Do we need to quit eating meat?

This is one of the more popular myths you hear about fighting climate change. The usual story goes that it takes so much fuel and chemicals to raise animals -- actually always depicted as beef -- that if we really are serious about fighting "the global warming thing" we should only eat lentils, wear sandals and dress in sack cloth.
Have you heard that cow farts and belches contribute to greenhouse gas too? Of course you have. That is because the richest and most powerful industry and lobby in the world, the fossil fuel industry, is keeping this and many other ridiculous stories alive through their well-heeled propaganda machines. Just Google "climate change skeptic organizations" for a list. They are using the same tactics formerly employed by the tobacco industry to sow doubt and confusion on a subject for which science reached a conclusion many decades ago.
Here is the real story: 83 per cent of each individual's contribution to climate change comes from his burning of fossil fuels either in his vehicle or to heat or cool his buildings. Cow farts and people's farts, for that matter, fall within the remaining 17 per cent of our carbon footprint. They are spit in the ocean compared to the big problems.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says we need to cut our fossil fuel use by 45 per cent in just the next 12 years or it will be too late to prevent catastrophe.
I've been thinking about our own situation. We actually reduced our gasoline use by 50 per cent  when we owned the camp by switching to four-cycle outboard engines. That was 15 years ago. Although we had to borrow in order to make that switch the savings in gas paid for the loan.
It seems to me this is always the case: spend a little to save a lot.
Now that we have retired we have cut our use of propane for home heating by installing a high efficiency wood burning stove and building a sun room. The sun room heats the house on sunny days and the stove heats it mornings and evenings and on cloudy days. We still rely on the high efficiency furnace at night. Will we cut our propane use by 45 per cent? We will know in a couple of months when our propane tank is refilled but my guess is there will be a substantial reduction.
We have already witnessed a 30 per cent reduction in our electricity or hydro bill. There are two reasons for that: we switched to an on-demand propane hot water system, and we have not needed to supplement our furnace with electric space heaters. In the past we used the space heaters during especially bitter nights. This year the wood stove has provided the extra needed BTUs. The propane water heater does, of course, use a fossil fuel. Our electricity does not; it comes from a hydro dam in Kakabeka Falls. However the money we save from not keeping a 30-gallon tank perpetually hot in the basement can be used toward other fossil fuel cuts, like a hybrid car when we are ready for a new vehicle.
Incidentally, next to solar and wind energy firewood is about as green a fuel as can be. Burning it does emit carbon dioxide but growing new trees takes the carbon back out of the atmosphere. Certainly it can't be used in cities but it is a viable alternative for people like us who live in the country and grow our own trees. Our high efficiency Napoleon stove is practically smokeless.
Other fuel-saving things we have done over the years include triple-glazed windows and an original house design that maximized solar gain and insulation as well as controlling air movement with enclosed door entries. Ventilation comes from a heat recovery system.
Any further carbon reductions will probably need to come from our vehicles. My four-cylinder truck although 10-years old is still about as fuel thrifty as more modern models although they are more powerful. Our three-year-old Grand Caravan gets amazing mileage on long trips but could be better for around town.

Beautiful sundog this morning

It was a beautiful, if cold, morning in Nolalu today. This lovely sundog greeted us right after dawn. The temperature at our home was -24 C and the vicious winds of yesterday are gone. I got chilled to the bone yesterday snowblowing the driveway as I cleaned up from Wednesday and Thursday's dump of snow. All told we probably got 15 cm or about six inches. It was the second such snowfall in a week. We now have about 30 inches on the ground.
Temperatures are more or less normal for this time of year. Nobody misses the -40 C stuff we had two weeks ago.

Lynx move on snowshoe hares

I wondered when lynx would discover the abundant snowshoe hare population on our property this winter. The trail camera pics are from yesterday.
Hares are virtually the only prey of lynx.
These two animals follow a wild 11-year cycle that has been documented for hundreds of years by the fur trade and undoubtedly for millennia by First Nations.
Why 11 years? There is an 11-year solar cycle too. This fluctuation in solar intensity also created cycles in forest fire destruction; however, I believe climate change has now upended that schedule. The worst fire season now is always just the previous year.

