Bruce Barcott

Svalbard: A Paradise of Ice Faces a Creeping Thaw

Five minutes past midnight in Svalbard: The wild world is awake and clattering. At the edge of a sheltered estuary in the Adventdalen, a valley on a cluster of islands halfway between Norway and the North Pole, a flock of arctic terns soar and wheel in the perpetual daylight.

It's a typical summer night in Svalbard, an entirely atypical refuge in the high Arctic that abounds with an extraordinary array of wildlife. I had the amazing opportunity to visit this high northern refuge last summer for National Geographic, which recently published a few of my words alongside Paul Nicklen's spectacular photographs--stunning shots in the best of the Geographic tradition. (That's his Svalbard reindeer in motion.)

What's it like in Svalbard? Bright. 24-hours-a-day bright during the time I was there (August), which was highly amusing and mildly disorienting. I went for sunshiney hikes at 2am, though not outside of the town limits, because those who do so run the risk of being eaten by polar bears. Here's a shot of your faithful correspondent tanning in the midnight hours. The biggest surprise? The locals' love of winter, which brings 24-hour darkness. "It's the best in winter," one of them told me, "because it is just us, just the local people, and everyone meets at the sports center for volleyball games and has parties, and snowmobiles gives you free reign of the island."

Port Townsend picks up "Measure of a Mountain"

...and doesn't, one hopes, fling it across the room. The Port Townsend Public Library recently announced that The Measure of a Mountain: Beauty and Terror on Mount Rainier, my 1997 book about the Northwest's great geographic icon, would be the featured title in its 2009 Community Read.

I find this both amazing and moderately frightening.

How cool to have your book read by an entire town! It sounds kind of like the plot of a Stanley Kramer movie--whole town reads the book, invites author, then...something goes horribly awry in a way that propels us through awkward/funny situations to a third act resolution in which all involved learn something grand and touchingly human about themselves.

It all happens next month (March), and includes a mind-boggling number of events about Rainier, and mountains, and people's opinions about the book. I'll be there on Thursday, March 26 for a massive star-studded multimedia extravaganza of a presentation but frankly I'm tempted to slip in unannounced to some of the earlier events. There's a "Book discussion group" scheduled to meet at the Hilltop Tavern at 7pm on Thursday, March 10. Now look: I've slung back a beer in Port Townsend. The idea of a posse of critics having a go at your own book around a pitcher at the Hilltop is both profoundly scary and almost irrisistibly enticing. Especially since I've seen the MySpace page for the Hilltop. Which lists the Hilltop as a 47-year-old female. "I am a red brick building..." says the Hilltop. "I have a new beer garden. It makes the customers very happy to be able to drink outside."

My goodness.

Anyway: Come on over to PT next month for the big doings. Couple of really nice articles about it just came out in the Port Townsend Leader and the Peninsula Daily News. The Daily News piece has a massive head shot of me that has me (a) running to RiteAid for some SPF 45 and (b) considering using its gargantuanity as a Fathead poster in our basement.

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Obama's open goverment: Let's hold him to it

There's a fantastic transcript of today's Obama cabinet meeting flying around via e-mail right now. A couple things of note. First, the man seems to be able to toss off Bartlett's-worthy remarks like a Denny's fry cook whipping out Grand Slams ("Order up!"). In the course of introducing tough new lobbying rules, which should stop the ridiculous door-spinning we all got used to during the Bush days, he said this:

It's not about advancing your friends or your corporate clients.  It's not about advancing
an ideological agenda or the special interests of any organization.  Public service is, 
simply and absolutely, about advancing the interests of Americans.  

Sure, plenty of politicians could say that. But Bush never did. And if he did, the evidence would have proven him a liar.

Also, Obama turned the Freedom of Information Act back into the Freedom of Information Act. Under the Bush rules, government officials were ordered to err on the side of secrecy. If a document wasn't already public, there were almost no good reasons to make it so. Obama just changed that.

For a long time now, there's been too much secrecy in this city.  The old rules said that if there was a defensible argument for not disclosing something to the American people, then it should not be disclosed.  That era is now over.  Starting today, every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information but those who seek to make it known.

Those two items aren't campaign promises. Obama just signed the Executive Orders. They're done.

Now it's up to us to hold him to it.

Birdstrike II: Why can't we shield the engines?

I've been asked the question three times in the past hour: Why can't they just put shields over the engines of airplanes to keep birds from destroying them? In other words, put some dang ol' wire mesh in front of 'em, like they did in the old days. Well, at least the old German days (see photo). I put the question to Russ DeFusco, one of the world's leading birdstrike experts and my main source for birdstrike knowledge over the past six months. Says Russ:

I can't even tell you how often this is suggested to us, but the bad news is it just can't be done.  Any kind of defective shield is so disruptive to airflow that modern jet engines just can't operate with them.  In order to make such a shield, it would have to be minimally intrusive and thus not able to withstand an impact.  In fact, such a shield would likely collapse and itself be drawn into the engines and thus cause even more damage.  The answer has been incorporated into almost all modern jet engines: a high bypass ratio.  Most air bypasses the core of the engine and is redirected, forced down, and used as thrust and for cooling.  Only a portion (usually less than 20%) is used for combustion in the core.  Therefore, most debris, including birds, is shunted to the perimeter of the engine and bypasses the core.  Unfortunately, birds and other debris when they hit the fan blades sometimes cause those blades to fail and they in turn are ingested along with the bird remains.  This, along with the inherent instability that results is usually the cause of an engine's demise in such events.

Russ has more info, great links, and a slideshow at www.bash-inc.com.

