Climate Lynx

As you can imagine pilots and good vision are thought of in concert. Much of our aviation training is centered around things that impair our vision. They can be things we eat and drink, sleep and rest discipline, how we set our cockpit lighting, and especially the tricks nature can pull on us when the visibility is bad at night or in the fog. Pilots spend a lot of money on glasses. It is not all vanity. Our livelihoods depend on protecting our vision. Additionally, different tinted lens can markedly help bring into focus obstacles. I was especially fond of my yellow tinted Ray Bans for low light conditions. The science of vision enhancing eyeglasses is science appreciated by aviators. Here is a short personal story about trying to see clearly. One day on the North Slope we received a mission request to fly a small package out to an oil rig on a manmade island in the Beaufort Sea north of Deadhorse. The weather at the rig was foggy. We were a little apprehensive. There was no wi...

A couple of blessings writing a column each week is it allows me to open my mind to science, and to look back on my personal experiences. When looking back at my North Slope flying experiences in Alaska I usually remember flying in fog, high winds, blizzards, and icing. It is not much fun to recollect. But there is one pleasant experience that always comes back to me. It was a mission to resupply an oil rig on an Arctic Ocean island called Tigvariak. It was in late fall and the cold temps were freezing up the Arctic Ocean.   It was night which meant I had to use my instruments to remain right side up since there was no horizon. Out my right door and ahead it was completely black. The Bell 212 helicopter with its dependable and powerful PT 6 engines bored us smoothly through the night. The needles of the dimly lit gauges were steady, all reporting systems normal. Mercifully, even the heaters were working. I zipped down my insulated flying gear and relaxed. To the left the ...

What was the situation in Europe five years ago when Greta Thunberg, then 11 years old, was first introduced to climate change science? About the same time, I attended a Summer Institute educational program put on by, “Climate Generation” in St. Paul. Simultaneously, St. Paul was hosting an international industrial energy symposium. There, I met two Swedish Engineers who represented a Heat Exchanger/Pump company. We chatted at length. They noted in Europe, about ten years earlier, (now 15) conservative political parties denied climate science. Now, they noted, no political parties deny climate science, world-wide, except the United States Republican Party. It follows at 15 years of age, Greta Thunberg and the whole of the European Continent understood climate change. All knew it is a huge threat. Additionally, despite the widespread acceptance of the science, nothing was being done. Greta decided she would, despite her parent’s misgivings, strike from school and petition the Sw...

Time Magazine’s Person of the year is the diminutive 16 year-old girl from Sweden, Greta Thunberg. She has come upon us quickly. She is the face of her generation.   She is also a mirror to previous generations, the mirror which asks us who are we? There are about 14,000 climate scientists. For years they have been in consensus and sometimes even loud, fierce consensus. Greta’s generation sees themselves as the inheritors of our public ignorance, or worse yet our apathy, or even worse yet our predatory relationship with the planet we exploit. The planet they will soon inherit.   The Greta generation has before them a task even greater than our Greatest Generation who had to deal with the   Depression, the same old revered generation of Americans who set aside personal dreams and sometimes sacrificed their lives fighting the enemies of civilization during the Second World War. If you think I am exaggerating, here is one result of our climate inaction: The first hal...