Smartphones — Modern Day Shamanism

Constellations

Man has stared into the Heavens for thousands of years. At first, we saw only shimmering jewels glittering in the Firmament, having no concept of space and stars or planets and Earthlings. There was only man, his family, the village, the country, the ocean and the sky. But what of the sky?

The night lights were constantly moving, constantly shifting and drifting across the sky, but early man noticed there were repeating patterns and memorable formations, shapes and figures to which he gave recognizable names: bear, lion, fish, bird, dragon, hunter, man, woman, and so on. These early constellations are still there, plus many more, but who other than astronomers and amateur buffs really looks at them anymore?

Do most people living in the city ever look up and remember what sort of mysteries lie beyond the harsh glow of the city street lights? Or are they too blinded by their busy urban lifestyles — going from work to the bar, from soccer game to school concert, from shopping mall to shopping mall — to slow down and recollect the grand mystery of the spheres always playing out right over our very heads?

Now, I don’t want to make it sound too dramatic seeing as astronomy, to most people, is about as riveting as watching paint dry — less so if you asked my wife — but fortunately there are decent iPhone apps out there that make astronomy more hands-on and immediate. My favorite one so far is called “SkyView.”

SkyView uses the GPS in your iPhone to identify your latitudinal and longitudinal location, establishes the correct sky dome around your global position and, using the iPhone camera to give you a see-through window, overlays the proper constellation patterns and planetary positions on your screen as you scan the Heavens with your phone. It tracks the Sun, the Moon and the planets and shows the elliptical slant of the solar system, showcasing the way the Heavenly bodies chase each other through the sky in such a simple-to-understand format that even Copernicus would be awed. Not only that, but SkyView also labels all the orbiting satellites in your field of vision and names every star in the sky (even the ones you can’t see from the city), taking all the memorization and night-vision-preserving flashlights out of amateur astronomy. “Augmented reality” indeed.

So now, with a simple tap of an icon, you can view the constellations in a way that took mankind thousands of years of develop and was, at one time, a secret knowledge possessed only by high priests and shamans. The secret machinations of the night sky are contained within a 21.5 MB program and are available for $0.99 on the App Store.

Wouldn’t our star-gazing ancestors be amazed at these vaunted accomplishments? Where they built monolithic monuments and humongous pyramids in alignment with the stars, we built a tiny device capable of mapping and charting them in the blink of an eye, even during the daytime. “Where’s Jupiter? Oh, there it is, just below the horizon line; it hasn’t risen yet. But it will be right there at 10:33 PM. Hey look! The Hubble telescope is passing just overhead. See that faint moving ball of light?”

We take it for granted just how amazing our modern-day technology really is. In any other age, smartphones would be considered sorcery and we’d all be burned at the stake.

There’s been a lull on this blog…

…but not to worry, because new posts will be coming soon.

In the meantime, visit aftertherapture.wordpress.com for some light-hearted, armageddon-tinged fan fiction written by yours truly.

 

Spring Flooding — the New Norm

Flooded neighborhoods in St. Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, May 5, 2011

For some pundits, it’s becoming rather easy to pile up examples of recent wacky or extreme weather patterns and put the blame on “global warming.” This year alone, there have been freak snowstorms, prolonged winters, destructive tornadoes, massive tsunamis, out-of-control wildfires and, of course, rampant flooding. But is global warming really to blame? Are humans directly responsible for throwing the Earth’s weather systems out of kilter? And can we expect to see more floods in the near future?

In a province like Manitoba, which seems to face near-cataclysmic flooding every couple of years, words like “worst-ever” and “unprecedented” aren’t bandied about very lightly. Remember, this is a province where the capital city of Winnipeg is protected by a 50-year-old “Floodway,” a life-saving feat of engineering marvel designed to divert and control the flow of the Red River during spring runoff. The Floodway was constructed after the Red River Flood of 1950 destroyed a good portion of Winnipeg, but that flood was only the seventh highest on record since 1826. Those flood levels were surpassed in 1997, then again in 2009, and now for a third, and most dramatic, time in 2011.

