Tag Archives: canyon

Wow. The Grand Canyon Is Being Stolen By a Sea of Fog.

by Teofilnpc Posted on May 28, 2017

Mother Jones

This story was originally published by HuffPost and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

SKYGLOWPROJECT.COM: KAIBAB ELEGY from Harun Mehmedinovic on Vimeo.

A stunning time-lapse video of the Grand Canyon shows the carved formation as it may have looked millennia ago — but instead of water, it’s filled with what has the appearance of an ocean of fog.

Filmmaker Harun Mehmedinovic has set up his camera at the canyon 30 different times since 2015. During one visit, he managed to witness and film the dramatic changes of a full cloud inversion, which occurs when warm air traps cold air beneath and creates a sea of fog. The inversion lasted the entire day, allowing time for Mehmedinovic to film fog “crashing” on the “shores” of the canyon and swirling through winding passages.

The film made its debut on BBC Earth in early May and has been viewed online millions of times.

The video is part of the Skyglow Project, a crowdfunded operation to record the effects of light pollution from urban areas and contrast them with stunning vistas.

Mehmedinovic is a Bosnian-American who went into hiding in his war-wracked hometown of Sarajevo for three years when he was 9. His family stayed indoors in a cellar of their home to escape the Serbs. He moved to the U.S. when he was 13 and went to film school in Los Angeles.

Check out the Reuters video below for more information about background:

Reuters TV interviews Harun Mehmedinovic from Harun Mehmedinovic on Vimeo.

View original:

Wow. The Grand Canyon Is Being Stolen By a Sea of Fog.

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Wow. The Grand Canyon Is Being Stolen By a Sea of Fog.

Fight over Grand Canyon pits Native Americans against John McCain

by Darrel52U68209 Posted on June 17, 2016

Fight over Grand Canyon pits Native Americans against John McCain

By on Jun 17, 2016 3:45 pmShare

President Obama has already protected over 265 million acres of land and water in the U.S. — more than any other president in history. He’s headed out west this weekend to Carlsbad Caverns and Yosemite to celebrate that record, at the same time that there is a battle underway in Arizona to see one more region protected before he exits office.

Sierra Club and Native American tribal leaders have been organizing local support for designating 1.7 million acres around the Grand Canyon as the Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument. Rep. Raul Grijalva, a Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, has taken up the cause, proposing a long-shot bill to create the monument. Activists argue it would mean better protection for areas that have been harmed by uranium mining (there is a 20-year moratorium on new uranium mining in the greater Grand Canyon region). The Orphan Mine, a former copper and uranium mine in the area, closed in 1969 and is now a highly radioactive waste site.

While conservation efforts are popular among residents — 85 percent support national monuments and a plurality want more to be done for the Grand Canyon area — some lawmakers and business interests are pushing back. Republican Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake have advised Obama against conservation that would “lock away” land from development, even though the designation would only block uranium mining. The opposition is flanked by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which called the proposal a “monumental mistake.”

But activists would say that leaving tribal sites and the Southwest’s largest old-growth Ponderosa pine forest unprotected would be its own monumental problem.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Get Grist in your inbox

Source article:  

Fight over Grand Canyon pits Native Americans against John McCain

Posted in alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Fight over Grand Canyon pits Native Americans against John McCain

These gorgeous photos of national parks make America look great again

by JamesFender Posted on April 28, 2016

These gorgeous photos of national parks make America look great again

By on Apr 28, 2016Share

When the American political scene gets too disturbing to look at, rest your eyes on something beautiful: the scenery of our national parks.

The U.S. Interior unveiled the winners of the annual Share the Experience photography contest, and ne’er before have our public lands shone so bright! The grand prize photo: a sunrise over Reflection Canyon in Utah’s Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, shared on the Interior’s popular Instagram account.

Yang Lu/Share the Experience

This otherworldly image of bighorn sheep in Joshua Tree National Park, California, took second place.

Koustabh Kulkarni/Share the Experience

The fans spoke up for their favorite: the national-mammal-to-be in all its hairy majesty, standing in literal amber waves of grain, in Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park.

Matthew Sorum/Share the Experience

Get lost in the rest of the contest’s glorious winning photos here.

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Get Grist in your inbox

See the article here:

These gorgeous photos of national parks make America look great again

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on These gorgeous photos of national parks make America look great again

I Can’t Stop Reading One-Star Yelp Reviews of National Parks

by EldenJenson Posted on August 25, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The National Park Service turns 99 years old on Tuesday. To celebrate, the Department of the Interior has waived admission fees for all NPS sites for the day. That’s a pretty sweet deal. You should stop reading this right now, call in sick, and enjoy the great outdoors. National parks are great.