Let's hear it for most-successful humans

Ski hill in distance is twice as far away as our atmosphere is thick

That, of course, would be Homo erectus.
These hominids survived for two million years and eventually cohabited the Earth with several other human species including Homo neanderthalensis, Homo floriensis, Homo denisova and yes, Homo sapiens, the "wise one."
It wasn't the Neanderthals or the Denisovans that named us that. We thought up the "wise one" moniker ourselves. Homo sapiens have a lot of qualities but modesty isn't one of them.
Everybody got along in their respective regions: Asia, southwestern Europe, Indonesia, Siberia and East Africa.
Sapiens, who have been around for only 150,000 years, were much like the other hominids. They hunted and gathered and made fires just like the others had done for hundreds of thousands of years.
Then something went terribly "wrong" about 70,000 years ago. Sapiens streamed out of Africa and eventually killed everyone. In fact you could say we killed everyone and everything.
Our historical relationship with nature could be summed up with: "We ate the big ones first and then we ate the rest."
It is estimated our species has, at best, another 1,000 years.
So what happened 70,000 years ago? Author Yuval Noah Harari says in the book Sapiens that is when the Cognitive Revolution started. People started believing in mythologies that eventually became religions, social hierarchies, systems of economics, corporations and countries. Things began snowballing downhill with the Agricultural Revolution 10,000 years ago and went ballistic with the Industrial Revolution, just 200 years ago. It is the latter revolution that will finish us along with most of the rest of life on the planet. It's one thing to have speared, shot and netted umpteen species into extinction but it is exponentially worse to pollute the very atmosphere everything breathes and alter the temperature of the entire planet so that nothing lives other than insects and bacteria.
That we can do this and not even care says everything about our species.We are arrogant, greedy, violent and conniving but that isn't even the worst about us. The worst is we believe in fantasies and refuse to accept reality when it conflicts with our beliefs. Case in point: How many people believe that those other humans mentioned above were steps on the evolutionary ladder that eventually led to the pinnacle of evolution - Sapiens! That fits with our mythology that we are the most intelligent and therefore the most deserving to be alive today and it helps us ignore the reality that if we are indeed "intelligent" we would not be exterminating all life.
Homo erectus walked the Earth from 2,000,000 years ago until 10,000 years ago. Our species started 150,000 years ago and will be gone at 151,000.
Must this be our outcome? No, it doesn't.  We know as a species how to save the planet, how to live sustainably. There are real-world solutions. Our parents were called the Greatest Generation because they saved the world from Nazi tyranny through their hard work, sacrifice and ingenuity. Our generation needs to step up and save the world, period.
We are in a boat surrounded by a sea of uninhabitable space and we have continually been removing boards from the top of the boat. We're now down to the waterline.
Here's something to ponder: See that ski hill in the photo above? It is Mount Baldy as seen from our house in Nolalu. It is 36 miles away. That is exactly twice as far as the thickness of our atmosphere.
It is just 18 miles high. Now do you understand how easy it is to pollute it, to change its composition?
When we look up at the sky it seems endless because there is nothing on the other side. It is anything but. It is a thin, fragile veneer and it is the only thing that supports Life.

Temperature is definitely 'snappy' today

Cork and I walk our snowshoe trails daily

Webbing on these 'shoes needed revarnishing

At dawn today the thermometer registered -27 C or -16 F. That is the record so far this winter in Nolalu. It was far colder in Red Lake. I heard on the radio that it was only -36 C there. Those temperatures do not take into account the wind chill. I could certainly feel the wind as I walked down the road to the mail box. At these temperatures even the slightest breeze makes you turn your head away.

