Off The Grid public relations

We do.

On June 19, I leave for Petrapavlosk in the Kamchatka peninsula in Siberia where I am promised  "mountains raising their gleaming white heads into a cerulean blue sky, of hillsides covered in a profusion of wildflowers, of stretches of Siberian "raiga", of rivers fringed by reeds and woodlands, of forest of birch and conifer". Only accessible by land or by sea.

Surrounded by 100 volcanoes,68 of which are active (comprising 10% of the total Earth's active volcanos----hence the Russian's have their Institute of Vulcanology here) this truly is a place for those seeking TNRIs (Totally New Retinal Images) as well as  those of us who might just be a tad jealous of John Muir's wintering in Yosemite Valley. For this is a most volatile region of the Earth called The Ring of Fire--part of the high tectonic shifting along the Pacific Rim, it comprises part of the string of volcanoes that mark this rim of the Pacific Ocean.

Unlike San Francisco quakes and Mt St Helens, these do not make the news: They are too frequent and obviously too remote.

From PBS' Siberia's Ring of Fire: Forbidden Wilderness...

 A region of Kamchatka called the Valley of Death has been especially lethal to animals. Numerous vents in the Valley release a heavy, odorless, toxic gas. When the wind blows from a certain direction, the entire Valley is filled with this gas, suffocating any animals (and humans) present. During one recent year six bears, four foxes and three hares perished, along with dozens of crows and assorted rodents.

All of the above may have you asking: Why am I going there?

Then of course there is Gorely Lake - in above photo. No,that's not photoshopped. That's a lake of pure hydrochloric acid.

This too may have you asking: Why am I going there?

Loaded into zodiac boats with Russians (and hopefully a good supply of caviar and vodka on occasion, given the risks and consequences of being here) I cannot think of a place more remote and free from civilization and pr agency discontents.

And a place to meet surely one of the 120,000 remaining walruses in this region (see map above).  As impossible as it is to envision this from my desk here in Orlando, I do hope shortly to blow a puff of air into a walrus' face -- a gesture  they apparently appreciate. And to hear them sing. This all seems quite wonderfully eccentric to me for a 2,200 lb "perverse lump" as a Times writer dubbed walruses.

But sad to say, to those of us who track global warming data, I'm afraid the geologists in our group will be pointing out that the ice caps on the mountains, in previous years an everpresent fixture of the landscape, will not be so thick or everpresent. 

My greatest fear is that I'll actually see walruses fighting over the few scant ice floes they leave their young on when they hunt. After all, I've read in Imaging Notes that scientists have been studying the recent exposure of over one million square miles of open water, as measured through remote sensing satellite monitoring. As reported in the New York Times (Andrew Revkin, Oct., 2007), satellite and buoy data show that winds have been pushing think old ice out of the Arctic basin past Greenland, leaving behind only thinner ice that melts more rapidly under summer conditions. (Note being a PR person - I love satellite data as it is relatively difficult to "spin".  It is not that the data cannot be visually biased to omit a scientist's bias, eg. setting the threshold value for pseudo-coloring to be high or low,  so much as the peer group which guards this easily dispells such a bias.)

 The U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center had previously projected a 2050 or 2070 ice-free summer ocean in the Arctic, and now have moved that projection forward to as early as 2030. 

Since it's 2008, well, I have my concerns.

So I've come to see if the dots connect between what we witness in this remote place of ice and what is projected to come, far closer

 to this desk I sit at in Orlando.

Sea-level  rise simulations by Jared T. Williams Copyright (c) Daniel P. Schrag. Source: Fueling our Future, Harvard Magazine, May 2006

To read more why we are going to this strange remote place, check out this great NY Times piece on the walrus.

And though we're a bit south of this, we're greatly inspired also by Imaging Notes, The Need for Mapping Polar Bear Habitat Collapse written by Timothy Foresman, President of the International Centre for Remote Sensing Education.

Yours truly- speaking for the walrus and polar bear - the only PR I'll be doing for the next two weeks is Planet Reverence.

lisa