Along Hetch Hetchy

I've been to the dam and looked out over John Muir's worst nightmare a number of times. Even half filled with water it's a helluva sight. But I'd never walked much beyond the dam. Saturday we took the trail out to Rancheria Falls, 6 miles each way. I would not recommend it much later than early June... it was hot enough this time of year, and within weeks the waterfalls will likely have lost a lot of their roar.

But right now? Two classic waterfalls and a wildflower display as good as any I have seen in Yosemite.

Wapama Falls may be the prettiest waterfall in the park. The water shoots over the canyon rim and after a cascade or two plunges steeply about 600 feet, with a fantastic bump that provides a lot of visual interest. Unfortunately you can't get very close to the biggest parts, but the views from the footbridges that cross near the bottom are fine enough.

It being Yosemite, one expects impressive rocks...

... but I had not expected the flowers. The section of trail just before you reach Wapama crosses seeps that send water flowing broadly over gentle slopes of smooth granite. At the margins are brilliant yellow monkeyflowers (Mimulus sp?)...

... and in the meadows dayglo Hetch Hetchy monkeyflower (Mimulus filicaulis)...

... and abundant mariposa lilies (Calochortus venustus?).

With all that eye candy, it's perhaps too easy to ignore the humble fungi and lichens...

Clouds Rest

According to Jeffrey Schaffer, Clouds Rest is the largest granite face in Yosemite, and an amazingly beautiful one at that, with its undulating contours and pale exfoliating layers—but it suffers the inattention that comes with having the world's most famous hunk of granite as a next-door neighbor. Oh well, the smaller number of hikers who take the "easier" trip to the top of Clouds Rest from Tenaya Lake are rewarded with views that surpass Half Dome's—in part because they include a good profile of Half Dome! (See lower right of second photo.)

Unfortunately for hikers, clouds don't just come to Clouds Rest for repose, but often engage in loud and violent revelries that put measly exposed humans at risk. So our own rest was cut short and we scurried back down, showers and booming thunder following us all the way.

Soylent Green is people!

The makers of Soylent must have a good sense of humor, if not a palatable product. They can't have been unaware of the classically bad Charlton Heston movie...

This is unfortunate

I was never sold on the idea of using natural gas as a bridge to a carbon-neutral energy system. It seemed way too convenient given recent huge gas discoveries, and therefore too good to be true. Indeed.

This is rich

"Forty-one Republican Senators asked the Obama Administration on Wednesday to abandon its new rules limiting carbon emissions from coal plants, saying their 'primary concern' is how the rules will harm the poor and the elderly." Can a hike in the minimum wage and Medicaid expansion in all the red states be far behind?

She Came Along to Me

Laura put Mermaid Avenue on the stereo tonight. I suppose Woody Guthrie's "She Came Along to Me" could be heard as one of those patronizing "behind every great man stands a great woman" songs... but I have to think the universalism he finishes with extends to gender equality. And somehow Billie Bragg knew exactly what to do with wacky American vernacular like "Never could have it been done":

Ten hundred books could I write you about her
Because I felt if I could know her
I would know all women
And they've not been any too well known
For brains and planning and organized thinking
But I'm sure the women are equal
And they may be ahead of the men

Yet I wouldn't spread such a rumor around
Because one organizes the other
And some times the most lost and wasted
Attract the most balanced and sane
And the wild and the reckless take up
With the clocked and the timed
And the mixture is all of us
And we're still mixing

But never, never, never
Never could have it been done
If the women hadn't entered into the deal
Like she came along to me

And all creeds and kinds and colors
Of us are blending
Till I suppose ten million years from now
We'll all be just alike
Same color, same size, working together
And maybe we'll have all the fascists
Out of the way by then
Maybe so.

Either / and

A lot in the news lately about climate policy and cap-and-trade. Obama is doing what he can, I suppose. But if Hilary loses, it will all be undone with an asshole's signature.

Robert Stavins may overstate the case when he writes:

A national carbon-pricing regime is the only feasible way for the United States to reach its goal of reducing emissions to 83 percent below their 2005 level by 2050.

It may be the most sensible way, but the only feasible way? I guess that claim rests primarily on the assumption that energy interests that would otherwise oppose heavy regulation must be bought off by allocating them valuable carbon permits. Some environmentalists and lefties find such bribes distasteful, but Stavins is being realistic about the politics, and permit handouts do not undermine the effectiveness of the policy:

The initial distribution of allowances in a cap-and-trade system offers a direct means of compensating for the inevitably unequal burdens imposed by a climate policy. It resists degradation by political forces, because its environmental and economic performance is unaffected by the initial distribution of allowances.

Still, even an effective policy, whether in California or nationally, will fail to prevent the worst warming unless we can bring China and India on board, and soon. For that reason, I am with Severin Borenstein:

The primary goal of California climate policy should be to invent and develop the technologies that can replace fossil fuels, allowing the poorer nations of the world – where most of the world’s population lives – to achieve low-carbon economic growth. If we can do that, we can avert the fundamental risk of climate change.  If we don’t do that, reducing California’s carbon footprint won’t matter.

Thankfully, we can do both. Let's take the permit revenue we don't give away to the fossil magnates and commit it all to green energy R&D. There's no real economic rationale for doing that, but it has political appeal, and might just raise enough money to save the planet.

NBA salary cap and league competitiveness

If LeBron were paid his market value (about double his current 20 million), along with his fellow players, would it make the league more or less competitive?

Last year, the ever-unreliable Planet Money said "less": under the individual player salary cap, superstars are affordable even by poor teams, making the league more competitive... hence even LeBron would agree that the player cap is good for the league.

Roger Noll disagrees: Surely if the NBA kept its team cap rules and eliminated the individual cap, no team could afford to assemble the Heat's talent... and hence the Heat would be beatable in the playoffs by more than one or two other teams. Seems to me that Roger must be correct. The most obvious piece of evidence is that the league really isn't very competitive!

Regardless, Miami vs. San Antonio should be a good show.