But not everyone agrees. Yelp is filled with one- and two-star reviews of America’s most pristine and majestic natural wonders. And honestly, they’re riveting. What makes a national park a one-star destination varies from one reviewer to the next. Maybe the tacos at the visitor center aren’t up to snuff. Maybe it was cloudy. Maybe the park was too cowardly to cut down some trees for spillover parking lots. Maybe it was President Barack Obama’s fault.

Whatever the case, you can thank these people for leaving the campgrounds a little bit less crowded for the rest of us:

Joshua tree:

The desert is too hot. Esther Lee/Flickr

I looked it up, and it’s true—the bees at Joshua Tree National Park are out of control. In 2000, a group of hikers was attacked by a swarm and one man was stung more than 100 times. They tried to get inside their car to escape, but some of the bees followed them inside the car and continued stinging them. Holy crap, bees! If you were stung 100 times by bees at Joshua Tree, you should give it one star. But maybe it shouldn’t have come as too much of a surprise that the desert gets hot in the summer. This is like downgrading a restaurant because you went there on a hunger strike.

Death Valley:

Pass. John Fowler/Flickr

Pinnacles:

Some rocks. sfbaywalk/Flickr

Yosemite:

And? Aaron & Carol/Flickr

Lassen volcanic:

Where’s the lava? Roy Scribner/Flickr

Crater Lake:

You could see Fantastic Four for the same price. Glenn Scofield Williams/Flickr

And a bonus two-star review of Crater Lake that’s kidding itself about not being a one-star review:

Olympic:

A big rock with glorified weeds. Esther Lee/Flickr

Do not let the National Park Service tell you how many friends you can have.

Grand Canyon:

Few amenities. Grand Canyon National Park/Flickr

Carlsbad Caverns:

Only go to this cave if you like caves. Greg Heartsfield/Flickr

Petrified Forest:

The trees are all dead! Park Ranger/Flickr

Yellowstone:

Good luck swimming here. A Davis/Flickr

Badlands:

Bad. Jim Bowen/Flickr

Arches:

One star. Max and Dee Bernt/Flickr

Zion:

Skip the tacos. Cyril Fluck/Flickr

Shenandoah:

Pure government overreach. David McSpadden/Flickr

(N.B.: There is an entire visitor center devoted to the mistreatment of former inhabitants.)

Acadia:

Nice try, try a state park. Robbie Shade/Flickr

Hawai’i Volcanoes:

Still no lava. Ed Dunens/Flickr

Haleakala:

This is it? Joe Parks/Flickr

But enough about the sunrise, already. How were the tacos?

See the original article here: 

I Can’t Stop Reading One-Star Yelp Reviews of National Parks

Posted in Anchor, Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Scribner, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on I Can’t Stop Reading One-Star Yelp Reviews of National Parks

Nestlé doesn’t want you to know how much water it’s bottling from the California desert

by CarolEllington Posted on July 15, 2014

Nestlé doesn’t want you to know how much water it’s bottling from the California desert

By

Shutterstock

Nestlé may bring smiles to the faces of children across America through cookies and chocolate milk. But when it comes to water, the company starts to look a little less wholesome. Amid California’s historically grim drought, Nestlé is sucking up an undisclosed amount of precious groundwater from a desert area near Palm Springs and carting it off in plastic bottles for its Arrowhead and Pure Life brands.

The Desert Sun reports that because Nestlé’s water plant in Millard Canyon, Calif., is located on the Morongo Band of Mission Indians’ reservation, the company is exempt from reporting things like how much groundwater it’s pumping, or the water levels in its wells.

From The Desert Sun:

The plant … has been drawing water from wells alongside a spring in Millard Canyon for more than a decade. But as California’s drought deepens, some people in the area question how much water the plant is bottling and whether it’s right to sell water for profit in a desert region where springs are rare and underground aquifers have been declining.

“The reason this particular plant is of special concern is precisely because water is so scarce in the basin,” Peter Gleick, who wrote the book on bottled water, told The Desert Sun. “If you had the same bottling plant in a water-rich area, then the amount of water bottled and diverted would be a small fraction of the total water available. But this is a desert ecosystem. Surface water in the desert is exceedingly rare and has a much higher environmental value than the same amount of water somewhere else.”

Nestlé refused to let The Desert Sun in on any of its data, but defended itself via email: “We proudly conduct our business in an environmentally responsible manner that focuses on water and energy conservation,” the company said. “Our sustainable operations are specifically designed and managed to prevent adverse impacts to local area groundwater resources, particularly in light of California’s drought conditions over the past three years.”

