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How's that climate change treating you . . .
DENIERS IN OUR MIDST
- I am still stunned when I hear someone
claiming either that climate change simply
doesn't exist or that there's no "evidence"
(usually followed by "I've done my own
research") that humans have any influence over
it. While it's almost impossible to take a
specific weather event and tie it conclusively
to a specific aspect of human behavior, looking
at the overall patterns in the weather
worldwide, how can you you not say that
something's going on? And whether its man-made
or just man-influenced or not, why not try to
alter/fix it? What's the downside? We get a
better planet when we didn't need to? End of
rant (for now).
RACHEL, RACHEL, RACHEL
- As I'm writing this (Sunday late afternoon),
Rachel is slightly SE of Las Vegas and is now a
remnant low with winds maxxing out at around
35mph. But have you seen some of the videos from
our oceanfront cities? Yikes!!! The peninsula in
Long Beach, or Newport Beach including Balboa
Island, areas of Laguna Beach, and more are
getting slammed by waves that were generated
from Rachel as she churned up from Baja
California. Add on to that the unfortunate
timing of some extreme high tides occurring, and
that's accounting for a lot of the damage.
Seeing waves pounding directly against that
house that used to have beach sand in front of
them is heartbreaking. Seeing some of the aerial
shots of Newport Beach and seeing how the surf
has just breached sand berms and rolled in
across the beach, flooded Newport Blvd., and
then continued on to the area like the Newport
Fun Zone is also heartbreaking. Hopefully the
worst is behind us. Looks like we may get some
scattered showers overnight as a parting gift
from Rachel and that will be it. But there's
likely to be another Rachel in our future and
hopefully we start paying attention to what's
going on and try to do something about it.
AQUACULTURE MAY NOT BE AS BENEFICIAL AS WE THINK
- Somewhat along those same lines (the
underlying theme being "What are we doing to our
planet?"), there's a really great article in
today's (Sunday)
L.A. Times
on the front page that examines an aspect of
aquaculture that we don't often think about:
What does it take to sustain it? In other words,
yes, we may be taking less fish out of the
already-depleted ocean, but how are we raising
those fish and more specifically, what are we
feeding them and where do THOSE fish come from?
Does that need to feed them exacerbate the very
problem aquaculture tries to solve? Interesting
read and hopefully it's not behind a paywall:
THE HIDDEN COST OF AQUACULTURE.
CATALINA EXPRESS FARES RISE AGAIN
- Fuel costs are still going up and Catalina
Express the other day announced a fare increase
to hopefully offset the additional expenses. The
new round-trip fare to Avalon from either Long
Beach or San Pedro is now $103 for adults.
(Seniors 55+ still get $10 off of that fare.)
It's certainly understandable but also not
desirable.
GAS PRICES IN BEVERLY HILLS
- Gas prices overall are on the rise and nowhere
more evident than at the Union 76 station in
Beverly Hills at the corner of little Santa
Monica and Rexford where the cost of diesel #2
was $9.89/gallon on Friday when I drove by.
Yikes!!!
MALDIVES CAVE FATALITY VICTIMS AUTOPSIES
- A couple of dive publications made a big deal
last week that the autopsies of the five divers
who died in that Maldives cave accident in May "
. . . have confirmed that they ran out of air."
There are numerous problems IMHO with this
conclusion.
First of all, this is certainly not a surprising
find but it's an incomplete one. The depths in
that cave range from 165 feet at the entrance to
over 200 feet at the back. The divers dove on
what are presumed to be single-tank aluminum
80s. Under normal circumstances, a tank that
size at that depth, discounting what you might
use up to get to depth, and assuming a surface
breathing rate of 0.75cfm, would last about 15
minutes.
But because of the way regulators work,
delivering air at ambient pressure plus the
working pressure of the reg (usually around
130psi), those divers wouldn't be able to get
air from the reg once the tank pressure dropped
much below 300psi. So you would expect any legit
tank analysis to report that there was some air
left in the cylinder and explain why.
So this release of autopsy information doesn't
really tell us anything. It's sort of like
saying, "They went underwater on scuba gear and
that's why they're dead." We still would need to
know if this was the original dive plan (I
suspect it was), why they went into the cave,
did they have ANY of the generally-required cave
exploration equipment like lines, lights, and
spare bottles, and a host of other questions.
The report, summarized in
Dive Magazine,
does rule out other scenarios that were
circulating on-line months ago including that
they were sucked in by a current or that there
was a shark attack. You can read the summary of
the report in this link but bear in mind that
there are still a number of unanswered questions
about this tragic event:
MALDIVES CAVE ACCIDENT FINDINGS.
ARRRGGGHHH!!
- My poor Dodgers. Edge-of-the seat game and
hopefully tomorrow produces a better outcome.
And that'll do it for now. Have a great week and
let's go diving soon!!!
- Ken |
