Views from the Aerie
Entry Number One

Al Gore on “Charlie Rose” Wednesday, November 4, 2009 was nothing short of magnificent.

He looks terrific. He’s lost a lot of weight. He is impeccably dressed and groomed. I’m sure the TV makeup helps.

He has complete command of himself and a huge volume of facts. He has translated complex science and stats into memorable images and easily digestible comparisons. For example:

• 90 million tons of global warming gases are released into the atmosphere every day.

• Enough sunlight falls on the Earth daily to provide the entire world’s electricity needs for a year.

• Gasoline from Canadian tar sands oil would give a Prius the carbon footprint of a Hummer.

He anticipates questions. He knows what the question is about half way into its expression and has a comprehensive answer on the tip of his tongue.

He is a finely tuned presenter. He expresses himself extremely well. He has the presence of mind to adjust his manner and delivery according to the venue. He is not so single-minded as to miss irony and humor. He is self-aware and in complete control. He knows to wait to wipe his upper lip until the interviewer begins a long question and the shot angle changes from facing him to facing the interviewer.

He is deeply passionate and thoroughly committed, yet realistic about politics, vested economic interests, and the weight and consequences of ignorance.

He mentions his new book title several times and cites examples from it.

He cajoles, he praises, he persuades, he warns, and he condemns but in a gentle, patient, inoffensive way.

His overarching point is that climate change is a moral rather than political issue. How will future generations view ours for our action or inaction regarding the most existential crisis global society has ever faced?

Charlie knows he is outclassed. Gore is an unremitting major leaguer. Charlie sputters a few times and is compelled to interrupt now and then to confirm his intelligence and knowledge, but he’s inoffensive, asks good questions and draws Gore out, giving him free rein and a platform.

If the politically corrupt Supreme Court had not installed George W. Bush in the Presidency in 2001, had mandated a thorough, honest vote count and maybe a do-over in some Florida counties, Al Gore would have been president for eight years, and the world would be a different and much better place.

The white type on the mermaid says "Home is where the waves are."

It is entirely fitting that on the final morning of the blogger's nearly five-month tour of North America, this totally cherry '55 Chevy was parked beside his white steed at his motel in Needles, California.

Route 78 through Glamis, Imperial County, California. Well in excess of 100 degrees on this enormous beach in search of an ocean.

Below is the Great Basin, Nevada, series. It's a good idea to have a bunch of your favorite CDs along.

Renovation under way in McGill, Nevada.

Elvis isn't the only cultural icon to have his image consigned to velvet. McGill, Nevada.

Well, as long as he or she is a smart, effective Democrat. It's one thing to be born into the Church of Latter Day Saints and then stick with it, but it's quite another to convert to Mormonism. Anybody who does that has to be seriously deficient intellectually. Ely, Nevada.

"One recalls the question that was asked by Chinese when the first Christian missionaries made their appearance. If god has revealed himself, how is it that he has allowed so many centuries to elapse before informing the Chinese?"

"If I can definitively prove that the usefulness of religion is in the past, and that its foundational books are transparent fables, and that it is a man-made imposition, and that it has been an enemy of science and inquiry, and that it has subsisted largely on lies and fears, and been the accomplice of ignorance and guilt as well as slavery, genocide, racism, and tyranny, I can most certainly claim that religion is now fully aware of these criticisms. It is also fully aware of the ever-mounting evidence, concerning the origins of the cosmos and the origin of species, which consign it to marginality if not to irrelevance."

A very pastel-looking Black Pine Mountain behind Malta, Idaho.

Pen for outside dogs.

Airstream's got nothing on this rig.

Fragments from the westering experience, probably 150 to 175 years old. The blogger found a ceramic pottery chip and what is likely a broken hinge on a remote stretch of the California Trail, west of the Raft River where that trail and the Oregon Trail split. The California Trail was an emigrants' wagon road in the mid-1800s and an overland route to and from the California gold fields for '49ers.

On the horizon: Black Pine Mountain, southeastern Idaho.

Appaloosa and associates appropriating alfalfa.

The blogger's home on the range, with Tacoma safely in corral, near Malta, Idaho.

The blogger drives 14 miles out of town on a little-used, roughly paved road and continues for two more miles on this even less-used gravel road:

The blogger parks outside this locked gate:

The blogger gathers his gear, climbs over the locked gate and walks legally another one and a half miles on the still less-used gravel road behind the gate:

The remote trekking is for the purpose of swimming in this lake, which is in a national wildlife refuge:

Approaching the lake shore, there's a sign post up ahead:

The blogger is astounded to find that it reads:

Handicapped Parking — Permit Required

Experiences like this make the blogger think it's not such a good idea to have the federal government run everything.

Full moon. Burley, Cassia County, Idaho.

Below is the Craters of the Moon National Monument series.

The figure displayed at top left in the panel is the humidity: 13.9 percent.

The lush campground.

Why, youuuuu yellow-bellied marmot!

An Oregon woman driving a minivan had this personalized license plate. The blogger asked the ranger if he had seen the plate. The ranger replied he hadn't. The blogger told the ranger the plate read TETONS. The ranger said, "Maybe that's her favorite place." The blogger asked, "On Earth or her body?" The ranger was embarrassed.

Two above: Dwarf buckwheat.

Rabbit brush.

Damn tourists!

Two above: A volcanic crater containing a pine tree the blogger estimated to be about 30 feet tall. It's amazing anything can survive in this environment, let alone flourish.

Arco, Idaho, is on the Snake River Plain at the mouth of the Big Lost River Valley near Craters of the Moon National Monument and Sawtooth National Forest.

That autumn, the Brooklyn Dodgers beat the New York Yankees in a seven-game World Series. 1955 was a big year.

As far as the blogger could determine, high school graduating classes in Arco have been at this since 1924.

Below is the nuke series.

Surprised the blogger, you? The location had to be extremely remote in case something went awry, and there had to be plenty of water for cooling and creating steam. The vast Snake River Plain and the huge aquifer beneath it met the criteria.

Experimental Breeder Reactor-1.

One of many interior areas.

The blogger's mom must have been here.

Today, smokers are banished to an area for naughty people outside.

See, it's simple!

Everything was kept under control here.

The first electricity produced by a nuclear fission chain reaction lit these bulbs on December 20, 1951.

Ironic, eh?

It's a butte. Snake River Plain, Idaho.

It's two buttes. Snake River Plain, Idaho.