Also see December 2009
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also see: www.no-villageatwolfcreek.blogspot.com
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Last week the Durango Herald was filled with news about the reawakened push for the Village at Wolf Creek speculative development. First Red McCombs hires Michael Dino a heavy weight Democratic lobbyist. His mission - bring in the money cannons. Dino knows where to aim them for greatest effect in developing political channels for side stepping public review.
As the week unfurled we learned the new plan was hinged on a new land swap effectively moving the development a few hundred yards. Also, ‘Hal Jones Development’ is now proposing a resort merely three-quarters the size of the original ten thousand person conception.
The key ingredient to this new strategy would be Congressman Salazar sponsoring a land-swap bill. As Clint Jones, of HJD, says John Salazar is the only one who could credibly carry the land-exchange act through Congress. This may be true, but credibility is hard won and easily lost.
It seems difficult to believe Congressman Salazar could be swayed into compromising his credibility to join this speculative real estate scheme. Should you oppose the idea of developing Wolf Creek, now would be a good time to drop Congressman Salazar a line at http://www.house.gov/salazar/contact.shtml. or (202) 225-4761 or (970)-245-7107 or (719)-543-8200.
In another article US Senator Bennet speaks of “serious concerns about the potential impacts” and “We need to keep a close eye on the matter and get answers to a number of questions...”
Here are some starter questions: How viable is this eighties pipedream of building a small village at 10,000 elevation to begin with? Look at today’s economic reality and outlook. Consider the under appreciated future ripple effects our continuing rising chronic unemployment will have.
Look at the lower elevation areas around Wolf Creek Pass, Colorado ~ they have a frightening saturation of unsold vacation homes, as documented in a Pagosa Sun article by James Robinson (7-8-9). Why add to the glut?
Also see March 5, 2009 Durango Herald's story "(Luxury) Resorts morph into "toxic" real estate assets."
Why risk that high value fresh water resource?
Remember we are talking about source waters to the Rio Grande River. Any digging and construction will disrupt, even destroy portions of an exquisitely tuned biological super-organism, one that produces any number of priceless services for all down stream inhabitants. Moving the project a few hundred yards one way or another doesn’t change that.
When will developers appreciate that some places deserve to be left alone because they are of a caliber that warrants being considered National Security Resources?
There is also the matter of the original “dirty land swap.” Documented in Mike Soraghan’s 2-5-6, Denver Post article: “Wolf Creek development tangled with political ties.”
B.J. Red McCombs may hold legal title but, he does not possess ethical or moral title to that land. Therefore some of us continue to beg Mr. McCombs, and now his daughter, to please revert that land to some Nature Conservancy status, protecting that irreplaceable resource for the greater national good.
The solution really is that simple. Leave that parcel alone to remain an unmolested portion of an indescribably important biological super-organism. It would be a fitting gesture for someone who recently received the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars award for “corporate citizenship.”
If you agree, please encourage Red McCombs to reconsider his priorities. He can be reached through http://www.redmccombsmedia.com/us/contact-us .
Sincerely, Peter Miesler
Durango, Colorado
PS. Mr. McCombs doesn’t “The Billy Joe “Red” McCombs Fresh Water Biological Preserve” ~ dedicated to all down stream children yet to be born, have a nice ring to it?
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For more information visit Friends of Wolf Creek at http://www.friendsofwolfcreek.org/
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Thursday, September 3, 2009
An Essay Concerning Our Weather
Printed in The Humanist,
Nov-Dec, 2005
“Katrina and Rita in Context”
There has been something missing from the recent news coverage in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina's and Rita. No one seems to be reporting on the real story ~ namely the weather.
These most recent storms should encourage U.S. citizens to recognize that we are facing a powerful entity that has only begun to barge into our American way. Look up into that beautiful sky overhead and consider its substance, dynamics and might. Our atmosphere is the product of more than four billion years of ongoing evolution ~ geological as well as biological. It's a tenuous veil of gases that lays upon the surface of our earth, thin as the finest silk upon your skin. This veil has a most interesting structure, one that's worth thinking about.
Our atmosphere is composed almost totally of nitrogen and oxygen. Interwoven into this medium is a gossamer thin admixture of everything else: thousands of different compounds that can be grouped into almost two hundred distinct families. Combined, these compounds make up less than one percent of our atmosphere's volume. Most of this volume is made up of inert compounds and noble gases, so called because they don't react with their surroundings very much, if at all. Within this matrix of nonreactive molecules is another, yet thinner community of reactive compounds. By volume, these reactive components total less than four hundred parts per million. This is where the action is. These chemicals are always reacting with each other: they combine, split up, mutate, affect neighboring molecules, change characteristics ~ and they do this at nonstop hypervelocities. This is the scaffolding over which energy, moisture, and heat perform their weather ballet.
What's new is that, over the past two hundred years or so, humanity has been injecting a third category of ingredients: human-made and human-generated. By volume, this new genre consists mainly of substances already present in the atmosphere, only now they are being added to in unfathomable quantities ~ and they belong to the reactive families. Then there are the "exotics": creations of science and industry that make up a small but usually highly reactive percentage. Many of these compounds are totally new to our atmosphere. All told, society has been injecting millions upon millions upon millions of tons of these gases and particulates into our atmosphere at ever-increasing rates. So much so that the very composition of our atmosphere ~ the weave of our atmospheric veil ~ has been significantly and verifiably altered.
This is cause for concern because our atmosphere is in actuality a heat engine. Its matrix of gaseous and particulate components are the valves and pistons. This engine is powered by the sun’s energetic rays and the result is our weather: the global distribution of energy, heat, and moisture. But each compound we've introduced interacts with the sun’s energy according to its own unique thermo-hygroscopic-chemical profile. Recent weather fluctuations are little more than a physical reflection of our atmosphere's composition.
