Like David Letterman…

https://backpackinglight.com/forums/topic/12706/

Global Cooling, Global Warming, Global Change, Climate Change (wink) (wink)

Ken, thanks for that interminable link. It was depressing that people could go on for so long STILL quibbling over why global warming is just another “cycle” in earth’s grand cycles of climate.

Yet many in that thread just fail to look at the overall picture and the many factors that point to a looming disaster not only for humans but for uncounted species – uncounted because so many species yet to be “counted’ (discovered) will die off due to climate change.

D@mnably depressing, as I first stated intros thread. Letterman said he felt it was too late to stop us from the “tipping point” and I agree.

“We have met the enemy and he is us.” (Pogo the possum, from the POGO comic strip of many decades ago)

We have met the enemy and they are ours, part of a message from American naval officer Oliver Hazard Perry in 1813 after defeating and capturing British Royal Navy ships in the Battle of Lake Erie. We have met the enemy and he is us, Pogo creator Walt Kelly’s 20th century parody of Perry’s quote.

Yeah Ken, I served as crew for 3 years on the reconstructed Brig Niagara, Perry’s “second” flagship, after the Lawrence, his original flagship,  was blown to unusability in the Battle of Lake Erie, off Middle Bass Island. So I’m much more familiar with that saying and the history behind it than most.

I thought you were actually there

Like Bonnie and Clyde…smallpox has been eradicated. The title of this thread is itself an instance of thread drift.

There’s a moment in the Simpsons when Kent Brockman, the newscaster, half yells “President Reagan dies!” and then later adds under his breath, ‘his hair’.

Oh well.

This should be under Chaff.

I think most know by now David

Eric, I took a glacier travel class with the late Dusan Jagersky on Mt. Rainier’s Nisqually Glacier in 1977. We had to rope up to move around. We climbed 100 foot towers of gleaming, turquoise ice, we practice crevasse rescue in what seemed bottomless crevasses. I returned here in 1992 to find a flat as a parking lot sheet of grey ice sprinkled with pebbles. All the grandeur and arctic splendor was gone. I freaked out and started telling everyone I knew that global warming was upon us, that this “stuff” was real, and America needed to wake up NOW! Even my friends who were climbers denied it. The reaction was like a kid dealing with an alcoholic in the family… so many excuses and so much denial…

You should see Mt. Baker now. Or Rainier. Or the Pocket Glaciers on Buckner, Forbidden, and the other Cascades gems. All the permanent snow fields we climbed are gone. The Cascades are covered in glacial residue that is often unclimbable.

Meanwhile they continue logging the old growth out on the peninsula and over in the Cascade foothills. I backpack now to see the places before they burn and are gone forever.

A young backpacker passed me in a massive burn below Mt. Goode, and when I made a comment how awful this was, he said, well, trees grow back. This kid looked educated but a comment like that showed the magnitude of ignorance we are dealing with. 500 year old trees don’t just grow back! 10,000 year old glaciers don’t just melt in 30 years.

I appreciate your honesty about being depressed…

Keith