety of the seafood are not as thorough or transparent as they could be to assure consumers that the seafood is safe for them to eat. “The government numbers and protocols are probably fine to protect the occasional fish consumer but not not necessarily good enough to protect vulnerable populations,” says Solomon.

Meanwhile, the government maintains that seafood from the Gulf is perfectly safe.

Got that? Perfectly safe. Just like our seafood here in the Bay. Just like people everywhere, squeezed by rising unemployment and underemployment aren’t going to try to supplement their families’ diets with what they can catch. Thank god we all have health insurance now, to cover hospital visits when the young, the reproductive, and the elderly eat wildlife considered by our government to be perfectly safe.

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Rogue Waves for the Intensely Geeky

Laureen — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:00:50 +0000

This is so cool, from Ars Technica:

Researchers have finally observed a special type of wave that has eluded experiments for almost 25 years. The Peregrine soliton, a special type of large wave that can retain its size and shape while traveling at a constant speed, has finally been demonstrated using light pulses traveling through fiber optics. Studies of the Peregrine soliton could help us model the rogue waves that can cause sudden disasters in the ocean, and give definite limits for a large class of solutions to the non-linear Schrodinger equation.

…

By timing the size and spacing of the breathers just right, researchers were able to get them to combine into a large, solitary wave—a Peregrine soliton. The scientists also found that waves that were more localized in space and time came together into a Peregrine soliton more easily. This may be the reason that rogue waves are relatively rare and seem to happen more often during storms.

Now that they have proved a Peregrine soliton can be created in the lab, the authors hope that meteorologists will be able to use this information to search for and forecast oceanic rogue waves. As a nice side benefit for mathematicians, many implications of the Peregrine soliton extend to nonlinear math in general. The nature of its formation and dynamics should place limits on a set of solutions to the nonlinear Schrodinger equation.

HT: Jonathan

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Do Nothing, But Look Good Doing It

Laureen — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:00:27 +0000

Back when I was a kid, Greenpeace meant something. They were on the front lines. They were doing good stuff.

And now? They’re a freaking brand. This, from Unsuitablog:

Some of Motivaction’s past clients include Coca Cola, Imperial Tobacco, Unilever, McDonald’s and Mercedes Benz. On top of that, why is an environmental campaigning group employing a marketing company that promises to “achieve a high return on your marketing, communication and policy investments” to create brand and customer loyalty?

Because Greenpeace is a brand.

Greenpeace has become like any other corporation, using demographic segmentation techniques to analyse how best to brand themselves to attract customers. The survey itself, as well as questions on what environmental problems the survey-taker think are most important, also included sections on people’s opinions of rival organisations (including its radical splinter sea shepherd), opinions of Greenpeace itself and demographic questions. It seems that Greenpeace is trying to find its niche in a ‘marketplace’ of environmental organisations, using demographic analysis to find who its loyal ‘customers’ are to focus their branding on them.

So, Greenpeace supporters amongst you reading this: you are being analysed and treated as a consumer, marketed at and targeted with a brand to suit your “milieu”.

Is this what the environmental movement should be?

Whilst Greenpeace are busy spending supporters money on corporate branding and promoting the reform of Industrial Civilisation, the destruction of forests, pollution of oceans and the 6th mass extinction continues unabated. Activists need to see that Greenpeace and its colleagues (even Oxfam features as a client to Motivaction) are becoming brands, competing in a marketplace for your ‘custom’ – they’re turning our anger and activism into a consumer item. Activists need to see this and move beyond the corporatized NGOs and take real action, and show them that we won’t consume their corrupted vision of environmentalism.

…

I … have now discovered that Greenpeace Inc. is registered in the state of California as a Corporation; and thus the wheel turns further in favour of the corporate machine. Thanks for making my decisions so much easier, Greenpeace Inc.

The whole thing makes me really, really sad. Come on, Greenpeace. Do some work, and quit with the marketing.

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-08-29

Laureen — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 05:41:00 +0000

Today? We're taking it easy, sorting legos, and eating gorgeous organic watermelon the farmer picked for us himself. #notbacktoschool #
RT @SCKayaks: Speed record smashed. Tweeked the Torqeedo motor with a motor/shaft fairing and gained 2mph! Planning at 5.7 mph #kayaks #
RT @MomsRising: Wells Fargo wants to know what’s a-brewin’ in my uterus before they make me a loan.http://bit.ly/cDLwqb //Infuriating!! #
The marina has a Great Blue Heron in residence again! This makes me absurdly happy; the last one died in the oil spill 3 years ago. #
Barkissimo writes:: Barkissimo: The Thanksgiving Dinner http://barkissimo.com/blogissimo/?p=623 #
People who are honest, people who are direct, people who are straight with me, and people who say it like it is. #GratitudeList #

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Boat Kids in the Meadow

Laureen — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 13:00:30 +0000

Since s/v Convivia moved in next door, we’ve been trying to hang out. This is one sunny afternoon in the winter that’s been serving as our “summer” here.

Waiting for our friends to arrive…

Rolling down the hill…

Sooooooo dizzy…

Helping Ruby roll. Miles, in the background, has it down.

Ruby headed off on her own a bit.

This one reminds me so much of Waterhouse’s “Miranda, the Tempest“.