As Brandon dealt with the spill-over from the severely engorged Assiniboine River, causing what officials called a “1-in-300-year flood” (a bit of an exaggeration), there were very real worries that things could go from bad to worse very quickly—things got so bad, in fact, that Greg Selinger, Premier of Manitoba, announced on Friday the 13 of May, that he was going to purposefully break a dike at the Hoop and Holler Bend near Portage-de-Prairie the next morning and flood an otherwise unaffected swath of land to the tune of 225 square kilometers, an area that included many rural towns and arable farmland. There was much outrage and consternation, but the waters couldn’t be held back.

Manitoba isn’t the only place experiencing higher-than-normal flooding this year: residents in cities along the Richelieu River in Quebec fled from their homes over a month ago as the water cascaded down from a swollen Lake Champlain and found its way into their basements. Heavy rainfall, unseasonal snowstorms and a late, slow winter thaw have all contributed to the “unprecedented” water levels, also said to be the highest “in over 140 years.” Due to heavy rainfall and lingering crests, the waters still haven’t receded. Neighborhood streets remain flooded and dealing with house mold has become the number one priority among non-evacuated residents.

There’s also the flooding in British Columbia to account for, where the rapidly melting snowpack pushed rivers higher and higher throughout the province. Water levels haven’t yet reached the city-flooding proportions of Manitoba or Quebec, but no one knows how quickly things might change or worsen. The main reason for the higher-than-normal rivers in BC is due to a record snowfall in the Kootenay mountains—recorded at its highest accumulation since 1991—and the later-than-normal spring thaw. Heavy rain and cloudy forecasts have only added to the worries.

The Mississippi River gushes out of the Morganza Spillway, opened for the first time since 1973

South of the border, states along the Mississippi River have also been dealing with record flood levels, but their situation is much more dire. Cities like Memphis, Tennessee, and Vicksburg, Mississippi, have been inundated by floodwaters. For the first time in 38 years—and for only the second time since it was built in 1954—authorities in Louisiana have opened the floodgates of the Morganza spillway and have loosed the destructive waters of the Mississippi on the flatlands of southern Louisiana, expecting the waters to spread over nearly 8000 square kilometers, decimating rich farmlands, fish farms and small towns before finally emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. These desperate measures have been undertaken to save larger cities like Baton Rouge and New Orleans—still not fully recovered from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005—from broken levees and further destruction. Unfortunately, the people who have been put in the path of the Mississippi deluge are some of the same who had to deal with the brutal consequences of the BP Deepwater oil spill just last March, a terrible run of luck that doesn’t look to be ending any time soon.

Speaking of the Gulf of Mexico, another calamitous side-effect of the Mississippi River flooding will be the unchecked dumping of fertilizer, manure, top soil, garbage and other prefabricated detritus washed downstream by the raging river waters into the deep blue ocean. This flood debris will not only further pollute the already–heavily polluted Gulf of Mexico, but the excessive amounts of untreated fertilizer, sewage and other waste products high in nitrates and phosphates will serve to exacerbate the western hemisphere’s largest dead zone, sapping the Gulf waters of what little oxygen and nutrients it has left (for more info, please read my other article, ”The Jellyfish Are Coming! The Jellyfish Are Coming!“).

But where is all this extra water coming from? And why is it showing up all at once? It seems logical to surmise that, as the polar ice caps melt as a result of man-made global warming, more water is being released from these 3000-year-old glaciers and is re-entering the water table as either rising sea levels or increased precipitation. This logic could be used to account for the higher-than-average snowfall dumped on a large portion of North America this past winter, the melting of which is causing most of these flooding headaches. But, global warming aside, we’ve experienced higher-than-average snowfalls in years past and haven’t pushed the panic button when the spring thaw hit and flooded our basements. So why is it any different now? Has the thought of global warming become so prevalent now that people have stopped looking for other explanations? Even though it’s entirely possible that global warming played a small part in our current flooding woes (only time will tell), I still don’t think it’s the sole culprit.

