Our comfortable levels of atmospheric oxygen (O2) and carbon dioxide (CO2 ) are attributable to photosynthesis: H2O + CO2 = CH2O + O2. It is thus reasonable to assume that forests are needed to preserve the oxygen we breathe. But that is a common misconception. A mature redwood or Amazon forest busily recycles its products, […]
Life + Outdoors
Posted inLife + Outdoors
What’s so amazing about anemones?
Among all the fantastic products of three billion years of evolution, such as intricately constructed ears, eyes and skeletons, the most amazing exists within primitive anemones, corals and jellyfish. The stickiness you feel when touching anemones in local tide-pools is a consequence of thousands of microscopic harpoons launched into your skin. Each launching mechanism is […]
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Asters Up Front
It was a perfect day to be in the garden. There had been just enough rain to make the ground damp and easy to dig, but not enough to turn it to mud. More rain was on its way, but not right away. Time to start transplanting. I’ve been working on this gradual transformation of […]
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Civil Disobedience
It was Sunday, a clear and warmish fall day, sun sitting low in the sky, with no wind even on the coast — a perfect day for civil disobedience. It all started some months ago with a letter to the Journal from one Benjamin Garlick. He’s pushing 40 now, but I knew him as a […]
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Trick our Trucker
His friends, until recently, called him ZZ Top. He had a dark bushy beard down to his chest. He had a belly, too. Mark David loves his drink. And tobacco, and chocolate. And he and Loretta Bradford, his life-love and full-time co-pilot, would be out there on the open road, trucking lumber and pipe and […]
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Bottled and Blessed
Yes, yes, from Oakland to Baltimore they’re booting the bottle from city government offices and fancy restaurants. The bottle of water, that is, which activists have taken on as yet another villain in the fight to save the planet from choking on plastic or drowning in deep-puddling carbon footprints. Bottled water, critics say, creates mountains […]
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Can We Extract Energy from Waves?
PG&E is seeking permits to investigate the feasibility of producing energy from waves off Humboldt Bay. The potential is high off our coast because of our winter storms and summer winds. Waves approaching shallow water begin to break and lose energy, so most schemes target waves in water deeper than the “wave base” (about half […]
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Why Does the Setting Sun Flash Green?
If you watch the red sun just before it disappears below the sea’s horizon you may see a flash of green. Gene Callahan, a local builder of fine homes, tells me that a red road flare will turn green if stared at long enough. These phenomena are actually quite different. Gene’s green is a result […]
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Spooky Bugs
There has been a lot of bug action at my house lately. On warm nights, the chorus of crickets from the front yard is loud enough to get a little embarrassing. If I go outside and walk up and down the street, it becomes obvious that the entire cricket scene is happening at my house […]
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It’s the Algae, Dear
Oh, drear, more gloom and bad cheer — that’s what you’re thinking if you’re a SAD Brit hunkered down in your centuries-old stone house staring out the fortress slit at yet another gray day. What is this mist before your eyes, tears or rain? So you punch on the computer and randomly search for sunny […]
