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A man's home is his castle.
Upham Manor
Upham Manor has been home to my family for three generations, going back to my maternal grandfather. I am the current Lord of Upham and live there with my wife Janet and our son Benjamin and our twin sons Daniel and Jesse.
The grounds of the manor include the Mead Hall, a small piazza, the gardens, the courtyard, and a shrine. (Every estate needs a shrine.)
Not bad for a sixteenth of an acre of land, eh?
If you would not be forgotten
As soon as you are dead and rotten,
Either write things worth worth the reading,
Or do things worth the writing.
-Benjamin Franklin
The grounds of the manor include the Mead Hall, a small piazza, the gardens, the courtyard, and a shrine. (Every estate needs a shrine.)
Not bad for a sixteenth of an acre of land, eh?
If you would not be forgotten
As soon as you are dead and rotten,
Either write things worth worth the reading,
Or do things worth the writing.
-Benjamin Franklin
Yeoman Followers
About Me
- Gleno
- There is little better in life than hosting friends & family in the parlor or Mead Hall at Upham Manor. A fine meal, good wine, warm fire, and stimulating conversation amongst thoughtful people are one of the things in life I relish most.
8 comments:
Aspen Die-Off May Hurt Colorado's Economy
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114195038
Pine Forests Destroyed by Beetle Takeover
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89942771
Bark Beetles Spark Western Fire Threat
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5560058
The threat to Whitebark Pine by blister rust is currently complicated by widespread outbreaks of Mountain Pine Beetle in the western U.S. and Canada.[3] Since 2000, the climate at high elevations has been warm enough for the beetles to reproduce within Whitebark Pine, often completing their life cycle within one year and enabling their populations to grow exponentially. These higher temperature trends have been attributed by some researchers to global warming. Regardless of cause, the pine beetle upsurge has killed large numbers of Whitebark Pine (nearly 3/4 million in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem alone). Mountain pine beetles jeopardize current and future Whitebark Pine restoration efforts, because they are killing trees genetically resistant to white pine blister rust.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitebark_Pine
Global Warming Has Devastating Effect on Coral Reefs, Study Shows
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/warming-coral.html
Devastating invasive pest threatens hemlock trees in region
Whitmore speculated that the local adelgids may be adapting to colder temperatures or able to survive in milder microclimates created by the Finger Lakes. Long-term climate warming, he said, may eventually play a role in their spread.
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/March09/hemlock.kr.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/us/13water.html
Cleansing the Air at the Expense of Waterways
These are a few things that pop into my head. They used to carry a canary in a coal mine. I watch trees die every year. Here, in MA. They are under assault from bugs that were never here before. We lost a beautiful Norway spruce a few years ago, just dropped dead, and I fear the others will soon follow. Is it a subtle rise in overall temps? Is it disease or bugs that are taking advantage of those slightly higher temps and or stress to the trees? Some things can be attributed to human movement, but other things seem to be thriving for other reasons. Also, even if you don't believe in global warming, no one can deny global pollution. If for NO OTHER REASON than to protect our health from pollution, carbon use MUST be reduced.
I do not make any statement denying "global warming." It's clearly demonstrated that temperatures have been rising since the end of the last ice age.
I also do not disagree that air pollution (and all kinds of pollution should be reduced).
I do not believe the tenuous causality assumed by many is nearly as strong as we're told, if there is a connection at all.
If I put a pot of water on the stove and turn the gas on, and then dip my elbow in the water, I'd hope I'd have a tough time convincing you that it was my body heat that was responsible for the rising in water temperature. The same thing holds true for human causality for increased global temperatures.
But, regardless of the presence or absence of a connetion, the solution is NEVER to abandon our freedoms to ANYONE, not our own government, and certainly not to any global policy making body that presumes to usurp our sovereignty.
I promise you right now with all I have in me, I will not fail to pursue the violent overthrow of our government if we cede our liberty over to a world body to the degree proposed by this "treaty." Taxation without representation was wrong in the 18th century and it's still wrong today.
The climate is CHANGING. It always changes. We can't make it happen any faster, and we can't slow it down. We have to adapt to it, or we will go extinct. The current changes may be faster than they have been before. Eventually, they will slow down. And things will adapt. Or, they'll die. Some species will prosper. Others, will grow too fast, and burn out. Others, may dominate. Like we have. Oh well. Too bad. The Sahara desert used to be a lush forest. If the Arctic Ice melts, it MAY stop the Gulf Stream current. Which would make the North colder. Which would make the ice form faster again. It's too complicated for us to comprehend, much less manage. So some trees die. So what. Others will grow there eventually. Or, maybe they won't. We are too short-sighted.