Homes on Mud Island sit in floodwater Tuesday, May 10, 2011, in Memphis, Tennessee. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

Other questions raised by all the flooding is the role of proper city planning and the proliferation of urban sprawl. As our cities get more and more crowded, municipal planners keep looking for new parts of the city to develop. Eventually, areas of the city that were previously considered undesirable or risky, like floodplains or along riverbanks, are snapped up and filled with condos and duplexes. New residents, lured in by promises of “river-front living” and lower mortgages, don’t even recognize the threat of living so close to such an unpredictable body of water, which most of the time is relatively harmless but still harbours the potential of wreaking the massive damage we’re seeing now. For example, in Memphis, Tennessee, the worst flooding occurred in neighborhoods on Mud Island, a riverside community built up in just the past 20 years. Now, logic would dictate that the name “Mud Island” wasn’t plucked randomly from a hat but actually has some connection to the type of land that existed there before development began—and, truth be told, a name like “Flooded So Often That Grass Won’t Even Grow Here Island” just doesn’t have the same cachet. If these “danger areas” were left undeveloped just in case a monster flood like this one came ripping through the city, there would be a lot less damage and a lot less displaced, angry, frustrated residents filling the hotels.

The other problem with the current city-development scheme is the proliferation of urban sprawl. As our cities expand, we need to develop more neighborhoods for people to live in, which means more roads and more schools and more shopping centers and more parking lots. To make room for all these things, construction crews go into pristine landscapes, rip up trees and shrubs and existing vegetation, remove all the dirt to lay pipes, gas lines and sewers, then re-grade the land and build on top of the new levelled surface. They pour concrete foundations for houses, asphalt tarmacs for roads and cement pads for parking lots. All of this new development completely changes the make-up of the land, destroying natural water channels, natural drainage patterns and, worst of all, uprooting hundred-year-old tree growth and their potent water-sucking abilities.

To compensate for completely raping the land, they install storm drains and gutters to help guide the water into the sewers and away from the surface. But all this excess water, instead of filtering down naturally through the soil and into tree-roots and underground reservoirs, is now funnelled through a couple of miles of sewers and is dumped directly into nearby rivers or lakes or other bodies of water, which, during flood season, shouldn’t be forced to handle all the extra run-off. Some of our current flooding problems have no doubt been exacerbated by the water management practices of local municipalities.

Beyond the looming threat of global warming, spring floods are sure to become a recurring theme over the next decade. We probably won’t have record floods like this one every year (hopefully), but so long as our society continues to ignore the tenets of sustainable development (ie. installing gray water systems to reduce, and maximize, water use) and refuses to curb its overzealous building habits, our streets might start looking like Vienna and we’ll all be canoeing our way to work. Don’t laugh—it’s already happening in Quebec.

Paddling on the Richelieu River, Monday, May 9, 2011, Saint-Paul-de-l'Ile-aux-Noix, Quebec (Ryan Remiorz/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

The Cherished Child of Chaldean Brown.

Inspired by the National Novel Writing Month, I recently decided to embark on a literary escapade not unlike the prosaic misadventures of Todd Babiak and Alexander McCall Smith: the serial novel. A format that is usually printed daily in newspapers, the serial novel is the ultimate test of prolific writing.

What I’m going to try and do is write a 50,000 word novella completely online, publishing each scene right after I finish it. The idea is to eliminate a writer’s worst enemy: constant editing and rewrites. I can’t promise that I’m going to finish the whole story in 30 days, as per the conditions of the National Novel Writing Month, but I will do my best to top out at 50,000 words, whether it be before Christmas or by next summer. To keep me honest, I will be keeping a cumulative word count of my ongoing wordsmithly battles. Literary mayhem ensues.

I believe a quick synopsis is in order, and then it’s up to YOU to
start reading:

“The Cherished Child of Chaldean Brown” is being written as a memoirs-style mystery story about a father and his son set in the near future in-and-around Alberta, Canada. The main character, Chaldean Brown, was abandoned by his father at a young age and, only recently, has had the chance to reconnect with his estranged parent. The only problem is his father seems to have lost his mind, spouting endless drivel about discovering Atlantis and staying the weekend in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Four weeks ago, however, Chaldean discovered a secret about his father’s past, a secret that suggested his father wasn’t crazy at all and was somehow speaking the truth. But who else would believe him?

