The Watch Begins In addition to watching the approaching tropical cyclone, we are also reviewing the daily ice forecasts. Our plan is to fly to Goose Bay and then Nain,...
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I left Florida yesterday and arrived in Newfoundland after midnight. Rick Stanley kindly picked me up at the airport in St. John's and helped me lug all my baggage to...
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This video almost brought me to tears this morning, but I'm not sure whether it was tears of frustration or tears of determination or great hope for the next generation....
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Happy Canada Day It seems only fitting to head to my ancestral home on Canada. By midnight I'll be arriving in St. John's, Newfoundland and will be picked up by...
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The Arctic is warming very fast and as a result the sea ice minimums are shrinking each year. Watch this video to see a time-lapse of the changes that have...
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A Valuable Tool Tip I have always liked using wrist slates. Notebooks are useful for some purposes, but I find that I use a wrist slate much more often due to ease of access. I write down turn pressures or other dive details, teaching notes to review with my students and other tidbits I want to log later. To add to convenience I take a standard pencil eraser and drill a hole through the center, then skewer it with the bungee that secures the pencil to the slate. Having the ability to erase the slate makes it ever more useful….
The frontline of future American Water Wars is building in the Western United States, and Las Vegas is at the heart of the issue. Lake Mead is dwindling rapidly and pleas to nearby California for more water have gone unheard. With 100% of California now withering in record-breaking drought, there is nothing left to offer. This excellent article from the Guardian sums up the issue. But there is a very small silver lining. More aggressive water management in Las Vegas has lead to a reduction in water use per capita. Whether it is buying up turf grass or creating water reuse infrastructure, Las…
Ambit 2S and Movescount.com I have been playing with my Suunto Ambit 2S and Movescount.com to look ahead at my route for the next month. Using the tools in Movescount, I created a route and saved it as a .kml file. In Google Earth I could open the file and then view the full route. It looks like I will have over 15,000 km of travel ahead. That may seem like quite a bit, but considering I completed almost 7,000 on a bicycle last summer, it should be a piece of cake! Planes, cars, boats, underwater scooters and swimming will make…
Detroit’s Water War: a tap shut-off that could impact 300,000 people The Detroit Water Department’s needs to recoup millions of dollars to support the water utility, so they are going after the easiest targets – families. Meanwhile, Detroit’s high-end golf club, the Red Wing’s hockey arena, the Ford football stadium, and more than half of the city’s commercial and industrial users are also behind in their bills, owing a sum totalling $30 million. But no contractors have showed up on their doorstep to shut off their water. Guardian journalist Michael Lukacs tells a gut wrenching story about how people’s lives are…
National Action Plan is Needed As I packed my bags to depart for Canada’s North, I was confronted with the front page of Huffington Post. A full screen banner read “Canada is Melting.” In his article, Michael Bolen, reviews a 259 page report form the federal government that describes how Canada is warming at roughly the global average over the last half century. With no national plan for addressing climate change, he wonders how long we can keep our heads in the sand. As Prime Minister Stephen Harper said recently: “No matter what they say, no country is going to take actions…