November 6, 2009 - Brona Simon, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Historical Commission has decided that Nantucket Sound is eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic places because of its significance to the Mashpee and Aquinnah Wampanoag indian tribes. The tribes have maintained that windmills on Horseshoe Shoal will disturb their ritual of greeting the sun every morning. In a letter made public yesterday Simon wrote that she believes Nantucket Sound should be listed on the National Register as a traditional cultural property. This view is opposite that of the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency that led the environmental review of the Cape Wind project. The National Park Service has been asked to review the claim - this could delay the Cape Wind project for up to a year. Here's more from Beth Daley at Boston.com.

October 28, 2009 - The Aquinnah and Mashpee Wampanoag tribes say that the Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound will disturb their spiritual sun greetings and submerged ancestral burying grounds. They have recently requested that all of Nantucket Sound to be listed as a traditional cultural property on the National Register of Historic Places. A listing by itself would not necessarily stop the project, but could add more reviews and make it harder to obtain necessary permits. The tribes are being supported and encouraged by the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, the primary opposition group to the Cape Wind project. It is predicted that the tribes’ opposition will cause some delays but will ultimately be rejected.

The tribes’ have been objecting to Cape Wind since 2004 for the same reasons as waterfront property owners - wind turbines will ruin the view. Tribal representatives say their culture greets the sunrise each day, sometimes from sacred sites on the shore of Nantucket Sound, and that this ritual requires unobstructed views. Here's more from the Boston Globe.

In an editorial published yesterday the Boston Globe says that this opposition move is "cynical:" OF ALL THE gimmicks that opponents of Cape Wind have resorted to, working with the Wampanoag tribes to protect all of Nantucket Sound for cultural reasons wins the prize for sheer cynicism. The ploy seems intended to drag out the approval process long enough for some other tactic to emerge. But the opponents will have to work hard to find a mechanism for delay as laugh-out-loud bogus as this one.

The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, which opposes the wind-power project, must know full well that the federal government would never designate the sound as a tribal “traditional cultural property.’’ Nor should the government do so. Such a precedent could cast a legal shadow over any new pipeline, oil rig, or harbor reconstruction on any US coastline...

The Wampanoag tribes say they want the entire sound placed on the National Register of Historic Places because they say their spiritual greetings of the sun require unobstructed views; Cape Wind’s proposed 130 wind turbines would get in the way. They also say the turbines could disturb the ancestral burying grounds that might be under the shallow waters of the sound. This concern has not kept one of the Wampanoag tribes, the Aquinnah, from proposing its own wind-turbine project on tribal land on Martha’s Vineyard - just a few hundred yards from the Gay Head Cliffs that have won designation as a National Historic Landmark...

Here's the full editorial.

October 24, 2009 - Organizers at 350.org have declared today as International Day of Climate Action. From the pyramids of Egypt to Christopher Columbus park in Boston, some 4,500 events have been organized around the world to generate awareness of the need for coordinated global efforts against climate change. Billed as the largest political environmental action effort in the world’s history, the day will see events in more than 175 nations. Organizers hope to persuade world leaders to create meaningful policies to reduce carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. People wearing snorkels, life vests and the like will be gathering in Boston’s Christopher Columbus Park this afternoon. They will be highlighting concerns that parts of Boston could be submerged as global warming raises sea levels. Here's more from Beth Daley at Boston.com.

October 10, 2009 - I do not have a position on global warming beyond the fact that it's happening. In the face of indisputable evidence of retreating glaciers, thawing permafrost and a navigable passage opening up through the heretofore ice-blocked Arctic Ocean, it would take ostrich-like head-in-the-sand ignorance to deny it. So I experienced some cognitive dissonance in reading the following from Climate Correspondent for the BBC News, Paul Hudson:

"... the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998... For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures. And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise."

Tell that to the glaciers in Greenland.

Hudson's article goes on to discuss the debate on the causes of climate change. The warming observed at the end of the last century could have been caused by the sun or by a heat cycle in the Pacific Ocean... or maybe not. The earth may cool for the next decade or three... or maybe not. Global warming may begin with renewed vigor in another decade or two... or maybe not.

In the face of all this complexity I'm keeping it simple and watching those glaciers. As long as they're retreating I'll say that the earth is clearly warming.

Here's a link to Hudson's story.