Start reading: http://serial.allanink.com/

Near Earth Asteroid Tracker is NEAT.

Amateur astronomer Rolando Ligustri took this photo of an incoming comet dubbed "Hartley 2" near the Pacman cluster.

Do you remember what you were doing on September 8, 2010? It was the Wednesday right after Labor Day long weekend. Do you remember what you had for lunch? Or who you talked to on the phone? Did you send a funny text to a friend who lol’d you back? You were probably distracted by the widely publicized upcoming 9/11 protests that were all over the evening news, fuelled by talks of building a mosque near Ground Zero in New York and coming to a head when that wacky American pastor Terry Jones decided to tell everyone that he was planning to burn Qurans at mass on September 11. There were also a lot of TV show premieres that week as most networks’ fall schedules came into effect. Oh, and not to mention it was back-to-school week for most students and their parents, meeting new friends, changing schools and the parents’ last minute scramble to buy school supplies, new clothes and lunchbox-friendly snacks items.  

On September 8, 2010, 2 asteroids whizzed by the Earth within the orbit of the Moon.

So I really don’t blame you if you didn’t know that the Earth was almost struck by not one, but two asteroids on September 8, 2010. These two asteroids were spotted at the last minute (astronomically speaking) just three days before they blasted past Earth, both passing within the orbit of the Moon (known as the Lunar Distance or LD, equal to 384,000 kilometers).  

Showing the altered trajectory of asteroid 2010 RF12 due to its nearness to Earth's gravity.

The first rock, dubbed 2010 RX30, shot past the Earth at about 3:51 am MDT, when most of us were probably still sleeping—it was 10–20 meters in size (about the size of a semi-trailer) and passed within 0.6 LD (248,000 kilometers) of Earth. The second asteroid, dubbed 2010 RF12, rattled our cages at 2:21 pm MDT from a ridiculously close distance of 0.2 LD (79,000 kilometers), close enough to be affected by Earth’s gravity. To put that distance into perspective, all of our orbiting geosynchronous satellites (for weather, communication, broadcasting, etc) have to be stationed at an altitude of 36,000 kilometers in order to stay fixated on a specific geographic location, meaning 2010 RF12 was only twice as far away from hitting Earth as an orbiting FoxNews satellite. Luckily, this second asteroid was only 6–14 meters in size (about the size of a stretch limo), a likely candidate for atmospheric dispersal.  

In fact, to allay your blooming panic and fear, most of the asteroids that blaze past Earth are usually not big enough to penetrate our atmosphere (which also protects us from dangerous solar winds and produces aurora borealis). Unless the asteroid were at least 100 meters in size, it wouldn’t last long enough to get anywhere near the Earth’s surface—you might get to see a wicked fireball, but there won’t be a smoking hot meteorite to pick up afterwards. At least once a year, a car-sized asteroid flashes through Earth’s atmosphere and leaves a wicked contrail; not to mention all the smaller, basketball-sized meteors (so-called ”shooting stars”) that constantly blaze through the sky. That isn’t to say that there isn’t a slight risk that an incoming asteroid might strike the atmosphere at exactly the right angle to avoid being burnt to a total crisp, but in any case, the rock would have to be pretty huge to cause catastrophic, wide-spread damage—about 2 kilometers in size is a typical large-impact asteroid.  

One of the telescopes at Catalina Sky Surveys in Tucson, Arizona.