(Update: Temperature Sunday was -34 C which happens to be 30 below F)

I had big plans about raising the final beam on my wood shed today but came to the conclusion that a better idea was to sit in the sunroom where a combination of the sun and the wood stove made it feel like a tropical beach. So I read a book the whole afternoon.
Cork and I have now packed down the snow on all of our bush trails. It was tough going with snowshoes the first time around. The snowshoes plunge about half way down through the two feet of the white stuff. I noticed that I have worn off all the varnish on my snowshoes so I brought them into the house for a few coats. In the meantime I borrowed Brenda's which are of a modern design and have a solid nylon material under the foot. I broke some new trail with them just to see if they held me further aloft but no such luck.
It is important to varnish the rawhide lacing on snowshoes from time to time to waterproof them. If the temperature ever gets above freezing the untreated rawhide will stretch and make walking absolutely miserable.
There are no signs of any canines in the bush now, not foxes, wolves or coyotes. I'm a little worried that something drastic has happened to the whole lot, like disease. On the other hand it could be these animals are hampered by the deep snow now and aren't moving.
Every time I snowshoe on a trail that I have made I think back to when I was a kid. I loved to make trails in the bush around our house at Red Lake. Perched three feet above the ground in the deep snow I could fly over the windfalls that make summer walking difficult.
One time my friends Dennis and Brian Larson and I found a deep drift at the edge of the lake and beside a small game trail. We thought it a great spot to make a fort and spent hours chopping out blocks of snow and piling them around the hole we had dug using our snowshoes as shovels.
We were exhausted and sat with our backs against one side of the "igloo" that had no top. Uncharacteristically we were silent, probably because we were too tired to speak for the moment and it just felt good to soak up the sun's rays down in the hole where there was no wind.
Just then a dog came walking along the game trail which was on top of the snow and about three feet higher than our heads. It was only about six feet from where I sat. The dog never saw us and walked down to the lake where it followed the little trail to the other side of the bay and walked into the bush.
As it disappeared all three of us realized at once, "That was a wolf!"

Wood shed site now buried in snow

Evidence that nature abhors a vacuum

A Harris's Sparrow, rare in these parts, is a regular visitor to our feeder this winter

There is a postscript to the posting awhile back regarding grey foxes appearing for the first time in Nolalu. It now seems that something has happened to the usual population of red foxes. I haven't seen a single one all winter, not even along the roads. Red foxes are just about the most commonly seen animal on our rural roads, especially at night. Where are they?
It is still early to say for sure but a neighbour reports finding two dead red foxes last year. What could be killing them? One suggestion is distemper.
At any rate that might explain how grey foxes are gaining a foothold. It is only about 30 miles from here to Minnesota where grey foxes are fairly common. The greys may be filling the niche left open by the reds.
In other wildlife news, the Harris's Sparrow above seems to have made the decision to spend the winter at our bird feeder. He showed up with the first snows in November. He is about half a continent away from his usual territory of Alberta - to - Texas.

New Year's Eve buck still has antlers

Whitetails will be dropping their antlers any day

Call it Snow-la-lu instead of Nolalu

Thank goodness for our Kubota tractor and snowblower

We had a white Christmas in Nolalu but the snow was only about six inches deep. Then Old Man Winter blew in. We got 14 inches a few days ago and a few more inches last night.

Merry and Peaceful Christmas!

This is the scene just about any afternoon at our home in Nolalu, Ont. We are so blessed to have so much wildlife right outside our windows. Brenda and I as well as our Chocolate Lab, Cork, wish everyone a joyous Christmas.

Evidence of our prickly neighbour

Birch and pine are its favourites

A white birch with its bark gnawed away shows that a porcupine was here. Cork and I found this tree yesterday and the damage looks recent. I expect we will find more such trees in the future.
Porcupines do not travel far in the winter. When it gets really cold they seem to hibernate right on the tree. They don't move at all for days.

Things are really hopping here in the bush

Snowshoe or Varying Hares seem to be everywhere

There are only a few inches of snow here in Nolalu, ON, which is 50 kilometers southwest of Thunder Bay, but that snow is just about trampled with rabbit tracks. I can see the tracks clearly but spotting the animal that is making them is another matter. This bunny just happened to "show up" on one of my trail cameras.

'How do they know all this climate stuff?'

Moon rises over Thunder Bay as seen from Nolalu, ON

If you don't understand all the information coming at you about climate change, I highly recommend Earth's Changing Climate, a course taught by Professor Richard Wolfson as part of the Great Courses program.

