When mamma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

When Mamma Nature ain’t happy, it can get real ugly, or pretty depending on your perspective.

Alaska’s Mount Redoubt volcano erupted five times in one night. The volcano sent ash plume more than 9 miles into the air. It was the volcano’s first emissions in nearly 20 years. (Yeah, trying to hold your anger in for 20 years will make you blow your top seriously, eh?)  Fine gray dust fell Monday morning on small communities north of Anchorage.

Alaska’s volcanos’ ash is used as an industrial abrasive. It can also injure skin, eyes and breathing passages.  Ash can cause damage to engines in planes, cars and other vehicles.

There were reports of a quarter-inch of ash in Trapper Creek and up to a half-inch at a lakeside lodge near Skwentna.

“This morning we will have a half-inch snow, um, ash fall…”

“The heavier stuff drops out very quickly, and then the other stuff filters out. There’s going to be a very fine amount of it that’s going to be suspended in the atmosphere for quite some time,” said one meteorologist. “The finer ash is going to travel farther, and any ash can affect aviation safety.”

Redoubt Volcano is 10,200 feet high and roughly 100 miles southwest of Anchorage. It last erupted during a four-month period from 1989-90.

The last time Redoubt erupted it sent ash 150 miles away into the path of a KLM jet.  The jet’s four engines flamed out and dropped more than 2 miles before the crew was able to restart all engines and land safely. It cost $80 million to repair the plane.

So, my question is – If we don’t start taking care of our planet and Mother Nature gets really really angry, what do you think might happen?

Perhaps we don’t want to find out.

Via: Sina

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The US Federal government listed the beluga whales as endangered. While the beluga swims off the coast of Alaska’s largest city, Governor Sarah Palin called the listing “premature” saying she had pressed for more time to count the whales. It stands to reason that potlickers trying to gain points in Washington 5,000+ miles away would know more than a governor who lives in the area, eh? NOT!

A beluga whale at the Georgia Aquarium

Environmentalists hailed the decision. “Hopefully the State of Alaska will now work toward protecting the beluga rather than, as with the polar bear, denying the science and suing to overturn the listing,” said the oceans program director for the Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement.

Initial problems with the number of beluga whales was caused by over-harvesting by the region’s Native hunters.

Environmentalists also criticized Palin for causing a delay in the listing. Palin had said, “The State of Alaska has had serious concerns about the low population of belugas in Cook Inlet for many years. However, we believe that this endangered listing is premature.”

The hang up on Palin’s side – “all the legal requirements” a listing brings with it. Industry groups have also fought the listing because they fear the listing will hamper:

1. Cook Inlet oil and gas development,
2. cargo shipping,
3. commercial fishing and
4. major construction projects

Let’s see, whales? or industry? – via Sina (Image courtesy of wacko)

Sarah Palin is likely to be our next Vice President of the United States … president, too if McCain kicks the bucket in office. If so, the environmentalists will have a “killa from Wasilla” on their hands. Characterized as “cut, kill, dig and drill”…

1. Sarah Palin is against classifying the polar bear as a threatened species.

2. Sarah Palin argues the Bush administration doesn’t use the best science.

3. Sarah Palin doesn’t agree with federal marine scientists who say under the Endangered Species act that the Cook Inlet beluga whale needs protection.

4. Sarah Palin doesn’t have a problem with shooting wolves from the air to boost caribou and moose herds for hunters.

5. Sarah Palin is not convinced that global warming is the result of human activity.

6. Sarah Palin opposes increased protection of salmon streams from mining operations.

7. Sarah Palin is a hockey mom who can handle a gun, dress a moose and do commercial fishing.

8. Sarah Palin says those in the 48 States don’t understand the North Country.

CA Rep Miller “doesn’t understand rural Alaska, doesn’t comprehend wildlife management in the North, and doesn’t appreciate the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that gives states the right to manage their own affairs,” Palin said in a press release a year ago.

Let’s see … who do we listen to? Someone who lives there or someone from CA who is far removed?

Images courtesy of geerlingguy and Celeste Van Kirk

In a trial that is probably going to take proportions because of the problems it raises, the village of Kivalina in Alaska is suing 24 energy companies for large amounts of greenhouse gases that contributed to global warming and led to coastal erosion, which puts the lives of the 400 residents at risk. (ADN reported)

Kivalina is a community of Inupiat Eskimos, located in the Chukchi Sea on a shrinking barrier island is now facing heavy storms and because of the shrinking sea ice that formerly acted as a barrier the waves are coming closer and closer.

The complaint (pdf link) was filed by the San Francisco-based Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment and the Anchorage office of the Native American Rights Fund in the US District Court in San Francisco against one coal company, 14 power companies and nine oil companies of which Exxon Mobil, BP, Conoco Phillips, Chevron and Duke Energy and have asked them to pay the relocation cost (around $400 million) , of moving the village to safer grounds.

As expected none of the companies expressed their point of view.

I can only hope the court will make justice and will consider reports from the US Corps of Engineers and the US General Accountability Office on coastal erosion. Here are two images of Kivalina (photos by livesimply)

Kivalina, Alaska Aerial View

$3 million sea wall to protect Kivalina from global warming effects