Unfortunately, we have a veritable treasure trove of Near Earth Objects (NEOs)—comprising Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) and Near Earth Comets (NECs)—to worry about, all within 116 LDs (44,590,000 kilometers) of Earth. For example, just recently, on October 1, 2010, NEO 1998 UO1, an asteroid with a diameter of 1.3–2.9 kilometers, passed within 32.1 LDs of Earth (12,326,400 kilometers). Then, coming up on October 14, we can expect to not even notice as NEO 1999 VO6, another massive hunk of rock with a diameter of 1.1–2.5 kilometers, breezes past Earth, narrowly missing us by about 34.3 LDs (13,171,200 kilometers). And, more notably for backyard astronomers, comet 103P/Hartley 2—a highly visible, blue-green tailed comet about 1.6 kilometers across—is expected to come within 47 LDs of Earth (18,048,000 kilometers), putting on a spectacular show in the constellation Cassiopeia for the next couple weeks.  

To make matters even worse, as of October 3, NASA has counted no less than 1147 potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) within 20 LDs (7,500,000 kilometers) of Earth, all of which are over 150 meters in size and, due to the tug and pull of other planetary objects, might potentially pass fairly close to Earth at one point in their oblong orbits. For an exhaustive list of other NEOs and their approximate close approach dates, please click here.  

To me, what’s even more impressive than Earth’s constant dodging of such an Armageddon-like disaster is that we can know so much about it. In 1998—which, ironically (or sadly, maybe not), is the same year that the movie Armageddon was released—NASA instigated a program known as “Spaceguard,” which had the vested purpose of “discovering and charting over 90 percent of the near Earth objects larger than one kilometer in size by the end of 2008.” In aiming so high, however, the program drastically underestimated just how many NEOs there actually are out there. To date, they’ve discovered over 6400 NEAs and 84 NECs, but which is admittedly only about 60 percent of the total number of NEOs thought to be spinning around Earth’s immediate vicinity. Spaceguard eventually expanded their search to include the “far more numerous, perhaps hundreds of thousands” NEOs that are less than one kilometer in size, creating a massive catalogue of years and arbitrary numbers that look like this: 2010 RT30, 2004 RQ252, 1998 MQ, 2002 EZ16, etc.  

A graph depicting the rapid increase of newly discovered NEOs since 1995.

Today, Spaceguard is known as the Near Earth Object Program and brings together observatories from all across the world, such as the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) in Socorro, New Mexico, the Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) in Tuscon, Arizona, the Siding Spring Survey (SSS) near Coonabarabran, Australia, and—by far the most creatively named—Japanese Spaceguard Association (JSGA) in Bisei Town, Japan. As you can see in the graph above, the amount of newly discovered NEOs found as a result of all the extra observation jumped from a paltry 40 discoveries per year in 1995 to over 800 per year in 2009, and those numbers just continue to grow.  

Most of these NEOs are chunks of rock culled from the asteroid belt, that giant hula hoop of planetary debris orbiting out past Mars. In my experience, I’ve found that astronomy books and orthodox opinion paints a rather benign picture of our solar system’s asteroid belt, like it’s just a couple dozen hunks making up a harmless interstellar pearl necklace—when in fact, the asteroid belt is a terrifying conglomeration of atmosphere-piercing space missiles, some of which occupy orbits that keep them coming close to Earth on a regular basis just to say “hi.”  

These asteroids are caught up in the same unyielding solar gravity field as we are and, because of their smaller size, aren’t locked into the same steady orbit as Earth—they often collide and fracture, spin-off and change direction, impacting one another and moving into different, more elliptical orbits. Asteroids can also be knocked off course by passing high-speed comets (like Hartley 2 on October 20) that are on a bee-line towards the Sun, thereby inadvertently pushing more PHAs into Earth’s airspace. The moon, just like the Earth, is visibly pockmarked with evidence of hundreds of thousands of years of asteroid impacts, though most terrestrial evidence has been masked by erosion, geology, vegetation and ocean water.  

According to conservative estimates, there are no less than 450,000 asteroids comprising the asteroid belt, most of which are completely unknown to us other than the fact that they exist. To put it into perspective, here’s is a startling graphic depicting the absolutely crowded nature of our inner solar system.  

(The green fringe shows the sheer density of the asteroid belt, while the red dots demarcate the potentially dangerous NEAs, spinning and cavorting right through Earth’s orbit.)  

The inner sanctum of the asteroid belt. NEAs are marked in red.