Remember all those environmentalists whining about pollution, global warming, and all that? Well, it isn't mere delusion. Scientists have been discovering and recording these changes since the end of World War II. For more than forty years now, satellites have been visually recording the stains, rips, and acid burns that we continue to inflict upon the veil of our atmosphere. The increasingly sophisticated information they gather continues to have ominous implications for the future as well as the present.
While the media discusses global changes in terms of global averages, keep this in mind: there is no "average" patch of ground or water on this planet. Pollutants aren't added as amorphous averages. They are injected into the fabric of our atmosphere as ribbons of varying concentrations and volumes. It's true that today scientists have convincing evidence that some global areas are experiencing a warming trend, while others are experiencing a cooling trend. There is nothing reassuring about this.
Think about our atmosphere as the heat engine whose role it is to seek a globally balanced distribution of energy, heat and moisture. This engine has evolved to a delicate state of dynamic equilibrium. Remember, it is the profile of temperature gradients and barometric differentials that provide the throttle behind this engine's drive to maintain its equilibrium. Inject extremes and it will react in kind ~ it makes no difference to the engine. It does, however, make a difference to humans and the biosphere as we know it.
Science has consistently shown that nature is always vastly more complex, interwoven, and unpredictable than the human intellect is capable of imagining. Why won't we allow this lesson to sink in? Why be surprised when weather continues to become more chaotic? Admittedly, no one can accurately predict how weather will change. But who can deny that it will continue to change, and at an accelerated rate? We can kid ourselves, but we can't fool nature.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
{Note: A previous version of this article was printed in the November/December 1995 issue of The Humanist.}
Nov-Dec, 2005
“Katrina and Rita in Context”
There has been something missing from the recent news coverage in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina's and Rita. No one seems to be reporting on the real story ~ namely the weather.
These most recent storms should encourage U.S. citizens to recognize that we are facing a powerful entity that has only begun to barge into our American way. Look up into that beautiful sky overhead and consider its substance, dynamics and might. Our atmosphere is the product of more than four billion years of ongoing evolution ~ geological as well as biological. It's a tenuous veil of gases that lays upon the surface of our earth, thin as the finest silk upon your skin. This veil has a most interesting structure, one that's worth thinking about.
Our atmosphere is composed almost totally of nitrogen and oxygen. Interwoven into this medium is a gossamer thin admixture of everything else: thousands of different compounds that can be grouped into almost two hundred distinct families. Combined, these compounds make up less than one percent of our atmosphere's volume. Most of this volume is made up of inert compounds and noble gases, so called because they don't react with their surroundings very much, if at all. Within this matrix of nonreactive molecules is another, yet thinner community of reactive compounds. By volume, these reactive components total less than four hundred parts per million. This is where the action is. These chemicals are always reacting with each other: they combine, split up, mutate, affect neighboring molecules, change characteristics ~ and they do this at nonstop hypervelocities. This is the scaffolding over which energy, moisture, and heat perform their weather ballet.
What's new is that, over the past two hundred years or so, humanity has been injecting a third category of ingredients: human-made and human-generated. By volume, this new genre consists mainly of substances already present in the atmosphere, only now they are being added to in unfathomable quantities ~ and they belong to the reactive families. Then there are the "exotics": creations of science and industry that make up a small but usually highly reactive percentage. Many of these compounds are totally new to our atmosphere. All told, society has been injecting millions upon millions upon millions of tons of these gases and particulates into our atmosphere at ever-increasing rates. So much so that the very composition of our atmosphere ~ the weave of our atmospheric veil ~ has been significantly and verifiably altered.
This is cause for concern because our atmosphere is in actuality a heat engine. Its matrix of gaseous and particulate components are the valves and pistons. This engine is powered by the sun’s energetic rays and the result is our weather: the global distribution of energy, heat, and moisture. But each compound we've introduced interacts with the sun’s energy according to its own unique thermo-hygroscopic-chemical profile. Recent weather fluctuations are little more than a physical reflection of our atmosphere's composition.
Remember all those environmentalists whining about pollution, global warming, and all that? Well, it isn't mere delusion. Scientists have been discovering and recording these changes since the end of World War II. For more than forty years now, satellites have been visually recording the stains, rips, and acid burns that we continue to inflict upon the veil of our atmosphere. The increasingly sophisticated information they gather continues to have ominous implications for the future as well as the present.
While the media discusses global changes in terms of global averages, keep this in mind: there is no "average" patch of ground or water on this planet. Pollutants aren't added as amorphous averages. They are injected into the fabric of our atmosphere as ribbons of varying concentrations and volumes. It's true that today scientists have convincing evidence that some global areas are experiencing a warming trend, while others are experiencing a cooling trend. There is nothing reassuring about this.
Think about our atmosphere as the heat engine whose role it is to seek a globally balanced distribution of energy, heat and moisture. This engine has evolved to a delicate state of dynamic equilibrium. Remember, it is the profile of temperature gradients and barometric differentials that provide the throttle behind this engine's drive to maintain its equilibrium. Inject extremes and it will react in kind ~ it makes no difference to the engine. It does, however, make a difference to humans and the biosphere as we know it.
Science has consistently shown that nature is always vastly more complex, interwoven, and unpredictable than the human intellect is capable of imagining. Why won't we allow this lesson to sink in? Why be surprised when weather continues to become more chaotic? Admittedly, no one can accurately predict how weather will change. But who can deny that it will continue to change, and at an accelerated rate? We can kid ourselves, but we can't fool nature.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
{Note: A previous version of this article was printed in the November/December 1995 issue of The Humanist.}
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