The Great Courses are university-level courses that you purchase to be viewed on your computer or listened to in your car. I prefer listening to these courses instead of commercial radio. Lectures are 30-45 minutes in length and there are usually 18 or so lectures to a course.
Courses like Earth's Changing Climate are designed for non-scientists so don't be afraid that you won't be able to understand. At the same time Earth's Changing Climate gives you all the facts and tells you what is known and not known about climatic processes.
Climate change is going to drastically affect us all. The more you know, the more prepared you will be.

Strange animals showing up in Nolalu

Where are all the grey foxes coming from?

These smaller tree-climbing canines haven't been seen here in recent memory

I was stunned to look out the window the other night and see two grey foxes eating sunflower seeds beneath our bird feeders. They were the first grey foxes I have seen in the 33 years that we have lived in Nolalu.
A neighbour told me he has heard of two other sightings this fall.
I called the local Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry office with the news. Biologist Laura Darby said other grey foxes have been seen in Thunder Bay.
That is news because in the past there has been almost nothing but red foxes here, at least in recent history. Red foxes themselves are immigrants from Europe. They were brought to North America with the first British settlers for fox hunts.
So, hundreds of years ago this might have been grey fox country. What happened to them is anybody's guess but they are known to be killed by coyotes.
I'm just guessing but I can imagine the coyote population rose when Europeans settled here. Those mid-size predators thrive around humans, especially around agriculture.
That might explain why the grey foxes disappeared, if in fact they actually once lived here at all, but what accounts for them coming back? Not much has changed, agriculture-wise.
My guess would be climate change.

Just missed filming wolves killing deer

These deer look worried. The kill took place about 10 feet to the right, a day and a half later

This would appear to have been the kill time.

This guy is looking for scraps. There was just a hide, backbone and hooves when we came along this afternoon

When I went to pick up the SD card from one of my trail cameras today there was blood, deer hair and hooves strewn all about just 10 feet away. For sure I thought I had gotten photos of wolves killing a deer. But the camera, which was focused on a deer scrape, just recorded before and after scenes. The blurry night photo of the wolf at 6 a.m. today was no doubt when the kill took place.
Cork and I came upon the scene at 3 p.m. as we traversed this trail to gather a firewood tree.
We have known the wolves were killing deer right behind the house for the past week because of all the ravens and bald eagles flying about. I wouldn't be surprised if the wolves are getting a deer every night.

It has been a cold, wet, dreary fall

Cork finds the perfect location

The ultimate window bird scarer

I find this to be the very best way to keep birds from flying into the windows. A CD of DVD hung on a piece of thread moves with the slightest air disturbance. In fact it is virtually never still. Its hologram side casts an ever-changing rainbow of colours. Even the non-hologram side and the edges create flashes, all of which keep birds away.

Just 12 years left to save ourselves

The latest alarm from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that all hell is going to break loose by the year 2030 if the world doesn't reduce its carbon emissions by 45%. That is predicted to be the time when we will have raised the average world temperature by 1.5 C from burning fossil fuels.
Is it even possible to meet the 45% reduction target? Yes, say these experts, if we take drastic action starting right now. We need a major conversion to electric vehicles, tremendous expansion of mass transit systems, carbon capture and sequestration for the cement and waste disposal industries, and a reversal of deforestation to make room for agriculture.
In other words, we need to stop using carbon fuels and start planting trees and crops to act as carbon sinks pronto.
Is this going to happen?
Well, right now in the U.S. we still have rapturous crowds dancing around the Coal President chanting "Lock her up! Lock her up!" In Ontario we just elected a premier whose first acts were to destroy every climate change initiative in exchange for "Buck-a-Beer!"
In other words, no, it's not going to happen. Human beings are incapable of making decisions other than those that bring them immediate gratification. Want to get elected? Promise to lower the price of gasoline.
Even if we did hold the warming to 1.5 C there will still be catastrophic changes ahead: sea level rise, extinction of many species including most of the fish in the oceans, incredible hurricanes, rainfalls that wipe out communities, crop failures, billions of refugees. But humans could still survive for the hundreds of years it will take for the carbon to come back out of the atmosphere.
The prognosis for reaching 2 C is far more dire. That is when feedback mechanisms will start clicking into place. We could end up with a runaway atmosphere like Venus which is 860 F (460 C).
There likely won't be anyone around to see that happen. We will have long since suffocated from lack of oxygen. 80 per cent of the oxygen we breathe comes from phytoplankton in the oceans. Already we have killed 40 per cent of the world's phytoplankton just from the 1+degrees C we have heated the atmosphere.
There is no time left. We either do the right thing and save life on the planet or we dance around the coal fire chanting "Lock her up!" while we toss back "Buck-a-beers."