Birdstrike: Behind the US Air Crash

Talk about strange timing: About three weeks ago I handed in a 3,500-word feature on the danger of birdstrikes--airplanes hitting birds--to the editors at Audubon Magazine. "The numbers keep going up, and the FAA is just clueless," one veteran pilot told me. "The airline industry doesn't want to get involved because they're afraid they might have to spend money. Nobody will get involved until we have a big catastrophe." 
    Enter catastrophe. 
    Early indications are that yesterday's crash of a US Airways jet on New York's Hudson River was caused by a birdstrike. Two, in fact. Canada geese. Took out the engines.
    Aubudon is scrambling to put the piece up on its web site, and it should be there any minute now. I'll link to it when it's live. In the meantime, I put together a short piece for the New York Times Op-Ed page, which they're running on their "Room for Debate" web site, which picks up where the printed page leaves off. As soon as the Audubon story goes up, I'll post more photos and videos of birdstrikes. Amazing stuff, really.

Gil's Great Goodbye

The Bush Administration warped American life in such profound yet subtle ways that we won't really know what hit us we can look back years from now and wonder, What the hell? Take, as one tiny example, television. There were some shows made unwatchable by their virtuous counter-example: The West Wing. Week after week, we'd tune in to watch the train we'd all missed by a few lousy Florida votes--a smart, articulate, chess-playing(!) president who was familiar with the concepts of strategy, diplomacy, and sophistication. At least you all tuned in, because after a while the contrast between make-believe Martin Sheen and the real-world man in the Oval became too painful for me to take. And then there were shows made unbearable simply by the knowledge that Dick Cheney liked them: 24. How could you enjoy Kiefer Sutherland saving the world when you knew the Dark One took every episode as an endorsement for waterboarding? There were changes in viewing habits that, at first, baffled the commentariat--I worry and scratch my chin as America switches from Tom Brokaw to Jon Stewart--and then, as some unspoken tipping point was reached, became obvious. How could you not get your news from Stewart, seemingly the only man in America left with an honest, not-completely-gutless reaction. Finally, last night's exit by Gil Grissom from CSI. It's no mystery why CSI has crushed all comers in the ratings: Cops and robbers in Vegas, great writing, fab acting, good guys win. And no politics involved. Pure escapism. Until last night, that is. On his way out the door, Gil Grissom (William Peterson) uttered a piece of advice to his successor, played by Samuel L. Jackson. "People lie," he said. "The only thing we can count on is the evidence." As the Bushies leave the building, it's not a bad aphorism to remember them by.

Propane vs Passive

Take it as a sign of America's home heating bill sickness (as in, we're sick of paying them): Today's most-emailed story over at the New York Times is a feature on passive houses, homes so efficient and tight they require no fuel source other than human bodies. As a couple of colleagues have pointed out, the story was frustratingly short on specifics--the key to the whole rig seems to be a mysterious heat exchanger shaped like a styrofoam cooler--but apparently that hasn't stopped a whole lot of readers from dreaming of a fuel-bill-free world. I rooted around and found a few more details at the Passive House Institute, an Urbana, Illinois-based group, that's got a good web site and a book, Homes for a Changing Climate. If you're wondering how propane and heating oil prices have fluctuated in the past year, check out the Energy Information Administration's heating oil and propane update. I also like John Bogdanski's home heating site; he ain't the greenest freak in the world but the Boge peddles good basic info. The most intriguing device I've run across lately is the EcoFire Super-Grate, which promises to turn your fireplace into a high-efficiency heater. Anybody tried one of these things? Do they work? Let me know.

** INAUGURATION UPDATE ** LET THE SHOESTORM BEGIN!

INAUGURATION DAY UPDATE: Fantastic piece in today's Huffingtonpost about revelers in D.C. throwing shoes over the White House fence yesterday, and at a blow-up W doll today.

I just got back from the Bainbridge Island post office, where I met a woman waiting patiently in the long holiday line to mail her own shoe to the White House. GENIUS! The brilliance of her idea nearly sent me running screaming in the streets. If you haven't seen the video of the Iraqi journalist throwing his own shoes (excellent aim and velocity--had he practiced?) at George W. Bush, you can see the CNN clip here. I'm going home now to box up an old hiking boot. Tell your friends to do the same. Here's the mailing address: George Bush, The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington DC 20500. Boot up, America!

Life and Limb: Running with Tom White

Over the past 12 months I've had the great fortune to spend time with Tom White, a new addition to my life list of amazing, inspiring people (see also: Sharon Matola, Alex Lowe, Alexandra Morton) whose spirit stays with me long after the reporting and writing end. Tom's a family doctor in Buena Vista, Colorado, who nearly lost his leg in a motorcycle accident 25 years ago. After recovering from that tragedy (he was an NCAA marathoner at the time), Tom returned to doing what he loved: Running long distances with his wife Tammy. When his leg began failing him again, though, he made an agonizing choice. He decided to have it cut off so that he might run again. I followed Tom and Tammy through his decision, surgery, recovery, and rehab for Runner's World, and you can read the whole story here. A little more than a year ago Tom was recovering from surgery. Last month he ran the New York City Marathon. Check out his mid-race interview in this video from WNBC.

How many scarlet macaws are left in Central America?

The conservation status of Ara macao, the scarlet macaw, is one of the central issues in The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw. The bird's relatively healthy populations in South America keep it off the IUCN's   Red List of endangered species, but that designation hides the bird's threatened status in Central America, where its habitat is quickly dwindling--and with it, the last flocks of the area's wild macaws. I'm continuing to track the region's macaw populations, and am building some pages that contain general information and deeper source material, which you can find here.