Well, we all know that bottled water is widely known to be environmentally responsible and sustainable. Oh, wait, did I just say that? Nestlé, you got some ‘splainin’ to do!


Source
Little oversight as Nestle taps Morongo reservation water, The Desert Sun
Nestlé is bottling water straight from the heart of California’s drought, Salon

Samantha Larson is a science nerd, adventure enthusiast, and fellow at Grist. Follow her on Twitter.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

,

Climate & Energy

Excerpt from – 

Nestlé doesn’t want you to know how much water it’s bottling from the California desert

Posted in alo, ALPHA, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Nestlé doesn’t want you to know how much water it’s bottling from the California desert

Drive-by Truckers’ Long Road Stretches On

by Keith44Mvbrhqr Posted on March 10, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Drive-By Truckers
English Oceans
ATO

Twelve studio albums is a long time to maintain your edge, but Drive-By Truckers show no signs of fatigue on the compelling English Oceans. While the band has maintained a consistent identity over the years, telling hard-luck stories of everyday people with nonjudgmental eloquence, subtle changes have helped them stay fresh, namely new faces in the supporting cast and a gradual shift to a greater sharing of creative power. Where Patterson Hood seemed to be the main driving force in the early days, fellow writer and singer Mike Cooley has emerged as a more substantial and confident contributor, and provides 6 of the 13 songs here. His folkier voice may sound too understated at first, but serves as an effective counterpoint to Hood’s bluesier and brasher displays. Highlights include “Made Up English Oceans,” inspired by real-life political smear master Lee Atwater, and the epic, eight-minute lament “Grand Canyon.”

Equally adept at dirty, two-fisted rock and tender ballads, Drive-By Truckers still have their mojo. Long may they roll.

Read original article: 

Drive-by Truckers’ Long Road Stretches On

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, Keurig, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Drive-by Truckers’ Long Road Stretches On

Enviros step up fight over oil shale mine in Utah

by Arterisa Posted on January 23, 2014

Enviros step up fight over oil shale mine in Utah

By

zeesstof

The mining is planned for Utah’s Book Cliffs.

Environmentalists are, unsurprisingly, not happy about a scheme to strip-mine parts of the Utah desert and toast them at 725 degrees for months on end to get at oil shale deposits.

Oil shale doesn’t actually contain oil, but it can be processed into synthetic oil via an elaborate and expensive process. This Utah project would be the first oil shale mine in the U.S.

Environmental groups are ratcheting up their fight against the plans. Here are the details from a press release put out Wednesday by the Sierra Club, Grand Canyon Trust, and three other groups:

Oil shale strip mining atop Utah’s Book Cliffs is being challenged by conservation groups. The challenge is a “request for agency action” filed Tuesday, over the ground water discharge permit approved by the Utah Department of Water Quality. The permit, which authorizes Red Leaf Resources to test an oil shale mining facility, lacks measures to prevent or detect surface or groundwater pollution, in violation of state law. …

“The scheme used by Red Leaf Resources is basically the same as it was for failed ventures a century ago: mine it, crush it, sort it, put it in an oven, heat it, gather the liquid into a sump, hope that it doesn’t burn the facility down, and get it to a refinery before it congeals,” said John Weisheit, conservation director with Living Rivers.

Red Leaf Resources is dismissing the environmentalists as carbon haters. Deseret News reports:

Jeff Hartley, Red Leaf’s spokesman, said the objection by the environmental groups is less about water and more about energy philosophy.

“My response to criticism of oil shale is that either you hate carbon-based energies or you don’t. And if you hate carbon-based energy sources, you will never like oil shale,” he said. “And if you realize that oil, gas and coal are part of our energy portfolio, you have to embrace oil shale, that it will be successful, and that is what Red Leaf will prove out.” …

Hartley said the goal is for Red Leaf to be producing 300,000 barrels of oil by the end of 2015 — representing the world’s first commercial production of oil shale in decades.

No, Mr. Hartley, to “realize” that gas and oil are currently a part of our energy portfolio most certainly does not mean that one has to “embrace oil shale.” That’s some bullshit logic.


Source
Controversial Utah Oil Shale Project Challenged, Grand Canyon Trust
Fight erupts over uintah basin oil shale mining project, protection of water, Deseret News

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

,

Climate & Energy

This article:

Enviros step up fight over oil shale mine in Utah

Posted in Anchor, Dolphin, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, oven, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Enviros step up fight over oil shale mine in Utah