Of particular concern to scientists and astronomers is a future close pass by the asteroid Apophis, scheduled for Friday, April 13, 2029. Apophis is an asteroid 270 meters in size that was discovered in 2004, and it is expected to pass by only about 29,470 kilometers above sea level, over 6000 kilometers closer than Earth’s geosynchronous satellites, which—needless to say—is pretty damn close. At first, astronomers figured that Apophis had a 2.9 percent chance of striking Earth, but after some intense calculations, they finally determined that we should probably be safe, but just barely. Now, the concern lies in how much Earth’s gravity will alter Apophis’ trajectory for its next pass, expected in 2036, although there are so many factors in play that such a determination is nearly impossible to lock down. As it stands, we’ll just have to wait and see how Apophis responds.  

Now, I’m not trying to scare you with any of this, nor do I think you should lose any sleep over it. Asteroids have been circling overhead for millions of years and have been exploding in Earth’s atmosphere for longer than any of us have been alive, so it’s not a sudden development that we should be increasingly wary of. Just rest easy knowing that if a giant destructive space rock was about to tear its way through the Earth’s atmosphere and destroy civilization as we know it, you will probably have enough warning to get your affairs in order.

The Jellyfish are Coming! The Jellyfish are Coming!

Japanese fishermen unsure how to extract the Nomura jellyfish from their nets.

Global warming is proving to have a few unexpected side effects. Other than the incremental increase in temperatures worldwide, the greater intensity of hurricanes and tropical storms, and the constant danger of drought and deadly forest fires—all of which were predicted before global warming became such an ever-present condition—there have been a good number of surprising developments that no one could have seen coming.   

One of these developments was the invasion of the virulent mountain pine beetle into B.C., Alberta and the northern United States, turning otherwise healthy pine trees into red-tinged, cancerous stumps. Sure, the mountain pine beetle has always been around, but the advent of global warming expanded their pestilence by bringing warmer temperatures and somewhat milder winters, giving the beetles a longer time to run rampant over the countryside. We are still trying to figure out how to stem their yearly feeding frenzy before they turn our national parks into a tinderbox of dead wood.

Another huge problem is happening in Japan, namely the sudden influx of Nomura jellyfish into their valuable fishing grounds. Since 2000, as global warming has slowly raised the ambient temperature of the Sea of Japan, Japanese fishermen have noticed a stunning seasonal increase in the number of these gigantic jellyfish. And when I say “gigantic,” I mean absolutely, grotesquely, hugely gargantuan. These mysterious creatures routinely reach mammoth proportions of about 6 feet long (with tentacles) and weigh up to 450 pounds, literally the same size as a Japanese sumo wrestler. If that’s not scary enough, imagine 10,000 of these massive creatures swimming around in the water next to you, their deadly, stinging tentacles zapping every fish in reach.

That’s what Japanese fishermen have had to deal with the past few years as the jellyfish’s numbers have suddenly exploded. For a few months out of the year, these creepy invertebrates totally clog the waterway between China and Japan. It’s gotten to the point that fishing boats can’t cast their nets without collecting hundreds of Nomura jellyfish with each pass. When they’re not busy tearing the nets and weighing down the trawlers, the jellyfish also manage to taint the fishermen’s regular payloads, coating the desirable fish with slime and making them mostly inedible. And, unfortunately, there’s no relief in sight. One expert states, “The arrival is inevitable. A huge jellyfish typhoon will hit the country.”

And Japan is not alone in this conundrum. A sharp increase in jellyfish blooms has also been noticed in places like the Gulf of Mexico (pre-oil spill), the Black Sea, the North Sea, the Mediterranean Sea and especially in Australia, where the venom of a box jellyfish has been known to kill a person in less than 10 minutes by inducing a fatal heart attack (even in children). More recently, in August 2010, beaches along the Mediterranean side of Spain had to be closed due to a sudden bloom of Mauve Stinger jellyfish—in just a half hour, over 50 people had to be treated by the Red Cross for severe jellyfish stings.

