Yeah, climate change is just a theory...right?

People multiply at an ungodly rate, CO2 increases, greenhouse gases trap heat, ice melts, less reflective land mass exists, more of the sun's radiation hits darker Earth surfaces, warming things faster, repeat.

Canadian Arctic sheds ice chunk

Oh, and caught in the crossfire right now are polar bears who will eventually have no ice left to raise babies on, rest from fishing, or sleep on. I shouldn't get started on polar bears or I may go off on a tirade.

Ok so let's say a fisherman falls off his boat. He is not adept at swimming for long periods of time. The currant pulls him away from the boat a little bit and then as he tries to swim back to the boat, it just floats off into the distance. The fisherman is now treading water in the middle of the ocean with no life raft and nobody coming to save him. He has no chance to live. No land for miles around. Eventually his muscles will give out and he will drown.

Sad metaphor, I know.

Help plant a billion trees in 2008

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has launched a major worldwide tree planting campaign. Under the Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign, people, communities, business and industry, civil society organizations and governments are encouraged to enter tree planting pledges online with the objective of planting at least one billion trees worldwide each year.

Bamboo

There has been so much talk about bamboo lately, and for good reason. I don't even know a fraction of its uses other than for flooring, fabrics, and to use as a blow-gun of you are a ninja. It's one of those really strange things in this world that is almost impossible to kill, grows hearty and rapidly, and is strong. I happen to have some growing in my yard and part of my reason for this post is to warn people about it.

Bamboo spreads. Like poison ivy (the plant and the rash). After seeing the little patch of bamboo in my yard, several people have told me they wanted some. And I could easily give it to them. This patch came from my parent's house in the form of 5-10 roots about 10 years ago.

What people don't often notice is the 40-mil plastic barrier sticking out of the ground about 3 inches (it is hidden by edgers). Those 3 inches above ground are supported by 33 inches below ground. That's right, I dug a 3-foot deep trench around the bamboo patch and it took countless hours to pull up all the roots and rhizomes that had spread into the surrounding grass area.

Bamboo must be contained. Period. It is a HIGHLY invasive species. When planned for, however, it can make a beautiful natural fence or privacy screen. Too often, though, I see peoples' yards where the bamboo is simply spreading out of control, and there is not a lot you can do about that once it starts. Ask my parents. They started with 3-5 clumps of roots and shoots. Ten years later, they had a forest of bamboo behind their house and after several days (at a time and multiple attempts at this) of serious manual labor trying to dig that stuff out, it keeps coming back. The people they got it from were digging it out with a backhoe.

My basic point is that if you want any of my bamboo, you need to approach me with a 10-step plan of how you plan to contain it.