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If the Oceans Die, We Die

Laureen — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:00:16 +0000

Yet another reason to love Captain Watson.

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Recovery Is Slower Than You Think

Laureen — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:30:56 +0000

For the last week, a Great Blue Heron has been fishing on the shoreline at our Marina. And I am ridiculously happy about that. It’s been three years since we had one in residence here.

On November 7 2007, due to a series of moves so stupid people are still figuring them out, the Cosco Busan hit one of the towers of the Bay Bridge, and dumped 53,500 gallons of oil into San Francisco Bay.

We were living here, then. I was pregnant with Aurora. The world smelled like diesel for weeks. The “cleanup” took even longer. And within a few months, it was declared “clean.”

I’m here to tell you, friends, that “clean” means very different things to bureaucrats, and to the people actually living on the water. As does “recovered.”

In the dinky little spill we lived through, everything died. We lost a harbor seal, we lost a nesting family of Great Blue Herons, we lost our entire crew of egrets and white herons and pelicans. Even the seagull population, normally tougher than tough, was decimated.

I don’t know how bad it was under the water; I can only guess it was at least as bad, or worse.

So when people start talking about the Gulf spill, and how it will be clean “sooner than we thought”, I am beyond incredulous. No one who’s actually lived through a spill, in close proximity to the biota affected, could possibly be saying such stupid things. Maybe to the casual observer, because the rainbow sheens are gone from the surface and the beaches no longer have black tar on them, things look OK. But it’s a measure of just how clueless we are about the natural world that when a giant swath of very visible wildlife just disappears, we can’t even tell.

For the Cosco Busan spill, there’s an argument about whether 2,000 birds, or 20,000 birds died. Anyone who lives here could tell you that it simply has to be the bigger number, just based on how many birds you could spot daily before the spill, and how many you could spot after, then multiply that by habitat locations. But lawsuits went with the number of birds the cleanup crews physically, directly encountered. Systemic myopia of the most egregious order.

I’m asking you all, pay attention to your wildlife. Be conscious of the birds, the mammals, even the insects. They all have a ton to tell you about where you are. Don’t wait until the disaster strikes before you pay attention.

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Global Warming Is A Hoax

Laureen — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 13:00:57 +0000

I adore Mark Morford, but I never thought I’d be quoting him on this blog. From his recent column in SFGate (emphasis mine):

Wouldn’t it be horrible if all this stunning, insanely mounting, irrefutable evidence — death, floods, fires, heat waves, the worst this and the most violent that in 1,000 years — were some sort of surefire, cumulative sign that we have, if not directly caused, then wildly accelerated and amplified the imminent implosion of this planet?

But we didn’t! And we haven’t! And we aren’t! I mean, whew.

…Even the U.N. secretary-general, Ban Ki-Moon, is in on it, coming back from Pakistan stunned and shaken by the epic flooding he witnessed there. “The magnitude of the problem; the world has never seen such a disaster. It’s much beyond anybody’s imagination,” he said, putting out the urgent call for more international aid. I mean, sure global warming is happening — even some of the more ignorant climate change deniers have had to reverse course on that — but humanity had nothing to do with it, OK? We don’t need to change our behavior one iota. If God wants another Ice Age or whatever, who are we to argue?

…

Have you seen the photos from the Gulf of Mexico, all shiny and clear thanks to toxic chemical dispersants, the miracle of ocean currents and armies of PR people who smell like hate? What happened to all the oil? It’s all gone, even though it’s really not! Absorbed into the planetary bloodstream like magic! Even the president is there, splashing around in waters that, not a month ago, had hundreds of million of gallons of crude oil and chemicals floating in it.

…

I just read the flooding in Pakistan has already caused more devastation than the 2004 tsunami in Asia, worse than the Haiti earthquake. One quarter of the country is underwater. They say Pakistan also just broke a record for the single highest temperature ever recorded on the Asian continent, at 128 degrees (16 other nations also met or broke heat records this year, too). That record was set in a city. Where people live. But not for very much longer, because they do not have giant air conditioners and pallets of Fiji water from Costco like we do, so they probably won’t survive.

…

Yes, it’s tragic. It’s unprecedented. It’s never happened like this before. Heck, even here in the eco-terrorist homeland of San Francisco, they say the change in ocean temperatures will soon mean Fog City will be entirely fog bound, edge to edge, nearly year round. But I repeat: It’s not our fault. Seven billion rapacious, industrialized bipeds have the impact of a feather.

…

I mean, so what if giant icebergs four times the size of Manhattan are suddenly breaking off in Greenland? That’s happening way, way up there. I’m overconsuming energy and blocking out inconvenient truths way, way down here. There is no cause/effect, no connection whatsoever, never mind that dark, nagging sense of self-wrought doom, deep in my bones. I know that’s just a liberal lie, an implant, completely futile — just like those failed climate talks in Copenhagen, and the soon-to-be-failed ones coming up shortly in Mexico. I mean, whew.

I love it. Love love love. “Seven billion rapacious, industrialized bipeds.” Fabulous. The bit about San Francisco in fog year-round makes perfect sense to me too, given the fact that we’re seeing about an hour of sun a day for the last five or six weeks.

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