And global warming isn’t the only man-made contribution to this growing jellyfish epidemic: other factors include overfishing, which deprives the ecosystem of the jellyfish’s natural predators like sardines, anchovies and tuna (no kidding); contaminated storm-water runoff, which is high in pollutants like nitrogen and phosphorous and creates a low-oxygen “dead zone” in which most sea-life cannot live (a process known as “eutrophication“); and the importation of invasive jellyfish species from other parts of the world by way of oil tankers and transoceanic liners.

Comparison of the Gulf dead zone with the Gulf oil spill.

The Gulf of Mexico, oil spill aside, had already been considered one of the largest “dead zones” in the western hemisphere, last estimated to cover about 10,000 square miles. This “dead zone” is caused by the sheer volume of fertilizer, sewage, pollutants and other human waste that is dumped into the gulf waters from the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers—essentially draining the whole middle of the United States directly into the gulf waters. These contaminants rob the ocean of its life-giving oxygen and chase away all the oxygen-dependant sea creatures, thereby leaving a vast opening for the highly adaptable jellyfish to swim in and bloom like invertebrate rabbits. To make matters worse, those nonindigenous jellyfish species that are carried into the Gulf of Mexico from as far away as Australia can cling to the oil platforms that dot the gulf sea—acting like artificial coral reefs—and will start polyptiplying, filling the aptly named “dead zone” with a plethora of deadly jellyfish.

If this sounds bad to you, that’s because it is. Scientists have even started theorizing about what they call a “jellyfish stable state,” which is essentially an ideal set of conditions that would allow the jellyfish population to completely take over the ocean, creating a “monoculture of jellyfish” and replacing fish as the dominant species—which is a total shame, since jellyfish don’t taste half as good as fish.

A catalogue of potential sites for increased jellyfish blooms.

And, in the same way that global warming has unleashed the voracious mountain pine beetle upon more northerly climes, the jellyfish could easily start migrating towards the poles and realistically be plaguing the beaches of more densely populated, less tropical areas in the coming years. If you’ve ever been stung by a jellyfish (I have), then you’ll know that this is not good news. Imagine not being able to swim in the ocean when you go to Mexico or surf the huge waves in Tofino because of jellyfish invasions.
 
The most obvious solution to this inevitable jellyfish infestation is to stop eating sardines, anchovies and tuna, the jellyfish’s aforementioned most deadly natural predators. If those salty little ichthyoids were out policing the world’s oceans instead of sitting all tin-canned on store shelves across North America, the world would be an infinitely safer place.

So please boycott tuna melts and anchovy pizzas no matter how delicious you think they are—your planet needs you right now. The jellyfish are coming, and we need all the protection we can get.

Photo by Ken Knezick.

Edward Burtynsky: OIL at the AGA.

A candid shot of an industrial wasteland in Fort McMurray, Alberta. Photo by Edward Burtynsky, 2010.

Alberta has been making a lot of headlines lately regarding its oil production, and they’re not the typical “Those Rich Fat Cats In Alberta Are Laughing All The Way To The Bank” headlines that we’re used to reading. No—in fact, they’ve been downright incendiary and more scathing than usual. Between the Rethink Alberta campaign started by a group of businesses in the U.S. and the negative press generated by movies such as the upcoming Dirty Oil documentary (strangely funded through a grant from the Alberta government) set to premiere at the Calgary International Film Festival, things haven’t looked this bleak for Alberta in recent memory.

Amongst all this negative press, the Art Gallery of Alberta (AGA) is preparing to open a potentially controversial new exhibit by famed Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky simply called OIL, a series of photos from Burtynsky’s newest book of the same name detailing the destructive impact that our civilization’s addiction to oil has wrought on the planet. Despite the negative light that this exhibit is bound to shine on Alberta’s already tarnished tar sands, I think that everyone in Edmonton reading this should definitely go and check it out (between September 17 and January 2), and here’s why.