Alright, here's another what if. This isn't about warming, it's about CO2. (Its the first site I grabbed, but it explains it pretty simply)http://www.eurekalert.org/features/kids/2004-07/aaft-hd020805.php
CO2 in the air get absorbed by the ocean, changing the sea life. Millions if not billions of people survive on food from the sea. Change that, and with our overfishing we already are, and you change the entire food cycle, possibly starving millions of people. But hell, they'll adapt. We can't change the atmosphere to make the world warmer? Ok, fine, but we sure as hell can strip the ocean of most of it's life, if no one stops us, and that's without changing the co2.
I understand that things will change, but in one person's lifetime? Donzo may not give a hoot about the trees, but with the trees goes an entire ecosystem, from the bugs up to the bears, and including the people. Sure, whatever survives survives. But someone somewhere is using the same logic to poison the water, the food, you name it. Hey, so what if everyone is getting cancer. Maybe it will just speed up evolution a bit.
I'm tangenting, I realize this. Glen, I dont want our country giving up its sovereignty either. But I do want it to get of it's flipping ass and do something to change the way we make and use energy. Eventually, it will ALL run out, the coal, the gas, the oil. And while we have a yellow haze over the entire South Shore most days, you know you are filtering that air with every breath you take. Suck it in, it's good for you! And it's making someone rich.
I'm not really concerned about global warming or climate change or whatever new label they want to slap on the notion that mankind is ruining the planet. It seems oddly paradoxical to me that evolutionists worry about things changing and going extinct when that's exactly what their entire ideaology is predicated upon.
As a Christian who believes unabashadly in Creation (not some sissified "intelligent design"), I'm not worried about the world being prematurely destroyed by man. HOWEVER, I AM very motivated to say that we are supposed to be good stewards of creation. Pollution in all its forms needs to be controlled, regulated against, punished, and what was ruined restored.
What are your thoughts on nuclear energy? To me it seems like the most obvious, cost effective, safe, (did he say "safe??") and efficient energy means we have. It's a terrible, terrible shame that those who claim to hold the environment's best interest at heart are the ones blocking us from fully utilizing this power.
I used to be very against the idea of nuclear energy, for the simple reason that we have no way of getting rid of nuclear waste. And any time you make waste, you aught to have a good plan on what to do with it that won't create more problems. And of course there is always the dreaded meltdown scenario, which can happen any time you mix humans and responsibility.
But now, looking at the options, nuclear energy is something I think HAS to be considered. It is by far cleaner than anything out there, besides renewable forms of energy such as solar and wind. But before we go building any more unloved nuclear plants, I think we have to look seriously at non polluting energy. I've heard of amazing amounts of energy that can be produced by the sun, and not with solar panels.
When we get really serious about renewable energy, like tidal generators all along the coast, and get over this idiotic 'not in my backyard' mentality.. Oh, wait, never mind. Humans don't changed until the crisis hits, if ever.
Ironically, some of the changes in the climate recently have endangered nuclear plants in Europe and the US which rely on water to cool them. "Nuclear reactors across the southeastern United States could be forced to throttle back or temporarily shut down later this year because drought is drying up the rivers and lakes that supply power plants with the awesome amounts of cooling water they need to operate. ""During Europe’s brutal 2006 heat wave, French, Spanish and German utilities were forced to shut down some of their nuclear plants and reduce power at others because of low water levels — some for as much as a week."
Mankind's search for the perpetual motion machine seems to have overlooked the tides. What machine could be better? It's ubiquitous (everyone with a mile of coastline has one), it's free (at least until the liberals decide to tax it) and it's eternal. Heck, unless we somehow knock the moon out of orbit, we'll always have it and it generates no pollution.
So why hasn't anyone come up with a plan to utilize it?
Pisses me off to no end, really. You can't tell me it would take very complex engineering to put a water wheel into the surf and design it to turn in alternating directions. Given the immense power of the tides, it wouldn't need to turn very quickly at all. Just design it to use a lot of torque.
There are plenty of remote places that we could build nuclear power plants: northern woods of Maine, deserts, the tundra, or just about anywhere in New Jersey would make appropriate locations.
And as for the waste? We could send some of the rods into space -- hell, we're already up there often enough. Anything coming down would burn up harmlessly, including radioactive materials, I'm sure. How about mine shafts? We've got tons of them? How about volcanoes? And again, how about New Jersey?
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