Hawks attack jays which just don't care

Call it a case of unintended consequences. I had been feeding the birds all summer and had attracted large groups of blue jays and gold finches especially when a few days ago a couple of Sharpshinned hawks showed up. They started attacking the bluejays which, to my amazement, barely seem to care.
Now there are four or more hawks joining in the hunt. They dive bomb the feeder and obviously want the bluejays to fly. Some always do and the nimble hawks pursue them right through the limbs of the trees nearby. Other jays just refuse to take wing.
The jays will return to the birdfeeder immediately after each attack which come every five or six seconds from one or more of the hawks. Incredibly the bluejays will land in the feeder even when the hawks are perched on limbs only 10-15 feet away.
All the little birds such as goldfinches, purple finches, nuthatches and chickadees have vanished.
To my amazement, however, a group of ruffed grouse pecked away in the yard with the air war taking place nearly over their heads.
Go figure!
I have now suspended the feeding operation until the hawks move on. 

Sharpshinned hawk sits on branch mere feet away from feeder full of jays

Back view shows square tail that IDs Sharpie, not rounded like Coopers hawk

Rare glimpse of a camera-shy critter

My first photo of a fisher. I have only seen one other

I have had at least one trail camera set up in the bush behind our home here in Nolalu for the past 15 or so years. Sometimes I have had three cameras on the go. I love getting wildlife photographs and it is a hoot checking out my camera cards every day.
I also had an ulterior motive: it seems everyone in the townships south and west of Thunder Bay has seen a cougar, except for me. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry maintains there are no cougars in these parts. They point to a lack of physical evidence -- no photos, no scat, no dead animals -- just eye-witness accounts. As police officers will tell you anywhere, eye witnesses often see what they want to see. Well, I was determined to prove the authorities wrong by getting trail camera photos of the elusive felines.
Now, 15 years later (it might actually be 20) here are my results. I have about 10,000 photos of whitetail deer of which 95 per cent are does and fawns. The next-most photographed animals are timber wolves at a few hundred photos. I have a few dozen photos of red foxes and a few of marten, porcupines and skunks. I have one trail camera photo of a lynx (although I have many more taken with a standard camera through the window of the house.)
Today I got my first photo of a fisher. I saw one other from the house a few years ago.
I have zero photos of cougars.
Do cougars exist here? Well, I have to admit there just is no physical evidence, at least on our land which is crawling with the cougars' favourite food -- deer.
But then, it took me all this time to get the fisher photo and they are known to be common in this area. Also I have no moose photos either and yet tracks tell me they still cross the land here at least once a year.

No summer problems with bears

This plump bear eats clover blossoms on our property a couple nights ago

By all reports there have not been many problems with bears in Northwestern Ontario this summer. Typically the bruins run afoul of humans by raiding garbage cans, barbecues and bird feeders. However few bears have been seen anywhere, including along roadsides. What does this mean?
One of our neighbours who has a bear hunting business says there is a bumper crop of berries and the bears are feasting on them rather than in people's backyards. That makes sense. When bear problems are at their worst a poor berry crop is usually to blame.
I wonder, however, if we lost some bears last winter to the exceptional cold. We experienced a lot of -40 temperatures and when coupled with a scarcity of snow could have killed some bears in their dens. A typical bear den is just a few inches beneath the surface. A common site is in the cavity made by tree roots when a tree has blown over.