As Albertans, we often forget the reasons why we’ve never had to pay PST like other provinces, or worse, the new HST like the rest of those unfortunate Canadians: plain and simple, it’s because of our oil money. Our provincial government is rolling in cash from all the tar sands developments paid for by local and out-of-country interests. Before the recession hit, most tar sands projects were charted in the billion dollar range—in 2007, Petro Canada invested $26.2 billion in a single tar sands project. This number hasn’t been quite as high in the last couple years but still regularly clears the $1 billion benchmark. Alberta is only second to Saudi Arabia for its sheer amount of extractable oil, making us not only very popular with oil-dependant countries but also very unpopular with environmental groups and green-oriented NGOs. 

Unfortunately for Alberta, these NGOs have recently banded together to create the Rethink Alberta campaign, which seems to be geared toward discouraging future tourism dollars from lining the already fat pockets of our oil rich province. Some of these determined NGOs include the UK Tar Sands Network, Corporate Ethics International, Raincoast Conservation Foundation and the Friends of the Earth (just to name a few—see the rest on the Rethink Alberta website). Their clever logo, as you can see above, shows the recently redesigned Alberta signature being smirched by copious amount of dirty crude oil. At the height of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill—when the whole world was focused on the absolute travesty of BP’s mismanagement of the disaster—they came up with the equally clever catch phrase “Alberta: the Other Oil Disaster,” an obvious attempt to cash in on the public outcry generated by the Gulf spill and to keep the (tar)ball rolling by linking the two events in people’s media-addled minds. The end result: the tar sands are somehow equivalent to the worst oil spill debacle to ever occur in human history. Clever? Maybe. True? Not exactly. 

The Rethink Alberta Billboard.

Now, I don’t profess to be an oil expert or a tar sands aficionado—and I’m sure the oil fields of Fort McMurray are pretty dirty and are super polluting—but what bugs me about this type of sensationalized marketing is its sheer unequivocalness, as if there’s no question that Alberta—and only Alberta—is to blame for leaving this globby blight on our precious planet’s landscape. It’s all Alberta’s fault, and they should have to pay by losing valuable tourism dollars—don’t go to Alberta because they’re destroying our planet with their unstewardly rubber-stamping of new tar sands projects and overall neglectful governance. Bad Alberta! 

But the reality is that numerous foreign interests are the ones pumping all the money into the Alberta tar sands, funding new ventures (see an exhaustive list on the Oil Sands Developers Group website) in order to be at the receiving end of all that valuable crude. Alberta might be the actual geographic site of the oil sands, but it’s the whole world’s fault that things have gotten so out of control and destructive. Our civilization absolutely needs that oil, and Alberta would be foolish to turn away billions of dollars of revenue—coming our way simply because we happen to be sitting on a treasure trove of bitumen-flavoured goodness—because of something as flimsy and intangible as a conscience. And, more importantly, I really don’t want to have to start paying HST. 

Burtynsky’s upcoming exhibit, however, takes a more objective and, in my opinion, more critical look at the reality of the whole world’s obsession with oil—not just Alberta’s. His newest book, entitled OIL, catalogues photographs taken over the past 13 years in countries all over the world. It starts by showing photos of oil extraction and processing, in places like Alberta and California. It then proceeds to images of what humankind does with that oil, like building cars in gigantic factories Detroit, driving along massive freeways in Los Angeles and Houston, and parking in expansive lots in Las Vegas, filled with thousands upon thousands of other unoccupied, gas-guzzling pieces of metal. The retrospective finishes with a view of the wasteland left after human has used and combusted all the gas and oil, leaving toxic pools of seepage and tailings, hunks of processed metal shaped like cars, and giant steel behemoths of abandoned oil tankers on beaches in Bangladesh and China. 

Edward Burtynsky's newest book, OIL. Go buy it.

The exhibit at the AGA (from September 17 to January 2) is sure to ask some tough questions not only about Alberta’s culpability in this whole scenario, but about our own complicity in causing this worldwide oil horror. Burtynsky’s objective photographic eye refuses to point the finger or play the blame game because every one of us is just as guilty as the next person—we’ve just chosen to ignore the consequences, but Burtynsky’s photographs refuse to let us look away. The sight of our own beautiful destruction is just too enthralling to be missed.