Pacific Spirit Marine Institute

Russia goes to new deepths. The U.S. sinks deeper too.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Artur Chilingarov gets around. He's the same guy that led the dive to plant the Russian flag under the North Pole last year.Now he's seeing what is at the bottom of Lake Baikal.

Lake Baikal is said to be the deepest body of fresh water on the planet. It also
holds 20% of the entire earth's fresh water. While the Russians are exploring and recording tectonic information and gathering archeological artifacts...yes, they will be doing a little oil and gas prospecting.

The last time the Russians ventured deep into the lake was 1977 when they went down to 4,600 ft. under the surface. This dive went to 5,500 feet.

To say it's only taken a little more than 30 years to dive an additional 900 feet is probably unfair. After all the last time the U.S. sent a man to the moon was in 1972.

It makes me wonder what everyone has been doing for the last 30 years with their time. They promised us flying cars!

We haven't been developing new forms of energy. We haven't developed ways to sustain the oceans food sources. In fact there isn't enough room to list all the things we haven't done in the past 30 years.

The first earth day took place in 1970, when "Rising concern about the environmental crisis is sweeping the nation's campuses with an intensity..." yeah, that worked out real well.

In 1973 We were handed the famous oil embargo in the United States. We were told then that the nation would be embarking on a full court press to develope new kinds of energy, clean energy. Cars would have to be built with greater gas miliage.

Instead we moved into the age of the Hummer. Bigger and bigger cars getting less and less gas miliage litter the landscape.

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Nearly 30 years after the Love Canal nightmare,
the U.S. Army was busy sinking $100 million dollars into housing being built atop a Weapons Dump in Alaska. This is a site so toxic and dangerous the construction workers even became ill while trying to get it built.

Is this the new home of the future?

I saw the home of the future at Disneyland when I was 6 years old. It was amazing to me. I couldn't wait to see my mother swishing around the kitchen in her apron and pearls in a house just like that one. The future of things to come. I wanted to see her pilot her flying car to the store. I wanted to see the future as brightly as they promised me it would be.

They say Disney may build a "new" new home of the future. I say, "they may as well not disappoint anymore little girls."

Things haven't turned out the way anyone thought they would. what have we been doing for the last 30 years?

Time flies, but not in flying cars.

Photo Thanks: Love Cannal Avenue of Barrels, AEG Environmental Engineering Geologists
Disney Families